Quote of the Day

"We don't want to be like Jesus because we like plain old us better.  We value what we see as our uniqueness apart from Him.  On some level, we are all tempted to believe that we ourselves, even in our sin, are more interesting than we would be in Christ……On one hand, this is what reveals our darkest bit of idolatry- our desire to cling to Me, no matter what.  Rather me in sin than Him in me.  This is ultimately hell; being left to ourselves and our desires, and being given free reign."  

Rachel Jankovic
From her book: You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal With It.

Quote of the Day

True love isn't mutual, true love is selfless.

- Don Lambert

Quote of the Day

They were living to themselves: self, with its hopes, and promises, and dreams, still had hold of them; but the Lord began to fulfill their prayers. They had asked for contrition, and He sent them sorrow; they had asked for purity, and He sent them thrilling anguish; they had asked to be meek, and He had broken their hearts; they has asked to be dead to the world, and He slew all their living hopes; they had asked to be made like unto Him, and He placed them in the furnace, sitting by "as a refiner of silver," till they should reflect His image; they had asked to lay hold of His cross, and when He had reached it out to them, it lacerated their hands. They had asked they knew not what, nor how; but He had taken them at their word, and granted them all their petitions. They were hardly willing to follow so far, or to draw so nigh to Him. They had upon them an awe and fear, as Jacob at Bethel, or Eliphaz in the night visions, or as the apostles when they thought they had seen the spirit, and knew not that it was Jesus. They could almost pray Him to depart from them, or to hide His awefulness. They found it easier to obey than to suffer--to do than to give up--to bear the cross than to hang upon it: but they cannot go back, for they have come too near the unseen cross, and its virtues have pierced too deeply within them. He is fulfilling to them his promise, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.

But now, at last, their turn is come. Before, they had only heard of the mystery, but now they feel it. He has fastened on them His look of love, as He did on Mary and Peter, and they cannot but choose to follow. Little by little, from time to time, by flitting gleams the mystery of His cross shines upon them. They behold Him lifted up--they gaze upon the glory which rays forth from the wound of His holy passion; and as they gaze, they advance, and are changed into His likeness, and His name shines out through them, for he dwells in them. They live alone with Him above, in unspeakable fellowship; willing to lack what others own, and to be unlike all, so that they are only like him.

"Such are they in all ages who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. Had they chosen for themselves, or their friends chosen for them, they would have chosen otherwise. They would have been brighter here, but less glorious in His kingdom. They would have had Lot's portion, not Abraham's. If they had halted anywhere--if He had taken off His hand, and let them stray back--what would they have lost? What forfeits in the morning of the resurrection? But He stayed them up, even against themselves. Many a time their foot had well-nigh slipped; but He, in mercy, held them up; now, even in this life, they know all he did was done well. It was good for them to suffer here, for they shall reign hereafter--to bear the cross below, for they shall wear the crown above; and that not their will but His was done on them.

 

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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

When other people offend us, we should see that as an opportunity to love them.  

Paraphrase of Don Lambert

Quote of the Day

The cross is laid on every Christian. It begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death -- we give over our lives to death. Since this happens at the beginning of the Christian life, the cross can never be merely a tragic ending to an otherwise happy religious life. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time -- death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at His call. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of his following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and His call are necessarily our death and our life. 

  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

We are not doomed to an ultimate conflict with no hope of resolution.  The message of scripture is one of victory- full, final, and ultimate victory.  It is not our doom that is certain, but Satan's.  His head has been crushed by the heel of Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega. 

Above all suffering and death stands the crucified and risen Lord.  He has defeated the ultimate enemy of life.  He has vanquished the power of death.  He calls us to die, a call to obedience in the final transition of life.  Because of Christ, death is not final.  It is a passage from one world to the next.

God does not always will healing.  If He did, He would suffer endless frustration, seeing His will being repeatedly thwarted in the deaths of His people.  He did not will the healing of Stephen from the wounds inflicted by the stones that were hurled against him.  He did not will the healing of Moses, of Joseph, of David, of Paul, of Augustine, of Martin Luther, of John Calvin.  These all died in faith.  Ultimate healing comes through death and after death….Certainly God answers prayers and gives healings to our bodies during this life.  But even those healings are temporary.  Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  But Lazarus died again.  Jesus gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.  Yet every person Jesus healed eventually died.  They died not because Satan finally won over Jesus, but because Jesus called them to die.

When God issues a call to us, it is always a holy call.  The vocation of dying is a  sacred vocation.  To understand that is one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn.  When the summons comes, we can respond in many ways.  We can become angry, bitter or terrified.  But if we see it as a call from God and not a threat from Satan, we are far more prepared to cope with its difficulties.

R. C. Sproul

Quote of the Day

My goal is God Himself, not joy, nor peace,

Nor even blessing, but Himself, my God;

'Tis His to lead me there - not mine, but His—

At any cost, dear Lord, by any road.

So faith bounds forward to its goal in God,

And love can trust her Lord to lead her there;

 Upheld by Him, my soul is following hard

Till God hath full fulfilled my deepest prayer.

No matter if the way be sometimes dark,

No matter though the cost be oft-times great,

He knoweth how I best shall reach the mark;

The way that leads to Him must needs be strait.

One thing I know, I cannot say Him nay;

One thing I do, I press towards my Lord;

My God, my glory here, from day to day,

And in the glory there my great Reward.

F. Brook

Quote of the Day

There before you is the grisly old enemy to spiritual progress standing astride the path of obedience to Christ – SELF!  This monster cries out daily to be served.  He challenges the dominion of Jesus Christ and opposes every devotion of time, energy and love to the Lord.  But it is a strange war that we may win only by feeling ourselves the painful blows we give.  Every denial of self is felt keenly.  How we would love to change the scene of combat!  But on every occasion when we are serious about advancing in righteousness, we must contend with self.

Walter Chantry

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

O God, I have tasted Your goodness,

and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.

I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace.

I am ashamed of my lack of desire.

O God, the Triune God,

I want to want You;

I long to be filled with longing;

I thirst to be made more thirsty still.

Show me Your glory, I pray,

so I may know You indeed.

Begin in mercy a new work of love within me…

Give me grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland

where I have wandered so long.

  

A. W. Tozer

Quote of the Day

"In life with Jesus Christ, death as a general fate approaching us from without is confronted by death from within, one's own death, the free death of daily dying with Jesus Christ.  Those who live with Christ die daily to their own will.  Christ in us gives us over to death so that he can live within us.  Thus our inner dying grows to meet that death from without.  Christians receive their own death in this way, and in this way our physical death very truly becomes not the end but rather the fulfillment of our life with Jesus Christ.  Here we enter into community with the One who at his own death was able to say, 'It is finished.'"

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer