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.