"Let your eternal rest be the subject of your frequent serious discourse, especially with those that can speak from their hearts, and are seasoned themselves with a heavenly nature. It is a pity Christians should ever meet together without some talk of their meeting in heaven, or of the way to it, before they part. It is a pity so much time is spent in vain conversation and useless disputes, and not a serious word of heaven among them." — Richard Baxter
In the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30, the servant who did the least talked the most...
"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent." — John Calvin
"Accountability is not using peer pressure to 'scare' someone into behaving, but using community to encourage spiritual change." — David E. Longacre
"Idleness is a madness in which the soul toils to achieve an elusive state of ease. The Lord - Whose yoke is easy, and Whose burden is light - gives real peace and rest!"
"How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man." — Johnny Cash
"Theology is for doxology and devotion - that is, the praise of God and the practice of godliness. It should therefore be presented in a way that brings awareness of the divine presence. Theology is at its healthiest when it is consciously under the eye of God of Whom it speaks, and when it is singing to His glory." — J.I. Packer
"Nature does not make us love more ardently than grace. We certainly ought to love those who we think will be with us for evermore, than those who will be with us in this world only." — Ambrose of Milan
"For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world." — John Winthrop 1588-1649, First Governor of Massachusetts
"Are our souls more skillful in delays than in performances: Are there no excuses when sin calls us, and studied put-off when God invites us?" — Stephen Charnock
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." — Galileo Galilei
"In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart." — Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
The apostles and early Christians got in trouble for proclaiming the Lord Jesus for what He is: the absolutely sovereign King of all. The King has never abdicated! Are we proclaiming the King, or asking people to "accept Jesus" as the chief advisor to their own private little thrones?
"Courage brother, do not stumble,
Though thy path be dark as night:
There is a star to guide the humble,
Trust in God, and do the right.
Let the road be dark and dreary,
And its end far out of sight.
Face it bravely, strong or weary.
Trust in God, and do the right."
— Norman Macleod
"I am ready to meet God face to face tonight and look into those eyes of infinite holiness, for all my sins are covered by the atoning blood." — R.A. Torrey
"When passion sends out for whores, hypocrisy cancels the request but for the fear of the world, not God. The man who allows one sin to command another, and thus to rule his soul, cannot be God's champion." — William Gurnall
"I confess my fearful imagination and today I ask the Lord to make my imagination a channel of His vision and not a breeding place of fear." — Rev. Lloyd Ogilivie
"The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light — although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted." — Augustine
"We have in us a new creature, 2 Corinthians 5:17. This new creature is fed, cherished, nourished, kept alive, by the fruits of holiness. To what end has God given us new hearts, and new natures? Is is that we should kill them? Stifle the creature that is found in us in the womb? That we should give him to the old man to be destroyed?" — Dr. John Owen, 17th century
"Why God Won't Go Away" is the title of a book published in March 2002. Presented there is the idea that religious experiences are rooted in the biology of the brain. It alleges that having religious and mythological beliefs and experiences has been adaptive for humans, and so we have evolved with brains that tend to establish and follow such belief systems. — Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili and Vince Rause (book's authors)
"A fence post may be painted, but is has no roots. A man may be painted with 'Christian values', and yet have no root of Divine grace. A 'moral' person can be rinsed off, but not changed. A life might look good when the heart is bad - when the ocean looks calm, its water is still unfit to drink." — Thomas Watson, paraphrased
June 1, 165 Anno Domini: Justin, an early Christian apologist, is beheaded with his disciples for their faith. "If we are punished for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, we hope to be saved," he said just before his death. Christians soon named him Justin Martyr.
"God has not deserted His Church; He has brought her through even darker hours than those which try our courage now, yet the darkest hour has always come before the dawn. We have today the entrance of paganism into the Church in the name of Christianity. But in the second century a similar battle was fought and won. And another Reformation in God's good time will come." — J. Gresham Machen, 1923
"How do we pray in the Holy Spirit? With this mindset: 'Father, Your Son is Your chosen Servant, You chose Him to be my Mediator, my Savior, my all in all. He is the Anointed One and Deliverer of Your own choosing. You will not refuse Your own choice. If You look at me, there is nothing but unworthiness. But look upon Him Whom You chose, my Head and my Savior!'" — Richard Sibbes (adapted from "A Description of Christ")
"Hence that dread and amazement with which, as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God....Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God." — John Calvin
"If we ever forget that we are a nation under God, then we will become a nation gone under." — President Ronald Reagan, 1984
"The more a true saint loves God with a gracious love, the more he desires to love Him, and the more uneasy is he at his want of love to Him; the more he hates sin, the more he desires to hate it, and laments that he has so much remaining love to it." — Jonathan Edwards
"Drop Thy still dews of quietness
'Til all our stirrings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace."
