Good Book Bytes

The Puritans on Loving One Another - from the writings of Ralph Venning, Thomas Manton, Joseph Caryl & John Ball - edited by Rev. Don Kistler

2010-06-17T09:15:00.000-04:00

"Indeed, the glory of all our hereafter glory will be oneness of communion with the Father, Son, Spirit, and one another in God, who is one in all and all in one." (pg. 8)

"It is true that the multitude of years teaches wisdom, and so may the youth of days; it is truth, and nothing but the truth, and all the truth, which should have our esteem, whether it is old or young, whether it is the firstborn of time or the last." (pg. 17)

"Jealousy is as quick as martial law: it arraigns, condemns, and executes all in a moment." (pg. 23)

"When we are inferior and others superior, we beg (as did the servant in Matthew 18:26), 'Have patience a little.' Have a little patience! But when we are superior and others inferior, we have no patience at all." (pg. 26)

"Nature is so in love with unity that particular beings will forsake their own interests, their elements and centers which are their rest and happiness, rather than there should be a breach or vacuity in nature. And it is but reasonable that particulars should serve the universal (for they who so lose, shall save), seeing that unless the vessel be preserved their cabins cannot." (pg. 28)

"...none must look upon love as an indifferent thing, which we may practice or forbear at our own pleasure. No, it is a debt or duty by virtue of Christ's express command, a duty to Christ, a debt that we owe to God more than to our neighbor. (pg. 62)

"Those works of love, of love toward man, much more of love toward God, which are the end of the commandment, must flow from a good spring, from a gracious principle, a principle of grace." (pg. 79)

"...the heart is evangelically pure though there is sin dwelling in us, or an indwelling sin; and though sin is stirring, having strong motions in us, it makes war in our souls from day to day, though sin sometimes prevails and gives us that foil; yet, notwithstanding all this, when: First, the soul is free from the command of every sin. Second, when the soul is free from the customary practice of every sin. And, third, when the soul is free from the love of any sin, then the soul is evangelically pure." (pg. 101)

"It is an easy matter to be pure in our own eyes and yet remain altogether unclean." (pg. 102ff)

"Love causes the soul of him who loves to be more where it loves than where it lives." (pg. 119)

Venning, Manton, Caryl, Ball, edited by Rev. Don Kistler, The Puritans on Loving One Another (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1997)

Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God - by J. I. Packer

2010-05-29T14:03:00.002-04:00

"The recovering of old truth, truth that has been a means of blessing in the past, can under God become the means of blessing again in the present, while the quest for newer alternatives may well prove barren." (pg. 13)

"Holiness is always the saved sinner's response of gratitude for grace received." (pg. 22)

"Genuine holiness is genuine Christlikeness, and genuine Christlikeness is genuine humanness - the only genuine humanness there is. Love in the service of God and others, humility and meekness under the divine hand, integrity of behavior expressing integration of character, wisdom with faithfulness, boldness with prayerfulness, sorrow at people's sins, joy at the Father's goodness, and single-mindedness in seeking to please the Father morning, noon, and night, were all qualities seen in Christ, the perfect man." (pg. 27)

"To long for total spiritual well-being is right and natural, but to believe that one is anywhere near it is to be utterly self-deceived." (pg. 39)

"Our time will surely go down in history, at least as far as the West is concerned, as the age of the God-shrinkers. Mainstream thinkers, inside as well as outside the church, have affirmed either the bloodless deism of a God who is cool, faraway, and uninvolved, and who lets His world run free; or the static monism of a God whose achievement is limited to unifying reality by linking all entities and processes with Himself in an interdependent whole; or the pathetic impotence of a God who is revealed in Jesus as an unsuccessful lover; or the faceless force of a God who animates all religions equally, so that none should dream of displacing any other." (pg. 64)

"When almighty love has thus totally taken over the task of getting me home to glory, responsive love, fed by gratitude and expressed in thanksgiving, should surface spontaneously as the ruling passion of my life." (pg. 71)

"Spirituality without ethics corrupts itself by becoming morally insensitive and antinomian, more concerned to realize God's presence than to keep His law. Ethics without spirituality corrupts itself by becoming mechanical, formalistic, proud, and unspiritual." (pg. 86)

"All ventures in holiness go rotten at the core when gain in any form, rather than gratitude, motivates them." (pg. 97)

"Godly Christians have always been marked by a two-sided perception of the numinous [the sense of divine holiness]. On the one hand, the transcendent glory of God's purity and love, as focused in the plan of salvation, fascinates them. On the other hand, the transcendent glory of God's sovereignty, as focused in the divine threat of judgment for impiety, alarms them. This characteristically Christian sense of the mercy and the terror (fear) of the Lord is the seed-bed in which awareness grows that life-long repentance is a 'must' of holy living." (pg. 120ff)

"Some forms of so-called holiness teaching encourage us to be insensitive to, or unconcerned about, the ungodly thoughts and motives that lurk within us, but one index of true holiness is an increasing awareness of them, a growing hatred toward them, and a deepening repentance for them, when we find ourselves harboring them in our hearts." (pg. 136)

"The fact is that Christians today are all victims of our decadent late twentieth century ethos that wrenches public orthodoxy and personal morality apart, implying that the latter does not matter so long as one is valiant for the truth." (pg. 140)

"The point I am trying to drive home is that holiness is the healthy growth of morally misshapen humans toward the moral image of Jesus Christ, the perfect man. This growth is supernatural. It takes the sanctifying work of the indwelling Holy Spirit to effect it." (pg. 152)

"Law-keeping love is the epitome of holiness, though love in any other sense negates it. Law-keeping love is God's prescription for the fulfilling of our humanity." (pg. 163)

"It has been truly said that the greatest social problem of the modern world is extreme emotional immaturity masquerading as an adult lifestyle. In God's ordering of things, the human family is meant to function as a relational network in which the lesson of responsible love and life-strategy will be thoroughly learned. But with the weakening of family life almost everywhere this is not happening." (pg. 182ff)

"Christian endurance, as we have seen, means living lovingly, joyfully, peacefully, and patiently under conditions that we wish were different." (pg. 227)

"...Christian contentment, cheerfulness and joy are fed, not directly by spiritual experiences - feelings, visions, raptures, thrills, which come and go, and in particular cases may hardly come at all - but by cognitive meditation and reflection - that is, by thinking, and thinking often - about the goodness, glory, and grace of the holy Three." (pg. 262ff)

J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2009)

Famine In The Land: A Passionate Call For Expository Preaching - by Steven J. Lawson

2010-05-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

"This is the true nature of preaching. It is the man of God opening the Word of God and expounding its truths so that voice of God may be heard, the glory of God seen, and the will of God obeyed." (pg. 18)

"In seeking to capture the upper hand in church growth, a new wave of pastors is reinventing church and repackaging the gospel into a product to be sold to 'consumers.'" (pg. 25)

"While evangelicals affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, many have apparently abandoned their belief in its sufficiency to save and to sanctify." (pg. 26)

"Rather than expounding the depths of God's Word, many Bible-believing ministers have chosen the path of least resistance, content to scratch the surface of shallow souls and tickle the ears of languid listeners. The result is congregations are starving - even though many of the famished may not be aware of it - settling for sickly sweet, yet totally inadequate, spiritual pabulum." (pg. 38)

"This present-day 'famine' of 'hearing the words of the Lord' (Amos 8:11) must be traced back to a famine of preaching the Word. Surely John Stott is right when he observes, 'The low level of Christian living is due more than anything else to the low level of Christian preaching.' May preachers today expound the Book, the whole Book, and nothing but the Book - so help them God!" (pg. 98ff)

"...the ultimate goal of Bible exposition is changed lives. Preaching must do more than simply inform the mind; it must grip the heart and challenge the will. The entire person - mind, emotion, and will - must be impacted." (pg. 114)

Steven J. Lawson, Famine In The Land: A Passionate Call For Expository Preaching (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2003)

A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13 - by D. A. Carson

2010-04-29T13:19:00.000-04:00

"The gospel will purify and transform the people from any cultural heritage who bow unreservedly to Jesus Christ. By this means it will modify or eliminate many of the culturally transmitted values of those new Christians; and they in turn may in some measure influence their culture and society as salt exerts its influence in food (cf. Matt. 5:13)." (pg. 50)

"Overemphasis on the futuristic aspects of eschatology, e.g., at the expense of the realized aspects, may foster unhealthy speculation regarding what God has not revealed, date-setting as to when Christ will return, a denial of the graces and benefits we have already received, and a depreciation of the importance of living together as Christians who constitute a kind of outpost of the new heaven and new earth. The opposite imbalance may prompt us to neglect the promises the Bible gives us regarding the future, to forget to live lives that look forward to and long for Christ's return, and to act as if the fullness of all Christ provided by his cross-work is already our due." (pg. 53ff)

"Christians are especially open to the kind of cunning deceit that combines the language of faith and religion with the content of self-interest and flattery. We like to be told how special we are, how wise, how blessed, especially if as a consequence others are gently diminished. We like to have our Christianity shaped less by the cross than by triumphalism or rules or charismatic leaders or subjective experience. And if this shaping can be coated with assurances of orthodoxy, complete with cliche, we may not detect the presence of the archdeceiver, nor see that we are being weaned away from 'sincere and pure devotion to Christ' to a 'different gospel.'" (pg. 96ff)

"...if we hold that God has revealed himself to men, supremely in the person of his Son, but also in the words and propositions of Scripture, then however many interpretative difficulties may still afflict us, we have no right to treat as optional anything God has said." (pg. 111)

"Very often in the Scriptures, weakness is not the condition of grace in the sense that it serves as the necessary precursor of grace, but in the sense that it serves as a continuing vehicle of grace." (pg. 155)

"... We are more concerned to pray that we may not do evil, than that we may not suffer evil' (Henry)." (pg. 185)

"Here is the heart of a true apostle, a Christian so steeped in radical discipleship and firm self-discipline that his every care is for the people he serves, not for his own reputation." (pg. 186)

D. A. Carson, A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1984)

Jesus Christ And Him Crucified - by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

2010-04-14T12:54:00.000-04:00

"And this is what the world needs to be told tonight: that all it has trusted to, and the men it has trusted, have led them to the present chaos, and have nothing to offer us, and have no hope." (pg. 17)

"Your greatest need and mine - the greatest need of the whole world - is to be reconciled to God." (pg. 25)

"The Christian is not afraid of life, he is not afraid of death. He knows that there is a glory." (pg. 28)

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Jesus Christ And Him Crucified (Carlyle, PA: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 2003)

Manly Dominion: in a passive-purple-four-ball world - by Mark Chanski

2010-03-29T12:34:00.000-04:00

"Thomas Steele writes: Indeed activity (of labor) is so natural and delightful to man, that if idleness had the sanction of a law to enforce it, no doubt many would willingly pay their fine for liberty to work." (pg. 68)

"A hyper-spiritual, unbiblical view of decision making cripples many believers with thought patterns that result in unwarranted delay and vacillation on the one hand, and irresponsible, impulsive, emotionally loaded judgments on the other." (pg. 84)

"The soul that lives in accordance with manly dominion will not permit itself to be tossed to and fro by every wind of emotional anxiety or internal misgiving. Christian, please note: Subjective peace is not necessarily the compass needle for life-directing decisions." (pg. 103)

[quote from Sinclair Ferguson] "There is much that is mysterious about the way God guides us. What is plain to him is frequently obscure to us. But we are not called by god to make the mysterious, the unusual, and the inexplicable, the rule of our lives, but his word." (pg. 109)

"Manly dominion and aggressiveness does not independently plow forward without seeking wise advice. The man of true dominion is able to rule and subdue his pride that boasts in his own competence." (pg. 115)

Mark Chanski, Manly Dominion: in a passive-purple-four-ball world (Merrick, NY: Calvary Press Publishing, 2004)

The Crisis of Caring: Recovering the Meaning of True Fellowship - by Jerry Bridges

2010-03-15T12:14:00.000-04:00

"The Greek word for fellowship is koinonia. It is translated several ways in the New Testament: for example, 'participation,' 'partnership,' 'sharing,' and, of course, 'fellowship.' These various uses of koinonia convey two related meanings: (1) to share together in the sense of joint participation or partnership, and (2) to share with in the sense of giving what we have to others." (pg. 16)

"One of the amazing privileges that believers have is to share with God in communion, actually giving something to Him." (pg. 58)

"To be objectively in fellowship with other believers while we experientially deny that very fellowship is to contradict the clear teaching of the Bible and to live in disobedience to the revealed will of God." (pg. 65)

"As we build up and enjoy one another, we are in fellowship, but as we join together to spread the gospel we are in partnership; our objectives are focused outside ourselves on those who need to be brought into the fellowship of God's people." (pg. 96)

"We may be sure that God has equipped us, both in natural ability and in spiritual gifts, for the function He has called us to perform." (pg. 108)

"Our abilities and even our temperaments have to be laid at the foot of the Cross and left there for God to either take up and use in our lives or, if He so chooses, to leave lying at the foot of the Cross." (pg. 127)

"The reason we don't experience this family-like empathy with our suffering brothers and sisters in Christ is that we have not yet been fully gripped by the truth that we are in a community relationship with them." (pg. 162ff)

"Missionary statesman Bob Pierce prayed, 'God break my heart with the things that break your heart.'" (pg. 165)

"When we are being served, we need to be sensitive to the demands we make and careful to express gratitude when someone else serves us. But when we are serving, we need to accept our role and serve as unto the Lord, whether or not considerateness and gratitude are shown." (pg. 178)

Jerry Bridges, The Crisis of Caring: Recovering the Meaning of True Fellowship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1985)

The Everlasting Righteousness - by Horatius Bonar

2010-02-28T19:07:00.000-05:00

"Man has always treated sin as a misfortune, not a crime; as disease, not as guilt; as a case for the physician, not for the judge. Herein lies the essential faultiness of all mere human religions or theologies. They fail to acknowledge the judicial aspect of the question, as that on which the real answer must hinge; and to recognise the guilt or criminality of the evil-doer as that which must first be dealt with before any real answer, or approximation to an answer, can be given." (pg. 3)

"Sin is too great an evil for man to muddle with. His attempts to remove it do but increase it, and his endeavours to approach God in spite of it aggravate his guilt. Only God can deal with sin, either as a disease or as a crime; as a dishonour to Himself, or as a hinderer of man's approach to Himself." (pg. 7)

"God's free love to the sinner is the first part of our message; and God's righteous way of making that free love available for the sinner is the second. What God is, and what Christ has done, make up one gospel. The belief of that gospel is eternal life." (pg. 23)

"The resurrection was the great visible seal set to this completeness. It was the Father's response to the cry from the cross, 'It is finished.' ... The resurrection added nothing to the propitiation of the cross; it proclaimed it already perfect, incapable of addition or greater completeness." (pg. 57ff)

"Men object not to receive any kind or amount of this world's goods from another, though they have done nothing to deserve them, but everything to make them unworthy of them; but they refuse to accept this favour of God, and a standing in righteousness before Him, on the ground of what a substitute has done and suffered. In earthly things they are willing to be represented by another, but not in heavenly things. The former is all fair, and just, and legal; the latter is absurd, an insult to their understanding, and a depreciation of their worth!" (pg. 91ff)

"Though faith is not 'the righteousness,' it is the tie between it and us. It realizes our present standing before God in the excellency of His own Son; and it tells us that our eternal standing, in the ages to come, is in the same excellency, and depends on the perpetuity of that righteousness which can never change." (pg. 113)

"Let it be granted that Christ in us is the source of holiness and fruitfulness (John xv. 4); but let it never be overlooked that first of all there must be Christ FOR US, as our propitiation, our justification, our righteousness. The risen Christ in us, our justification, is a modern theory which subverts the cross." (pg. 121)

"For Him resurrection was joy, not merely because it ended His connection with death, but because it introduced Him into the fulness of joy, - a joy peculiar to the risen life, and of which only a risen man can be capable." (pg. 139)

"...let us know that assurance was meant to be the portion of every believing sinner. It was intended not merely that he should be saved, but that he should know that he is saved, and so delivered from all fear and bondage, and heaviness of heart." (pg. 174)

"The love of God to us, and our love to God, work together for producing holiness in us. Terror accomplishes no real obedience. Suspense brings forth no fruit unto holiness. Only the certainty of love, forgiving love, can do this." (pg. 183)

Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness (Carlisle, PA: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 1993)

Right Thinking In A World Gone Wrong: A Biblical Response To Today's Most Controversial Issues - by John MacArthur

2010-02-17T19:27:00.000-05:00

"The rise of postmodern thought has similarly skewed the church's understanding of right and wrong - as an unbiblical tolerance (in the name of love) has weakened churches to the point where they are as soft on truth as they are on sin." (pg. 7)

"In a culture where parents excel at sanitizing little hands, bandaging little cuts, and vaccinating little immune systems, we must not neglect the spiritual well-being of little eyes, ears, and hearts." (pg. 54)

"Critics may claim capital punishment is hateful and destructive, but it is actually an outworking of God's common grace to humanity, enabling sinful societies to maintain civil order and deter criminal activity." (pg. 116)

"Rather than focusing on the God-given priority of evangelism (from the same Greek word that means "evangelical"), American evangelicalism has spent billions of dollars and millions of man hours fighting to legislate morality. Not only is it a battle we cannot win (since legislated morality cannot change the sinful hearts that make up a depraved society), it is also a battle we have not been called to fight." (pg. 122ff)

"The Bible does not place a premium on ignorance; thus, believers should have a basic understanding of and appreciation for economic principles and practices. The danger comes when understanding and appreciation turn into obsession and anxiety." (pg. 133)

