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I was somewhat encouraged by reading in my father's memoir, and in reflecting that he passed through far greater spiritual conflicts than will probably ever be mine….I see now that it is not always best for us to have the light of God's countenance.  Do not spend your time and strength in asking for me that blessing, but this -- that I may be transformed into the image of Christ in His own time, in His own way.

 

Elizabeth Prentiss

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"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.  Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."   I have read the 1st and 2d verses of the 12th chapter of Hebrews....Here in this wonderful 12th chapter of Hebrews, God calls the roll of the champions.  The champions are at the race.  There is a big crowd of them, a great throng......After God names the champions He say, "Now, you are in the race."  Remember you have to be a Christian to get in the race, but if you are already a Christian you are in the race.  And listen! Jesus is your Manager...He has arranged for the race.  He has mapped out the course for you.  He has fixed the race track for you.  He has put you on it.  He has told you about the champions that have won before.  You have a great crowd of witnesses here.  But these witness can't do anything for you except to encourage you.  All they can do is to tell you it can be done....Boys and girls, don't play to the grandstand.  Look to Jesus.  Jesus is the only one who can help you.  All the saints who have gone on before can only encourage you....God says you are compassed about by a great cloud of witnesses, but they can't win for you...you must put your eyes on Jesus in the race.

....Then He says, "I want you to win this race, and I will tell you how to do it.  There are three things you must do:  First, Look to Jesus.  That is essential! Put your eyes on Him!  Second, Lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset you.  Third, Run the race with patience."  "Lay aside the weight."  I don't know whether I am right about this.  It may not be taught here, but it is true anyway.  A great many people carry weights that are not actual sins.  Some people carry the weight of ignorance.  There is nothing that weighs a person down more than ignorance.  It is not a sin to be ignorant.  But it is a sin to stay ignorant...Suppose I should run down the street in this town with a jug of whiskey in one hand and a grindstone under the other arm.  Suppose I say to myself, "Now, I ought not to have this jug of whiskey.  It is a sin to carry this jug of liquor.  It is wrong .  I am going to throw it down."  I throw the jug of liquor down.  But I have the grindstone.  I say, "I will carry the grindstone; there is nothing wrong with that."  The jug of liquor is a sin.  The grindstone is a fault.   I drop the sin - that is  a good thing.  But sometimes a fault will hold one down almost as bad as a sin......A great many people delight themselves in their faults.  A girl said to me one time, "Everybody thinks I am angry when I am not angry."  Well, listen young lady, if that is so, then it is just the same as far as effect is concerned as if you were angry.  It may not be exactly the same as far as your character is concerned, but it is just the same in its effect and influence......If you have a style about you that hurts your testimony, get rid of it.  It is wrong to keep it.

Bob Jones Sr.

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Regarding salvation, dispensationalists believe that in every generation

men are saved by grace through faith, but they also recognize that the

content of their faith differs from dispensation to dispensation. Ryrie (p.

123) explains salvation in Dispensationalism as follows: "The basis of

salvation in every age is the death of Christ; the requirement for salvation

in every age is faith; the object of faith in every age is God; the content of

faith changes in the various dispensations. It is this last point, of course,

w h i c h d i s t i n g u i s h e s d i s p e n s a t i o n a l i s m from c o v e n a n t theology.” 

(Fruchtenbaum, I, p. 326)

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The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis tell of an older demon, Screwtape, writing to a younger demon,  Wormwood, about how to be effective in spiritually ruining people.  In his first letter Screwtape said, 'Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.  He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false,' but as 'academic' or 'practical.' Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Demons know that true science and reason will not contribute to their cause, which is deception.  Speculations, not facts, must fill men's minds.  All 'good' demons will use that strategy because it obscures biblical truth by focusing on temporal concerns.

John Macarthur

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God's Will is only revealed to us step by step.  He reveals more as we obey what we know.  Surrender means that we are prepared to follow God's guidance, wherever or however He guides, no matter what the cost.

