Ezekiel 36:24-28

²⁴ I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. ²⁵ I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. ²⁶ And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. ²⁸ You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

L. Ann Jervis

Spending time studying Paul is a corrective to viewing Christianity as the same as certain moral frameworks, or to equating particular cultural expressions, or even patriotism, with Christianity. Paul’s argument against circumcision, which is an argument against identifying with a certain religious disposition and a particular nation, speaks to our current struggles to be shaped by Christ apart from inherited standards of behavior or national allegiance. Further, spending time studying Paul is a summons to be less attuned to the pressures and pleasures of our social context and more aware of the presence of Christ in our midst. Paul’s attempt to put into words the fundamental importance of the profound and all-encompassing knowledge of being “in Christ” speaks to the possibility of living by faith, not achievement, in our time. Paul invites us to be molded not by inner needs or external circumstances, but to know freedom – the freedom of being “in Christ.”

Francis of Assisi

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

Henri Nouwen

Although the world in which we live keeps suggesting that realism is an outlook on life based on power, confusing but at the same time attractive prophets keep saying that there is another possible alternative, the alternative of love.

1 John 4:20

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Keith Cox

When one says that one of the attributes of God is Love I believe one is approaching the central fact of God’s existence, and ours. “God is love,” John tells us (1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16) and “whoever abides in love abides in God” (John 4:16). When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Mt. 22:37-40)

Love is the unifying principle. When the omnipresence of God is referred to, it is in love that God is encountered everywhere. The image of God in man is the intended love relationship between the Creator and His creatures, and the phenomenon we refer to as “the Fall” is in fact the act of man turning away from that intended love relationship.[1] God expresses His love for his creatures by sacrificing himself to atone for their sin and restore the intended relationship (John 3:16), and thus sets the standard for how His creatures are to love Him, each other, and the world (John 13:34, 15:9, 15:12). In other words, love finds its fullest expression in self-sacrifice for the other, even the enemy (Mt. 5:44).

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[1] Emil Brunner, Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1952), 58-59.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There was a time when the church was very powerful. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But they went on with the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.”

Jean Vanier

“Those with whom Jesus identifies himself are regarded by society as misfits. And yet Jesus is that person who is hungry; Jesus is that woman who is confused and naked. Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if we all discovered that? The face of the world would be changed. We would then no longer want to compete in going up the ladder to meet God in the light, in the sun and in beauty, to be honored because of our theological knowledge. Or if we did want knowledge, it would be because we believe that our knowledge and theology are important only so long as they are used to serve and honor the poor.”

Helmut Thielecke

Consider that the first time someone spoke of God in the third person and therefore no longer with God but about God was that very moment when the question resounded, “Did God really say?” (Gen. 3:1) This fact ought to make us think.

William Penn

I expect to pass through life but once.  If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.

Colossians 3:12-15

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

Kenny Werner

As enslaved peoples are separated from their religion, the lyrics of the song change. The cry is for sense pleasures: more sex, money, alcohol. How many blues and rock and roll songs speak about that? Desire for “my God” is supplanted by the desire for “my man.” Mankind’s vision decays, entangled by the search for temporary relief from its subjugation to false gods. But the cry is still there, even if man no longer knows for what. It is the yearning for unity, for oneness as experienced in the mother’s womb, attuned to the rhythm of her heartbeat. The muffled song can still be heard from the God within “seeking to behold himself,” and man’s yearning to be one with him.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At times we may feel that we do not need God, but on the day when the storms of disappointment rage, the winds of disaster blow, and the tidal waves of grief beat against our lives, if we do not have a deep and patient faith our emotional lives will be ripped to shreds. There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God.

We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save us or bring happiness to the human heart.

Only God is able. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism.

Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able. Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, of the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that, which cannot be changed. Is someone here anxious because of bad health? Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds and our nights become even darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and He is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.

Henri Nouwen

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.

Walter Cronkite

There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.

Exodus 33:12-14

Moses said to the LORD, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Timothy Keller

At some level, your normal assumptions, your pride and your egotistical way of thinking, are blinding you to the truth. One prime example is worry. Naturally, if you love people, you're going to worry about them. But do you know where constant worry comes from? It's rooted in an arrogance that assumes, I know the way my life has to go, and God's not getting it right. Real humility means to relax. Real humility means to laugh at yourself. Real humility means to be self-critical. The cross brings that kind of humility into our lives.

R. Alan Cole

Whenever God acts, it must always be with sufficient ambiguity for us to need the interpretation of faith if we are to see the happening as an act of God. Christian faith is, in the last resort, an understanding by faith of every event as the activity of a God who is at once all love, all holiness, and all power. So, without the key of faith, which is the means of interpretation, even the news of the resurrection would be opaque. But faith is not subjective self-deception, for it does not create the fact which it interprets. Only God creates the fact or event, in this case, the resurrection of Jesus. Faith is an appropriation for oneself of the act of God, a grasping hold of that which is real, even if at present unseen.

Charles H. Spurgeon

Our misery is that we thirst so little for these sublime things, and so much for the mocking trifles of time and space.

