Quote of the Day

Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person's seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next. 

  

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

…when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the' German Christians'(Nazi church ) in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't.  "If you board the wrong train," he said, "it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction."

From  Eric Metaxas book, BONHOEFFER

Quote of the Day

On Divorce: …Clearly Jesus sees a tension between Deuteronomy 24 and Genesis 1-2.  The but at the beginning of verse 6 ('But from the beginning of Creation…') means: God's will about divorce in Genesis 1-2 is not the same as his will expressed in Deuteronomy 24.  So the question is:  Which way will Jesus go?  Will he say, 'Well, there is still hardness of heart today, even in my disciples, and so Deuteronomy expresses God's will for my followers today'?  Or will he say, "I am the Messiah, the Christ.  The Son of Man has come into the world to gather a people who by faith in him and union with him display the true meaning of marriage in the way they keep their marriage covenant'?  Will the emphasis fall on the fact that in the church there is still hardness of heart, or will the emphasis fall on the fact that the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17)?

John Piper

Quote of the Day

The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you….If you make usefulness the test, then Jesus Christ was the greatest failure that ever lived.  The lodestar of the saint is God Himself, not estimated usefulness.  It is the work that God does through us that counts, not what we do for Him.  

Oswald Chambers

Quote of the Day

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

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

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)

Quote of the Day

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

Quote of the Day

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

Quote of the Day

 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

Quote of the Day

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

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