"This earth was never ever intended to be a permanent planet - it is not eternal. We do not have to worry about it being around tens of thousands, or millions of years from now because God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth. Understanding this fact is important to holding in balance our freedom to use, and responsibility to care for, the earth." (pg. 148)

"The gospel enables the believer to see his identity in Christ as spiritual, not ethnic. Our ethnic and cultural identities are secondary as we assume the primary identity of citizens of God's kingdom. Here and only here can we find a common identity, which is an eternal one." (pg. 164)

"While we must recognize the equality of every race, we cannot also affirm the equality of every faith system. Religious pluralism is a great threat to the church, often coming on the heels of the noble pursuit of cultural diversity." (pg. 168)

"God uses the troubles of our lives, culminating in the inevitability of our own deaths, to pry our grips off this world and refocus our hearts on what lies ahead with Him." (pg. 187)

John MacArthur, Right Thinking In A World Gone Wrong: A Biblical Response To Today's Most Controversial Issues (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2009)

Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose In The Glory Of Christ - by John Piper

2010-01-31T15:31:00.003-05:00

"At the all-important pivot of human history, the worst sin ever committed served to show the greatest glory of Christ and obtain the sin-conquering gift of God's grace. God did not just overcome evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil." (pg. 12)

"If any person or any power or any wisdom or any love awakens any admiration or any amazement or any joy, let it be the greatest person and the greatest power and the greatest wisdom and the greatest love that exists - Jesus Christ." (pg. 32ff)

"The Son of God, Jesus Christ, will be more highly honored and more deeply appreciated and loved in the end because he defeats Satan not the moment after Satan fell, but through millennia of long-suffering, patience, humility, servanthood, suffering, and decisively through his own death." (pg. 49)

"He created the universe, and it has the meaning he gives it, not the meaning we give it. If we give it a meaning different from his, we are fools. And our lives will be tragic in the end." (pg. 57)

"Thousands of languages around the world and thousands of different peoples limit the global aspirations of arrogant mankind." (pg. 69)

"If God plans four hundred years of affliction for his people (Gen. 15:13) before the Promised Land, we should not be surprised that he says to us, 'through many tribulations you must enter the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22)." (pg. 77)

"God's allegiance to his own name is the foundation of his faithfulness to us. If God ever forsook his supreme allegiance to himself, there would be no grace for us. If he based his kindness to us on our worth, there would be no kindness to us." (pg. 93)

John Piper, Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose In The Glory Of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008)

The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin - by Randall C. Zachman

2010-01-17T18:22:00.003-05:00

"The conscience is that power of the soul that judges what the person does on the basis of what the person should do, thereby rendering the person either condemned or acquitted - that is, justified - before God. Apart from the grace of Christ, the conscience only finds such condemnation by the performance of good works. The grace of Jesus Christ frees the conscience from its attempt to justify itself before God by trusting in its own works, and places the trust of the conscience in the righteousness and forgiveness of Christ alone." (pg. 2)

"The question that the testimony of a good conscience addresses is not, 'Do I have a gracious God?' but rather, 'Is my faith in the grace of God sincere or hypocritical?' In other words, the testimony of the good conscience builds on the foundation of God's witness to us in the gospel and cannot replace that foundation." (pg. 6)

"The church cannot be judged by its appearance, but only by whether it has the Word of Christ crucified. Hence the primary task of the church is to preach the Word of God, while letting externals take their course." (pg. 10ff)

"On the basis of the evidence, I am convinced it is possible to show that the theologia crucis is the governing motif of Luther's theology, and that the Fatherhood of God in the Son through the Holy Spirit is the guiding doctrine of Calvin's theology." (pg. 14)

"...at the heart of all false knowledge of God - which Luther calls either theologia gloriae, general knowledge (cognitio generalis), or legal knowedge (cognitio legalis) - is the conscience's attempt to testify to itself about God and its status before God on the basis of what it sees and feels, that is, works of the law." (pg. 20)

"False teaching creates a false conscience. 'It is the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a conscience where there is none, and to cause conscience to disappear where it does exist.'" (pg. 27)

"The more the conscience is guided by its feelings of piety, the more it falls from works that are good in themselves to works that seem to be good and holy but are in fact worthless and even harmful." (pg. 35)

"According to God's own self-revelation in the Word, however, the acquittal of God is offered only to those who are condemned before God in their own consciences; and the law is preached not so that we might attain an approving testimony of conscience through works, but so that the conscience might stand condemned before God on the basis of its own works. The self-revelation of God thus directly contradicts the testimony of the conscience to itself about God." (pg. 41)

"Without the revelation of sin in the Word, the conscience could never arrive at the conclusion that we are helpless sinners who deserve only the wrath of God." (pg. 45)

"In sum, because of the limitations of the natural mind, compounded by the blindness inflicted by Satan, the conscience is not capable of hearing the Word of the law and acknowledging its truth. Unless God works inwardly in the heart and conscience, the Word will be rejected as a lie." (pg. 47)

"Just as no one but Christ could perform the work of redemption, so no one but Christ could testify as to the significance of that work; for the testimony that God wishes to be gracious to sinners is unknown to the heart, mind, and conscience of humanity." (pg. 58)

"...faith believes God's promise to have mercy on sinners to be true, even though both reason and conscience oppose such a promise." (pg. 60)

"Works are done with a free conscience when they are not performed to improve our relationship with God but are done out of confidence and trust in the mercy of God revealed in Christ." (pg. 73)

"The testimony of the good conscience has its most direct use not before the judgment seat of God - for there we are all sinners - but before the judgment of the world." (pg. 80ff)

"In sum, the good conscience testifies to the truth of our faith, yet true faith trusts only in Christ and not in the testimony of conscience." (pg. 86)

"This darkness of mind is especially apparent when the human mind judges the governance and providence of God in the world; in its ignorance the mind thinks that all things are tumbled about fortuitously, and believes in fortune or chance instead of providence. The mind's limitations are also apparent in our contemplation of the works of God in general, for in contemplating creation we look only at the works and do not consider their author." (pg. 107)

"Even though we are aware of our sins by the accusing testimony of conscience, we are not aware of our inability to do anything but sin, because of our ignorance of the sin of concupiscence, which gives birth to all actual sins; thus we think that the solution lies not in the grace of repentance given by Christ, but in our own efforts to do good and shun evil." (pg. 120)

"Hypocrites pretend to worship the God from whom they flee, but when they hear the Word of God they cannot help but openly blaspheme God. In this way the Word of God discloses the thoughts of many hearts (Luke 2:35)." (pg. 125)

"Without the Holy Spirit, the Word of God only removes all excusing ignorance of God by awakening the condemning judgment of conscience." (pg. 125)

"The fountain of every good is only known by participation in the triune life of God itself: for the Son and Holy Spirit bring about our participation in the powers of God that can only come from the Father. No creature will be able to know or call on God as Father without being engrafted into the Son by the Holy Spirit." (pg. 133)

"Any desire or motion of the heart or conscience not in accord with the holiness of God is a mortal sin." (pg. 147)

"The essential functioning of the conscience is short-circuited by pride and self-love, so that its accusing testimony results not in humility but in hypocrisy. It is therefore necessary for the conscience to be awakened by the teaching of the law so that it might come to a genuine knowledge of its sin and a serious awareness of the judgment of God." (pg. 149)

"To call Jesus the Christ is the same as to call him the fountain from which we must draw every good thing." (pg. 165)

"Because it is axiomatic that God is true and cannot lie, God's witness in the gospel of Jesus Christ establishes our minds, hearts, and consciences in certainty, which all human opinion taken together is unable to do." (pg. 179)

"Only the godly simultaneously have confidence in God as their Father while they fear God as their Lord and judge." (pg. 182)

"The testimony of a good conscience that arises out of our conformity to Jesus Christ has as it primary purpose the confirmation that our knowledge of Christ is genuine and our confession of faith sincere." (pg. 198)

"Justification is the irreducible basis, and sanctification is the irreducible goal, of our adoption as children of God in Jesus Christ." (pg. 213)

Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2005)

A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God's Love - by Milton Vincent

2009-12-31T14:06:00.000-05:00

"Re-preaching the gospel and then showing how it applied to life was Paul's choice method for ministering to believers, thereby providing a divinely inspired pattern for me to follow when ministering to myself and to other believers." (pg. 13)

"When God chose me in Christ before the foundation of the world, He did not merely choose me to be 'holy and blameless'; He chose me also to be 'before Him in love.' To be sure, I am always in God's presence on earth, and in heaven I will be in His presence more fully than ever. But it could also be said that in this life I am especially 'before Him in love' when I come 'before Him' in prayer and worship." (pg. 35)

"...the key to mortifying fleshly lusts is to eliminate the emptiness within me and replace it with fullness; and I accomplish this by feasting on the gospel." (pg. 46)

"The gospel is called 'the gospel of God,' not simply because it is from God, nor merely because it is accomplished through God, but also because ultimately it leads me to God, who is Himself its greatest Prize." (pg. 49)

Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God's Love (Bemidji, MN: Focus Publishing, 2008)

If God Already Knows Why Pray? - by Douglas F. Kelly

2009-12-19T08:34:00.002-05:00

"The better you know God the more certain it is that you will pray to Him." (pg. 21)

"At last, here is the answer to the question: what is God like? This is what the triune God is like: life, light, and love. That is the secret to this universe and the key to understanding everything that exists." (pg. 26)

"Praise takes us outside ourselves, above all our petty worries, and catches us up in something wonderful and ennobling. It catches us up into the very purposes and the person of God." (pg. 45)

"In the prayers of His people, as everywhere else, our God has the initiative. This is very encouraging if we grasp what it means! Effective prayers start in heaven and are sent down to us by God Himself." (pg. 63)

"It is the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man (that) prevails. But what renders prayer 'effectual'? Not its length, not its vehemence, not its eloquence, not its passion, but simply the living sympathy which is established between the soul pleading in the closet, and the Saviour interceding in the heavens." [quote by B. M. Palmer] (pg. 64)

"Chosen by the Father to be engrafted by the Spirit and bonded by faith into His son, we have an incredibly happy, new family identity: we are united to Christ! How different our prayers are when we kneel down with an awareness of who we are and what we have in Christ!" (pg. 86)

"Power in prayer is found not by looking at ourselves, but by concentrating on the one with whom and through whom we wrestle. Instead of fainting, we need to keep looking to Jesus, who will enable us to win the battle of intercession." (pg. 140ff)

Douglas F. Kelly, If God Already Knows Why Pray? (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 1995)

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters - by Timothy Keller

2009-11-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

"There is a difference between sorrow and despair. Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation. Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you can find comfort in your family to get you through it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing." (pg. x)

"What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give." (pg. xvii)

"People who have never suffered in life have less empathy for others, little knowledge of their own shortcomings and limitations, no endurance in the face of hardship, and unrealistic expectations for life. As the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, anyone God loves experiences hardship (Hebrews 12:1-8)." (pg. 15)

"Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it." (pg. 53)

"Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding and identity, our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without a complete change of heart will be superficial and fleeting." (pg. 68)

"More than other idols, personal success and achievement lead to a sense that we ourselves are god, that our security and value rest in our own wisdom, strength, and performance. To be the very best at what you do, to be at the top of the heap, means no one is like you. You are supreme." (pg. 75)

"The idol of success cannot be just expelled, it must be replaced. The human heart's desire for a particular valuable object may be conquered, but its need to have some such object is unconquerable." (pg. 93)

"An ideology, like an idol, is a limited, partial account of reality that is raised to the level of the final word on things. Ideologues believe that their school or party has the real and complete answer to society's problems. Above all, ideologies hide from their adherents their dependence on God." (pg. 104)

"What we learn here is that theology matters, that much of our addiction to power and control is due to false conceptions of God. Gods of our own making may allow us to be 'masters of our fate.' Sociologist Christian Smith gave the name 'moralistic, therapeutic, deism' to the dominant understanding of God he discovered among younger Americans." (pg. 115)

"Because of the self-justifying nature of the human heart, it is natural to see our own culture or class characteristics as superior to everyone else's. But this natural tendency is arrested by the gospel." (pg. 139)

"There is no way to challenge idols without doing cultural criticism, and there is no way to do cultural criticism without discerning and challenging idols." (pg. 167)

"Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to 'plant' the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back." (pg. 172)

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters (New York, NY: Dutton, 2009)

The Conversations of Jesus: Learning From His Encounters - by Simon J. Kistemaker

2009-11-21T09:25:00.002-05:00

"We should remember that God is never indebted to us when we show our love to him and to our neighbor. We cannot claim any reward or merit for performing a good deed. Instead, we humbly confess that all our deeds are incomplete and imperfect in his sight. His blessings, then, are not in response to our good works but stem from his grace and goodness to us in Christ Jesus." (pg. 42)

"Jesus wants us to express our thankfulness to him by living our lives in harmony with God's will. This is a matter not merely of politeness but of worship. As God's children, we should daily thank our heavenly Father for his goodness and provision." (pg. 99)

"None of us are able to write the script of our lives. Yet when we look back, we see the hand of God leading, guiding, and preparing us. We must confess that God in his providence has prepared us for productive service in his church and kingdom. And we thank him for his abundant blessings." (pg. 161)

"The air in a room may appear to be dust-free, but when a beam of sunlight illumines the air, it reveals a multitude of floating particles. Though you know you are a sinner, it is not until the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, enlightens your soul that your sin shows up. When your conscience convicts you, confess your sin to Jesus and he'll forgive you." (pg. 192)

Simon J. Kistemaker, The Conversations of Jesus: Learning From His Encounters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004)

Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World - by David F. Wells

2009-10-31T08:29:00.000-04:00

"God's disappearance not only is evident on the one end of the production chain. It is evident all the way along and, not least, in what keeps it all going: unbridled consumer desire. In an older time, desire used to be bridled." (pg. 38)

"In a secularized culture, God has ceased to be a player in regulating our desires and, besides, his regulation, such as it is, has ceased to be moral and has become only therapeutic. The restraints, therefore, are gone." (pg. 39)

"If postmoderns do not want to find any objective realm in which what is true and right finds its validation - and they do not - what other avenues are left open to them but that of nihilism?" (pg. 67)

"As our world has thus fallen in on us, stripping us of a worldview larger than our own perceptions, denying that we have access to what is true, and leaving us purposeless, so many people in the West are, perhaps surprisingly, now reaching out for what is spiritual." (pg. 89)

"Here, then, are what we might call the underlying motifs of the postmodern mind. They constitute a gravitational pull toward three simple affirmations: no (comprehensive) worldview, no truth, and no purpose." (pg. 90)

"Spirituality travels light. It needs no buildings, no rituals, no professionals, or even sacred books. It can be practiced alone. Perhaps, then, it should not be so surprising that in the business world, for example, which is driven by fierce competition, suffused with insecurity, where corporate vitality can turn to corporate death with astonishing speed, spirituality is appearing everywhere." (pg. 111)

"In the absence of an authoritative, and perhaps privileged, interpretation, one that can comprehend all of life, what we are left with is simply our own private perspectives." (pg. 118)

"For Christian [in Pilgrim's Progress], the pilgrimage through life is all about its destination, not about the experience of wandering or, in contemporary parlance, of being a spiritual seeker. Christian always knew where he was headed; postmoderns on the spiritual journey do not and their modus vivendi is to experiment rather than to imagine they know the destination to which they are headed." (pg. 121ff)

"It is true, of course, that the modernization of the Western world has also filled it with abundance and with relief from so many of the ills that once afflicted life. It is offering up new possibilities, new choices, and an astounding array of new opportunities. Yet, at the same time, we live with more anxiety, more loneliness, more meaninglessness, a deeper sense of having been uprooted from family, place, and work. And the technology that has produced miracle drugs and genetically altered foods has also produced a world more dangerous and threatening than ever before with its nuclear bombs, its chemical and biological weapons, and its pollution. What has enabled us to progress in some ways also casts its own long, dark shadow across life in other ways." (pg. 146)

"Given our cultural climate, religion which is useful is that which is therapeutically helpful. And the need to discern between what is true and what is false, we have come to think, is a bad habit which needs to be abandoned." (pg. 150)

"For while the evangelical Church is aware of such things as the fight for gay and lesbian rights, hears about the eco-feminists, knows about pornography, has a sense that moral absolutes are evaporating like the morning mist, knows that truth of an ultimate kind has been dislodged from life, it apparently does not perceive that in these and many other ways a new worldview is becoming ensconced in the culture. If it did, it surely would not be embracing with enthusiasm as many aspects of this postmodern mindset as it is or be so willing to make concessions to postmodern habits of mind." (pg. 158)

"Paul's teaching [1 Corinthians 15] is not that life loses its emptiness because there is life beyond the grave but that what has made life empty is destroyed by Christ's death and resurrection." (pg. 198)

"In a decentered culture, eclecticism is the coin of the realm. This is what excessive choice has done to us. There is simply too much to choose between, ranging from products, to beliefs, to lifestyles, so choice becomes almost random. And the sheer weight of all of the information - the knowledge of other religions, belief systems, products, and services - blurs everything so that one idea seems no truer than another." (pg. 235)

"Exploiting generational distinctions in the pursuit of success, which is what is at the heart of the seeker church movement, should be as offensive as exploiting racial differences for personal advantage." (pg. 295)

"Needs, in a therapeutic society, multiply faster than fruit flies. No sooner is one need met than two take its place. Coopting the needy to church is not the same thing as seeing a sinner converted and brought into the Church." (pg. 303)