J. David Muyskins

Clinging to attachments that have become dear to us deprives us of the freedom of loving and serving the Lord. Our attachments become idols that detract from our living in the grace of our Source and Sustainer. Fear, unresolved anger, selfish desires, false ambitions can keep us from God's desired fulfillment for us.

J. Campbell White

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

Henri Nouwen

The Word of God is always coming into the world, though it is often met with indifference. Those who preach are called upon to remove these obstacles and lead folks to the true insights that eventually set them free.

If we who are privileged to announce God's word do not want to increase the resistance against the Good News, but to decrease it, we have to willing to lay ourselves down and make our own suffering and our own hope available to others, so that they too can find their own, often difficult way.

J. David Muyskins

In the quite of silent prayer I accept the gift of communion with the Holy One. I wait to receive this gift, which comes like a flower blossoming. I cannot force the flower to bloom any faster than it will. I can only express gratitude for the beauty that unfolds.

Tim Keller

If you seize that gift [of grace] and keep holding on to it, then Jesus won't draw you into fanaticism or moderation. You will be passionate to make Jesus your absolute goal and priority, to orbit around him; yet when you meet someone with a different set of priorities, a different faith, you won't assume they're inferior to you. You'll actually seek to serve them rather than oppress them.

Thomas Oden

You must risk telling your own story, not as an end in itself, but rather as a sharply focused lens through which the whole Christian story is refracted.

Jan de Volder

Above all it [the life of Father Damien de Veuster] showed something universal, something essential in Christianity: namely, that in love for the poorest, lived as self-giving until death, lies a road to salvation. Neither Islam nor Buddhism produces this kind of saint.

The Christian martyr contrasts sharply with the martyrs exhibited in various extremist religious movements today. The latter look with contempt on their own lives in order to destroy the lives of others and bring them down to the grave with them. The Christian martyr gives his own life in order to save the lives of others.

Richard J. Foster

Love is not communicated in the big event but in the small acts of kindness.

Thomas Merton

Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally.

Billy Graham

When we preach atonement, it is atonement planned by love, provided by love, given by love, finished by love, necessitated because of love. When we preach the resurrection of Christ, we are preaching the miracle of love. When we preach the return of Christ, we are preaching the fulfillment of love.

Tim Keller

The gospel isn't advice: It's the good news that you don't need to earn your way to God; Jesus has already done that for you. And it's a gift that you receive by sheer grace -- through God's thoroughly unmerited favor.

David Livingstone

I never made a sacrifice. We ought not to talk of sacrifice when we remember the great sacrifice that he made who left his Father’s throne on high to give himself for us.

John Calvin

Men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see Him [and] wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of His glory.

John Piper

When people cast fear to the wind and spend themselves and risk their lives and fortune in the cause of God’s truth, and in love for other people, then God is revealed for who He really is: infinitely valuable and satisfying – so much so that His people don’t need the fleeting pleasures of sin in order to be content.

H. Wayne House

In addition to the outward general call to salvation, which is made to everyone who hears the Gospel, the Holy Spirit extends to the elect a special inward call that inevitably brings them to salvation.  The external call (which is made to all without distinction) can be, and often is, rejected; whereas the internal call (which is made only to the elect) cannot be rejected; it always results in conversion.  By means of this special call the Spirit irresistibly draws sinners to Christ.  He is not limited in His work of applying salvation to man's will, nor is He dependent on man's cooperation for success.  The Spirit graciously causes the elect sinner to cooperate, to believe, to repent, to come freely and willingly to Christ.  God's grace, therefore, is invincible; it never fails to result in the salvation of those to whom it is extended.

Don Whitney

During the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, Martin Luther articulated a timeless distinction between two approaches to knowing God.  He labeled one a “theology of glory,” and applied it to those who believe they can attain to a glorious knowledge of God by human goodness, religious effort, mystical experiences, or the wisdom of human reason.  According to this view, God manifests Himself most often through blessings, victory, success, miracles, power, and other exhilarating experiences of “glory.”  By contrast, Luther argued that the biblical way to know God goes through a “theology of the cross.”  God has “hidden” Himself where human wisdom would not expect to find Him, that is, in the lowliness and suffering of the man Jesus Christ, and especially in His humiliating death on a Roman cross.  As Luther put it, “true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ.”  So rather than finding God by ascending to Him through our efforts, wisdom, or self-initiated experiences, God has descended to us in Jesus whose glory was in the least-expected of places – the cross – and in a way where He can be found by faith alone.

Augustine

You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.

William Temple

It is probable that in most of us the spiritual life is impoverished and stunted because we give so little place to gratitude. It is more important to thank God for blessings received than to pray for them beforehand. For that forward-looking prayer, though right as an expression of dependence upon God, is still self-centered in part, at least, of its interest; there is something we hope to gain by our prayer. But the backward-looking act of thanksgiving is quite free from this. In itself it is quite selfless. Thus it is akin to love. All our love to God is in response to his love for us; it never starts on our side. "We love, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

Oswald Chambers

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself; it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.

Acts 1:6-11

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:6-11 ESV)

G.K. Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

George Muller

When the day of recompense comes, our only regret will be that we have done so little for Him, not that we have done too much.

Thomas Fuller

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.

