The Weight of Glory - by C. S. Lewis

"Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object." (pg. 29)

"To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son - it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain.  But so it is." (pg. 39)

"We can be left utterly and absolutely outside - repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.  On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.  We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities." (pg. 41ff)

"The main difference between Reason and Conscience is an alarming one.  It is thus: that while the unarguable intuitions on which all depend are liable to be corrupted by passion when we are considering truth and falsehood, they are much more liable, they are almost certain to be corrupted when we are considering good and evil." (pg. 68)

"The attempt to discover by introspective analysis our own spiritual condition is to me a horrible thing which reveals, at best, not the secrets of God's spirit and ours, but their transpositions in intellect, emotion, and imagination, and which at worst may be the quickest road to presumption or despair." (pg. 106ff)

"As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.  The critique of every experience from below, the voluntary ignoring of meaning and concentration on fact, will always have the same plausibility." (pg. 114)

"Of all passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things." (pg. 154)

"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship." (pg. 160)

"There is, in fact, a fatal tendency in all human activities for the means to encroach upon the very ends which they were intended to serve." (pg. 162)

"The Christian is called not to individualism but to membership in the mystical body.  A consideration of the differences between the secular collective and the mystical body is therefore the first step to understanding how Christianity without being individualistic can yet counteract collectivism." (pg. 163)

"Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality." (pg. 167)

"Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live." (pg. 170)

"Neither the individual nor the community as popular thought understands them can inherit eternal life, neither the natural self, nor the collective mass, but a new creature." (pg. 176)

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York, NY:HarperCollins, 2001)

The Power In Praising God - by Charles Spurgeon

"There is no activity under heaven that is more exalting than praising God.  However great may be the work for which we are responsible, we will always do well if we pause to spend time in sacred praise." (pg. 7)

"There is, perhaps, no exercise that, on the whole, strengthens us as much as praising God." (pg. 23)

"If we are always blessing the Lord, we will be saved from complaining; the spirit of discontent will be ejected by the spirit of thankfulness." (pg. 48)

"When your mind finds all its joy in God, then it is clear that God and you, as much as can be, are standing on the same plane and moving in the same direction.  Then you will have the desire of your heart because the desire of your heart is the desire of God's heart. (pg. 74)

"...it does not matter what you think or what you know, unless it leads you to glorify God and to be thankful.  In fact, your knowledge may be a millstone around your neck that will plunge you to eternal misery unless your knowledge is turned to holy practice." (p.g 148)

"No song is so sweet, I think, in the ear of God as the song of a man who blesses Him for grace he has not tasted yet - for what he has not received, but what he is sure will come.  The praise of gratitude for the past is sweet, but that praise is sweeter that adores God for the future in full confidence that all will be well." (pg. 166)

Charles Spurgeon, The Power In Praising God (New Kensington, PA:Whitaker House, 1998)

Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the soul - by Octavius Winslow

"We often think of faith and love, and their kindred graces, as though they were essentially omnipotent; forgetting that though they undoubtedly are divine in their origin, spiritual in their nature, and sanctifying in their effects, they yet are sustained by no self-supporting power, but by constant communications of life and nourishment from Jesus; that, the moment of their being left to their inherent strength, is the moment of their certain declension and decay." (pg. 10)

"Rocked to sleep by a mere formal religion, the believer is beguiled into the delusion that his heart is right, and his soul prosperous in the sight of God.  Even more than this, - a declining believer may have sunk so deeply into a state of formality, as to substitute the outward and the public means of grace for a close and secret walk with God." (pg. 16)

"All soul-declension arises from the admission of things into the mind contrary to the nature of indwelling grace." (pg. 35)

"Love, flowing from the heart of Jesus into the heart of a poor, believing sinner, expelling selfishness, melting coldness, conquering sinfulness, and drawing that heart up in a simple and unreserved surrender, is, of all principles of action, the most powerful and sanctifying." (pg. 44)