"In a postmodern culture, with its deep relativism and its pervasive individualism, any belief is tolerated up to a point. What is not tolerable, and what will not be tolerated, is the kind of faith which makes absolute claims, which recognizes the right of all religions and spiritualities to exist but does not accept as viable their claims to religious truth. Christianity practiced and believed in private is not in any jeopardy; Christianity which makes its beliefs public in the sense that it asserts its own beliefs as being normative is not wanted. This is seen as plain, unvarnished bigotry and, in this age of unrepentant relativism, it simply is not acceptable." (pg. 312ff)

"The more the culture abandons truth and goodness which are absolute, the less the evangelical Church speaks about truth and goodness which are absolute!" (pg. 314)

David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005)

The Serpent of Paradise: The Incredible Story of How Satan's Rebellion Serves God's Purposes - by Erwin W. Lutzer

2009-10-18T19:25:00.003-04:00

"Let us boldly affirm that whatever mischief Satan is allowed to do, it is always appointed by God for the ultimate service of and benefit to the saints." (pg. 13ff)

"Our age believes in a tame devil. He is eager to serve our need to explain the existence of evil and willing to be a symbolic description of the horrors we struggle to understand." (pg. 19)

"We must stand in awe of a God who can use a rebel to glorify His name. We must never see Satan without seeing God." (pg. 22)

"Lucifer's bad judgment is a warning to us. We must never think that our obedience is best for God, but not best for us. When God commands us to obey Him, he no only has His best interests in mind but ours too." (pg. 28)

"If we really knew God, we would always choose righteousness. Satan's opening gambit is always intended to cause us to think wrongly about the Almighty." (pg. 44)

"...The devil is just as much God's servant in his rebellion as he was God's servant in the days of his sweet obedience." (pg. 102)

"A thousand devils cannot keep a soul from believing in Christ if God has chosen to grant such a one the gift of life." (pg. 104)

"Satan never becomes our friend, for he hates us and seeks our destruction, but he can do us good if he is sent by God to purify us. God uses Satan to show us that God's grace can be sufficient even in the thorns of life." (pg. 113)

"The devil does not have absolute power over human beings; he simply takes a bad situation and makes it worse. He tempts us with evil, but at the end of the day it is we who do what we want to do. Let us face up to our own sins, the sins of the flesh." (pg. 153)

"Control - the desire to own, possess, and command - is the fruit of self-will. It is just one more characteristic that we share, at least in some way, with the Evil One." (pg. 159)

"We must get beyond the notion that something has to be pleasant in order for it to be good. We must also get beyond the notion that if it is from Satan it is bad. Of course Satan means it to be bad, but God means it to be good. Satan's attacks can only be bad if we respond to them wrongly." (pg. 164)

"When we are willing to put "to death the deeds of the body" (Romans 8:13), we will no longer tell God what He can and cannot use to refine us. The ownership of our lives will have been transferred, and we will believe that God is greater than our circumstances and the devil, who often is permitted to arrange them." (pg. 164ff)

"Whether our day has been good or bad, our basis for approaching God is always the same, namely, the blood of Christ. And whether our guilt is objective (the guilt that appears before God) or subjective (the feelings of guilt we have within our own consciences), the remedy is always the same: the blood of Christ." (pg. 176ff)

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Serpent of Paradise: The Incredible Story of How Satan's Rebellion Serves God's Purposes (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1996)

Tying The Knot Tighter: Because Marriage Lasts a Lifetime - by Martha Peace & John Crotts

2009-09-30T20:53:00.000-04:00

"The main command for husbands in the primary passage about marriage roles is not to lead your wife - that's assumed. The main command is to love your wife." (pg. 45)

"Whether or not you have been well-taught on your role, whether or not your wife is a spiritually-minded woman, whether or not you feel adequate to do the job, you are ultimately going to be called to account by the Lord for your life as well as how you led your wife." (pg. 58)

"Probably the best summary describing a wife who sets a godly, joyful tone in her home is that she has a 'gentle and quiet spirit' (1 Peter 3:4)." (pg. 82)

"Almost every fight, angry reaction, stressful overload, or anxiety attack is caused by practical atheism. You may say you believe the right things about God and the Bible, but when you react to trials as if God doesn't exist, you are a practical atheist." (pg. 93)

"When couples are tested by money, money is not the problem, even when it is lacking - the character of the couple is what is being examined. Hidden structural flaws within the marriage are discovered by financial hardships." (pg. 106)

Martha Peace & John Crotts, Tying The Knot Tighter: Because Marriage Lasts a Lifetime (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2007)

Instruments In The Redeemer's Hands: People In Need Of Change Helping People In Need Of Change - by Paul David Tripp

2009-09-20T17:18:00.002-04:00

"As we listen to eternity [Rev. 19:6-8], we realize that the kingdom is about God radically changing people, but not in the self-absorbed sense our culture assumes. Christ came to break our allegiance to such an atrophied agenda and call us to the one goal worth living for. His kingdom is about the display of his glory and people who are holy." (pg. 5)

"We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer. In his power, we find the hope and help we need to defeat the most powerful enemies. Hope rests in the grace of the Redeemer, the only real means of lasting change." (pg. 8)

"Rebellion is the inborn tendency to give in to the lies of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-focus. It results in a habitual violation of God-given boundaries." (pg. 14)

"Sin also produces foolishness in us. Foolishness believes that there is no perspective, insight, theory, or 'truth' more reliable than our own. It buys into the lie that we know better." (pg. 14)

"Foolishness is a rejection of our basic nature as human beings. We were never created to be our own source of wisdom. We were designed to be revelation receivers, dependent on the truths God would teach us, and applying those truths to our lives. We were created to base our interpretations, choices, and behavior on his wisdom. Living outside of this will never work." (pg. 15)

"The changes God produces in his people are directly connected to the ministry of the Word." (pg. 21)

"...a truly effective ministry of the Word must confront our self-focus and self-absorption at its roots, opening us up to the vastness of a God-defined, God-centered world. Unless this happens, we will use the promises, principles, and commands of the Word to serve the thing we really love: ourselves." (pg. 24ff)

"...our problem as human beings is deeper than the individual sins we commit each day, creating the specific problems that complicate our lives. Our deepest problem is that we seek to find our identity outside the story of redemption. If the entire goal and direction of our lives are wrong, we need much more than practical advice on how to do the right thing in a particular situation. We need a message big enough to overcome our natural human instinct to live for our own glory, pursue our own happiness, and forget that our lives are much, much bigger than this little moment in life." (pg. 27)

"At the bottom of a broken marriage, a shattered family, or a forsaken friendship you will always find stolen glory. We crave glory that does not belong to us, and we step on one another to get it. Rather than glorifying God by using the things he has given us to love other people, we use people to get the glory we love." (pg. 34)

"When we say that God designed human beings to be interpreters, we are getting to the heart of why human beings do what they do. Our thinking conditions our emotions, our sense of identity, our view of others, our agenda for the solution of our problems, and our willingness to receive counsel from others. That is why we need a framework for generating valid interpretations that help us respond to life appropriately. Only the words of the Creator can give us that framework." (pg. 43)

"Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance. The core presupposition of fools is that there is no God, and we don't need his revelation in order to live." (pg. 48)

"Whatever rules the heart will exercise inescapable influence over the person's life and behavior." (pg. 68)

"If we fail to examine the heart and the areas where it needs to change, our ministry efforts will only result in people who are more committed and successful idolaters." (pg. 69)

"If adultery is the sin of giving someone the love I have promised another, then I am a spiritual adulterer whenever I give the rule of my heart to someone or something other than God." (pg. 82)

"Relationships are not primarily for our fulfillment. On the contrary, relationships between sinners are messy, difficult, labor-intensive, and demanding, but in that, they are designed to result in God's glory and our good as he is worshiped and our hearts are changed." (pg. 120)

"The hope we offer people is more than a set of strategies. Our hope is Christ! In him alone do lost, confused, angry, hurt, and discouraged people find what they need to be and do what God intends. We are not gurus. We are nothing more than instruments in the hands of a powerful Redeemer." (pg. 138)

"As we point people to Christ, he becomes the focus of our attention and the recipient of our praise. Truly biblical personal ministry always results in increasingly mature worship." (pg. 150)

"Personal ministry is not about always knowing what to say. It is not about fixing everything in sight that is broken. Personal ministry is about connecting people with Christ so that they are able to think as he would have them think, desire what he says is best, and do what he calls them to do even if their circumstances never get 'fixed.' (pg. 184)

"We cannot properly understand people without accurately exegeting Scripture, and we cannot properly apply Scripture without accurately exegeting people. Because the Bible tells us that people live out of their hearts, we are always interested in how the heart's thoughts and cravings are revealed by the choices people make and the things they say and do. It is in the convergence of this two-sided interpretive process that hearts and lives change for the long run." (pg. 186ff)

"The truth is that we fail to confront, not because we love others too much, but because we love ourselves too much. We fear others misunderstanding us or being angry with us. We are afraid of what others will think." (pg. 202)

"Remember, it is impossible to celebrate God's work of transformation without confessing your need for more. No one is more ready to communicate God's grace than someone who has faced his own desperate need for it." (pg. 211)

"Change always demands a deeper understanding of the things of God and a more careful application of those truths to our lives." (pg. 239)

Paul David Tripp, Instruments In The Redeemer's Hands: People In Need Of Change Helping People In Need Of Change (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2002)

The Christian In An Age Of Terror - by Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (edited by Dr. Michael Eaton)

2009-08-30T13:40:00.002-04:00

"The sinful life is always an unreasonable life. Sin is always something that is based upon passion. Sin can give no explanation of what it does." (pg. 18)

"...the most powerful of all the arguments for the reality of God is the fact of the persistence of the Christian church." (pg. 51)

"It is only in the light of the law, which reveals the holy nature of God, that man can see himself as a sinner; that man really begins to understand the nature of this foul canker that is inbred into his being, and that has marred the image of God, and brought chaos into the universe." (pg. 76)

"With all our self-centeredness in recent years we have always been waiting for something which will make us happier or more comfortable. Yet the word of God is a word about God. It is because of this morbidity and introspection that we lose sight of the great authority of the Christian faith. In our concern about men, we have been forgetting God." (pg. 96)

It is something which is almost incredible and astounding that, having our Bibles as we have them, after having read them so often, nevertheless when we are suddenly questioned or question ourselves about these matters, how prone we are to apply tests that are never put in the forefront of the New Testament, but which are the tests put by the man in the street in order to determine what is a Christian or what is not a Christian." (pg. 124)

"Beyond doubt one of the best ways of testing whether we love God is to test our feelings and attitude towards Him when we have sinned against Him." (pg. 133)

"The reason for being holy is not that we may be happy; there is only one reason for being holy and that is that it is God's will for me. It is God's purpose for me. It is God's desire for me." (pg. 141)

"Enthusiasm in connection with religion has been at a very serious discount. Our idea of the general standard to adopt is to display no emotion, or fervency of spirit in relation to any matter. We have rather cultivated a philosophical calm and detachment, and the result is, of course, that in our actions and activities we have become more or less paralysed and slow moving." (pg. 219ff)

"Nothing to me is of such significance as the increasing realization that without a given body of doctrine, without a fresh study of Christian theology, there can be no true revival in the church." (pg. 243)

"There is nothing that so drives and urges a man to live a truly ethical, moral, Christian life as an understanding of the doctrines of the faith." (pg. 244)

"However much strength and courage and manliness I may possess, if it is not in terms of faith, it is useless and valueless from the Christian standpoint." (pg. 250)

"Christian people far too often rush after new cults and lop-sided gospels and fail to stand four-square in the faith itself. There is only one way to avoid being carried to and fro like a bubble on the surface of the waves and that is by being strong as the result of studying and understanding the truth; by developing a knowledge of biblical theology, by reading, by developing a knowledge of what has been written by the great saints of the past in the interpretation of the word of God." (pg. 254)

"If the Christian church were doing nothing else at the present time, she could justify her existence by simply saying this, that there are ultimately just these two views with respect to life. You either face it with God, or else you do not." (pg. 272)

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (edited by Dr. Michael Eaton), The Christian In An Age Of Terror (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications)

In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement - by J. I. Packer & Mark Dever

2009-08-17T19:44:00.006-04:00

"Just justification - justified justification - through the doing of justice in penal substitution is integral to the message of the gospel." (pg. 24)

"The wrath of God is as personal, and as potent, as his love; and, just as the blood-shedding of the Lord Jesus was the direct manifesting of his Father's love toward us, so it was the direct averting of his Father's wrath against us." (pg. 35)

"The doctrine of the propitiation is precisely this: that God loved the objects of His wrath so much that He gave His own Son to the end that He by His blood should make provision for the removal of His wrath. It was Christ's so to deal with the wrath that the loved would no longer be the objects of wrath, and love would achieve its aim of making the children of wrath the children of God's good pleasure." (pg. 36)

"Our sins have been punished; the wheel of retribution has turned; judgment has been inflicted for our ungodliness - but on Jesus, the lamb of God, standing in our place." (pg. 40)

"The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us." (pg. 49)

"Surely the primary issue with which penal substitution is concerned is neither the morality nor the rationality of God's ways, but the remission of my sins; and the primary function of the concept is to correlate my knowledge of being guilty before God with my knowledge that, on the one hand, no question of my ever being judged for my sins can now arise, and, on the other hand, that the risen Christ whom I am called to accept as Lord is none other than Jesus, who secured my immunity from judgment by bearing on the cross the penalty that was my due." (pg. 79)

"The way to stand against naturalistic theology is to keep in view its reductionist method that makes man the standard for God; to stress that according to Scripture the Creator and his work are of necessity mysterious to us, even as revealed (to make this point is the proper logical task of the word 'supernatural' in theology); and to remember that what is above reason is not necessarily against it." (pg. 89)

"If we have any assurance of salvation, it is because of Christ's atonement; if any joy, it flows from Christ's work on the cross. The atonement protects us from our native tendency to replace religion with morality and God's grace with legalism. Apart from Christ's atoning work, we would be forever guilty, ashamed, and condemned before God." (pg. 102)

"One way of stating the difference between it [today's substitute gospel] and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be 'helpful' to man - to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction - and too little concerned to glorify God." (pg. 112)

"The knowledge of being the object of God's eternal love and Christ's redeeming death belongs to the individual's assurance, which in the nature of the case cannot precede faith's saving exercise; it is to be inferred from the fact that one has believed, not proposed as a reason why one should believe." (pg. 131)

"The cross on which the divine-human mediator hung, and from which he rose to reign on the basis and in the power of his atoning death, must become the vantage point from which we survey the whole of human history and human life, the reference point for explaining all that has gone wrong in the world everywhere and all that God has done and will do to put it right, and the center point for fixing the flow of doxology and devotion from our hearts." (pg. 148ff)

J. I. Packer & Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007)

Defending The Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America - by D. G. Hart

2009-07-31T16:55:00.000-04:00

"...he held that theological integrity and cultural authority were inversely related: a theology eager for public influence invariably compromised the Christian faith, while a principled theology could at best benefit society indirectly." (pg. 8)

"For Machen, although he was very conservative in religion, the threat of cultural modernism - pitting modern relevance against old-fashioned dogma, scientific verification against an implausible faith, and metaphysical skepticism against religious certainty - was not as great as the danger posed by Protestant hegemony in a free and diverse society. As great as the challenges of modern science and philosophy were, in the end they were not as profound as the peril of a religion that tailored its faith and practice to fit the prevailing temper of the age." (pg. 9)

"Instead of reducing seminaries to centers of religious sentiment and professional training, Machen wanted them to become 'battlegrounds of the faith.'... This was Machen's call to the ministry, the vision that he hoped to instill in students at Princeton, and the message he would eventually take before the councils of the Presbyterian Church." (pg. 34)

"'Jesus, according to Paul,' Machen concluded, 'came to earth not to say something, but to do something.' Paul's writings did not 'deal with general principles of love and grace, and fatherliness and brotherliness' but instead with the 'thing most distasteful to the modern liberal Church,' Jesus' death and resurrection. The clear implication was that Paul and Jesus were of a piece and the modern church could not reject Paul without also rejecting Jesus." (pg. 57ff)

"In Christian teaching, Machen wrote, a great gulf lay between God and man, and it was widened by human sinfulness. In contrast, the modern age had exhibited a 'supreme confidence in human goodness,' giving liberal ministers the impossible task of 'calling the righteous to repentance.' But Christianity, Machen said, began with the law of God and a conviction of sin." (pg. 70)

"Using religion as a means for solving social ills, Machen asserted, was altogether different from Christ's 'stupendous words' which demanded utter loyalty from his followers, even to the point of hating father and mother." (pg. 76)

"...following the example of the early church Machen recommended that modern church membership be restricted to those believers with an adequate understanding of their denomination's doctrinal standards. Although theological knowledge did not make one a Christian, it redressed the modern tendency to divorce faith from knowledge." (pg. 92)

"By stressing the intellectual aspects even in the subjective dynamics of religious experience Machen, in effect, made theologians out of all believers. Only in the act of regeneration, he explained, once the 'blinding' effects of sin had been removed, could the truth of Christianity be understood properly." (pg. 94)

"He believed that historic Christianity was fundamentally narrow, exclusive, and partisan and, therefore, could not provide the basis for public life in a free society. To do so, he argued, was to mistake ethics for salvation. Using Christian morals to promote public duties gave the faulty impression that people could do good without grace. 'When any hope is held out to lost humanity from the so-called ethical portions of the Bible apart from its great redemptive core, then the Bible is represented as saying the direct opposite of what it really says.'" (pg. 138)

"Indeed, at the same time that secular intellectuals attacked the Protestant ethos of American culture, Machen argued that the churches' involvement in cultural and social life was harmful because it undermined faithful witnessing to Christian truth. Unfortunately for Machen, that twin commitment - to Presbyterian orthodoxy and religious pluralism - went largely unheeded in fundamentalist and evangelical circles. Yet his outlook may still prove instructive to believers and secularists in America today who through a series of cultural wars struggle to reconcile the demands of faith with the realities of modernity." (pg. 170)

D. G. Hart, Defending The Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2003)

Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost Of The New Sexual Tolerance - by R. Albert Mohler Jr.