C.H. Spurgeon

I know of nothing which I would choose to have as the subject of my ambition for life than to be kept faithful to my God till death, still to be a soul winner, still to be a true herald of the cross, and testify the name of Jesus to the last hour. It is only such who in the ministry shall be saved.

Thomas a Kempis

I can only assume that God looked down from heaven to find the smallest and most insignificant creature and seeing me, He took me up and used me.

A.W. Tozer

Religion today is not transforming the people – it is being transformed by the people.  It is not raising the moral level of society – it is descending to society’s own level and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smiling accepting its surrender.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Proud people have a feeling – conscious or subconscious – that “this ministry is privileged to have me and my gifts.” They focus on what they can do for God. Broken people have a heart attitude that says, “I don’t deserve to have any part in this ministry”; they know that they have nothing to offer God except the life of Jesus flowing through their broken lives.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will. When we speak of loving those who oppose us, we refer to neither eros nor philia; we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart.[1]

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[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” 1958, in James Melvin Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 19.

Henry Ward Beecher

The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.

George Martin

The Gospel is a message about God and His holiness, man and his sinfulness, the Person and work of Jesus Christ, and a summons to repentance and faith. If these truths are not declared, then no matter what else might have been preached, it was not the Gospel.

Thomas Oden

The narcissistic edge of our culture is inordinately concerned with individual hedonistic self-actualization. Doubtless all cultures to a certain degree have that concern, but few have carried it to the lengths of modern hedonists, with their feather massages, frenetic self-improvement strategies, upwardly mobile individualism, bed-hopping, and high juvenile suicide statistics.

As long as Christian community and ministry accommodate to these hedonistic assumptions about life's purpose, there is no room or even perceived need for mutual correction. There is only pretended tolerance and the inner condemnation we feel when we do not fully "actualize ourselves."

Good pastoral care will strongly affirm the freedom of the Christian. It is for responsible, Spirit-led freedom that Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1). Justification is by grace, not our achievements in fulfilling of the law. But the gospel does not make void the law (Ro. 3:31). Life under grace is not a normless life without any moral accountability. It is a life in which moral accountability is transformed, deepened, and renewed in the light of Christ's forgiveness (Rom. 12:1 ff).

Timothy Keller

It is only because of the doctrine of judgment & hell that Jesus’ proclamation of grace & love are so brilliant & astounding.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

The way to open our hearts to others is by receiving afresh the grace of God and appreciating what it means: seeing our own need of Christ; coming to receive His mercy; sensing how undeserved His love for us is; remembering how He has also opened His heart to those whose hearts are closed against us. Then we will see that the heart which is too narrow to receive a fellow Christian is too narrow to enthrone the Lord Jesus Christ. But the heart that is opened to receive the grace of Christ will learn to welcome all those whom Christ Himself has welcomed.

C. S. Lewis

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.  These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.  For they are only the scent of a flower we have not yet found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in the generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Karl Barth

God so loved’—not the Christian, but—’the world’. ‘I am the light of the world’, says the Lord, and by His own self-giving He passes the light on to His disciples: ‘Ye are the light of the world!’ It is the duty of the real Church to tell and show the world what it does not yet know. This does not mean that the real Church’s mission is to take the whole or even half the world to task. It would be the servant of quite a different Master if it were to set itself up as the accuser of its brethren. Its mission is not to say ‘No’, but to say ‘Yes’; a strong ‘Yes’ to the God who, because there are ‘godless’ men, has not thought and does not think of becoming a ‘manless’ God—and a strong ‘Yes’ to man, for whom, with no exception, Jesus Christ died and rose again. How extraordinary the Church’s preaching, teaching, ministry, theology, political guardianship and missions would be, how it would convict itself of unbelief in what it says, if it did not proclaim to all men that God is not against man but for man. It need not concern itself with the ‘No’ that must be said to human presumption and human sloth. This ‘No’ will be quite audible enough when as the real Church it concerns itself with the washing of feet and nothing else. This is the obedience which it owes to its Lord in this world.

Martin Luther King, Jr

He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates does not know God.

The Canons of Dort

All people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform.

Author Unknown

Your life preaches your funeral.

Henri Nouwen

To build a better world, the beginnings of that world must be visible in daily life. There is no reason to expect much to happen in the future if the signs of hope are not made visible in the present. We cannot speak about ways to bring about peace and freedom if we cannot draw from our own experiences of peace and freedom here and now. We cannot commit ourselves to work for justice and love in tomorrow's society if we cannot discover the seeds of it in the relationships we engage in today. A nonviolent world cannot be born out of a violent teaching process any more than justice can be born out of jealousy, mildness out of cruelty, or love out of hate.

[I will be out of town. No more posts before Monday. Have a great weekend.]

C.H. Spurgeon

If you have been truly born again you have a new and holy nature, and you are no longer moved towards sinful objects as you were before. The things that you once loved you now hate, and therefore you will not run after them. You can hardly understand it but so it is, that your thoughts and tastes are radically changed. You long for that very holiness which once it was irksome to hear of; and you loathe those vain pursuits which were once your delights. The man who puts his trust in the Lord sees the pleasures of sin in a new light.  For he sees the evil which follows them by noting the agonies which they brought upon our Lord when He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Without faith a man says to himself, "This sin is a very pleasant thing, why should I not enjoy it? Surely I may eat this fruit, which looks so charming and is so much to be desired." The flesh sees honey in the drink, but faith at once perceives that there is poison in the cup. Faith spies the snake in the grass and gives warning of it. Faith remembers death, judgment, the great reward, the just punishment and that dread word, eternity.

