Quote of the Day

It is a great mistake when we fret over the human instrument which smites us, and forget the hand which uses the rod.  If I strike a dog, he bites my stick; poor creature, he knows no better; but if he could think a  little he would bite me, or else take the blow submissively.  Now, you must not begin biting the stick.  After all, it is your heavenly Father that uses the staff; though it be of ebony or of blackthorn, it is in his hand.  It is well to have done with picking and choosing our trials, and leave the whole matter in the hand of infinite wisdom."

Charles Spurgeon
From his book: Talks to Farmers

Quote of the Day

Freedom from sin is only granted to Christians.  Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells  believers that they have not been seized by any temptation that cannot be overcome.  He is not talking to non-Christians, who Paul establishes elsewhere are controlled by the sinful flesh and cannot do anything spiritually pleasing to God (Rom. 8:7-8)...."...walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh..."(Gal 5:16-17).  Again, this command is to Christians.  Unbelievers cannot "walk by the Spirit."  However, believers walking by the Spirit have the ability  to "not gratify the desires of the flesh ."  If this is true, that no temptation has ever come across a Christian that is not common to all, and that sin is nothing more than a Christian yielding to his fleshly desires, then how can addiction as commonly understood (i.e., uncontrollable urges and impulses) actually exist for believers?
......Granted, sin can certainly feel irresistible, but perhaps it feels that way because we capitulate to it far too readily.  We have not built up the essential perseverance to repel it.  We have repeatedly said yes, and like muscles that have atrophied from disuse, our spirit has become weak because we have not exercised the fortitude to resist temptation as we ought.

- Victor Kuligin

Quote from his book:

The Language of Salvation:  Discovering the Riches of What it Means to Be Saved

Quote of the Day

As to your thoughts of chastisement for past sin, I do not think we may look for it with emotions of fear.  I think the chastisements of God upon his people are prospective; retrospective never.  Do you see what I mean, dear; if I had yesterday a cankered wound in my hand, the careful surgeon may come today and cut it off.  Not because it was diseased yesterday, but that it may not be so tomorrow...Exactly in this point of view, I look upon the chastisements the believer has to anticipate.  No punishment but that which is remedial; if the sin which last year broke out into action of offence before God, be this year existing unabated in my bosom, ready to break out again, then chastisement must come;; the bitter remedy must be applied; the painful cure performed, because by any means, or all means, I must be made holy....there is no wrath in His bosom for the past: and if my view be right, I see in it no ground of depression, but rather of rejoicing, of encouragement. If we hate the sin more than its consequences, which I believe we do, we shall rather hope than fear, to see those consequences doing execution upon the sin.

Caroline [Fry] Wilson writing to a friend in 1829

Quote of the Day

Everything we encounter today is used by God to prepare us for tomorrow. he wastes no trials, withholds no blessings, nor does he hold back  on the discipline of his soldiers.  All he does prepares us for future usefulness as vessels of honor.

- From Polycarp: a destroyer of our gods - by Rick Lambert

Quote of the Day

On Philippians 2:12-13:

Here it is perfectly clear: the more I read the Bible and see the picture of the Christian man, the more I understand the nature of sin and life in this world, and what God has done for me in Christ, then the more I shall desire the things of God and hate the other. So I suggest that the best practical step is to read God's word, and to be thoroughly soaked in it. There is a very simple, practical test that one can apply at this point. I wonder what the result would be if we all kept a chart for one week and put down on paper the amount of time which we spent in reading God's word and things which help us to understand it, and the time we spent reading newspapers and novels or watching films? Now I am just asking the question. We say we believe in salvation. We believe God has given us this gift, so then, I ask, what are the relative amounts of time that we give to these things? Working out our own salvation means that we do everything we can to feed this life, to stimulate it, to enable it to extend and develop and grow.

 And the other thing, clearly, is prayer: prayer for an increasing knowledge of God, for a greater measure of the Holy Spirit and for a greater understanding of this word; prayer for guidance, for leading and for understanding. If I believe in God and that he has done this for me, why do I spend so little time with Him? Why do I not long for Him more and more? That is how we work it out and I must follow and obey every prompting and leading that I am conscious of in this direction. The fathers used to regard the Christian life as a whole time occupation. They used to spend their time with it and, I feel, it is one of the greatest condemnations of us today that we are guilty of not working out this amazing salvation that God has given to us.

 But, then, what is the manner in which we do this? The Apostle says that we are to do it 'with fear and trembling'. Here again we must define our terms. He does not mean that we must do it in fear of losing our salvation. You will find that in the New Testament these words never carry that implication. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians 'I was with you ... in fear, and in much trembling' (1 Cor 2:3), he did not mean that he was afraid that he would lose his soul. Neither is it a kind of craven fear, one of self torment. It means humility and a holy reverence, or, if you like, a holy vigilance and circumspection. It means that as I work out my salvation, I should realise the tremendous seriousness of what I am doing.