"No mind is so powerful as a renewed and sanctified mind." (pg. 68)

"Nothing perhaps more tends to unhinge the soul from God, engender distrust, hard thoughts, and rebellious feelings, than thus to doubt his loving-kindness and faithfulness in the discipline he is pleased to send." (pg. 82)

"If the soul is in a spiritually healthy, growing state, prayer will be vigorous, lively, spiritual, and constant; if, on the contrary, an incipient process of declension is going forward in the soul - if the heart is wandering, and love waxeth cold, and faith is decaying, the spirit and the habit of prayer will immediately betray it. " (pg. 94)

"The sacred Word, inspired though it be, is but a dead letter, unclothed with the life-giving power of the Holy Ghost." (pg. 113)

"The 'Sun of righteousness' might have risen upon the world in all his peerless splendour; but until the mental eye had been opened by the Holy Spirit, not a beam had found its way into the dark chambers of the understanding and the heart." (pg. 128)

"The work of the Spirit is, not to atone, but to reveal the atonement; not to obey, but to make known the obedience; not to pardon and justify, but to bring the convinced, awakened, penitent soul to receive the pardon and embrace the justification already provided in the work of Jesus." (pg. 136)

"We are but imperfect judges of what tends best to our spiritual or temporal benefit.  That which we may deem absolutely essential to both, the Lord in his wisdom and love may see proper to remove; and as frequently, that for the removal of which we had often besought the Lord, he may see fit to retain." (pg. 162)

"There is no more self-recovery after, than there is before, conversion; it is entirely the Lord's work." (pg. 174)

"...no creature ever has or ever can, by any innate, inherent strength or power of his own, help himself; that moment God leaves him to himself, that moment he falls." (pg. 190)

Octavius Winslow, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul (Edinburgh, Scotland: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 2000)

The Gospel Comes with a House Key - by Rosaria Butterfield

"Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God.  It brings glory to God, serves others, and lives out the gospel in word and deed." (pg. 31)

"Failing to discern rightly who we are renders us unable to accurately discern anything we touch, feel, think, or dream.  Failing to discern rightly who we are renders us unable to properly know who God is.  We are truly lost in a darkness of our own making." (pg. 60)

"Because Christian conversation always comes in exchange for the life you once loved, not in addition to it, people have much to lose in coming to Christ - and some people have more to lose than others." (pg. 95)

"Radically ordinary hospitality begins when we remember that God uses us as living epistles and that the openness or inaccessibility of our homes and hearts stands between life and death, victory and defeat, and grace or shame for most people." (pg. 109)

"Grace does not make the hard thing go away; grace illumines the hard thing with eternal meaning and purpose.  Grace gives you company in your affliction, in Christ himself and in the family of God." (pg. 200ff)

"One reason that too many Christians fail to practice ordinary, radical, Christian hospitality is that we have become so duped and distracted by its counterfeit that we don't know what we need." (pg. 216)

"The household that has too much and thinks too highly of material possessions has become seduced by the idols of acquisition and achievement.  If you love acquisition and achievement, you will never practice hospitality." (pg. 216)

Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018)

The Godly Man's Picture - by Thomas Watson

"Grace is called 'the new man' (Col. 3:10), not a new eye, or tongue, but a new man.  He who is godly is good all over; though he is regenerate only in part, yet it is in every part." (pg. 13)

"He will never be a priest to intercede unless your heart is the throne where he sways his scepter.  A true applying of Christ is when we so take him as a husband that we give up ourselves to him as Lord." (pg. 22)

"A humble Christian studies his own infirmities and another's excellences and that makes him put a higher value upon others than himself." (pg. 79)

"There is no idol like self; the proud man bows down to this idol." (pg. 83)

"A godly man cannot live without prayer.  A man cannot live unless he takes his breath, nor can the soul, unless it breathes forth its desires to God." (pg. 88)

"A godly man spiritualizes duty; he is not only for the doing of holy things but for the holy doing of things." (pg. 161)

"For a man to become a fool that he may be wise, to be saved purely by the righteousness of another, to keep all by losing all - this the natural man will by no means put in his creed." (pg. 177)

"A godly man should not only honour God while he lives, but do something that may promote God's glory when he is dead.  If our children are seasoned with gracious principles, they will stand up in our place when we have gone, and will glorify God in their generation." (pg. 187)

"Serious meditation represents everything in its native colour.  It shows an evil in sin and a lustre in grace." (pg. 206)

"Why are people so hasty in abandoning religion if not because they were so hasty in taking it up? (pg. 212)

"Self-love is self-hatred.  The man who cannot get beyond himself will never get to heaven." (pg. 214)

"Unbelief is worse than any other sin, because it brings God into suspicion with the creature.  It robs him of the richest jewel in his crown, which is his truth: 'He that believeth not God hath made him a liar' (1 John 5:10)." (pg. 225ff)

"It may humble the best to consider how much corruption is interlarded with their grace." (pg. 230)

"Rejoicing brings credit to your husband.  Christ loves a cheerful bride, and indeed the very purpose of God's making us sad is to make us rejoice.  We sow in tears, so that we may reap in joy." (pg. 251)

Thomas Watson, The Godly Man's Picture (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1999)

The Improvement of The Mind - by Isaac Watts

"...it appears to be the necessary duty and the interest of every person living to improve his understanding, to inform his judgment, to treasure up useful knowledge, and to acquire the skill of good reasoning, as far as his station, capacity, and circumstances furnish him with proper means for it." (pg. 2)

"...if upon some few superficial acquirements you value, exalt, and swell yourself, as though you were a man of learning already, you are thereby building a most impassable barrier against all improvement; you will lie down and indulge idleness, and rest yourself contented in the midst of deep and shameful ignorance." (pg. 6)

"Bishop Saunderson says, that study without prayer is atheism, and that prayer without study is presumption." (pg. 18)

"The eyes of a man in the jaundice make yellow observations on every living thing; and the soul tinctured with any passion or prejudice, diffuses a false colour over the real appearances of things, and disguises many of the common occurrences of life:  it never beholds things in a true light, nor suffers them to appear as they are." (pg. 35)

"In all our studies and pursuits of knowledge, let us remember that virtue and vice, sin and holiness, and the conformation of our hearts and lives to the duties of true religion and morality, are things of far more consequence than all the furniture of our understandings, and the richest treasures of mere speculative knowledge; and that, because they have a more immediate and effectual influence upon our eternal felicity or eternal sorrow." (pg. 46)

"...but where, to the advantage of learned lectures, living instructions, and well chosen books, diligence and study are superadded, this man has all human aids concurring to raise him to a superior degree of wisdom and knowledge." (pg. 124)

"Attention is a very necessary thing in order to improve our minds.  The evidence of truth doth not always appear immediately, nor strike the soul at first sight.  It is by long attention and inspection that we arrive at evidence, and it is for want of it we judge falsely of many things." (pg. 135)

"The passions call away the thoughts with incessant importunity towards the object that excited them; and if we indulge the frequent rise and roving of passions, we shall thereby procure an unsteady and inattentive habit of mind.  Yet this one exception must be admitted, viz.  If we can be so happy as to engage any passion of the soul on the side of the particular study which we are pursuing, it may have a great influence to fix the attention more strongly to it." (pg. 138)

"The mind that deals only in vulgar and common ideas is ready to imagine the nature and powers of man to come something too near to God his maker, because we do not see or sensibly converse with any beings superior to ourselves." (pg. 144)

"There is no reason whatsoever that can prove or establish any authority so firmly as to give it power to dictate in matters of belief what is contrary to all the dictates of our reasonable nature." (pg. 262)

"Over-hastiness and vehemence in arguing is oftentimes the effect of pride; it blunts the poignancy of the argument, breaks its force, and disappoints the end." (pg. 267)

Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1998)