John Newton

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.

Charles Colson

If Christians followed the teachings of a benign dead man, their lives would display an innocuous piety. But when Christians stand up for righteousness and justice, they evidence the power of the living God.

(1 Cor 15:20, 51-55 ESV)

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ... Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Some of us think at times that we could cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" There are seasons when the brightness of our Father's smile is eclipsed by clouds and darkness; but let us remember that God never does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with us, but in Christ's case it was a real forsaking. We grieve at a little withdrawal of our Father's love; but the real turning away of God's face from His Son, who shall calculate how deep the agony which it caused Him? In our case, our cry is often dictated by unbelief: in His case, it was the utterance of a dreadful fact, for God had really turned away from Him for a season. O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived in the sunshine of God's face, but art now in darkness, remember that He has not really forsaken thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when He shines forth in all the lustre of His grace; but since even the thought that He has forsaken us gives us agony, what must the woe of the Saviour have been when He exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"

Stanley M. Hauerwas

Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.

Thomas Oden

The young, who are most teachable, are going to learn whether we teach them or not. The question is what will they learn and whether they will be able to have the opportunity to incorporate Christian assumptions and values into their available fund of human wisdom.

Henri Nouwen

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.
And what you want to give me is love,
unconditional, everlasting love.
Amen.

C. H. Spurgeon

Why are we not one? Sin is the great dividing element. The perfectly holy would be perfectly united. The more saintly men are, the more they love their Lord and one another; and thus they come into closer union with each other. Our errors and our sins are roots of bitterness which spring up and trouble us, and many are defiled. Our infirmities of judgment are aggravated by our imperfections of character, and our walking at a distance from our God; and these breed coldness and lukewarmness, out of which grow disunion and division, sects and heresies.

SØREN KIERKEGAARD

What really counts in life is that at some time you have seen something, felt something, which is so great, so matchless, that everything else is nothing by comparison, that even if you forgot everything, you would never forget this.

Sadhu Sindar Singh

Real joy and peace do not depend on power, kingly wealth, or other material possessions. If this were so, all people of wealth in the world would be happy and contented, and prices like Buddha, Mahavira, and Bhartari, would not have renounced their kingdom. But real and permanent joy is found only in the Kingdom of God, which is established in the heart when we are born again.

Timothy Keller

The cross reveals the systems of the world to be corrupt, serving power and oppression instead of justice and truth.

Francis Schaeffer

But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God. It is because there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state and humanistically oriented law have no right and no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way it is being taken.

Oswald Chambers

If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men.

Walter Brueggemann

People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.

Karl Barth

This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.

Timothy Keller

The primary difference [between religion and the gospel] is motivation. In religion, we try to obey the divine standards out of fear. We believe that if we don't obey we are going to lose God's blessing in this world and the next. In the gospel the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessing we have already received because of Christ. While the moralist is forced into obedience, motivated by fear of rejection, a Christian rushes into obedience, motivated by a desire to please and resemble the one who gave his life for us.

ESV Study Bible Notes

Although individual Christians, and the church in general, tend to fall short of the fullness of unity that the Lord intends, whenever such unity is even partially realized (never at the expense of truth or holiness) the result will always be deep joy, a persuasive witness to the world, and a display of God's glory.

Emil Brunner

Love does not inquire into the character of the recipient but it asks what he needs. It does not love him because he is such-and-such a person but because he is there. In all this it is quite the opposite of natural love: it "does not seek its own". It does not perform the characteristic natural impulse of love and life. Therefore it is basically independent of the conduct of the other person; it is not conditional but absolute. It wants nothing for itself but only for others. Therefore it is also not vulnerable. It never "reacts" but is always "spontaneous", emerging by its own strength -- rather, from the power of God. Love is the real God-likeness of man for which he has been created. In so far as love is in man he really resembles God and shows himself to be the child of God.

Martin Luther

Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this written on them. You will not be able to look anywhere where it does not strike your eyes. None of the things with which you deal daily are too trifling to tell you this incessantly, if you re but willing to hear it; and there is no lack of such preaching, for you have as many preachers as there are transactions, commodities, tools and other implements in your house and estate, and they shout this to your face: "My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his."

C. S. Lewis

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

John Wesley

Thanksgiving is inseparable from true prayer; it is almost essentially connected with it. One who always prays is ever giving praise, whether in ease or pain, both for prosperity and for the greatest adversity. He blesses God for all things, looks on them as coming from Him, and receives them for His sake- not choosing nor refusing, liking or disliking,anything, but only as it is agreeable or disagreeable to His perfect will.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.

Watchman Nee

In the Gospels the Lord Jesus is presented as the Friend of sinners, for historically He was found, first of all, moving among the people as their Friend before He became their Savior. But do you realize that today He is still in the first place our Friend, in order that He might become our Savior?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I can no longer condemn or hate a brother [or sister] for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed through intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died.