— John Greenleaf Whittier
"Islam is itself a dominionist religion, and from almost the beginning it has employed violence to implement its objective of world conquest. Based on a fundamentalist reading of its holy text, the Koran, it seeks to impose a worldwide Islamic state based on Koranic law, a state incompatible with Western democracy — and the Christian Gospel." — P. Andrew Sandlin
"If I thought that God were going to grant me all my prayers simply for the asking, without even passing them under His own gracious review, without even bringing to bear upon them His own greater wisdom, I think there would be very few prayers that I would dare to pray." — John Baille, Diary of Private Prayer.
"In this world, Adam and Eve can be expelled from the very Garden in which God placed them. Israel can be thrown out of Canaan, after God placed them there. Judas can 'fall by transgression' after he was made an Apostle. Some can 'depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons.' We are in a war zone, and anyone who imagines there is no danger or jeopardy here has been lulled to sleep by unbelief." — Given O. Blakely
"Discouragement is one of the aliases of impatience." — James A. Smith
"When you are cold, do you stay away from the heater until you feel warm? When your heart is cold to the things of God, do you stay away from prayer, His word, and Christian fellowship?" (expanding on a thought from) — Richard Baxter
"All devices for exerting psychological pressure in order to precipitate 'decisions' must be eschewed, as being in truth presumptuous attempts to intrude into the province of the Holy Ghost. Such pressures may even be harmful, for while they may produce the outward form of 'decision', they cannot bring about regeneration and a change of heart, and when the 'decisions' wear off those who registered them will be found gospel-hardened and antagonistic." — J.I. Packer
"Are your desires after Christ industrious desires, using all the means of accomplishing what you desire? You say you desire Christ, but what will you do to obtain your desires? If you serve him carefully and incessantly in all the ways of duty; if you will strive in prayer, labour to believe, cut off right hands, and pluck out right eyes, in other words - be content to part with the most profitable and pleasant ways of sin that you may enjoy Christ, the desire of your souls; then your desires are right desires." — John Flavel
"Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them." — Robert Jarvik
"Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they 'own' their bodies -- those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!" — C.S. Lewis
"Many paths to God? On the contrary, Jesus Christ is THE way! There is no path to God but Him. satan (intentionally not capitalized) offers many paths that seem right and good, but they all lead to hell. See Proverbs 14:12 & 16:25."
"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character." — Horace Greeley
"Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter the stars shine. Let me find your light in my darkness, your life in my death, your joy in my sorrow, your grace in my sin, your riches in my poverty, your glory in my valley." — Valley of Vision (collection of Puritan prayers)
"One of the best ways to learn how to respond to enemies is to learn, sing, memorize, and preach from the Psalms...Contemporary worship songs don't have enemies in them. But the Psalms are full of enemies, and full of godly instruction on how to relate to them." — Douglas Wilson
"Unless Moses himself descends with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain, telling us that God has re-written the marriage code, we will not yield on redefining marriage and the family." — Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
"Impress the young convert from the very beginning with the conviction that God has called him into His kingdom to struggle with the corruptions of his heart." — William B. Sprague
"Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse." — Henry Van Dyke, 1852--1933
"If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be be better than they are in the world; at least, we should be better enabled to bear them." — John Owen
"...We Reformed types consider the Great Commission something of a spectator sport. We consider intramural arguments among postmillenialists more important than feeding the poor in Africa. We haven't the slightest idea how to get our finely-tuned engine into a car, let alone out on the road. We take our talents, bury them, and call our riskless life 'good stewardship'." — Brendan O'Donnell
"Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?" — Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity; mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" — Charles Dickens' character Jacob Marley, in A Christmas Carol
"...Christmas is said to refer to 'Christ's mass'. That may be the current understanding of things, but the fact is that the word 'mass' is derived from the Latin mittere ('to send'). Thus Christmas probably originally meant 'Christ-sent'...The term 'mission' is related to the same source." — Dr. Henry M. Morris
"A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I've played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year."
— Edgar Guest
Unattributed quotes are the words of the web site editor.
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