Quote of the Day

Soon after I stopped feeling this intense love and presence of God, I started grasping for things that normally brought that passion back.  I would drive almost an hour away to find churches with great worship bands and speakers……I knew on some level that there was something off about the way I was approaching this, but I felt like I needed to do whatever it took to get that feeling back.  And then one day it struck me:  my faith had stopped being about God and had become about how I felt.  That was really selfish of me.  It shouldn't have mattered how I felt if I trusted that God was real.  At that point the best thing for someone like me was to remove those feelings so that my faith would once again become about God, not myself. ….the end result was that I began learning how  to center my life around God with or without the feelings that I once had…….To make Christianity purely about feelings is to make it about ourselves rather than God.  God doesn't promise to constantly flood us with intense emotion…From the earliest days of the church, Christians have based their closeness to God on theology - on what they knew about God from Scripture - rather than feelings.  Many of the first Christians shed blood for believing in God.  If anyone had the right to feel distant from God, wouldn’t it be the people suffering for his sake? Instead, the early disciples rejoiced at the chance to suffer for Christ (Acts 5:41)."

From the book: Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible and Christianity

by Clinton E. Arnold and Jeff Arnold

Quote of the Day

To the natural man, the very notion of loving his enemies is an intolerable offense, and quite beyond his capacity:  it cuts right across his ideas of good and evil…….In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.  The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love.  His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus….Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it.  And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love?  Who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy?  Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?  Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love.  Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. ……How then does love conquer? By asking not how the enemy treats her but only how Jesus treated her…Our adversaries seek to root out the Christian Church and the Christian faith because they cannot live side by side with us, because they see in every word we utter and every deed we do, even when they are not specifically directed against them, a condemnation of their own words and deeds.  They are not far wrong.  They suspect too that we are indifferent to their condemnation.  Indeed they must admit that it is utterly futile to condemn us.  We do not reciprocate their hatred and contention.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Our enemies threaten us with death, if they had as much wisdom as foolishness, they would, on the contrary, threaten us with life.  What an absurdity and insult to presume to threaten death to Christ and Christians, who are themselves lords and conquerors of death!......It is as if I would seek to frighten a man by saddling his horse and helping him to mount.  Do they not know that Christ is risen from the dead?  In their eyes HE is still lying in the sepulcher; nay more - in hell.  But we know that He lives……Many believe because of me, but those alone truly believe, who would continue faithful even should they hear (which God forbid!) that I had denied Jesus Christ.  True disciples believe not in Luther, but in Jesus Christ.  As for myself, I do not care about Luther.  Whether he is a saint or a knave, what matters it?  It is not he that I preach; but Christ.  If the devil hate him, let him do so!  But let Christ abide with us, and we shall abide also.

 

Martin Luther

Quote of the Day

In 1891 the last year of his (Spurgeon’s) life, there was another sermon from the book of Daniel, this time on the resolution of Daniel’s three companions who were thrown into the furnace for their refusal to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. In the first division of the sermon he lists the kind of excuses the three men might have used to justify a compliance which might have used to justify a compliance which would have kept them out of the furnace. They might have said, ‘We can do more good by living,’ dying would ‘cut short our opportunities for usefulness.’ Upon which Spurgeon enlarges:

“Ah, my dear brethren! There are many that are deceived by this method of reasoning. They remain where their conscience tells them they ought not to be, because, they say, they are more useful than they would be if they went “without the camp”. This is doing evil that good may come, and can never be tolerated by an enlightened conscience. If an act of sin would increase my usefulness tenfold, I have no right to do it; and if an act of righteousness would appear likely to destroy all my apparent usefulness, I am yet to do it. It is yours and mine to do the right though the heavens fall, and follow the command of Christ whatever the consequences may be. “That is strong meat,” do you say? Be strong men, then, and feed thereon…

For right is right, since God is God,

And right the day must win;

To doubt would be disloyalty,

To falter would be sin.

Excerpt from The Forgotten Spurgeon - by Iain Murray

Quote of the Day

1. Father, long before creation

Thou hadst chosen us in love,

And that love so deep, so moving,

Draws us close to Christ above.

Still it keeps us, still it keeps us

Firmly fixed in Christ alone.

2. Though the world may change its fashion,

Yet our God is e'er the same;

His compassion and His covenant

Through all ages will remain.

God's own children,

God's own children

Must forever praise His name.

3. God's compassion is my story,

Is my boasting all the day;

Mercy free and never failing

Moves my will, directs my way.

God so loved us,

God so loved us

That His only Son He gave.

4. Loving Father now before Thee

We will ever praise Thy love,

And our songs will sound unceasing

'Til we reach our home above,

Giving glory,

giving glory

To our God and to the Lamb.

Chinese Hymn written in c. 1952 during the Cultural Revolution, a time of brutal persecution for Chinese Christians.

Quote of the Day

I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of wood, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to the load, before we are required to bear it. 

 

John Newton

Quote of the Day

O Almighty and Everlasting God! How terrible is this world! Behold, it openeth its mouth to swallow me up, and I have so little trust in Thee!.....How weak is the flesh, and Satan how strong! If it is only in the strength of this world that I must put my trust, all is over!......My last hour is come, my condemnation has been pronounced!......O God! O God!......O God! do thou help me against the wisdom of the world! Do this; thou shouldest do this.....thou alone.....for this is not my work, but Thine. I have nothing to do here, nothing to contend for with these great ones of the world! I should desire to see my days flow on peaceful and happy. But the cause is Thine.....and it is a righteous and eternal cause. O Lord! help me! Faithful and unchangeable God! In no man do I place my trust. It would be vain! All that is of man is uncertain; all that cometh of man fails....O God! my God, hearest Thou me not?.....My God, art Thou dead?.....No! Thou canst not die! Thou hidest thyself only! Thou hast chosen me for this work. I know it well!.....Act, then, O God!......stand at my side, for the sake of thy well-beloved Jesus Christ, who is my defense, my shield, and my strong tower...................Lord! where stayest Thou?......O my God! where art Thou?,,,,,,Come! come! I am ready!.....I am ready to lay down my life for Thy truth.....patient as a lamb. For it is the cause of justice - it is Thine!.....I will never separate myself from Thee, neither now nor through eternity!.....And though the world should be filled with devils, - though my body, which is still the work of Thy hands, should be slain, be stretched upon the pavement, be cut in pieces.....reduced to ashes.....my soul is Thine!....Yes! Thy Word is my assurance of it. My soul belongs to Thee! It shall abide for ever with Thee.....Amen!....O God! help me!.....Amen!

Martin Luther

The second morning of Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms.

Quote of the Day

Our great honor lies in being just what Jesus was and is. To be accepted by those who accept Him, rejected by all who reject Him, loved by those who love Him and hated by everyone that hates Him. What greater glory could come to any man?"

A. W. Tozer

Quote of the Day

Slavish fear makes the naughty heart imprison truth in his conscience, because, if that had its liberty and authority in the soul,it would imprison, yea, execute every lust that rules the roost; and he that imprisons truth in his own bosom, will hardly lie in prison himself as a witness for truth.

William Gurnall

Quote Of The Day

The problem with Christians is nobody wants to kill them anymore.

Author Unknown

Quote Of The Day

O ye saints, when reproached and persecuted, look farther than man, spend not your wrath on him. Alas! They are but instruments in the devil’s hand. Save your displeasure for Satan, who is thy chief enemy. These may be won to Christ’s side, and so become thy friends at last. Now and then we see some running away from the devil’s colours, and washing thy wounds with their tears, which they have made with their cruelty. It is a notable passage in Anselm, compares the heretic and the persecutor to the horse, and the devil to the rider. Now, saith he, in battle, when the enemy comes riding up, the valiant soldier ‘is angry not with the horse, but horseman; he labours to kill the man, that he may possess the horse for his use; thus must we do with the wicked, we are not to bend our wrath against them, but Satan that rides them, and spurs them on, labouring by prayer for them as Christ did on the cross, to dismount the devil, that so these miserable souls hackneyed by him may be delivered from him.

William Gurnall