William Booth

While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!

Leslie Newbigin

Mission is not a burden laid upon the church; it is a gift and a promise to the church that is faithful. The command arises from the gift. Jesus reigns and all authority has been given to him in earth and heaven. When we understand that, we shall not need to be told to let it be known. Rather, we shall not be able to keep silent.

Martin Luther

Not only are we the freest of kings, we are also priests forever—which is far more excellent than being kings, for as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things.

Timothy Keller

We're all trying to cleanse ourselves, or to cover up our uncleanness by compensatory good deeds. But it will not work. The prophet Jeremiah puts this very vividly: "'Although you wash yourself with soda and use and abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,' declares the sovereign Lord" (Jeremiah 2:22). Outside-in cleansing cannot deal with the problem of the human heart.

Warren Wiersbe

Submission is not subjugation. Subjugation turns a person into a thing, destroys individuality, and removes all liberty. Submission makes a person become more of what God wants him to be; it brings out individuality; it gives him the freedom to accomplish all that God has for his life and ministry.

Thomas Kelly

[The} practice of inward orientation, of inward worship and listening, is no mere counsel for special religious groups, for small religious orders, for special "interior souls," for monks retired in cloisters. This practice is the heart of religion. It is the secret, I am persuaded, of the inner life of the Master in Galilee. He expects this secret to be freshly discovered in everyone who would be his follower. It creates an amazing fellowship, the church catholic and invisible, and institutes group living at a new level, a society grounded in reverence, history rooted in eternity, colonies of heaven.

The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere doctrine, belonging particularly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted or rejected as a mere belief. It is the living Center of Reference for all Christian souls and Christian groups.

Thomas A Kempis

Sometimes it is good for us to have troubles and hardships, for they often call us back to our own hearts. Once there, we know ourselves to be strangers in this world, and we know that we may not believe in anything that it has to offer. Sometimes it is good that we put up with people speaking against us, and sometimes it is good that we be thought bad and flawed, even when we do good things and have good intentions. Such troubles are often aids to humility, and they protect us from pride. Indeed, we are sometimes better at seeking God when people have nothing but bad things to say about us and when they refuse to give us credit for the things we have done! That being the case, we should so root ourselves in God that we do not need to look for comfort anywhere else.

Henri Nouwen

A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God.

The prophet Elijah did not encounter God in the mighty wind or in the earthquake or in the fire, but in the small voice (see 1 Kings 19:9-13). Through the practice of a spiritual discipline we become attentive to that small voice and willing to respond when we hear it.

John Calvin

We can easily se how restless people are who follow their own mind, how many tricks they try, and how they tire themselves in the efforts to obtain the objects of their ambition and avarice, and then again to avoid poverty and humility. If God-fearing people do not want to be caught in such snares, they must pursue another course: they should not hope, or desire, or even think about prosperity without God’s blessing.

John Chrysostom

Do you believe that Christ was raised from the dead? Believe the same of yourself. Just as his death is yours, so also is his resurrection; if you have shared in the one you shall share in the other. As of now the sin is done away with.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The hungry need bread and the homeless need a roof; the dispossessed need justice and the lonely need fellowship; the undisciplined need order and the slaves need freedom. To allow the hungry to remain hungry would be blasphemy against God and one’s neighbor, for what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one’s neighbor.

François Fénelon

But woe to those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and their world! They want and they do not want. They are torn by passion and remorse at the same time. They fear the judgments of God and those of others. They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting its sweet consolations. O, how wretched they are! Ah, if they had a little courage to despise the empty talk, the cold mockings, and the rash criticism of others, what peace they would enjoy in the bosom of God!

Charles Colson

The pursuit of doctrine for the sake of doctrine can be idolatrous. The gospel will not be demystified. God will not be mocked by the pretensions of those who believe they might fully and certainly know his mind. Was that, after all, not the sin of the Garden?

Brennan Manning

To ascertain where you really are with the Lord, recall what saddened you the past month. Was it the realization that you do not love Jesus enough? That you did not seek his face in prayer often enough? That you did not care for his people enough? Or did you get depressed over a lack of respect, criticism from an authority figure, your finances, a lack of friends, fears about the future, or your bulging waistline?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after one’s own. But the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of his character.

Eric Liddell

Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. Our broken lives are not lost or useless. God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love.

Desmond Tutu

There is nothing the government can do to me that will stop me from being involved in what I believe God wants me to do. I do not do it because I like doing it. I do it because I am under what I believe to be the influence of God’s hand. I cannot help it. When I see injustice, I cannot keep quiet, for, as Jeremiah says, when I try to keep quiet, God’s Word burns like a fire in my breast.
But what is it that they can ultimately do? The most awful thing that they can do is to kill me, and death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian.

Mother Pollard

My feets is tired but my soul is rested.

John Piper

If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the only cement that can hold this broken community together.When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.

Timothy Keller

On the cross we see God doing visibly and cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone, though on an infinitely greater scale.

Thomas Merton

Our Lord came to overcome death by love, and this work of love was a work of obedience to the Father unto death – a total gift of himself in order to overcome death. That is our job.