 I wonder whether this is not the thing which needs to be emphasised most at the present time, not least in the ranks of evangelical people? I wonder why it is that the whole idea of the godly man has somehow or other got lost amongst us? Why is it that Christian people are not described as 'God fearing' people? Why is it that there is such a difference between us and the Christian of a hundred or two hundred years ago, or the Puritan of the seventeenth century? They were truly Christian. 'Methodist', too, was a kind of nickname given to people because of their methodical life. I wonder why it is that somehow or other we have lost this particular sense of the Christian life? I have no doubt but that the explanation is that it is an overreaction on our part from the pure legalism that was so common at the turn of the century when many people had lost the true spirit of the New Testament. They imposed a certain kind of life upon themselves and upon their children; they laid down rules and regulations; and people then reacted and said, 'That is pure legalism, not Christianity.' But now we are so much like everybody else because we have forgotten this about 'fear and trembling', vigilance and circumspection. Sometimes I am afraid we have been so anxious not to give the impression that to be Christian means being miserable, that we have imagined that we must be smiling and laughing all the time and we have believed in this so called 'muscular' Christianity…………

And, lastly, I must work out my salvation with fear and trembling, for this good reason: the New Testament teaches me that if I fail to do so myself, then I must not be surprised if God begins to do certain things to me. Do you remember the teaching of Hebrews 12:6-note? 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.' (cp He 12:5-note)It is put still more strikingly in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul says that there were many in the church at Corinth who were sick, and there were even some, he said, who were dead, and he tells us that the reason for that was that they had not examined themselves before partaking of the Lord's Supper, and were partaking unworthily. Such a man, Paul said, 'eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body' (1Co 11:29).

The doctrine of the New Testament can be put into this form: if God has called you and given you his salvation, he destines you for salvation and he is going to perfect you. His method is to put promptings within us. He energizes our mind and whole outlook, but if we fail to practise these things, then God, in His very love to us, is going to chasten us a sickness, an illness, a disappointment, a loss, a sorrow. These are ways which God uses because of our failure and our recalcitrance. 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' (Heb 10:31-note).

The love of God is as great as that. The Christian man who is not doing his utmost to live the Christian life is a fool, and he must not be surprised if certain things begin to happen to him. If you are a child of God, He is going to bring about your perfection and if you do not do it yourself to please Him in this way, then, I say, you may well find that God will do it to you in one of these other ways. That is a very wonderful thing. I am not saying that every Christian who suffers is being chastised, but I do say that God does do that, and if we fail to respond to His appeal, then we must not be surprised if we experience His chastening.”

 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Quote of the Day

What are you out for?  Believe me, you will get it whatever it is, if you are determined to do so.  Are you out for the rewards of this world?  They can be obtained with very little effort.  They satisfy for a while, but when one begins to think seriously about them they are not even worth that little effort.  But still we go on trying to get the best our of both worlds.  Let us realize once and for all that the things of the Spirit can only be appreciated by the spirit.  The reward for a spiritual way of life is a spiritual reward.  Why do we expect to get the rewards of this world as well?  Why do we so often complain that the ungodly seem to succeed while we fail?  We are not out for the same thing.  We must learn to judge spiritual results by spiritual  standards.  Whatever a man soweth that also shall he reap.  If we have sown to the spirit why expect to get a worldly and bodily harvest?  The man who sows for worldly results gets them, and everyone can see these and know them and appreciate them.  The Christian, on the other hand, has very little that the world can appreciate.  That is why the Way of Life is a difficult way - it is a life of faith.  When you enter upon it, you give up everything that the world treasures most, and it is inevitable that at times we shall experience a sense of loss.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Quote of the Day

What I most desired Thou hast denied, yet I praise Thee:  On what account, I know not, yet I praise Thee: Thou hast done it; that silences me. Thy will makes it indisputable, and renders it my indispensable duty to fall in with it….But what matters it how the affairs of a present world go, if the interests of the next world are secured?....what avails it though the outward man decay, if the inner man grow? Though the temporal condition be perplexed, if the conscience be possessed of spiritual peace? I praise Thee that Thou interposest Thy providence, even in disappointing my enterprises; and dost not give me up to the blind desires of mine own heart, and to wander at random in counsels of mine own.  I can resolve the present case into nothing but Thy will; yet I rejoice more to fall in with Thy will, and to be submissive to Thy disposal, than to have my will in every point performed... 

