Saturday, January 30, 2010

Believing and Tasting

"There is a difference between believing that God is holy and gracious, and having a new sense of heart of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. The difference between believing that God is gracious and tasting that God is gracious is as different as having a rational belief that honey is sweet and having the actual sense of it's sweetness."
- Jonathan Edwards

Source: "A Divine and Supernatural Light." The Works of Jonathan Edwards. 5th. 2. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005. Print.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Wimpy Western Worldviews

"The coddled Western world will sooner or later give way to great affliction. And when it does, whose vision of God will hold? Where are Christians being prepared for great global sorrows? Where is the Christian mind and soul being prepared for the horrors to come? Christians in the West are weakened by wimpy worldviews. And wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. God is weightless in our lives. He is not terrifyingly magnificent. His sovereignty is secondary (at best) to his sensitivity."
- John Piper

Source: Piper, John. Introduction. Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ. Introduction. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008. 13.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Love and Truth

"Love and truth must be maintained in perfect balance. Truth is never to be abandoned in the name of love. But love is not to be deposed in the name of truth… Truth without love has no decency; it’s just brutality. On the other hand, love without truth has no character; it’s just hypocrisy."
- John MacArthur

Source: MacArthur, John. Twelve Ordinary Men. Nelson Books, 2006. pp.106-08.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Prayer

"One of the best ways to discover a Christian's chief anxieties and ambitions is to study the content of his prayers and the intensity with which he prays them. We all pray about what concerns us, and are evidently not concerned about matters we do not include in our prayers. Prayer expresses desire....As the hymn puts it, 'Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.'"
- John Stott

Source: Stott, John R. W. The Message of Ephesians. Inter-Varsity Press, 1979. P. 131

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

God equals Peace

"22. God is fully at peace. Only God is perfect in this. As a result, inner peace is not something we attain by eliminating pressure points or by the cessation of war or conflict. Rather, peace is allowing the perfectly integrated character of God to express himself through us."
- Jerry MacGregor & Marie Prys

Source: MacGregor, Jerry, Marie Prys, and Donna Wallace. 1001 Surprising Things You Should Know About God. Baker Pub Group, 2003. p17. Print.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Religion vs the Gospel

"Religion operates on the principle of 'I obey— therefore I am accepted by God.' The basic operating principle of the gospel is 'I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus Christ— therefore I obey.'"
- Tim Keller

Source: Keller, Timothy. The Prodigal God. New York: Penguin Group Inc, 2008. 114.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A Paradoxical Practice

"Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision."
- Arthur Bennett

Source: Bennett, Arthur. The Valley of Vision. The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975. xxiv.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Fight for Truth

"No idea is more politically incorrect among today's new-style evangelicals than the old fundamentalist notion that truth is worth fighting for - including the propositions of Christian doctrine. That can be true - and is true in cases where human opinions are the only thing at stake. But when God speaks clearly, we have a duty to obey, defend, and proclaim the truth He has given us, and we should do that with an authority that reflects our conviction that God has spoken with clarity and finality."
- John MacArthur

Source: MacArthur, John. The Jesus You Can't Ignore. Thomas Nelson Inc, 2009. Introduction, xxv.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Limitless

"How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. For Him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years. God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves."
- A. W. Tozer

Source: Tozer, A. W. Gems from Tozer: Selections from the Writings of A. W. Tozer. Camp Hill: Send the Light Trust Christian Publications, 1969. p 11. 

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Liberal Christian Missionaries

"Some liberal Christians have assumed a kind of reverse mission: instead of being the church's missionaries to the world, they have become the world's missionaries to the church."
- Dinesh D'Souza

Source: D'Souza, Dinesh. What's So Great About Christianity. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2008. p. 5. Print.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Be Pressed Closer to Christ

"It doesn't matter, really, how great the pressure is, it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord- then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast."
- Hudson Taylor

Source: Taylor, Howard. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2002. 153. Print.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

A Dwelling Difference

"If it's true that the Spirit of God dwells in us and that our bodies are the Holy Spirit's temple, then shouldn't there be a huge difference between the person who has the Spirit of God living inside of him or her and the person who does not?"
-Francis Chan

Source: Chan, Francis. Forgotten God:Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit. David C. Cook, 2009. p. 32

Friday, January 1, 2010

Think About Truth

"One of the central themes of the Bible is the importance of believing the truth about God. Statement after statement in Scripture emphatically declares that our view of God is the most fundamental spiritual issue of all."

- John MacArthur

Source: MacArthur, John. The Jesus You Can't Ignore. Thomas Nelson Inc, 2009. Introduction, xix.