Hannah Whitall Smith

What have we to do with thinking whether we are fit or not for service? The Master-workman surely has a right to any tool He pleases for His own work, and it is plainly not the business of the tool to decide whether it is the right one to be used or not. He knows; and if He chooses to use us, of course we must be fit. And, in truth, if we only knew it, our chief fitness is our utter helplessness. His strength is made perfect, not in our strength, but in our weakness. Our strength is only a hindrance.

C. S. Lewis

The Christian way is different: harder and easier. Christ says, "Give me All. I don't so much of your time and so much of you money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked -- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours."

Catherine of Genoa

May this be our prayer: "I do not want to turn my eyes from you, O God. There I want them to stay and not move no matter what happens to me, within or without." For those who trust in God need not worry about themselves.

François Fénelon

Jesus Christ said to all Christians without exception, "let him who would be my disciple carry his cross, and follow me." The broad way leads to perdition. We must follow the narrow way which few enter. We must be born again, renounce ourselves, hate ourselves, become a child, be poor in spirit, weep to be comforted, and not be of the world which is cursed because of its scandals.

These truths frighten many people, and this is because they only know what religion exacts without knowing what it offers, and they ignore the spirit of love which makes everything easy. They do not know that it leads to the highest perfection by a feeling of peace and love which sweetens all the struggle.

Those who are wholly God's are always happy. They know by experience that the yoke of the Lord is "easy and light," that we find in him "rest for the soul," and that he comforts those who are weary and overburdened, as he himself has said.

Charles Spurgeon

It is God who quickens a soul which was dead, and it is God who maintains the life of that soul; God who nurtures and perfects that life in the Church. We ascribe nothing to ourselves and everything to God. We do not dare for a single moment to think that our conversion or our sanctification is effected by our own efforts or the efforts of another. True, there are means by which we are converted and sanctified, but they are entirely God's work.

Oswald Chambers

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.

William Law

If we are to love our enemies, our daily life must demonstrate that love. If we are called to be thankful, to be wise, to be holy, they must show forth in our lives. If we are to be a new people in Christ, then we must show our newness to the world. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in the way we spend each day.

Richard Rolle

Love for God and Love for the world cannot coexist in the same soul: the stronger drives out the weaker, and it soon appears who loves the world, and who follows Christ. The strength of people's love is shown in what they do.

Martin Luther

From this it follows that the one who prays correctly never doubts that the prayer will be answered, even if the very thing for which one prays is not given. For we are to lay our need before God in prayer but not prescribe to God a measure, manner, time, or place. We must leave that to God, for he may wish to give it to us in another, perhaps better way than we think best.

William Barclay

Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.

Keith Cox

To be sacramental means more than acting out rituals in a religious setting. I think it is difficult to comprehend the staggering truth that we are living the life of Christ on earth. If it is true, it follows that every one of our acts in the world should be sacramental. Our very lives, both individually and communally, should manifest the sacred. I think perhaps we shy away from this because we inherently know our frailty and limitations. But it is nevertheless what Jesus calls us to. (Mt. 5:48) That is why community is so important. What I cannot do we can, if our community is filled with the Spirit.

Eberhard Arnold

It becomes abundantly clear that the realization of true community, the actual building up of a communal life, is impossible without faith in a higher Power. In spite of all that goes wrong, people try again and again to put their trust either in human goodness (which really does exist) or in the force of law. But all their efforts are bound to come to grief when faced with the reality of evil. The only power that can build true community is faith in the ultimate mystery of the good, faith in God.

Basil Pennington

In a world where the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is growing ever wider we need to again be forcefully and persistently confronted with the ideals of the early Christian community. It is certainly a scandal when a person who professes to be a disciple of Jesus goes off to his bed well fed, and with food in his larder, while a fellow human hungers within his reach. It is certainly a scandal when a person professes to be a disciple of Jesus and uses his God-given talents only to augment his own wealth – while fathers cry out for an opportunity to earn a living for their children.

Athanasius

Before the sojourn of the savior even the holiest of men were afraid of death and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection... There is proof of this too; for men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the savior's resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die...

John Newton

Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.

John Wesley

Even to imagine that those who are not saved cannot teach you is a very great and serious mistake. Dominion is not found in grace. Not observing this has led some into many mistakes and certainly into pride. Beware even the appearance of pride! Let there be in you that lowly mind which was in Christ Jesus. Be clothed with humility. Let modesty appear in all your words and actions.

Thomas Merton

A politician can go around saying he stands for God, when what he really stands for is racism, and so racism becomes equated with Christianity. This is idolatry, it is turning things inside out. And it is the same with nationalism – people say we will equate our national outlook with Christianity, and suddenly all these things which have nothing at all to do with Christianity become identified with Christianity. This is a serious problem because it is a great scandal to people who have trouble with faith today. They say, “If this man is really a Christian, how can I be a Christian?”

John Piper

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.

Oswald Chambers

Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the gospel of God. The one all-important thing is that the gospel of God should be recognized as the abiding reality. Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell— it is redemption.