Eric Liddell

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 As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized, this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded.  The world was Christianized, and grace became its common property…..The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into the justification of sin and the world.  Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship…….It is under the influence of this kind of 'grace' that the world has been made 'Christian,' but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before…The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different form the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace.   The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven.  I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that.  Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.  It is terrifying to realize what use can be made of a genuine evangelical doctrine.  In both cases we have the identical formula - 'justification by faith alone.' Yet the misuse of the formula leads to the complete destruction of its very essence.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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In times of financial straitness Mr. Taylor more than once took occasion to remind his fellow-workers of this principle.  "The position of faith is incompatible with borrowing or going into debt, or forcing our way forward when the Lord closes the door before us," he wrote in November 1898.  "If we propose a certain extension for which the Lord sees the time has not come, or which is not in accordance with His will, how can He more clearly guide us than by withholding the means?  It would be a serious mistake, therefore, to refuse to listen to the Lord's 'No,' and by borrowing or going into debt do the thing to which He had objected by withholding the needed funds or facilities.  All the works we are engaged in is His rather than ours; and if the Master can afford to wait, surely the servant can also."

 

 

Hudson Taylor

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As she anticipated, the volume met in some quarters with anything but a cordial reception; the criticism upon it were curt and depreciatory.  It's representation of the Christian life was censured as gloomy and false.  It was even intimated that in her expressions of pain and sorrow, there was more or less poetical affectation.  Alluding to this in a letter to a friend, she writes:  "I have spoken of the deepest, sorest pain; not of trials, but of sorrow, not of discomfort, but of suffering.  And all I have spoken of, I have felt.  Never could I have known Christ, had I not had large experience of Him as a chastiser….You little know the long story of my life, nor is it necessary that you should;  but you must take my word for it that if I do not know what suffering means, there is not a soul on earth that does.  It has not been my habit to say much about this; it has been a matter between myself and my God; but the results I have told, that He may be glorified and that others may be led to Him as the Fountain of life and light.  I refer, of course, to the book of verses; I never called them poems.  You may depend upon it the world is brimful of pain in some shape or other; it is a 'hurt world'.  But no Christian should go about groaning and weeping; though sorrowing, he should be always rejoicing.  During twenty years of my life my kind and wise Physician was preparing me, by many bitter remedies, for the work I was to do; I can never thank or love Him enough for His unflinching discipline."

 

Elizabeth Prentiss

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I am no stranger, I assure you, to the misgivings you describe in your last letter; I think them the result of the wish without the will to be holy.  We pray for sanctification and then are afraid God will sanctify us by stripping us of our idols and feel distressed lest we can not have them and Him too.

Elizabeth Prentiss

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Want of trust is at the root of almost all our sins and all our weaknesses; and how shall we escape it but by looking to Him and observing His faithfulness?...The man who holds God's faithfulness will not be foolhardy or reckless, but he will be ready for every emergency.  The man who holds God's faithfulness will dare to obey Him, however impolitic it may be appear. "  As to the correctness of this modified translation, Mr. Taylor noted:  "For the rendering 'God's faithfulness,' see Rom. Iii. 3, where 'the faith of God' evidently means His faithfulness.  The verb translated 'hold', is thus rendered in Matt. Xxi. 26, 'all hold John as a prophet.' In the corresponding passage in Mark xi. 32, it is rendered 'count'; and in that in Luke xx. 6, a different Greek verb is used, which well illustrates the meaning, 'They be persuaded that John was a prophet.'  Let us see that in theory we hold that God is faithful; that in daily life we count upon it; and that at all times and under all circumstances we are fully persuaded of this blessed truth."  Abraham held God's faithfulness and offered up Isaac, 'Accounting that God was able to raise him from the dead.'  Moses held God's faithfulness and led the millions of Israel into the waste, holing wilderness.  Joshua knew Israel well, and was ignorant neither of the fortifications of the Canaanites nor of their martial prowess, but he held God's faithfulness and led Israel across the Jordan….The Apostles held God's faithfulness, and were not daunted by the hatred of the Jews or the hostility of the heathen….  "And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of those who, holding God's faithfulness, had faith, and by it subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises…out of weakness were made strong, waked valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the nations?'  Satan, too, has his creed:  Doubt God's Faithfulness.  Hath God said?  Are you not mistaken as to His commands?  He could not really mean just that.  You take and extreme view, a literal meaning to the words.'….How constantly, and, alas, how successfully are such arguments used to prevent whole-hearted trust in God, whole-hearted consecration to God!....How many estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt.  All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.