 

James Meikle

Quote of the Day

Every Christian who falls into sin is a fool.  If a Christian feels he is in a state of defeat, it is because he is being controlled by his subjective feelings, instead of by an understanding of the truth.  Deliverance from this condition, therefore, depends upon a total change in approach:  Christians are to look not at themselves and their problems but at what God had done for them; their need is not the ‘hospital’ but the ‘barracks” where they will forget their own troubles and ills, and learn to fight in the army. 

We must get rid of that notion of the clinic and the hospital; and we must look at these things more in terms of God and His glory, and the great campaign which He inaugurated through the Son of His love, and which He is going to bring to a triumphant conclusion.

Martyn-Lloyd Jones

Quote of the Day

Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ''in spirit and in truth.'' Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them. 

  

Elisabeth Elliot

Quote of the Day

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith or delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; toward disobedience and call it freedom; toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the non-discipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

D. A. Carson

Quote of the Day

Every Christian who falls into sin is a fool.  If a Christian feels he is in a state of defeat, it is because he is being controlled by his subjective feelings, instead of by an understanding of the truth.  Deliverance from this condition, therefore, depends upon a total change in approach:  Christians are to look not at themselves and their problems but at what God had done for them; their need is not the ‘hospital’ but the ‘barracks” where they will forget their own troubles and ills, and learn to fight in the army. 

We must get rid of that notion of the clinic and the hospital; and we must look at these things more in terms of God and His glory, and the great campaign which He inaugurated through the Son of His love, and which He is going to bring to a triumphant conclusion.

 

Martin Lloyd-Jones

Quote of the Day

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order; It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

 

Sherlock Holmes

A.K. A. 

A. C. Doyle

Quote of the Day

The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world. 

 

Elisabeth Elliot

Quote of the Day

The spirit knows the right way, an desires to follow it, but the flesh lacks courage and finds it too hard, too hazardous and wearisome, and so it stifles the voice of the spirit.  The spirit assents when Jesus bids us love our enemies, but flesh and blood are too strong and prevent our carrying it out.  Therefore we have to practice strictest daily discipline only so can the flesh learn the painful lesson that it has no rights of its own…The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of "evangelical liberty").  We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from  self- martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism……Any objection that asceticism is wrong, and that all we need is faith , is quite beside the point; it is cruel to suggest such a thing, and it is no help to us at all.  When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

"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.

Quote of the Day

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

Quote of the Day

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

Quote of the Day

I asked the Lord that I might grow

In faith and love and every grace;

Might more of His salvation know

And seek more earnestly His face.

T'was He who taught me thus to pray,

And He I know has answered prayer;

But it has been in such a way

As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,

At once He'd answer my request;

And by His love's constraining power

Subdue my sins and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of Hell

Assault my soul in every part.

Yes! More! With His own hand it seemed

Intent to aggravate my woe;

Crossed all the fair designs I'd schemed,

Blasted my gourds, and made me low.

"Lord! Why is this?" I trembling cried;

"Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?"

"Tis this way" The Lord replied

"I answer for grace and faith."

"These inward trials I employ

From self and pride to see thee free

And break thy schemes of earthly joy

That thou mayest seek thy ALL IN ME."

John Newton

Quote of the Day

 Tolerance and passivity define today’s approach to parenting. Restraint and correction are deemed too confining for the child’s psyche. Self-esteem has superseded self-control. Parents are afraid to correct wrong behavior. They are urged by experts to let their children express themselves freely. Too many parents are utterly absent from their own children’s sphere of moral influence. The child’s nature is simply permitted to take its course, and by the time the parent realizes the utter depravity of the child’s heart, things are already on a course for calamity.

John Macarthur

Quote of the Day

Unbelief looks at the difficulty. Faith regards the promise. Unbelief therefore makes our work a service of bondage. Faith realizes it as a “labour of love.” Unbelief drags on in sullen despondency. Faith makes the patience, with which it content to wait for success, “the patience of hope.” As every difficulty (as we have hinted,) is the fruit of unbelief; so will they all ultimately be overcome by the perseverance of faith. To gain therefore an active and powerful spring of renewed exertion, we must strike our roots deeper into the soil of faith. For the work will ever prosper or decline, as we depend upon an Almighty arm, or an arm of flesh. Few, probably, even of the most devoted servants of God, had duly counted the cost before they put their hand to the plough; and from the want of these preparatory exercises of faith, arises that oppressive faintness which gives the enemy such an advantage in distressing our peace, and enfeebling our exertions. But after all, the grand secret is habitually to have eye upon Christ. Peter–looking at the waves instead of the Saviour–”began to sink.” We too–if we look at the difficulties of our work, and forget the upholding arm of our ever-present Head–shall sink in despondency. Believe–wait–work–are the watchwords of the Ministry. Believing the promise, gives the power to wait. Waiting supplies strength for work, and such working “is not in vain in the Lord.

Charles Bridges