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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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)