 

Hudson Taylor

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"Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God; He riseth from supper and laid aside His garments; and took a towel and girded Himself." He took a towel - the Lord of Glory did that. Is it the bondservant's business to say which work is large and which is small, which unimportant and which worth doing? It was a foolish question, for the Master never wastes the servant's time.

 

Amy Carmichael

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God is wonderful in His design and excellent in His working. Believer, God overrules all things for your good. The needs-be for all that you have suffered, has been most accurately determined by God. Your course is all mapped out by your Lord. Nothing will take Him by surprise. There will be no novelties to Him. There will be no occurrences which He did not foresee, and for which, therefore, He has not provided. He has arranged all, and you have but to patiently wait, and you shall sing a song of deliverance. Your life has been arranged on the best possible principles, so that if you had been gifted with unerring wisdom, you would have arranged a life for yourself exactly similar to the one through which you have passed. Let us trust God where we cannot trace Him. 

Charles Spurgeon

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A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

 

G. K. Chesterton

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It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but what we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensable to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to inquire, “How will the work go on without me?” As well might the fly on the coach wheel inquire, “How will the mails be carried without me?” Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? If we were only put on one side when apparently we could be easily spared, there would be no rebuke to our pride, but to weaken our strength in the way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed, is the surest way to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful he can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured, for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone magnified.

Charles Spurgeon

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I never knew my own father...Personal deprivations…can easily distort our understanding of the Christian gospel by making it say what we want to hear, rather than what God is really saying…It is where we are most thirsty that we shall be most likely to drink, but also perhaps to be least discriminating about what we drink.  One of the functions of theology is to help us test the quality of the water, to distinguish what is brackish from what is living…

  Thomas Smail

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Commenting on Matt. 19:16 and Luke 10:25-29:

Moral difficulties were the first consequence of the Fall, and are themselves the outcome of 'Man in Revolt' against God.  The Serpent in Paradise put them into the mind of the first man by asking, 'Hath God said?'  Until then the divine command had been clear enough, and man was ready to observe it in childlike obedience.  But that is now past, and moral doubts and difficulties have crept in.  The command, suggests the Serpent, needs to be explained and interpreted. 'Hath God said?' Man must decide for himself what is good by using his conscience and his knowledge of good and evil.  The commandment may be variously interpreted, and it is God's will that it should be interpreted and explained: for God has given man a free will to decide what he will do.  

But this means disobedience from the start.  Doubt and reflection take the place of spontaneous obedience.  The grown-up man with his freedom of conscience vaunts his superiority over the child of obedience.  But he has acquired the freedom to enjoy moral difficulties only at the cost of renouncing obedience.  In short, it is a retreat from the reality of God to the speculations of men, from faith to doubt…..Jesus simply quotes the commandments of God as they are revealed in Scripture, and thus reaffirms them as the commandments of God.  The young man is trapped once more.  He had hoped to avoid committing himself to any definite moral obligations by forcing Jesus to discuss his spiritual problems.  He had hoped Jesus would offer him a solution of his moral difficulties.  But instead he finds Jesus attacking not his question but himself.  The only answer to his difficulties is the very commandment of God, which challenges him to have done with academic discussion and to get on with the task of obedience.  Only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says: 'Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.'  But Jesus is not interested in the young man's problems; he is interested in the young man himself.  He refuses to take those difficulties as seriously as the young man does.  There is one thing only which Jesus takes seriously, and that is, that it is high time the young man began to hear the commandment and obey it. 