2009-07-19T21:28:00.002-04:00

"The integrity of Christian marriage requires a man to exercise his will even in the arena of love and to commit all of his sexual energy and passion to the honorable estate of marriage, refusing himself even the imagination of violating his marital vows." (pg. 7)

"Sex has lost its public shamefulness; moral boundaries have been pulled down in the name of moral 'progress'; and overt sexuality now drives much of our entertainment, advertising, and cultural conversation. How is lust to be separated from all that?" (pg. 14)

"In an odd twist, hyperexposure to pornography leads to a lower net return on investment, which is to say that the more pornography one sees, the more explicit the images must be in order to excite interest. Thus, in order to sustain the excitement of 'transgressing,' as the postmodernist would put it, pornographers must continue to push the envelope." (pg. 29)

"We must also be careful to make clear that while we reject the concept of sexual orientation as a category of identity, we are not denying that there are some persons who discover themselves to be sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. Since our sexuality is such an important part of our lives, we are naturally tempted to think that our profile of sexual attraction is central to our identity. But our identity must not be constituted by mere sexuality. We are first of all human beings created in the image of God. Secondly, we are sinners whose fallenness is demonstrated in every aspect of our lives - including our sexuality." (pg. 67ff)

"We must learn to address the issue of homosexuality and other difficult sexual issues with candor, directness, and unembarrassed honesty. This is not an hour for prudish denial. To fail at the task of speaking clearly and directly to this issue is to fail to speak where God has spoken." (pg. 81)

"In the eyes of all too many in our culture, gender is merely a plastic social construct. Indeed, in the postmodern world, all realities are plastic and all principles are liquid. Everything can be changed. Nothing is fixed. All truth is relative, all truth is socially constructed, and anything that is constructed can also be deconstructed in order to liberate." (pg. 136ff)

"The very habits of human life - the customs and traditions on which civilization is grounded - are now being reversed, marginalized, and discarded in an effort to eliminate all norms by normalizing the abnormal." (pg. 141)

"The single greatest obstacle to the victory of the culture of polymorphous perversity is the Judeo-Christian heritage. The greatest obstacle to the normalization of homosexuality is the Bible." (pg. 152)

"Civilization cannot survive the triumph of the age of polymorphous perversity, because the idea of polymorphous sex is hopelessly incompatible with the very notion of civilization itself. Civilization is based upon order, respect, habit, custom, and institution - all of which are rejected outright by the age of polymorphous perversity." (pg. 155)

"...we must make certain that our marriages and our families are a testimony to God's intention, and that we live before the world declaring that even if insanity, irrationality, and sexual anarchy rule the world, it will not rule us. God's glory will be shown in faithfulness wherever it is found, even in the tiny domestic picture of our seemingly insignificant families." (pg. 159)

R. Albert Mohler Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost Of The New Sexual Tolerance (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2008)

The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs In The New Spiritual Openness - by R. Albert Mohler Jr.

2009-06-30T18:10:00.000-04:00

"...we live among the ruins of a moral value structure destroyed by the wrecking ball of a radical secularist agenda, but already weakened by compromise from within - even from within the church." (pg. 21)

"These days, most people think themselves to be imperfect, leaving room for improvement - but they do not think of themselves as sinners in need of forgiveness and redemption." (pg. 25)

"For millions of persons in the postmodern age, truth is a matter of personal choice - not divine revelation. Clearly, we moderns do not choose for hell to exist." (pg. 32)

"Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem rather than as an insult to the glory of God. Salvation has been reconceived as liberation from oppression, internal or external. The gospel becomes a means of release from bondage to bad habits rather than rescue from a sentence of eternity in hell." (pg. 43ff)

"...Augustine suggested that Christians uniquely understand that the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real, are indeed one, because they are established in the reality of the self-revealing God - the triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He alone is beautiful, He alone is good, He alone is true, and He alone is real." (pg. 50)

"Several years ago, a major study of religious belief revealed just how radically our culture has compromised the doctrine of God. Sociologists asked the question, 'Do you believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth?' One answer, which became the title of the study, was 'No, just the ordinary one.' That is to say, modern men and women seem to feel no need to believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth - just an 'ordinary God' who is an innocent bystander observing human events. Measured against the biblical revelation, this is not God at all." (pg. 117ff)

"The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other." (pg. 121)

"The very notion of shame has been discarded by a generation for which shame is an unnecessary and repressive hindrance to personal fulfillment. Even secular observers have noted the shamelessness of modern culture." (pg. 126ff)

"Unable or unwilling to deal with moral categories, modern men and women resort to the only moral language they know and understand - the unembarrassed claim to 'rights' that society has no authority to limit or deny. This 'rights talk' is not limited to secular society, however. Church members are so committed to their own version of 'rights talk' that some congregations accept almost any behavior, belief, or 'lifestyle' as acceptable, or at least off-limits to congregational sanction." (pg. 129ff)

"The Bible reveals three main areas of danger requiring discipline. These are fidelity of doctrine, purity of life, and unity of fellowship. Each is of critical and vital importance to the health and integrity of the church." (pg. 149)

"We are no longer seeing the first signs of cultural trouble, but rather the indicators of advanced decay. The reality is that people now do not even know what they have lost, much less that they themselves are lost." (pg. 158)

"...in a truly post-Christian age, the saddest loss of all is a loss of the memory of what was lost. The saddest aspect of our dawning post-Christian age is that there is no longer even a memory of what was discarded and what was denied and rejected. Having lived for so long on the memory of Christian truth, without the substance of Christian truth, the culture now grows hostile to that truth." (pg. 164)

"Postmodernism claimed that this new postmodern age - with the end of modernity, the demise of scientific objectivity, and the openness to new forms and understandings of truth - would lead to an opening of the mind. But as is always the case, the totalitarian opening of the mind always ends with the radical closing of the mind. There is nothing less tolerant than the modern ethos of tolerance." (pg. 169)

"We must recognize that the church has been compliant for far too long, and if we are effectively to challenge the prevailing worldview of postmodern culture, the church must become a post-compliant people." (pg. 176)

"...numerous influential voices within evangelicalism suggest that the age of the expository sermon is now past. In its place, some contemporary preachers now substitute messages intentionally designed to reach secular or superficial congregations - messages that avoid preaching a biblical text, and thus avoid a potentially embarrassing confrontation with biblical truth." (pg. 190)

R. Albert Mohler Jr., The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs In The New Spiritual Openness (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2009)

Growing Up In Grace: The Use of Means for Communion with God - by Murray G. Brett

2009-06-20T10:12:00.000-04:00

"...communion with God consists in giving, receiving, and returning; we might even say, a gracious giving, a humble receiving, and a bold returning." (pg. 12)

"Our egos will never be satisfied until clothed in gospel humility. And the essence of gospel humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking more of Christ than ourselves." (pg. 37)

"Our flesh cannot possibly pump repentance out of a heart that is indifferent to God's covenant graces. The flesh cannot possibly produce power to overcome even one single sin, but the covenant grace of God in the gospel can." (pg. 65)

"Enjoying the sweetness of felt communion with God is the highest motive for repentance. The more pleasure we derive from our communion with God, the stronger our desire for His fellowship will be and the more dissatisfied we are without it." (pg. 93)

"The key to answered prayer is abiding in Christ. That is the key to our motivation for prayer and the key to obtaining answers to prayer." (pg. 123)

"To take delight in God's law means that we take 'exquisite pleasure' in it, and Isaiah [58:13] reasons that when we take exquisite pleasure in God's law, we take exquisite pleasure in God Himself." (pg. 158)

Murray G. Brett, Growing Up In Grace: The Use of Means for Communion with God (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009)

Communion With The Triune God - by John Owen (edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor)

2009-05-26T20:27:00.002-04:00

"Now, communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed [grounded] upon some union between them." (pg. 93)

"Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself unto us, with our return unto him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him." (pg. 94)

The Father communicates no issue of his love unto us but through Christ; and we make no return of love unto him but through Christ. He is the treasury wherein the Father disposes all the riches of his grace, taken from the bottomless mine of his eternal love; and he is the priest into whose hand we put all the offerings that we return unto the Father." (pg. 117)

"Love in the Father is like honey in the flower - it must be in the comb before it be for our use. Christ must extract and prepare this honey for us. He draws this water from the fountain through union and dispensation of fullness - we by faith, from the wells of salvation that are in him." (pg. 117)

"There are three things in general wherein this personal excellency and grace of the Lord Christ does consist: (1) His fitness to save, from the grace of union, and the proper necessary effects thereof. (2) His fullness to save, from the grace of communion; or the free consequences of the grace of union. (3) His excellency to endear, from his complete suitableness to all the wants of the souls of men:" (pg. 148)

"This is the first thing on the part of Christ - the free donation and bestowing of himself upon us to be our Christ, our Beloved, as to all the ends and purposes of love, mercy, grace, and glory; whereunto in his mediation he is designed, in a marriage covenant never to be broken. This is the sum of what is intended: The Lord Jesus Christ, fitted and prepared, by the accomplishment and furniture of his person as mediator, and the large purchase of grace and glory which he has made, to be a husband to his saints, his church, tenders himself in the promises of the gospel to them in all his desirableness; convinces them of his goodwill toward them, and his all-sufficiency for a supply of their wants; and upon their consent to accept of him - which is all he requires or expects at their hands - he engages himself in a marriage covenant to be theirs forever." (pg. 157)

"Let it be evinced that all true and solid knowledge is laid up in, and is only to be attained from and by, the Lord Jesus Christ; and the hearts of men, if they are but true to themselves and their most predominate principles, must needs be engaged to him." (pg. 183)

"That we may have a saving knowledge of the properties of God, attended with consolation, these three things are required: (1) that God has manifested the glory of them all in a way of doing good unto us. (2) that he will yet exercise and lay them out to the utmost in our behalf. (3) that, being so manifested and exercised, they are fit and powerful to bring us to the everlasting fruition of himself; which is our blessedness." (pg. 197)

"For the knowledge of ourselves, which is the second part of our wisdom, this consists in these three things, which our Savior sends his Spirit to convince the world of - even 'sin, righteousness, and judgment' (John 16:8). To know ourselves in reference unto these three is a main part of true and sound wisdom; for they all respect the supernatural and immortal end whereunto we are appointed; and there is none of these that we can attain unto but only in Christ." (pg. 200)

"...it is not enough that we are not guilty, we must also be actually righteous - not only all sin is to be answered for, but all righteousness is to be fulfilled." (pg. 213)

"The more abilities the mind is furnished with, the more it closes with the curse, and strengthens itself to act its enmity against God. All that it receives does but help it to set up high thoughts and imaginations against the Lord Christ. So that this knowledge comes short of what in particular it is designed unto; and therefore cannot be that solid wisdom we are inquiring after." (pg. 225)

"If in any things, then, we are straitened, it is in ourselves; Christ deals bountifully with us. Indeed, the great sin of believers is that they make not use of Christ's bounty as they ought to do; that we do not every day take of him mercy in abundance. The oil never ceases till the vessels cease; supplies from Christ fail not but only when our faith fails in receiving them." (pg. 269)

"And thus have we a twofold bottom of the necessity of our obedience and personal holiness: God has appointed it, he requires it; and it is an eminent immediate end of the distinct dispensation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the work of our salvation." (pg. 306)

"This is the great mystery of faith in this business of our acceptation with God by Christ: that whereas the soul of a believer finds enough in him and upon him to rend the very caul [membrane; the pericardium] of the heart (Hos. 13.8), to fill him with fears, terror, disquietments all his days, yet through Christ he is at perfect peace with God (Isa. 26:3; Ps. 4:6-8). Hence do the souls of believers exceedingly magnify Jesus Christ, that they can behold the face of God with boldness, confidence, peace, joy, assurance - that they can call him Father, bear themselves on his love, walk up and down in quietness, and without fear. How glorious is the Son of God in this grace!" (pg. 314)

"This is that which I intend by this habit of grace - a new, gracious, spiritual life, or principle, created and bestowed on the soul, whereby it is changed in all its faculties and affections, fitted and enabled to go forth in the way of obedience unto every divine object that is proposed unto it, according to the mind of God." (pg. 326)

"...adoption is the authoritative translation of a believer, by Jesus Christ, from the family of the world and Satan into the family of God, with his investiture in all the privileges and advantages of that family." (pg. 335)

"The Comforter may always abide with us, though not always comfort us; he who is the Comforter may abide, though he do not always that work. For other ends and purposes he is always with us; as to sanctify and make us holy." (pg. 367)

"A soul does never glorify or honor Christ upon a discovery or sense of the eternal redemption he has purchased for him, but it is in him a peculiar effect of the Holy Ghost as our Comforter." (pg. 377)

"When we find any of the good truths of the gospel come home to our souls with life, vigor, and power, giving us gladness of heart, transforming us into the image and likeness of it - the Holy Ghost is then at his work, is pouring out of his oil." (pg. 387ff)

John Owen (edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor), Communion With The Triune God (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books, 2007)

The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World - by David F. Wells

2009-05-16T21:33:00.002-04:00

"When all is said and done today, many evangelicals are indifferent to doctrine - certainly they are when they 'do church.' Privately, no doubt, there are doctrines that are believed. But in church...well, that is different because, many think, doctrine is an impediment as we reach out to new generations." (pg. 3)

"The truth is that without a biblical understanding of why God instituted it, the church easily becomes a liability in a market where it competes only with the greatest of difficulty against religious fare available in the convenience of one's living room and in a culture bent on distraction and entertainment." (pg. 11)

"For seeker-sensitives, by their own reckoning, traditional evangelical belief is their dance partner but, in building their churches, they cannot be seen dancing with their partner. They must dance alone, theologically speaking. Actually, in place of the old partner is the new one. The new partner is the customer. It is the customer who is their theology!" (pg. 40)

"Those who were once the unconverted have become the unchurched. This spares us the embarrassment of uttering theological truth. And that is the tip-off that something is amiss here. What is amiss is that the Christianity being peddled is not about theological truth. Christianity is not just an experience, we need to remember, but it is about truth." (pg. 45)

"My conclusion is that absolute truth and morality are fast receding in society because their grounding in God as objective, as outside of our self, as our transcendent point of reference, is disappearing. There is nothing outside the individual that stands over against the individual, that remains as the measure for the individual's actions, the standard for what is right and wrong, or as the test of what is true and what is not." (pg. 61)

"The short answer, then, to the question why life has lost its center has a beguiling simplicity to it. The center has not been lost. It has only been lost to our view. And that is because our disposition, the orientation of our nature from birth, leads us inexorably to replace God with our own selves, to substitute our interests for his, and to redefine life around its new substitute center in ourselves." (pg. 104)

"When the (post)modern self becomes religious, it may become liberal, emergent, or loosely evangelical. But when it becomes (post)modern in these ways, it will no longer be historically Protestant. It will not be biblical. It will not be apostolic. It will be Christian in name but not in thought." (pg. 142ff)

"To speak of Virtue, then, is to speak of the moral structure of the world God has made. Rebellious though we are, we have not broken down this structure, nor dislodged God from maintaining it. It stands there, over against us, whether we recognize it or not. We bump up against it in the course of life and we encounter its reflection in our own moral makeup. And from all sides a message is conveyed to our consciousness: 'Beware! This is a moral world that you inhabit!'" (pg. 145)

"Our world is filled with offers of help and of hope, of meaning and of fulfillment, and even of surrogate regeneration, but they all come from a world that is spiritually dead and therefore ultimately worthless. That is an extraordinary, a breathtakingly radical, position to take. The New Testament takes it unapologetically." (pg. 195)

"The gospel, understood as a product, loses its depth and cost. ... The result is a set of damaging triumphs: the triumph of appeal over depth, of technique over truth, and of consumption over cost." (pg. 213)

"An authentic church is one that is God-centered in its thought and God-honoring in its proclamation and life. It can be authentic only when it honors, reflects, and proclaims who God is and what he has done in Christ." (pg. 242)

David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008)

The Joy of Fearing God - by Jerry Bridges

2009-04-30T21:03:00.000-04:00

"...a profound sense of awe toward God is undoubtedly the dominant element in the attitude or set of emotions that the Bible calls "the fear of God." (pg. 18)

"If we make it a practice to think great thoughts about God..., we will develop a sustained attitude of the fear of God." (pg. 30)

"We cannot separate trust in God from the fear of God. We will trust Him only to the extent that we genuinely stand in awe of Him." (pg. 48)

"So it is with us: Our reaction to God's majestic holiness is a realization of our own insignificance; our response to His ethical holiness is an awareness of our sinfulness and impurity." (pg. 71)

"It is only in Christ and His work that we see God's justice reconciled with mercy, His law reconciled with grace, His holiness with His love, and His power with His compassion." (pg. 91)

"This is when we really start to enjoy fearing God: when we realize in the depth of our being that we justly deserve the wrath of God, then see that wrath poured out on Jesus instead of on ourselves. We're both awed at His wrath and astonished at His love." (pg. 104)

"The fear of God flows from...a sound impression that the word of God makes on our souls; for without an impress of the Word, there is no fear of God." [John Bunyan] (pg. 127)

"We do not, to use a popular expression, 'make Christ Lord of our lives.' He is Lord. Our duty is to acknowledge His Lordship and submit to His authority." (pg. 137ff)

"Since God knows our every thought in exact detail, the person who fears God seeks to control his or her thought life in the same way we regulate our conduct." (pg. 181)