C.H. Spurgeon

I would propose that the subject of the ministry of this house, as long as this platform shall stand, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist, but if I am asked to say what is my creed, I think I must reply, “It is Jesus Christ.” The body of divinity to which I would pin and bind myself forever, God helping me, is Christ Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel, who is Himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let us notice finally that God is able to give us interior resources to confront us in the trials and difficulties of life. Each of us faces circumstances in life, which compel us to carry heavy burdens or sorrow. Adversity assails us with hurricane force. Glowing sunrises are transformed into darkest night. Our highest hopes are blasted and our noblest dreams are shattered.

Christianity has never overlooked these experiences. They come inevitably. Like the rhythmic alternation in the natural order, life has the glittering sunlight of its summers and the piercing chill of winters. Days of unutterable joy are followed by days of overwhelming sorrow. Life brings periods of flooding and periods of drought. When these dark hours of life emerge, many cry out with Paul Laurence Dunbar:

“A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, A pint of joy and a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double; And that is life!

Admitting the weighty problems and staggering disappointments, Christianity affirms that God is able to give us the power to meet them. He is able to give us the inner equilibrium to stand tall amid the trials and burdens of life. He is able to provide inner peace amid outer storms. This inner stability of the man of faith is Christ's chief legacy to his disciples. He offers neither material resources nor a magical formula that exempts us from suffering and persecution, but he brings an imperishable gift: "Peace I leave you." This is the peace which passeth all human understanding.

At times we may feel that we do not need God, but on the day when the storms of disappointment rage, the winds of disaster blow, and the tidal waves of grief beat against our lives, if we do not have a deep and patient faith our emotional lives will be ripped to shreds. There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God.

We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save us or bring happiness to the human heart.

Only God is able. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism.

Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able. Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, of the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that, which cannot be changed. Is someone here anxious because of bad health? Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds and our nights become even darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and He is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.

Hannah Whitall Smith

It is altogether the way we look at things whether we view them as crosses or not. And I am ashamed to think that any Christian should ever put on a long face and shed tears over doing a thing for Christ which a worldly person would be only too glad to do for money.

Henri Nouwen

Jesus tells us to set our hearts on the kingdom. Setting our hearts on something involves not only serious aspiration but also strong determination. A spiritual life requires human effort. The forces that keep pulling us back into a worry-filled life are far from easy to overcome.

"How hard it is," Jesus exclaims, "… to enter the kingdom of God!" (Mark 10:23). And to convince us of the need for hard work, he says, "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Mark 16:24).

John Chrysostom

When we do not love a person we do not want to be with them, no matter how great or noble that person may be. But when we love someone, we want to be with them, and we view their love for us with great honor even if they are not a person of great rank. For this reason - and not because of our great rank - God values our love. SO much, in fact, that he suffered greatly on our behalf.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade

To quench thirst it is necessary to drink. Reading books about it only makes it worse. Thus, when we long for sanctity, speculation only drives it further from our grasp. We must humbly accept all that God's order requires us to do and suffer. What he ordains for us each moment is what is most holy, best, and most divine for us.

Catherine of Genoa

The thing we must do is renounce the care of ourselves unto God, who can defend our true self. Only then can God do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Thomas A Kempis

I want to teach you the way of peace and true liberty. There are four things you must do. First, strive to do another's will rather than your own. Second, choose always to have less than more. Third, seek the lower places in life, dying to the need to be recognized and important. Fourth, always and in everything desire that the will of God may be completely fulfilled in you. The person who tries this will be treading the frontiers of peace and rest.

François Fénelon

What God asks of us is a will which is no longer divided between him and any creature. It is a will pliant in his hands which neither seeks nor rejects anything, which wants without reserve whatever he wants, and never wants under any pretext anything which he does not want. When we are in this disposition, all is well, and the most idle amusements turn to good works.

Richard Baxter

Men would sooner believe that the gospel is from heaven, if they saw more such effects of it upon the hearts and lives of those who profess it. The world is better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible.

James Emery White

Forgiveness is not a gift to the one who wronged you, nor is it a denial of the pain that was inflicted. Instead it's a personal responsibility you carry as a mandate from God independent of all other considerations.

Philip Graham Ryken

When you hear the glad news that Christ is King, the thing to do is to submit to His rule. When you repent for your sins and believe in Jesus Christ, God establishes His rule in your heart. This is part of what Jesus meant when He said, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Anyone who has ever entered that kingdom has done so by praying to God, “Your kingdom come” or words to that effect. That is the way the kingdom comes to you and the way you come into the kingdom. To become a Christian is simply to ask God to set up His throne as the supreme King of your heart.

Miroslav Volf

If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence -- that God would not be worthy of worship.

Timothy Keller

Jesus' death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Nothing is a surprise to God; nothing is a setback to His plans; nothing can thwart His purposes; and nothing is beyond His control. His sovereignty is absolute. Everything that happens is uniquely ordained by God. Sovereignty is a weighty thing to ascribe to the nature and character of God. Yet if He were not sovereign, He would not be God. The Bible is clear that God is in control of everything that happens.