Where moral difficulties are taken so seriously, where they torment and enslave man, because they do not leave him open to the freeing activity of obedience, it is there that his total godlessness is revealed.  All his difficulties are shown to be ungodly, frivolous and the proof of sheer disobedience.  The one thing that matters is practice obedience……The young man…is still not satisfied.  'All these things have I observed from my youth up:  what lack I yet?'  Doubtless he was just as convinced of his sincerity this time as he was before….He knows the commandment and has kept it, but now, he thinks, that cannot be all God wants of him, there must be something more, some extraordinary and unique demand, and this is what he wants to do.  The revealed commandment of God is incomplete, he says, as he makes the last attempt to preserve his independence and decide for himself what is good and evil…….. "

Speaking on the Lawyer in Luke 10:

"The final question 'Who is my neighbor?' is the parting shot of despair (or else of self confidence); the lawyer is trying to justify his disobedience.  The answer is:  "You are the neighbor.  Go along and try to be obedient by loving others." …Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience.  We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not.  We must get into action and obey - we must behave like a neighbor to him.  But perhaps this shocks you.  Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do.  To that there is only one answer.  You can only know and think about it by actually doing it.  You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.  It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.  With our consciences distracted by sin, we are confronted by the call of Jesus to spontaneous obedience.  But whereas the rich young man was called to the grace of discipleship, the lawyer, who sought to tempt him, was only sent back to the commandment.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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2 Peter 1, 'add patience/endurance'.  Not the : " "…the patience which sits down and accepts things but the patience which masters them.  It is not some romantic thing which lends us wings to fly over the difficulties and the hard places..  It is a determination, unhurrying and yet undelaying, which goes steadily on and refuses to be deflected.  Obstacles do not daunt It and discouragements do not take its hope away.  It is the steadfast endurance which carries on  until in the end it gets there.

 

William Barclay

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It is obvious that Agnosticism is the destruction of science. All the investigations and reasonings of science proceed on the foundation of axioms, - call them intuitions, rational postulates, or by any other name. But these, according to Agnostics, denote simply a certain stage at which the process of evolution has arrived. What is to hinder them from vanishing, or resolving themselves into another set of axioms, with the forward movement of this unresting process? What then will become of the doctrine of Agnosticism itself? It is plain that on this philosophy, all knowledge of realities, as distinct from transitory impressions, is a house built on the sand. All science is reduced to schein – mere semblance. It is impossible for the Agnostic to limit his knowledge to experience, and to reject as unverified the implications of experience, without abandoning nearly all that he holds true. If he sticks to his principle, his creed will be a short one. Consciousness is confined to the present moment. I am conscious of remembering an experience in the past. This consciousness as a present fact I cannot deny without a contradiction. But how do I know that the object of the recollection – be it a thought, or feeling or experience of any sort – ever had a reality? How do I know anything past, or that there is a past? Now, memory is necessary to the comparison of sensations, to reasoning, to our whole mental life. Yet to believe memory is to transcend experience. I have certain sensations which I attribute collectively to a cause named my “body.” Like sensations lead me to recognize the existence of other bodies like my own. But how do I know that there is consciousness within these bodies? How do I know that my fellow-men whom I see about me have minds like my own? The senses cannot perceive the intelligence of the friends about me. I infer that they are intelligent, but in this inference I transcend experience. Experience reduced to its exact terms, according to the methods of Agnosticism, is confined to the present feeling, - the feeling of the transient moment. When the Agnostic goes beyond this, when he infers that what is remembered was once presented in consciousness, that his fellow-men are thinking beings, and not mindless puppets, that any intelligent beings exist outside of himself, he transcends experience. If he were to predicate intelligence of God, he would be guilty of no graver assumption than when he ascribes intelligence to the fellow-men he sees moving about, and with whom he is conversing.

George Parker

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When the soul leaves off a duty, because he hath not in it what he expected from it. Oh, saith the soul, I see it is vain to follow the means as I have done; still Satan fails me, I will even give over. Dost thou remember, soul, it is of God's appointment? surely then thou wouldst persevere in the midst of discouragements. 

 

William Gurnall

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The best training is to learn to accept everything as it comes, as from Him whom our soul loves. The tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life, silly little nothings, things you are ashamed of minding (at all). Yet they can knock a strong man over and lay him very low.

Amy Carmichael

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The first thing I ask is that people should not make use of my name, and should not call themselves Lutherans but Christians. What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone...How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?

 

Martin Luther