"Unfortunately our degree of trust in God often lies more in our ability to foresee a way in which He might answer our prayers than in our belief in His power. If we can't see how He can answer, we tend to doubt that He will answer." (pg. 204)

"If we're to glorify God in the way we live, we must make God's glory our primary aim. All other goals in life, both temporal and spiritual, must be secondary." (pg. 214)

"The only fruit of character that brings glory and praise to God is that which comes through Jesus Christ as we look to Him to work in our lives and enable us to glorify Him." (pg. 223)

"This is the essence of worship: Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name." (pg. 235)

"The truth is, though, we cannot glorify God - either by our lives or by worship - unless we are enjoying Him." (pg. 253)

"...You grow in the fear of the Lord by gazing upon the beauty of His attributes and by seeking an ever-deepening relationship with Him." (pg. 255)

Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 1997)

Christ & Culture Revisited - by D. A. Carson

2009-04-10T15:50:00.002-04:00

"Worldwide, people in the 'liberal Christian' heritage make up only a tiny percentage of those who call themselves 'Christians.' Apparently, then, liberal Christianity and Gnostic Christianity have this in common: for a while, both seemed to sweep everything in front of them, such that if orthodoxy is measured by popularity rather than by some measure of commitment to conform to God's self-disclosure in Scripture and in his Son, they constituted the new orthodoxy. And both will be left on the ash pit of history." (pg. 34)

"...the two terms 'Christ' and 'culture' cannot be set absolutely over against each other, not only because Christians constitute part of the culture, but also because all authority is given to Christ in heaven and on earth, so all culture is subsumed under his reign." (pg. 63)

"Reacting against the condescension intrinsic to the colonial past, cultural anthropologists have for decades attempted to describe cultures in entirely neutral, purely descriptive, terms. Sometimes this passion for neutrality, for objective description without moral judgment, becomes, itself, a moral judgment: the only 'good' cultural anthropology is the sort that refuses to make any moral judgments." (pg. 71)

"...the Christian heritage of meanings and values turns on disclosure from God that makes us look at everything differently. In the much-quoted words of C. S. Lewis, 'I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.' That is why consideration of Christ and culture promises to be fruitful and revealing: it is a consideration of a different way of seeing, of a different vision, even when we are looking at the same thing." (pg. 86ff)

"...a Christian worldview, a Christian theological vision, is more than a system of beliefs (though it is never less): it also includes the volition that self-consciously thinks and acts in line with such beliefs." (pg. 96)

"In much of the Western world, however, faith is not at all tied to the truthfulness or reliability of its object. Faith is little more than personal, subjective, religious preference. Many people think that faith is utterly nonfalsifiable, and therefore competing faiths cannot usefully or realistically be discussed." (pg. 110)

"...arguing for morality from the assumption of Deism is a far cry from upholding Christianity. Deism has no power to check the advances of secularization, for it is religion without either robust intellectual defense or genuine power. Deism is not a halfway house between secularism and Christianity; it is in fact a form of secularism." (pg. 118)

"Tensions between Christ and culture are unavoidable because tensions between democracy and religion are unavoidable." (pg. 128)

"The irony, then, is that as citizens espouse increasingly diverse visions of what it means to be free, governments (including the courts) step in to resolve the divergences and end up making people less free." (pg. 137)

"Religious pluralism cannot be an ultimate good, for it will not be found in the new heaven and the new earth, toward which we press; but if in this broken world it curbs violence and coercion, if it promotes relative freedom among those who (whether they recognize it or not) bear God's image, then we thank God for the gifts of common grace and for the wisdom of the Master who insisted on some kind of distinction, no matter how complex and how little absolute, between the sphere of Caesar and the sphere of God." (pg. 193)

"It is unwise to speak of 'redeeming culture': if we lose the unique significance bound up with the redemption secured by Christ in his death and resurrection, we lose the ongoing tension between Christ and culture that must subsist until the end. Yet it is possible so to focus on the rescue and regeneration of individuals that we fail to see the temporally good things we can do to improve and even transform some social structures." (pg. 217ff)

"To a generation that scrambles for the top and then looks around and asks, 'Is this all there is?' a biblical vision that focuses on Christ and his cross, on the links between this world and the next, on bold Christian living and faithful witness, and on a large-scale vision that makes the world our parish while loving the neighbor next door, raises our eyes above ourselves, and delights in the glory of God." (pg. 228)

D. A. Carson, Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008)

The Enemy Within: Straight Talk About the Power and Defeat of Sin - by Kris Lundgaard

2009-03-31T20:28:00.000-04:00

"Believers are the only people who ever find the law of sin at work in them. Unbelievers can't feel it. The law of sin is a raging river, carrying them along; they cannot measure the force of the current, because they have surrendered themselves to it and are borne along by it. A believer, on the other hand, swims upstream - he meets sin head-on and strains under its strength." (pg. 25)

"Sin can be like trick birthday candles: you blow them out and smile, thinking you have your wish; then your jaw drops as they burst into flames." (pg. 39)

"So when Paul identifies the flesh with enmity and hatred of God [Romans 8:7], he cuts off any hope that the flesh will bow to God or befriend him. A treaty between God and the flesh is impossible." (pg. 44)

"...you can write this down as a maxim: When the flesh deceives you, you will sin. ... The flesh plies deceit to knock out the watchman of your soul: your mind." (pg. 55)

"If your mind is persuaded to believe a sin is good for your soul, and your affections work up an appetite for it, your will gives its consent - the dominoes fall and the flesh bears its putrid fruit in your life." (pg. 56)

"In order to walk before God, this is the mind's first duty: to know and hold on to the evil of sin and the love of God." (pg. 64)

"You must understand this: the flesh weakens conviction against sin by separating the remedy of grace from the design of grace. ... The flesh works to make you forget the design (that you are saved to be holy) and think only of the remedy (if you sin you'll be forgiven). (pg. 64ff)

"A duty offered to God as an act of mind and will without the affections is abominable to God." (pg. 82)

"When God's love touches your soul and moves you, and you know that every sin is against the Lover of your soul, you will not sin." (pg. 86)

"To protect your affections, you need to be careful of two things: the object of your affections, and the vigor of your affections. And the object of your affections, what you fix your eyes on, should always be heavenly things...(Colossians 3:2)." (pg. 96)

"...many ways to fight against the flesh, such as: meditating on the cross to see the rottenness of your sin and the fulness of Christ's love; keeping watch against sin's deceit; filling your affections with heavenly things; applying your will to every means of God's grace to fight temptation; renewing your first love for Jesus; hungering for a glimpse of God's holy glory." (pg. 142)

"Faith has to be the only thing that destroys the flesh because 'salvation come from the Lord' (Jonah 2:9). Faith has to be the only thing that destroys the flesh because the whole work of our salvation is God's from beginning to end." (pg. 142)

Kris Lundgaard, The Enemy Within: Straight Talk About the Power and Defeat of Sin (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 1998)

God's Way of Holiness: Finding True Holiness Through True Peace - by Horatius Bonar

2009-03-14T11:22:00.002-04:00

"These are weighty words of the apostle, 'we are his workmanship. Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things pertaining to us. Chosen, called, quickened, washed, sanctified and justified by God himself, we are, in no sense, our own deliverers. The quarry out of which the marble comes is his; the marble itself is his; the digging and hewing and polishing are his; he is the sculptor and we the statue." (pg. 10)

"How the Holy Spirit operates in producing the newness of which we have spoken, we know not; yet we know that he does not destroy or reverse man's faculties; he renovates them all, so that they fulfil the true ends for which they were given." (pg. 14)

"As the vessels of the sanctuary were at once separated to God and his service, the moment the blood touched them, so are we. This did not imply that these vessels required no daily ablution afterwards; so neither does our consecration intimate that we need no daily sanctifying, no inward process for getting rid of sin. The initiatory consecration through the blood is one thing, and the continual sanctifying by the power of the Holy Ghost is another." (pg. 17)

"The gospel does not command us to do anything in order to obtain life, but it bids us live by that which another has done; and the knowledge of its life-giving truth is not labour but rest - rest of soul - rest which is the root of all true labour; for in receiving Christ we do not work in order to rest, but we rest in order to work. In believing, we cease to work for pardon, in order that we may work from it; and what incentive to work or source of joy in working, can be greater than an ascertained and realised forgiveness." (pg. 30)

"The sinner's legal position must be set to right before his moral position can be touched. Condition is one thing, character is another. The sinner's standing before God, either in favour or disfavour, either under grace or under wrath, must first be dealt with ere his inner renewal can be carried on." (pg. 39)

"All through the ages has this struggle gone on, between the love and the dread of sin, the delight in lust and the sense of degradation because of it; men clasping the poisoned robe, yet wishing to tear it off; their life steeped in the evil, yet their words so often lavished upon the good." (pg. 53)

"Under law and its curse, a man works for self and Satan; 'under grace' he works for God. It is forgiveness that sets a man a-working for God." (pg. 57)

"The cross on which we are crucified with Christ, and the cross which we carry, are different things, yet they both point in one direction, and lead us along one way. They both protest against sin, and summon to holiness. They both 'condemn the world,' and demand separation from it." (pg. 69)

"It may seem a possible thing just now, by avoiding all extremes and all thoroughness, either in religion or in worldliness, to conjoin both of these, but in the day of the separation of the real from the unreal, it will be discovered to have been a poor attempt to accomplish an impossibility; a failure; a failure for eternity, a failure as complete as it is disastrous and remediless." (pg. 70)

"We want not merely a high and full theology, but we want that theology acted out in life, embodied nobly in daily doings, without anything of what the world calls 'cant' or 'simper'. The higher the theology, the higher and the manlier should be the life resulting from it." (pg. 110)

"Christ's truth sanctifies as well as liberates; his wisdom purifies as well as quickens; let us beware of accepting the liberty without the holiness, the wisdom without the purity, the peace without the zeal and love." (pg. 132)

Horatius Bonar, God's Way of Holiness: Finding True Holiness Through True Peace (Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1999)

Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World - edited by C. J. Mahaney

2009-02-22T11:10:00.003-05:00

"Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world." (pg. 22)

"The world we're not to love is the organized system of human civilization that is actively hostile to God and alienated from God. The world God forbids us to love is the fallen world. Humanity at enmity with God. A world of arrogant, self-sufficient people seeking to exist apart from God and living in opposition to God." (pg. 26)

"...it [worldliness] is to gratify and exalt oneself to the exclusion of God." (pg. 27)

"When it comes to waging the war of sanctification, severe trial usually alerts us to battle, rousing us to our need for God. Popular culture, especially entertainment media, often lulls us to ignore our battle with the flesh." (pg. 41)

"Do we risk legalism by establishing personal viewing standards? Absolutely! But the risk doesn't lie in having standards; it lies in our motivation. The question is not, 'Should we view selectively?' but 'Why do we view selectively?'" (pg. 44)

"Any discussion of biblical obedience, including entertainment guidelines, must spring from a robust understanding of grace." (pg. 47)

"We need more than a rating if we're to honor God through our viewing. We need an evaluation process that takes into account our time and our motive, as well as offering a biblical benchmark for measuring content." (pg. 57)

"What's appropriate for one person to listen to might be sin for someone else because of the differing associations we make. We rarely hear music in a vacuum. Depending on the state of our hearts, any song we hear is a potential carrier of worldly values and perspectives." (pg. 80ff)

"...coveting is desiring stuff too much or desiring too much stuff. It's replacing our delight in God with joy in stuff. Materialism is what happens when coveting has cash to spend." (pg. 95)

"When we're discontented, cost or practical utility is rarely the point of a purchase. The point is the pursuit of happiness." (pg. 101)

"Covetousness chains the heart to things that are passing away." (pg. 106)

"Of all people, it is the Christian who should appreciate aesthetics, discerning with renewed powers of perception the handiwork of God in creation. And as our own aesthetic achievements reflect his creativity and skill, we join him in expressing and celebrating beauty - a beauty that points us to God and intensifies our delight in him." (pg. 153)

"Every aspect of our involvement in this world is to have a redemptive component, illuminating the character of the Creator, imitating his activity, and embodying his intentions to save, renew, and restore. If we're appropriately 'heavenly minded,' we'll be alert to endless earthly opportunities to glorify God." (pg. 166)

C. J. Mahaney, Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008)

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners - by John Bunyan

2009-02-13T20:14:00.003-05:00

"157. Now I saw, that as God had His hand in all the providences and dispensations that overtook His elect; so He had His hand in all the temptations that they had to sin against Him; no to animate them to wickedness, but to choose their temptations and troubles for them; and also to leave them for a time, to such sins only that might not destroy, but humble them; as might not put them beyond, but lay them in the way of the renewing His mercy. But oh! what love, what care, what kindness and mercy did I now see, mixing itself with the most severe and dreadful of all God's ways to His people!" (pg. 51)

"214. This was a wonderment to me; yet truly, I am apt to think it was of God; for the word of the law and wrath, must give place to the word of life and grace; because, though the word of condemnation be glorious, yet the word of life and salvation doth far exceed in glory (2 Cor. 3:8-11; Mark 9:5-7; John 6:37)." (pg. 70)

"301. Thus therefore I came to perceive that, though gifts in themselves were good, to the thing for which they are designed, to wit, the edification of others; yet empty, and without power to save the soul of him that hath them, if they be alone: neither are they, as so, any sign of a man's state to be happy, being only a dispensation of God to some, of whose improvement, or non-improvement, they must when a little love more is over, give an account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." (pg. 96ff)

"C5. Of all fears, they are best that are made by the blood of Christ; and of all joy, that is the sweetest that is mixed with mourning over Christ. Oh! it is a goodly thing to be on our knees, with Christ in our arms, before God. I hope I know something of these things." (pg. 110)

"'...for men might have many elegant, or excellent words, and yet not pray at all; but when a man prayeth, he doth, through a sense of those things which he wants (which sense is begotten by the Spirit), pour out his heart before God through Christ; though his words be not so many and so excellent as other are.'" (pg. 126)

John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2007)

The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists - by Ravi Zacharias

2009-01-26T20:37:00.002-05:00

"A worldview basically offers answers to four necessary questions - questions that relate to origin, meaning, morality, and hope that assures a destiny. These answers must be correspondingly true and, as a whole, coherent." (pg. 33ff)

"I want to add that our arguments for the existence of God do not hinge on debunking evolution. Evolution is a straw man that has been thrown up, as if all that needs to be done to achieve the crashing down of belief in God is to posit evolution." (pg. 37)

"The greatest disappointment (and resulting pain) you can feel is when you have just experienced that which you thought would bring you the ultimate in pleasure - and it has let you down. Pleasure without boundaries produces a life without purpose. That is real pain." (pg. 41)

"To believe that there is no moral order, one must assume knowledge of what a moral order would look like if there were one. But why should one person's opinion of what the moral order should look like be any more authentic than anyone else's? And besides, if there truly is no moral order, any attempt to enforce one is sheer pragmatism, open to any challenge for other pragmatic reasons." (pg. 60ff)

"Denying the existence of God leads us to preposterous conclusions so that, in the end, the amoral world of the skeptic who simply cannot explain good is worse than the world of the theist who has an explanation of evil." (pg. 67ff)

"Wickedness is always excused as anything but the moral degeneracy that has resulted from each one of us becoming the god of God." (pg. 68)

"Given a starting point of primordial slime, one is forced to live apart from the moral law, with no meaning, no real understanding of love, and no hope." (pg. 79)

"For the believer in God and the follower of Jesus, there is more than the existential test, which is subject to circumstance and condition. We also have the empirical test of the person, teaching, and work of Jesus Christ." (pg. 79)

"It boils down to this: for the follower of Jesus Christ, the fact that the universe cannot explain itself, added to the obvious intelligence behind the universe, linked to the historical and experiential verification of what Jesus taught and did, make belief in him a very rational and existentially fulfilling reality." (pg. 120)

Ravi Zacharias, The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008)

God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself - by John Piper

2009-01-19T20:01:00.003-05:00

"The acid test of biblical God-centeredness - and faithfulness to the gospel - is this: Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever?" (pg. 11)

"If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond him for satisfaction." (pg. 12)

"When I say that God Is the Gospel I mean that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment." (pg. 13)

"Nothing fits a person to be more useful on earth than to be more ready for heaven." (pg. 16)

"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." (pg. 47)

"The glory of Christ is not synonymous with raw power. The glory is the divine beauty of his manifold perfections. To see this requires a change of heart." (pg. 54)

"The natural self-centered condition of human hearts cannot believe, because they cannot see spiritual beauty. It is not a physical inability, as though they can't act even if they have a compelling desire to act. It is a moral inability because they are so self-absorbed, they are unable to see what would condemn their pride and give them joy through admiring another. That is why seeing the glory of Christ requires a profound spiritual change." (pg. 54)

"...the glory of God in Christ, revealed through the gospel, is a real, objective light that must be spiritually seen in order for there to be salvation. If it is not seen - spiritually tasted as glorious and precious - Satan still has his way, and there is no salvation." (pg. 64)

"This is the way the Holy Spirit does his ongoing change in us. He does not change us directly; he changes us by enabling us to see the glory of Christ." (pg. 90)

"The purpose of the gospel - both its central events of Good Friday and Easter, as well as their proclamation in the world - is to make the glory of God in Christ the foundation and the means of all salvation and sanctification and glorification. There is no gospel where the glory of God in Christ is not shown. And there is no salvation through the gospel where the glory of God in Christ is not seen." (pg. 97)

"Something else must be present in faith if it is to be saving faith that honors Christ rather than just using him. Saving faith must have a quality to it that tastes what is Christ-exalting and embraces it." (pg. 129)