George Muller

Why do I carry on this business, or why am I engaged in this trade or profession? In most instances the answer would be, “I am engaged in my earthly calling so that I may support myself and my family.” Here is the chief error that causes almost all the other errors by children of God concerning their calling. To be engaged in a business merely to obtain the necessities of life for ourselves and family is not scriptural. We should work because it is the Lord’s will concerning us” (Eph. 4:28).

J. C. Watts

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking.There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

A. W. Tozer

Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust, not in the living God but in dying men. The unbeliever denies the self-sufficiency of God and usurps attributes that are not his. This dual sin dishonors God and ultimately destroys the soul of man.

C.H. Spurgeon

True salvation is not to be found through the mere reception of any creed, however true or scriptural. Mere “head notion” is not the road to heaven. "You must be born again," means a great deal more than that you must believe certain dogmas. The study of the Bible cannot save you! You must press beyond this; you must come to the living, personal Christ, or else your acceptance of the soundest creed cannot avail for the salvation of your soul. Salvation lies in Jesus only!

Timothy Keller

It is only grace that frees us from the slavery of self that lurks even in the middle of morality and religion.

C.S. Lewis

All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.

C.H. Spurgeon

The heir of heaven serves his Lord simply out of gratitude; he has no salvation to gain, no heaven to lose; … now, out of love to the God who chose him, and who gave so great a price for his redemption, he desires to lay out himself entirely to his Master’s service. O you who are seeking salvation by the works of the law, what a miserable life your must be!… you have that if you diligently persevere in obedience, you may perhaps obtain eternal life, though, alas! None of you dare to pretend that you have attained it.  You toil and toil and toil, but you never get that which you toil after, and you never will, for, “by the works of the law there shall no flesh living be justified”… The child of God works not for life; he does not work to be saved, he works because he is saved.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth - beware! - is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel’s call.

R.C. Sproul

The apostle Paul in writing to the Philippians gives them the admonition to be “anxious for nothing,” telling them that the cure for anxiety is found on one’s knees, that it is the peace of God that calms our spirit and dissipates anxiety (Phil. 4:6).

John Newton

My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things; That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.

Martin Luther

Monastic vows rest on the false assumption that there is a special calling, a vocation, to which superior Christians are invited to observe the counsels of perfection while ordinary Christians fulfill only the commands; but there simply is no special religious vocation since the call of God comes to each at the common tasks.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.

C.H. Spurgeon

Satan always hates Christian fellowship; it is his policy to keep Christians apart. Anything which can divide saints from one another he delights in. He attaches far more importance to godly intercourse than we do. Since union is strength, he does his best to promote separation.

John Calvin

We never truly glory in him until we have utterly discarded our own glory. It must, therefore, be regarded as an universal proposition, that whoso glories in himself glories against God.

Corrie ten Boom

Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.

Dietrich Bonheoffer

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

The Prophet Amos

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
        and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
     Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
        I will not accept them;
    and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
        I will not look upon them.
     Take away from me the noise of your songs;
        to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
     But let justice roll down like waters,
        and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5:21-24 ESV)

R. C. Sproul

The visible church may be distressingly and sorely fractured and fragmented into all different kinds of denominations and groups, but the invisible church is the true body of Christ. Everyone who is in Christ, and in whom Christ dwells, is a member of this one universal church.

John Calvin

Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.

Oswald Chambers

The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.

"Christ, so the scriptures tell us, bore the sufferings of all humanity in his own body as if they were his own – a thought beyond our comprehension – accepting them of his own free will. We are certainly not Christ; we are not called on to redeem the world by our own deeds and sufferings, and we need not try to assume such an impossible burden. We are not lords, but instruments in the hand of the Lord of history; and we can share in other people’s sufferings only to a very limited degree. We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the suffering of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“I would propose that the subject of the ministry of this house, as long as this platform shall stand, shall be the person of Jesus Christ. I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist, but if I am asked to say what is my creed, I think I must reply, “It is Jesus Christ.” The body of divinity to which I would pin and bind myself forever, God helping me, is Christ Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel, who is Himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life.” - C.H. Spurgeon

“I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.” - Mother Teresa

“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.” - Soren Kierkegaard

“I am not being saved- I am saved.” - Oswald Chambers

“Jesus came into this world for one purpose. He came to give us the good news that God loves us, that God is love, that He loves you, and He loves me. How did Jesus love you and me? By giving His life.” - Mother Teresa

“Then let us all do what is right, strive with all our might toward the unattainable, develop as fully as we can the gifts God has given us, and never stop learning.” - Ludwig van Beethoven

“Once we are totally surrendered to God, He will work through us all the time.” – Oswald Chambers

“So long as we stand 'under the Law', we cannot perceive this hidden unity of all the commandments. It is part of legalism that the will of God must appear to it as a multiplicity of commandments. In actual fact, it is one and indivisible; God wants nothing else except love because He Himself is love.” – Emil Brunner

“Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us then ten-thousand truths.” -  Alexander Pushkin

“The real test of a saint is not one's willingness to preach the gospel, but one's willingness to do something like washing the disciples' feet - that is, being willing to do those things that seem unimportant in human estimation but count as everything to God.” - Oswald Chambers

In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. Love in this connection means understanding, redemptive good will. When we speak of loving those who oppose us, we refer to neither eros nor philia; we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word agape. Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart. – MLK