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

Lately I've had the occasion to fly a lot around the country, preaching here and there. Even though I'm here on Sundays, it seems like my weeks have been spent in airports, sometimes for a long time, as I've had mechanical delays and things like that. And I've become very much aware of a book that I knew was out there but I see literally all over all the airports that I've been in, in the last month or so, it has been labeled, at least, the best selling religious book of the time. The title of it is Your Best Life Now. I have seen stacks and stacks and stacks of those books everywhere I've gone.

Out of curiosity, I want to know what's in the book and so I found this on page 5, “God wants this to be the best time of your life.” On another page it says, “Happy, successful, fulfilled individuals have learned how to live their best life now. On another page it says, “As you put the principles found in these pages to work today, you will begin living your best life now.” And that is absolutely true if you're not a Christian. This is it, you better get the book because your next life is going to be infinitely worse than this one.

This is your best life now. In fact, it's your only life because in the world to come, you will only exist in a perpetual state of dying with no hope, no satisfaction, no meaning, no joy and no future and no relief from eternal suffering. That's the worst life possible. And this is your best life, if your next life is in hell.

But, on the other hand, if you are a child of God and your sins are forgiven and you've come to embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, this is not even close to your best life.......

Contrary to what is popular today, even in religious circles, even in quote/unquote religion circles, even in the name of Jesus, the Lord is not promising you here and now a full, happy, rich, satisfying, trouble-free life of health, wealth and success. Oh He does promise that. Absolutely...a full, rich, satisfying, trouble-free life of health and wealth and success and absolute joy and peace and perfection...but not now...not now. In fact, quite on the other hand, our Lord has promised to those who know Him and love Him in this life...trouble, persecution, rejection, difficulty, trials, temptation, pain, suffering, sorrow, sickness and even physical death.

So, for Christians, this is our worst life now. It isn't that it's bad, but comparatively it's the worst when you think about the life to come, which is the best. Your best life as a Christian begins when this life ends.

- John Macarthur