"...gratitude that is pleasing to God is not first a delight in the benefits God gives (though that will be part of it). True gratitude must be rooted in something else that comes first - namely, a delight in the beauty and excellency of God's character." (pg. 136)

"Divine love labors and suffers to enthrall us with what is infinitely and eternally satisfying: God in Christ." (pg. 155)

John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005)

The Art of Divine Contentment - by Thomas Watson

2008-12-16T11:37:00.000-05:00

"Discontent is to the soul as a disease is to the body: it puts it out of temper and much hinders its regular and sublime motions heavenward." (pg. v)

"The main proposition I shall insist upon is this: a gracious spirit is a contented spirit. The doctrine of contentment is very superlative, and until we have learned this we have not learned to be Christians." (pg. 11)

"Here is the difference between a holy complaint and a discontented complaint. In the one we complain to God; in the other we complain of God." (pg. 17)

"Contentment is a divine thing; it becomes ours, not by acquisition, but by infusion. It is a slip taken off from the tree of life and planted by the Spirit of God in the soul." (pg. 19)

"God's Providence, which is nothing but the carrying out of His decrees, should be a counterpoison against discontent. God has set us in our station, and has done it in wisdom." (pg. 23)

"Be your material losses what they will, remember that in every loss there is only a suffering, but in every discontent there is a sin; and one sin is worse than a thousand sufferings." (pg. 37)

"The ship in the gospel was tossed because sin was in it, but it was not overwhelmed because Christ was in it. Christ is in the ship of His Church; do not fear sinking." (pg. 55)

"If the thing we desire is good for us, we shall have it. If it is not good, then not having it is good for us. Resting satisfied with this promise gives contentment." (pg. 60)

"Discontent both eclipses reason and weakens faith. It is Satan's usual policy to break over the hedge where it is weakest. Discontent makes a breach in the soul, and usually at this breach the devil enters in by a temptation and storms the soul. How easily can the devil, by his logic, dispute a discontented Christian into sin!" (pg. 66)

"True faith will trust God where it cannot trace Him, and will venture upon God's bond though it has nothing in view. You who are discontented because you do not have all you want, let me tell you, either your faith is a non-entity, or at best it is but an embryo." (pg. 80ff)

"As the throat of a malicious man is an open sepulchre, so is the heart of a covetous man. Covetousness is not only a sin, but the punishment of a sin. It is a secret curse upon a covetous person that he shall thirst and thirst and never be satisfied." (pg. 97)

"All our disquiets issue immediately from unbelief. It is this that raises the storm of discontent in the heart. Oh, set faith to work!" (pg. 112)

"The way for a Christian to be content is not by raising his state higher, but by bringing his spirit lower; not by making his barns wider, but his heart narrower." (pg. 125)

Thomas Watson, The Art of Divine Contentment (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 2001)

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism - by Timothy Keller

2008-12-08T11:03:00.002-05:00

"Skeptics believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true. But this objection is itself a religious belief. It assumes God is unknowable, or that God is loving but not wrathful, or that God is an impersonal force rather than a person who speaks in Scripture." (pg. 12)

"Broadly understood, faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone's life. Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not." (pg. 15)

"Just because you can't see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn't mean there can't be one. Again we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one's own cognitive faculties. If our minds can't plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can't be any! This is blind faith of a high order." (pg. 23)

"Freedom cannot be defined in strictly negative terms, as the absence of confinement and constraint. In fact, in many cases, confinement and constraint is actually a means to liberation." (pg. 45)

"Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us." (pg. 49)

"In short, hell is simply one's freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity." (pg. 78)

"The belief in a God of pure love - who accepts everyone and judges no one - is a powerful act of faith. Not only is there no evidence for it in the natural order, but there is almost no historical, religious textual support for it outside of Christianity. The more one looks at it, the less justified it appears." (pg. 83)

"We must not universalize our time any more than we should universalize our culture. Think of the implication of the very term "regressive." To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow and exclusive as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive." (pg. 111)

"It comes down to this: If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tells us about morality, love, and beauty is not real - if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code - then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should they trust them?" (pg. 139)

"Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him." (pg. 162)

"So racism, classism, and sexism are not matters of ignorance or a lack of education. Foucault and others in our time have shown that it is far harder than we think to have a self-identity that doesn't lead to exclusion. The real culture war is taking place inside our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control us, that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, and that fail to satisfy us even when we get them." (pg. 169)

"Everybody has to live for something. Whatever that something is becomes "Lord of your life," whether you think of it that way or not. Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally." (pg. 173)

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008)

The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel - by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander

2008-11-27T19:55:00.002-05:00

"When it comes to building a people for His own name and glory, God cares how we go about participating in His redemptive purposes." (pg. 27)

"God's Word is His supernatural power for accomplishing His supernatural work. That's why our eloquence, innovations, and programs are so much less important than we think; that's why we as pastors must give ourselves to preaching, not programs; and that's why we need to be teaching our congregations to value God's Word over programs." (pg. 35)

"...when we assume the Gospel instead of clarifying it, people who profess Christianity but don't understand or obey the Gospel are cordially allowed to presume their own conversion without examining themselves for evidence of it - which may amount to nothing more than a blissful damnation." (pg. 43)

"The only external evidence that the Bible tells us to use in discerning whether or not a person is converted is the fruit of obedience (Matt. 7:15-27; John 15:8; James 2:14-26; 1 John 2:3)." (pg. 53)

"Remember - what you win them with is likely what you'll win them to. If you win them with entertainment, they're likely to be won to the show rather than the message, which increases the likelihood of false conversions." (pg. 54ff)

"Entertainment is therefore a problematic medium for communicating the Gospel, because it nearly always obscures the most difficult aspects of it - the cost of repentance, the cross of discipleship, the narrowness of the Way." (pg. 55)

"Edification - building people up - happens when people are encouraged to understand and apply the Gospel more biblically, not necessarily when they are led into an emotional experience or encouraged to identify temporary emotional expressiveness with worship." (pg. 84ff)

"Corporate worship is not about pleasing people, whether ourselves, the congregation, or unbelieving seekers. Worship in the corporate gathering is about renewing our covenant with God by meeting with Him and relating to Him in the ways that He has prescribed." (pg. 115)

"Transformation into the likeness of the Lord happens as we gaze at Him together over time. The biblical hallmarks of church health - holiness, faith, love, sound doctrine - are cultivated in us as we are captivated by Him." (pg. 195)

"As our ministry methods become more complex, more reliant on human ingenuity, and more concerned with the approval of the world, they begin to cast a shadow on the image of God, and 'the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ' (2 Cor. 4:6) appears correspondingly dimmer. The mirror of God's Word becomes increasingly opaque, tarnished by the overapplication of human technique, and the result is a gradual diminishing of the transforming power that enables the church to reflect the character and knowledge of God." (pg. 196)

Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005)

When Sinners Say "I Do": Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage - by Dave Harvey

2008-10-17T17:39:00.000-04:00

"...What we believe about God determines the quality of our marriage." (pg. 20)

"...marriage is most amazing not because it brings people joy, or allows for a nurturing environment for children, or because it stabilizes society (even though it does all those things). Marriage is awesome because God designed it to display his glory." (pg. 28)

"It is very important in our Christian lives to be suspicious of any claims to righteousness we bring to our relationship with God. It is in Christ alone, and in his merit alone, that we trust. True humility is living confident in Christ's righteousness, and suspicious of our own." (pg. 63)

"Scripture does not give me permission to make the sins of my spouse my first priority. I need to slow down, exercise the humility of self-suspicion, and inspect my own heart first." (pg. 66)

"It's not wrong to desire appropriate things like respect or affection from our spouses. But it is very tempting to justify demands by thinking of them as needs and then to punish one another if those needs are not satisfied. A needs-based marriage does not testify to God's glory; it is focused on personal demands competing for supremacy." (pg. 74)

"There is fresh grace for each failure for both the sinner and the one sinned against. And kindness is a posture of heart that flows out in actions - daily-life stuff that reprograms behavior in marriage away from self-focus to the redemptive purposes of God." (pg. 85)

"Self-righteousness is a sense of moral superiority that appoints us as prosecutor of other people's sinfulness. We relate to other as if we are incapable of the sins they commit. Self-righteousness wages war against mercy." (pg. 91)

"The gospel, let us remember, has created something astounding - relationships among sinners where the King's rule is experienced and expressed! Do you see your marriage that way? Do you see it as two sinners experiencing and expressing the rule of Christ in the most significant human relationship he has created? When sinners say "I do," they acknowledge the Son of God's presence and Lordship in the endeavor of marriage." (pg. 111)

"If we sow loving honesty and courageous care, we will reap growth in godliness. If we avoid confrontation, we'll just get confrontation anyway, because sin unaddressed is sin unconfined. In an attempt to preserve peace, we sow war." (pg. 127)

"In marriage, to be meek is not to be weak or vulnerable, but to be so committed to your spouse that you will sacrifice for his or her good. A meek person sees the futility of responding to sin with sin." (pg. 130)

"So when life comes at you in ways you don't expect, remember this: Regeneration is the initial burst of spiritual life in our souls. Renewal is that same power working itself out in every facet of who we are, fitting us, as it were, for eternal life with Jesus." (pg. 172)

Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say "I Do": Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2007)

Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues With Timeless Truth - By R. Albert Mohler Jr.

2008-09-19T12:34:00.001-04:00

"Love of neighbor for the sake of loving God is a profound political philosophy that strikes a balance between the disobedience of political disengagement and the idolatry of politics as our main priority." (pg. 4)

"With the advent of modernity, and now the postmodern age, the view that public law is or ought to be predicated on Christian morals is no longer taken for granted. Not only is the idea questioned, but it is even rejected out of hand." (pg. 8)

"...if we accept the argument that Christian moral arguments are forbidden entry into the public space, we have decided not only to violate the clear intention of our Constitution's framers, not only to reject the inherited civilization that has brought us to this point, not only to redefine what it means to be a liberal democracy, but we have actually privileged one form of religious discourse over another. That is, we have privileged irreligious religious discourse over self-consciously religious discourse." (pg. 18)

"Christians must not only contend for the preservation and protection of free speech - essential for the cause of the gospel - we must also make certain that we do not fall into the trap of claiming offendedness for ourselves. We must not claim a right not to be offended, even as we must insist that there is no such right and that the social construction of such a right will mean the death of individual liberty, free speech, and the free exchange of ideas." (pg. 35-36)

"Moral relativism has denied any objective judgment of right and wrong. A naive non-judgmentalism often masquerades as moral humility. But a refusal to make moral judgments is not humility. It is insanity." (pg. 48-49)

"Spirituality is what is left when authentic Christianity is evacuated from the public square. It is the refuge of the faithless seeking the trappings of faith without the demands of revealed truth." (pg. 51)

"The God Gene is a parable for our postmodern times, further evidence of the lengths to which clever humans will go in trying to deny that we were made by a Creator who designed us with the capacity to know Him. Hamer's book is bad science and bad theology combined, but it does succeed in making one point clear: materialism just can't answer the big questions." (pg. 80)

"Keyes identifies the academic world as the source of much confusion when it comes to honesty. Postmodern philosophers routinely dismiss objective truth and assert that all truth is simply social construction and invention. Authorities in power simply invent truth in order to buttress their authority, the postmodernists allege. Following this logic, lying becomes a means of liberation." (pg. 101-102)

"Having established a truce with the naturalistic world-view, liberal theology simply accommodates itself to the secular temptation by denying God's active and sovereign rule. In other words, God's goodness is affirmed while His greatness is denied. Process theology does this by putting God within the created order, struggling along with His creation toward maturity." (pg. 130-131)

R. Albert Mohler Jr., Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues With Timeless Truth (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2008)

Humility: True Greatness - by C. J. Mahaney

2008-08-25T15:13:00.000-04:00

"Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holiness and our sinfulness." (pg. 22)

"Why does God hate pride so passionately? Here's why: Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him." (pg. 31)

"Here's an essential truth: To learn true humility, we need more than a redefinition of greatness; we need even more than Jesus' personal example of humble service. What we need is His death." (pg. 47)

"The end of each day offers us a unique opportunity to cultivate humility and weaken pride, as well as to sense God's pleasure. How? By reviewing our day and carefully assigning all glory to God for the grace we've experienced that day." (pg. 79)

"...only those who are humble can consistently identify evidences of grace in others who need adjustment. It's something the proud and the self-righteous are incapable of." (pg. 100)

"Our deliberate pursuit of obedience and growth in godliness isn't something we enter into with self-confidence, but as an expression of humble dependence upon the God who is actively working." (pg. 105)

"The biblical purpose for every conversation you have, in every personal interaction, is that the person who hears you will receive grace." (pg. 118)

"As I understand it, corrupt talk is the fruit of pride and the revealer of pride, while edifying words are the fruit of hearts that have been transformed by the gospel and evidence that a heart has been humbled by the gospel. Only the humble are genuinely concerned about edifying and encouraging others." (pg. 121)

C. J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2005)

God's Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith - by Bruce A. Ware

2008-07-25T21:09:00.003-04:00

"God's full self-revelation must be accepted by evangelical theology with the deep conviction that all of what God has disclosed of himself is important for our understanding, and that no part of it should be granted the regulatory function of a prime datum in its doctrine of God." (pg. 44)

"If we felt the strain and ultimate inability to comprehend fully each of these two truths central to a proper understanding of God - the transcendent self-existence of God, by which he stands eternally independent of the world, possessing the infinite fullness of all perfections within his own nature, intrinsically; and the immanent self-relatedness of God, a relatedness expressed supremely in the cross, in God's relentless love that pursued its beloved in the face of open and willful rebellion - we now must acknowledge our complete wonder and amazement at an even greater mystery, one that is exposed only when these two grand truths of God are brought together: the God of the Bible loves and seeks us out with such eagerness and persistence when he himself stands in no need whatever of the objects of his love. His love, then, is unconditional without qualification." (pg. 56)

"If...our freedom consists in our choosing to act according to our strongest desires or inclinations, then it stands to reason that we can change our behavior only when our strongest desires and inclinations change. Character transformation is the key to behavior modification. And, of course, this is why Scripture is so consistently concerned with the renewal of our minds, our hearts, our characters, and our inner persons. Only as the Spirit of God works in us to transform our deepest desires will we choose and act in ways, increasingly, that are pleasing to the Lord." (pg. 81)

"The work that God does, then, in the life of a believer to produce fruitfulness and growth is by his direct-causative agency, working in and through us from out of his very character of wisdom, truth, goodness, holiness, and love. And because it is altogether his work, to him belongs all the glory, honor, and praise (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14)." (pg. 105)

"...God possesses eternally and necessarily the attributes of goodness and love, but apart from the creation and fall, God simply would not appropriately be called or thought of as "merciful" or "gracious" since neither of these can have any rightful and appropriate expression within the immanent Trinity." (pg. 153)

"...worship happens only when we are granted eyes to behold God's magnificence, and splendor, and glory, and majesty. This is a seeing with deep and abiding longing, a seeing that savors, eliciting a savoring that satisfies. In this seeing, God invades our lives, and we experience the truths about him that we have beheld. Truth about him becomes existential within our own minds, hearts, hopes, fears, plans, dreams, values, and desires. We marvel at his character, we embrace his will and his ways as we savor the richness and bounty of all that he is." (pg. 158)

"...the end of life is God - God's worth and glory extolled as needy and humble creatures live in full and happy dependence upon him, to the glory of his name." (pg. 159)

Bruce A. Ware, God's Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004)

Respectable Sins: Confronting The Sins We Tolerate - by Jerry Bridges

2008-06-20T19:58:00.000-04:00

"In the biblical sense of the term, sainthood is not a status of achievement and character but a state of being - an entirely new condition of life brought about by the Spirit of God." (pg. 14)

"Usually, however, our sinful actions stem not from a failure to achieve but from an inner urge to fulfill our own desires." (pg. 21)

"If I complain about the difficult circumstances of my life, I impugn the sovereignty and goodness of God and tempt my listener to do the same. In this way, my sin "metastasizes" into the heart of another person." (pg. 24)

"The truth is, there is never a day in our lives when we are so "good" we don't need the gospel." (pg. 37)

"Practically speaking, we live under the controlling influence of the Spirit as we continually expose our minds to and seek to obey the Spirit's moral will for us as revealed in Scripture. We live in dependence on Him through prayer as we continually cry out to Him for His power to enable us to obey His will." (pg. 41)

"Ungodliness may be defined as living one's everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God's will, or of God's glory, or of one's dependence on God." (pg. 54)

"A person may be moral and upright, or even busy in Christian service, yet have little or no desire to develop an intimate relationship with God. This is a mark of ungodliness." (pg. 58)

"We can resign ourselves to circumstances we know will never change but still harbor in our hearts a smoldering discontentment. But as Amy Carmichael so helpfully brought out, it is neither in resignation nor submission but only in acceptance that we find peace." (pg. 75)

"What is self-control? It is a governance or prudent control of one's desires, cravings, impulses, emotions, and passions. It is saying no when we should say no. It is moderation in legitimate desires and activities, and absolute restraint in areas that are clearly sinful." (pg. 110)

"Let me make a statement loud and clear. It is never okay to be angry at God. Anger is moral judgment, and in the case of God, it accuses Him of wrongdoing. It accuses God of sinning against us by neglecting us or in some way treating us unfairly. It also is often a response to our thinking that God owes us a better deal in life than we are getting." (pg. 127)

"The damage to God's glory by our sin is determined not by the severity of our sin but by the value of God's glory." (pg. 137)

"Usually, there are two conditions that tempt us to envy. First, we tend to envy those with whom we most closely identify. Second, we tend to envy in them the areas we value most." (pg. 149)

Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting The Sins We Tolerate (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2007)

A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life - by J. I. Packer

2008-05-15T21:10:00.000-04:00

"Maturity is a compound of wisdom, goodwill, resilience, and creativity. The Puritans exemplified maturity; we don't." (pg. 22)

"Pastor, they [Puritan clergy] said, are responsible for rebuking heresy and defending truth, lest their flocks be misled and thereby enfeebled, if not worse. Biblical truth is nourishing, human error is killing, so spiritual shepherds must guard sound doctrine at all costs." (pg. 64)

"Not only in connection with justification, but at every point, first to last, the Puritan account of faith's focus, exercise, and fruits is structured in terms of conscience receiving God's word and by its light judging how God sees one and how through Christ one may or does stand related to him in covenant mercy." (pg. 68)

"He who would interpret Scripture aright, therefore, must be a man of a reverent, humble, prayerful, teachable and obedient spirit; otherwise, however tightly his mind may be 'stuffed with notions', he will never reach any understanding of spiritual realities." (pg. 100)

"'There is a dangerous error grown too common in the world [it is commoner still today] that a man is bound to do every thing which his conscience telleth him is the will of God; and that every man must obey his conscience, as if it were the lawgiver of the world; whereas, indeed, it is not ourselves, but God, that is our lawgiver. And conscience is...appointed...only to discern the law of God, and call upon us to observe it: and an erring conscience is not to be obeyed, but to be better informed....'" (pg. 113)

"A good conscience is a tender conscience. The consciences of the godless may be so calloused that they scarcely ever act at all; bu the healthy Christian conscience (said the Puritans) is constantly in operation, listening for God's voice in his word, seeking to discern his will in everything, active in self-watch and self-judgement." (pg. 116)

"Its [the old gospel] centre of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the centre of reference is man. This is just to say tha the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach people to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and his ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed." (pg. 126)

"...we appeal to men as if they all had the ability to receive Christ at any time; we speak of his redeeming work as if he had done no more by dying than make it possible for us to save ourselves by believing; we speak of God's love as if it were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust; and we depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quiet impotence 'at the door of our hearts' for us to let them in." (pg. 126ff)

"'It is a mercy to have a faithful friend that loveth you entirely...to whom you may open you mind and communicate your affairs...And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul and...to stir up in you the grace of God.'" (pg. 262)

"It was a Puritan maxim that 'all grace enters by the understanding'. God does not move men to action by mere physical violence, but addresses their minds by his word, and calls for the response of deliberate consent and intelligent obedience. It follows that every man's first duty is to explain it. The only way to the heart that he is authorised to take runs via the head." (pg. 281)

"Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ's sheep. The preacher's job is to proclaim the faith, not to provide entertainment for unbelievers - in other words, to feed the sheep rather than amuse the goats." (pg. 285)

"To their [Puritans] minds, it would be the worst advice possible to tell a troubled person to stop worrying about his sins and trust Christ at once when that person had not yet faced the specifics of his or her sinfulness and has not yet come to the point of clear-headedly desiring to leave all sinful ways behind and be made holy. To give this advice, they held, before the heart is weaned from sin would be the way to induce false peace and false hopes, as so to produce 'gospel-hypocrites', which is the last thing that a Christian counsellor should be willing to do." (pg. 298)

J. I. Packer, A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1990)

The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man - by Henry Scougal

2008-04-01T22:06:00.000-04:00

"...true religion is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the Divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle's phrase, 'it is Christ formed within us'." (pg. 41-42)

"The root of the Divine life is faith; the chief branches are love to God, charity to man, purity and humility;..." (pg. 52)

"...I had rather see the real impressions of a godlike nature upon my own soul, than have a vision from heaven, or angel sent to tell me that my name were enrolled in the book of life." (pg. 55)

"The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love: he who loveth mean and sordid things doth thereby become base and vile; but a noble and well-placed affection doth advance and improve the spirit unto a conformity with the perfections which it loves." (pg. 68)

"The true way to improve and ennoble our souls is, by fixing our love on the divine perfections, that we may have them always before us, and derive an impression of them on ourselves, and 'beholding with open face, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we may be changed into the same image, from glory to glory'." (pg. 69)

"Love is the greatest and most excellent thing we are masters of; and therefore it is folly and baseness to bestow it unworthily;..." (pg. 69-70)

"But oh! how happy are those who have placed their love on him who can never be absent from them!" (pg. 75)

"...let us never look upon any sin as light and inconsiderable; but be fully persuaded, that the smallest is infinitely heinous in the sight of God, and prejudicial to the soul of men: and that if we had the right sense of things, we should be as deeply affected with the least irregularities as now we are with the highest crimes." (pg. 100)

"The love of the world, and the love of God, are like the scales of a balance, as the one falleth, the other doth rise:..." (pg. 110)

"...the deepest and most pure humility doth not so much arise from the consideration of our own faults and defects, as from a calm and quiet contemplation of the divine purity and goodness." (pg. 129)

Henry Scougal, The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man (Scotland, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1996, 2001, 2002)

Future Grace - by John Piper

2008-04-01T21:59:00.000-04:00

"Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it holds out some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us until we believe that God is more to be desired than life itself (Psalm 63:3)." (pg. 9-10)

"Could it be that gratitude for bygone grace has been pressed to serve as the power for holiness, which only faith in future grace was designed to perform?" (pg. 11)

"...faith is the God-appointed means of justification and sanctification because, better than any other act, it highlights the freedom of grace and magnifies the glory of God." (pg. 19)

"In regard to justification, faith is not the channel through which a power or a transformation flows to the soul of the believer, but rather faith is the occasion of God's forgiving and acquitting and reckoning as righteous. ... However, in regard to sanctification, faith is indeed the channel through which divine power and transformation flow to the soul; and the work of God through faith does indeed touch the soul, and change it." (pg. 26)

"The only debt that grace creates is the "debt" of relying on more grace for all that God calls us to be and do." (pg. 42)

"As unbelief gets the upper hand in our hearts, one of the effects is anxiety. The root cause of anxiety is a failure to trust all that God has promised to be for us in Jesus." (pg. 54)

"Every act of grace shown to a person because he is a sinner is also an act of mercy because his sin brings misery. And every act of mercy shown to a person because of his miserable plight is also an act of grace because he doesn't deserve it." (pg. 77)

"God made us alive and secured us in Christ so that he could make us the beneficiaries of everlasting kindness from infinite riches of grace. This is not because we are worthy. Quite the contrary, it is to show the infinite measure of his worth." (pg. 82-83)

"Belief is not merely an agreement with facts in the head; it is also an appetite for God in the heart, which fastens on Jesus for satisfaction." (pg. 86)

"Pride does not like the sovereignty of God. Therefore pride does not like the existence of God, because God is sovereign." (pg. 92)

"God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God." (pg. 116-117)

"Justification by faith secures final glorification. God has ordained it. God accomplishes it. The future grace of glorification is guaranteed by the past grace of justification." (pg. 125)

"...much of what makes us feel shame is not that we have brought dishonor to God by our actions, but that we have failed to give the appearance that other people admire. Much of our shame is not God-centered but self-centered. Until we get a good handle on this, we will not be able to battle the problem of shame at its root." (pg. 134)

"Loving your enemy doesn't earn you the reward of heaven. Treasuring the reward of heaven empowers you to love your enemy." (pg. 163)

"...the strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours. This requires great faith in future grace, because the evidence is seldom evident." (pg. 174)

"All future obedience comes by the power of future grace." (pg. 185)

"Therefore, two things are necessary for saving faith to emerge. One is to use our perception and our mind to hear and see and understand and validate a testimony to the truth of Christ. The other is that we must apprehend and embrace the spiritual beauty and worth of Christ through the illumination of the Holy Spirit." (pg. 202)

"The safest place in the universe is with our arms around the neck of God. And the most dangerous place is any path where we flee from his presence." (pg. 243)

"It is not the memory of past grace that 'wills and works for God's good pleasure.' It is God himself, graciously arriving each moment, that brings the future into the present." (pg. 292)

"When something drops into your life that seems to threaten your future, remember this: the first shockwaves of the bomb are not sin. The real danger is yielding to them. Giving in. Putting up no spiritual fight. And the root of that surrender is unbelief - a failure to fight for faith in future grace. A failure to cherish all that God promises to be for us in Jesus." (pg. 307)

"The key to assurance is not to eliminate the biblical commands for endurance, but rather to magnify grace as a future power to believe, as well as a past pardon of sin." (pg. 317)

"All true virtue comes from faith in future grace; and all sin comes from lack of faith in future grace." (pg. 323)

"Faith stands or falls on the truth that the future with God is more satisfying than the one promised by sin. Where this truth is embraced and God is cherished above all, the power of sin is broken." (pg. 326)

"...the test of whether our faith is the kind of faith that justifies is whether it is the kind of faith that sanctifies." (pg. 332)

"The challenge is not merely to pursue righteousness, but to prefer righteousness." (pg. 338)

"God so values our wholehearted faith in future grace that he will, graciously, take away everything else in the world that we might be tempted to rely on - even life itself." (pg. 347)

"If the nature of faith is to be satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus, then the universal biblical mandate to believe is a radical and pervasive call to pursue our own happiness in God." (pg. 386)

"My discovery is that God is supreme not where he is simply served with duty but where he is savored with delight." (pg. 399)

John Piper, Future Grace (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1995)

When People Are Big And God Is Small - by Edward T. Welch

2008-04-01T20:32:00.000-04:00

"1. We fear people because they can expose and humiliate us. 2. We fear people because they can reject, ridicule, or despise us. 3. We fear people because they can attack, oppress, or threaten us." (pg. 23)

"The roots of shame-induced fear of man lie in our relationship with God. We stand ultimately under his penetrating, holy gaze." (pg. 35-36)

"What is it that shame-fear and rejection-fear have in common? To use a biblical image, they both indicate that people are our favorite idol. We exalt them and their perceived power above God." (pg. 44)

"Feelings have become the inarticulate mutterings of the divine soul: to be morally upright is to do whatever your heart inspires you to do. When following inner impulses, this assumption declares, we can do no wrong." (pg. 81)

"Yet if our use of the term "needs" is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs." (pg. 89)

"Most sins are ungodly exaggerations of things that are good. As a result, we can supply proof texts to justify our behavior long after it has become idolatrous." (pg. 101)

"The triune God delights in showing us his grandeur and holiness, and we should never be satisfied with our present knowledge of him. So aspire to the fear of the Lord." (pg. 133)

"When psychological needs, rather than sin, are seen as our primary problem, not only is our self-understanding affected, but the gospel itself is changed." (pg. 146)

"The main reason why there is an epidemic of emptiness is that we have created and multiplied our needs, not God." (pg. 151)

"People are most similar to God when he is the object of their affection. People should delight in God, as he does in himself." (pg. 156)

"To image God means to imitate and represent God for the sake of his glory." (pg. 199)

"No one should have to ask what their gifts are; we should tell people their gifts as they minister to us." (pg. 205)

Edward T. Welch, When People Are Big And God Is Small (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1997)

The Knowledge Of The Holy - by A. W. Tozer

2008-04-01T17:41:00.000-04:00

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." (pg. 1)

"The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him." (pg. 3)

"The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God." (pg. 4)

"For while the name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible, He in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes." (pg. 11)

"What God declares the believing heart confesses without the need of further proof. Indeed, to seek proof is to admit doubt, and to obtain proof is to render faith superfluous." (pg. 19)

"Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself." (pg. 32)

"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 the man." (pg. 35)

"Nothing in God is less or more, or large or small. He is what He is in Himself, without qualifying thought or word. He is simply God." (pg. 46)

"Wisdom, among other things, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to achieve those ends by the most perfect means." (pg. 60)

"We rest in what God is. I believe that this alone is true faith. Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith." (pg. 62)

"The testimony of faith is that, no matter how things look in this fallen world, all God's acts are wrought in perfect wisdom." (pg. 62)

"With the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it, and the power of God to achieve it, what do we lack? Surely we are the most favored of all creatures." (pg. 64)

"Science observes how the power of God operates, discovers a regular pattern somewhere and fixes it as a 'law'." (pg. 66)

"When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesitation. The fear of consequences is no deterrent when the fear of God is gone." (pg. 71)

"The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid - that is the paradox of faith." (pg. 84)

"God's compassion flows out of His goodness, and goodness without justice is not goodness." (pg. 88)

"Because God is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another." (pg. 98)

"Theological knowledge is the medium through which the Spirit flows into the human heart, yet there must be humble penitence in the heart before truth can produce faith. The Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth. It is possible to have some truth in the mind without having the Spirit in the heart, but it is never possible to have the Spirit apart from truth." (pg. 104)

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge Of The Holy (New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1961)

The Cross Centered Life - by C. J. Mahaney

2008-04-01T16:28:00.000-04:00

"Only when we hear the very bad news that we're deserving of judgment can we appreciate the very good news that God has provided salvation through His Son." (pg. 14-15)

"Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be." (pg. 21)

"'Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry.'" [quote from D.A. Carson] (pg. 22)

"Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God." (pg. 25)

"We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging truth of who God is and what He's accomplished for us at the cross." (pg. 47)

"...our emotions shouldn't be vested with final authority. This should be reserved for God's Word alone." (pg. 48)

"'We never move on from the cross, only into a more profound understanding of the cross.'" [quote from David Prior] (pg. 74)

C. J. Mahaney/Sovereign Grace Ministries, The Cross Centered Life (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2002)

The Cross and Christian Ministry - by D. A. Carson

2008-04-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

"...Paul here sets forth the only polarity that is of ultimate importance: he distinguishes between those who are perishing and those who are being saved. The dividing line between these two groups is the message of the cross...(1 Cor. 1:18-21)." (pg. 14)

"...the demand for signs becomes the prototype of every condition human beings raise as a barrier to being open to God. I will devote myself to this God if he heals my child. I will follow this Jesus if I can maintain my independence." (pg. 21)

"We depend on plans, programs, vision statements - but somewhere along the way we have succumbed to the temptation to displace the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of strategic planning." (pg. 26)

"The only thing of transcendent importance to human beings is the knowledge of God." (pg. 32)

"When the pressure to 'contextualize' the gospel jeopardizes the message of the cross by inflating human egos, the cultural pressures must be ignored." (pg. 34)

"...the possibility of knowing God and of understanding his ways does not belong to any human being as an essential component of his or her being. The distance is too great; our self-centeredness is too deep. ... What is required, then, is revelation." (pg. 53)

"...truly grasping the truth of the cross and being transformed cannot be separated - and both are utterly dependent on the work of the Spirit." (pg. 65)

"If the church is being built with large portions of charm, personality, easy oratory, positive thinking, managerial skills, powerful and emotional experiences, and people smarts, but without the repeated, passionate, Spirit-anointed proclamation of 'Jesus Christ and him crucified,' we may be winning more adherents than converts." (pg. 80)

"The way of destroying the church are many and colorful. Raw factionalism will do it. Rank heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it - admittedly more slowly than frank heresy, but just as effectively on the long haul." (pg. 83)

"...what is required in some sense of all believers is peculiarly required of the leaders of believers. There is a difference of degree." (pg. 95)

"...a leader's ultimate allegiance must not be to the church, or to any individual leader or tradition. It must be to the Lord alone and to the 'secret things of God' he has entrusted to him or her." (pg. 98)

"Leaders in the church suffer the most. They are not like generals in the military who stay behind the lines." (pg. 108)

"Strong Christians may be right on a theological issue, but unless they voluntarily abandon what is in fact their right they will do damage to the church and thus 'sin against Christ' (1 Cor. 8:12). To stand on your rights may thus involve you in sin after all - not the sin connected with your rights (there, after all, you are right!), but the sin of lovelessness, the sin of being unwilling to forgo your rights for the spiritual and eternal good of others." (pg. 125)

D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1993, 2003)

The Practice Of Godliness - by Jerry Bridges

2008-04-01T14:15:00.000-04:00

"Devotion is not an activity; it is an attitude toward God. This attitude is composed of three essential elements: 1) the fear of God; 2) the love of God; and, 3) the desire for God." (pg. 14)

"The practice of godliness is an exercise or discipline that focuses upon God." (pg. 14)

"As we mature in our Christian lives we are increasingly aware of God's holiness and our own sinfulness." (pg. 25)

"True godliness engages our affections and awakens within us a desire to enjoy God's presence and fellowship. It produces a longing for God Himself." (pg. 28)

"...minimum characteristics necessary for training" in godliness: 1) commitment; 2) A competent teacher/coach (Holy Spirit); and, 3) practice. (pg. 34ff)

"...five methods of intake of the Word of God - hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating." (pg. 37ff)

"...we can build Godlike character only upon the foundation of a wholehearted devotion to God." (pg. 54)

"...Devotion to God is the only acceptable motive for actions that are pleasing to God." (pg. 57)

"...The power or enablement for a godly life comes from the risen Christ." (pg. 59)

"...Though the power for godly character comes from Christ, the responsibility for developing and displaying that character is ours." (pg. 61)

"...The development of godly character entails both putting off and putting on character traits." (pg. 63)

"...We are to pursue growth in all of the graces that are considered the fruit of the Spirit." (pg. 65)

"...Growth in all areas is progressive and never finished." (pg. 67)

"We must not treat the Scriptures only as a source of knowledge about God, but also as the expression of His will for our daily lives." (pg. 75)

"The Scriptures repeatedly affirm that the focal point of our joy should be our hope of the eternal inheritance that awaits us in Jesus Christ and the final revelation of His glory." (pg. 116)

"...the most essential elements of holiness. They can be summed up in five words: conviction, commitment, discipline, dependence, and desire." (pg. 123)

"This is where holiness begins: with the knowledge of the truth that renews our minds and enables us to understand how God wants us to live." (pg. 125)

"A conviction is not truly a conviction unless it includes a commitment to live by what we claim to believe." (pg. 125)

"...Self-control is the exercise of inner strength under the direction of sound judgment that enables us to do, think, and say the things that are pleasing to God." (pg. 134)

"...love is a vigorous spirit that rules the whole man, ever directing him to the humble and loving fulfillment of his duties to God and man." (pg. 210)

"...Godlike character is both the fruit of the Spirit as He works within us and the result of our personal efforts." (pg. 211)

Jerry Bridges, The Practice Of Godliness (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1983, 1996)

What Angels Wish They Knew - by Alistair Begg

2008-03-15T21:45:00.000-04:00

"...we believe 'what we like,' and what most of us 'like' is the idea of a god who exists for us. Far less attractive is the 'outmoded' notion of a personal Creator-God who made us and to whom we are accountable." (pg. 14)

"Learning to be content with what we have is a safeguard against the temptation to break the previous nine commands." (pg. 52)

"The deity of Jesus Christ is the essential presupposition of the finality of Christian revelation and the validity of Christian redemption." (pg. 99)

"This is what Professor Nathaniel Micklem of Mansfield College, Oxford, referred to: 'The ultimate scandal of evangelical religion...lies not in dogma or symbolism but in its intolerable offense to human pride.'" (pg. 127)

"We are so driven by the idea that in order to appeal to the mind of contemporary society we must ensure that we are always pragmatic, positive, and careful to avoid anything that may unsettle or disturb potential 'clients.' How unlike Jesus, who explains how it will be at the end of the age. Some will go away to eternal punishment and others to eternal life." (pg. 140)

Alistair Begg, What Angels Wish They Knew (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1998)

Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apologetics - by R. C. Sproul

2008-03-15T20:51:00.000-04:00

"The term apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which literally means 'a reasoned statement or a verbal defense.'" (pg. 13)

"Notitia (content) and assensus (assent to its truth) are necessary conditions for saving faith (we can't have saving faith without them), but they are not sufficient to save us." (pg. 24)

"Epistemology, or the study of how human knowledge is obtained, is indispensable to the apologetic task." (pg. 29)

"...the four basic epistemological premises (all of which are presupposed in Scripture): 1) the law of noncontradiction; 2) the law of causality; 3) the basic (although not perfect) reliability of sense perception; and 4) the analogical use of language." (pg. 30)

"Indeed, the assumption of an objectively rational structure of reality is an assumption that is necessary for any obtaining of knowledge to take place." (pg. 36)

"The law of causality does not require that everything have a cause, only that every effect must have a cause. An eternal object need not have a cause..." (pg. 51)

"...our senses have limitations; that is, our powers of perception can never penetrate the invisible realm where perhaps various kinds of unseen forces (most significantly the providence of God) are in operation." (pg. 58)

"The truth all sinners suppress, which exacts the wrath of God, is knowledge about the Creator." (pg. 76)

"...the two corresponding spheres of enquiry, science and theology, so far from being separated and opposed to one another, are actually in perfect agreement - because all truth is God's truth. Science and theology both presuppose God's divine revelation; and they both meet, as it were, at the top." (pg. 83)

"The greatest myth in modern mythology is the myth of chance." (pg. 116)

"Chance is a perfectly legitimate word for describing coin tosses and unexpected encounters. Today, however, the word chance has been subtly elevated to indicate something far more than mathematical odds or probabilities. To many modern minds, chance is seen as having causal power." (pg. 118)

"The idea of self-existence, which in theology we call the attribute of aseity, is the idea that something exists in and of itself; it is uncaused, uncreated, and differs from everything in the universe that has a cause. A self-existent, eternal being is one that has the power to be, in and of itself." (pg. 122)

"Ex nihilo nihil fit - 'out of nothing, nothing can come'..." (pg. 123)

"When we say that God is transcendent we mean, simply, that he is a higher order of being than we are." (pg. 132)

"No, intention is always attached to intelligence. Indeed, the single most important characteristic of personality is intention. For intention to exist, something must be acting with purpose. One cannot have design accidentally." (pg. 143)

"The ungodly seek an impersonal and ignorant God precisely because we are personal beings and we know we are ultimately accountable to our Creator for our behavior." (pg. 143)

"Our relativistic culture today attempts to get around the need for a moral law by declaring that there is no right or wrong at all, that every act is amoral (neither moral nor immoral). This is nothing more than an educated barbarism; and despite its efforts to the contrary, the conscience cannot be eradicated." (pg. 148)

"If there were no God, then there would be no ultimate ground for doing what is right. All things would be permissible, because all choices would reduce to a battle over preferences." (pg. 149)

"To summarize, in order for ethical standards to have any absolute meaning (thereby imposing obligations upon us), justice must exist; and, granted that our justice is imperfect on earth, there must be perfect justice in the hereafter; and that perfect justice must be secured by a morally perfect, omniscient, and omnipotent judge." (pg. 151)

"Just as we are capable of inventing gods where there are none, so we are capable of doing everything possible to deny our guilt before a God who actually exists." (pg. 160)

"...the dual nature of God's Word. The first 'nature' of Scripture is the humanity of the human authors, which includes all of the idiosyncrasies of style; the second is the deity of its ultimate author, which includes the infallible superintendence of every word, thereby elevating the book into the very word of God himself." (pg. 187)

"Far from being a threat, there is no greater liberation for the seeker of truth than the certainty that God exists and reveals himself and his will in the special revelation of sacred Scripture." (pg. 196)

R. C. Sproul, Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apologetics (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003)

Hard To Believe - by John MacArthur

2008-02-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

"Self-importance is the reigning reality in human fallenness: man is the master of his own soul, the captain of his own fate, the monarch of his own world." (pg. 14)

"Perhaps the dominant myth in the evangelical church today is that the success of Christianity depends on how popular it is, and that the kingdom of God and the glory of Christ somehow advance on the back of public favor." (pg. 19)

"The gospel is hard to believe, and the people who bring it to the world are nobodies. The plan is still the same for all who are God's clay pots. To summarize, here is Paul's humble, five-point strategy: We will not lose heart. We will not alter the message. We will not manipulate the results, because we understand that a profound spiritual reality is at work in those who do not believe. We will not expect popularity, and therefore, we will not be disappointed. And we will not be concerned with visible and earthly success but devote our efforts toward that which is unseen and eternal." (pg. 51)

"God offers nothing to people who are content with their own condition, except judgment." (pg. 68)

"Fallen people set the Law of God aside, constantly inventing new systems that accommodate their shortcomings, then affirming that they are okay before their gods, based on their own personal criteria or religious beliefs and behaviors." (pg. 79)

"The only visible evidence you will ever have of your salvation is a life lived in the direction of obedience; it is the proof that you genuinely have bowed to the lordship of Jesus Christ and been transformed by His grace into a servant of His righteousness." (pg. 112-113)

"Pride is an illusion that curses greatness. The great are the ones who see their failings and work to overcome, not the ones who fancy themselves to be without weakness." (pg. 142)

"...prepare for the rejection the truth is likely to receive. No matter how many features or enticements you add, and how many difficulties you remove, all except true believers will turn you down in the end." (pg. 162)

"The truth divides people. The more fundamental the truth, the deeper and wider the division. The goal of Christian preaching - the goal of presenting the gospel, the goal of the church - is not just to open the door so wide that we can suck everybody in and make them feel comfortable. The goal is to preach the truth to as many people as possible, so that we can sort out the true from the false." (pg. 173)

"If you don't believe the gospel, you don't know God. If you don't know God, you're going to be judged without regard for your human morality." (pg. 211)

John MacAurthur, Hard to Believe (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003)

"Fundamentalism" and the Word of God - by J. I. Packer

2008-02-15T19:34:00.000-05:00

"We agree that no single human formulation of God's truth can be final or exhaustive; we agree that it will take the combined insight of the whole Church to grasp the whole truth of God, and that all groups within Christendom have much to learn from each other; we know that we are all prone to misunderstand the views of others, and to do so in an unfavourable sense; we recognize that there is at least a grain of truth in every heresy, and that views which are partly wrong are also partly right. It is indeed important in theological discussion to bear these things in mind. But it is even more important to remember that the essential step in sound theologizing is to bring all views - one's own as well as those of others - to the touchstone of Scripture." (pg. 18)

"We shall argue that subjection to the authority of Christ involves subjection to the authority of Scripture. Anything short of unconditional submission to Scripture, therefore, is a kind of impenitence; any view that subjects the written Word of God to the opinions and pronouncements of men involves unbelief and disloyalty towards Christ." (pg. 21)

"...as Machen insisted, 'the true way in which to examine a spiritual movement is in its logical relations: logic is the great dynamic, and the logical implications of any way of thinking are sooner or later certain to be worked out'." (pg. 26-27)

"Liberalism swept away entirely the gospel of the supernatural redemption of sinners by God's sovereign grace. It reduced grace to nature, divine revelation to human reflection, faith in Christ to following His example, and receiving new life to turning over a new leaf; it turned supernatural Christianity into one more form of natural religion, a thin mixture of morals and mysticism." (pg. 27)

"The Concise Oxford Dictionary is thus right when it defines 'Fundamentalism' as: 'maintenance, in opposition to modernism, of traditional orthodox beliefs such as the inerrancy of Scripture and literal acceptance of the creeds as fundamentals of protestant Christianity.'" (pg. 29)

"The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith." (pg. 34)

"The deepest cleavages in Christendom are doctrinal; and the deepest doctrinal cleavages are those which result from disagreement about authority." (pg. 44)

"There are three distinct authorities to which final appeal might be made - Holy Scripture, Church tradition or Christian reason; that is to say, Scripture as interpreted by itself; Scripture as interpreted (and in some measure amplified) by official ecclesiastical sources; and Scripture as evaluated in terms of extra-biblical principles by individual Christian men. The problem of authority can be answered in three ways, and three only, according to which of the authorities mentioned is given precedence over the other two: we call these three types of answer the evangelical, the traditionalist and the subjectivist respectively. Confessional Protestants give the first; Romanists, some Anglo-Catholics and Orthodox give the second; modern Liberal Protestants give the third." (pg. 46-47)

"To undercut Christ's teaching about the authority of the Old Testament is to strike at His own authority at the most fundamental point." (pg. 61)

"Apostolic utterances are the truth of Christ and possess the authority of Christ; they are to be received as words of God, because what they convey is, in fact, the word of God." (pg. 64)

"...because the Church on earth consists of imperfectly sanctified sinners, there are always two defects in the lives of its members, both corporately and individually. These are ignorance and error, which cause omissions and mistakes in belief and behaviour. The Church, therefore, has two constant needs; instruction in the truths by which it must live, and correction of the shortcomings by which its life is marred." (pg. 68-69)

"...it is entirely natural for sinners to think of themselves as wise, not by reason of divine teaching, but through the independent exercise of their own judgment, and to try to justify their fancied wisdom by adjusting what the Bible teaches to what they have already imbibed from other sources ('modern knowledge')." (pg. 70)

"...inspiration is to be defined as a supernatural, providential influence of God's Holy Spirit upon the human authors which caused them to write what He wished to be written for the communication of revealed truth to others." (pg. 77)

"But the Bible teaches rather that the freedom of God, who works in and through His creatures, leading them to act according to their nature, is itself the foundation and guarantee of the freedom of their action." (pg. 81)

"There is no such thing as an exhaustive exegesis of any passage. The Holy Spirit is constantly showing Christian men facets of revealed truth not seen before." (pg. 89)

"Our God-given textbook is a closed book till our God-given Teacher opens it to us." (pg. 112)

"Unscriptural ideas in our theology are like germs in our system. They tend only to weaken and destroy life, and their effect is always damaging, more or less." (pg. 123)

"Liberalism, like all Subjectivism, discounts the perfection and truth of Scripture in order to make room for man to contribute his own ideas to his knowledge of God, just as Mediaevalism discounted the perfection of Christ's merits in order to make room for man to contribute his own merits to his acceptance with God. But Christ's merits do not need to be augmented by human works; and God's revealed truth does not need to be edited, cut, corrected and improved by the cleverness of man. To attempt either task is to insult God (by denying the perfection of His gifts) and to flatter ourselves (by supposing that we can improve on them)." (pg. 173)

J. I. Packer, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958)

The Problem of Pain - by C. S. Lewis

2008-01-15T20:25:00.000-05:00

"All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt." (pg. 11)

"Whatever human freedom means, Divine freedom cannot mean indeterminacy between alternatives and choice of one of them. Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be attained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to achieve it. The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them - that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower." (pg. 26-27)

"Our life is, at every moment, supplied by Him: our tiny, miraculous power of free will only operates on bodies which His continual energy keeps in existence - our very power to think is His power communicated to us." (pg. 33)

"When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one." (pg. 39)

"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love', and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake." [Rev. 4:11] (pg. 40)

"The first answer, then, to the question why our cure should be painful, is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain." (pg. 88-89)

"It is hardly complementary to God that we should choose Him as an alternative to Hell: yet even this He accepts. The creature's illusion of self-sufficiency must, for the creature's sake, be shattered; and by trouble or fear of trouble on earth, by crude fear of the eternal flames, God shatters it 'unmindful of His glory's diminution'." (pg. 96)

"The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination." (pg. 98)

"But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads." (pg. 110-111)

"In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute." (pg. 111)

"To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity." (pg. 127-128)

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2001)

Holy Spirit Power - by Charles Spurgeon

2008-01-15T20:18:00.000-05:00

"Paraclete is the Holy Ghost, and it is the original Greek word, but it has other meanings besides 'Comforter.' Sometimes it means 'monitor' or 'instructor.' Frequently it means 'advocate,' but the most common meaning of the word is 'comforter.'" (pg. 10)

"No man ever learns anything correctly unless he is taught by the Spirit. No man can know Jesus Christ unless he is taught by God." (pg. 11)

"He (Holy Ghost) is the mighty Advocate when He pleads in the soul. He makes us aware of sin, of righteousness, and of the judgment to come." (pg. 13)

"The Holy Ghost does not reveal anything fresh now. He brings old things to our remembrance. [John 14:26]" (pg. 20)

"If you have one blessing, you will have all. God will never divide the Gospel. He will not give justification to one and sanctification to another, or pardon to one and holiness to another." (pg. 24)

"The Spirit comes to Convict before He comforts..." (pg. 25)

"Now, man can guide us to a truth, but it is only the Holy Spirit who can guide us into a truth. [John 16:13]" (pg. 69)

"...the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth by suggesting ideas, directing our thoughts, and illuminating the Scriptures when we read them." (pg. 75)

"...wherever there is a real work of grace in any soul, it begins with a pulling down. The Holy Ghost does not build on the old foundation." (pg. 91)

"We cannot fetch anything from elsewhere and bring it to God, but the praises of God are simply the facts about Himself." (pg. 163)

"That it came from Christ is the best thing about the best thing that ever came from Christ. That He saves me is somehow better than my being saved. It is a blessed thing to go to heaven, but I do not know that it is not a better thing to be in Christ and so, as the result of it, to get into heaven." (pg. 164)

"The Holy Ghost will glorify Christ by making us see that these things from Christ are indeed of Christ, completely from Christ, and still in connection with Christ, and we only enjoy them because we are in connection with Christ." (pg. 165)

Charles Spurgeon, Holy Spirit Power (New Kensington, Pennsylvania: Whitaker House, 1996)

Authority - by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

2008-01-15T19:55:00.000-05:00

"Use your reason, use your intellect; do so honestly, and you will come to the conclusion that there is a limit to reason. And then wait. It is at that point that God in His infinite grace and kindness meets us in revelation." (pg. 13)

"We must never conceive of revelation as existing only in Jesus Christ or beginning with His coming into the world. God had revealed Himself in times past, ..." (pg. 31)

"You cannot separate the Lord Jesus Christ from the background and the context of the Old Testament Scriptures." (pg. 32)

"The whole Bible comes to us and offers itself to us in exactly the same way, and as a whole. There is no hint, no suspicion of a suggestion that parts of it are important and parts are not. All come to us in the same form." (pg. 35)

"Just as a man may have an intellectual conception of, and give an intellectual assent to, the truth about Christ without really receiving Him and becoming a Christian, so he can do exactly the same with the Scriptures." (pg. 38)

"...the only adequate view of the world as it is today is to be found in the biblical view of man, the biblical view of the fall, and of sin. It is only in the light of this teaching that you can understand the whole process of history." (pg. 42)

"...all that we believe about the Scriptures and about the Lord Himself can only be applied in our ministry, and so become relevant to the world and its situation, as we are under the authority and power of the Holy Spirit." (pg. 62)

"We are so concerned about ourselves and our self-importance that we are almost afraid to allow the Holy Spirit to gain control, lest we find ourselves doing something or saying something, or appearing in a guise which does not accord fully with our ideas of what befits the modern educated, sophisticated individual." (pg. 66)

"We seem to have forgotten that God has done most of His deeds in the Church throughout its history through 'remnants'. We seem to have forgotten the great story of Gideon, for instance, and how God insisted on reducing the thirty-two thousand men down to three hundred, before He would make use of them." (pg. 71)

"You can be an advocate of Christianity without being a Christian. ... You may be talking about something which you do not really know, about Someone you have never met. You are an advocate, perhaps even a brilliant advocate. But note what the Lord said to the apostles: 'Ye shall be my witnesses.'" (pg. 82)

"A revival is something that can never be arranged and organized by men. A revival is the result of the direct action of the Holy Ghost in authority and power." (pg. 89)

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authority (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 1984, 1985, 1992, 1997)