Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Passion of Christ - Perfect In Power

"The passion of Christ is not only infinite and almighty, but it is perfect. The atonement in Jesus Christ's blood is perfect; there isn't anything that can be added to it. It is spotless, impeccable, flawless. It is perfect as God is perfect. The holy suffering there on the cross and the resurrection from the dead cancels our sins and abrogates our sentence."
- A.W. Tozer

 Source: Tozer, A.W. The Radical Cross: Living the Passion of Christ. WingSpread. Camp Hill, PA. 2009. vi, vii

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Courage, I am thy salvation.

"Sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bedside and draw the curtains, and say, 'Courage, I am thy salvation,' than to enjoy health, being lusty and strong and never need to be visited of God."
- Samuel Rutherford

Source: Rutherford, Samuel. The Loveliness of Christ. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2007. Pg 21.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Be "Arrogant"

"'Arrogance' is the condemnation of choice in the political and religious arena for anyone who breaks the rules of Relativism. If you say of anybody's view of God that it is wrong and harmful, you will be accused of arrogance."
- John Piper

Source: Piper, John. Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. B&H Books, 2002. 160. Print.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Christ's Knowledge of Temptation

"A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.—the only complete realist."
- C.S. Lewis

Source: Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 1980. 142. Print.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Passion of Christ - Almighty In Power

"The passion of Christ is not only infinite but almighty. It's possible for good men to 'almost' do something or 'almost' be something. That is the fix people get in because they are people. But Almighty God is never 'almost' anything. God is always exactly what He is. he is the Almighty One. When the God the Almighty Maker died, all the power there is was in that atonement. You can overstate the efficaciousness of the atonement. You never can exaggerate the power of the cross."
- A.W. Tozer

 Source: Tozer, A.W. The Radical Cross: Living the Passion of Christ. WingSpread. Camp Hill, PA. 2009. 6, 7.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Sowing

"It is not an open question at all whether I sow or not today. The only question to be decided is: Shall I sow good seed or bad? Every man is always sowing."
- Charles Spurgeon

Source: Smith, Kay. Reflecting God. Costa Mesa: The Word for Today, 2009. Pg. 58.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Legalism

"Legalism means treating Biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God's favor."
- John Piper

Source: Piper, John. Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. B&H Books, 2002. 153. Print.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Be Known for What You Do (More than for What You Don't)

"Being considered a good teen only requires that we don't do bad stuff like taking drugs, drinking, and partying. But is it enough to be known for the negative things we don't do, or should we also be known for the positive and difficult things that we do?"
- Alex and Brett Harris

Source: Harris, Alex, and Brett Harris. Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2008. Print. 97

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Passion of Christ - Infinite In Power

"His suffering in His own blood for us was infinite. Infinite means without bound and without limit, shoreless, bottomless, topless forever and ever, without any possible measure or limitation. And so the suffering of Jesus and the atonement He made on that cross under that darkening sky was infinite in its power."
- A.W. Tozer
Source: Tozer, A.W. The Radical Cross: Living the Passion of Christ. WingSpread. Camp Hill, PA. 2009. 6.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

His Yoke is Easy

"The will of the Father is the yoke He would have us take, and bear also with Him. It is of this yoke that He says, 'It is easy,' of this burden, 'It is light.' He is not saying, 'The yoke I lay upon you is easy, the burden is light'; what He says is, 'The yoke I carry is easy, the burden on My shoulders is light.' With the garden of Gethsemane before Him, with the hour and the power of darkness waiting for Him, He declares His yoke is easy, His burden light."
- George MacDonald

Source: Lewis, C. S. George MacDonald: An Anthology. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York: 1946. Pg 83.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Taste and See that God is Good

"We must taste the pleasure of knowing God before we will experience the God-honoring pain of remorse for sin."
- John Piper

Source: Piper, John. Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. B&H Books, 2002. 124. Print.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Seduced, Not Persecuted

"Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world."
- C.J. Mahaney

Source: Mahaney, C.J. Wordliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World. Ed. C.J. Mahaney. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008. Print. 22.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Paradox of the Cross

"The paradox of the cross is the consummation of perfect peace and perfect justice became united in one death on a Friday afternoon some two thousand years ago. The death of Christ is timeless and timelessness. The moment Christ died was an actual point in time in the past. He presently offers to live within us and promised to return."
- Ravi Zacharias

 Source: Tozer, A.W. The Radical Cross: Living the Passion of Christ. WingSpread. Camp Hill, PA. 2009. vi, vii

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Self-Denial

"The self is given to us that we may sacrifice it: it is ours, that we, like Christ, may have somewhat to offer—not that we should torment it; but that we should deny it; not that we should cross it, but that we should abandon it utterly: then it can no more be vexed....It is to be no longer the regent of our action. We are no more to think, 'What should I like to do?' but 'What would the Living One have me do?'"
- George MacDonald

Source: Lewis, C. S. George MacDonald: An Anthology. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York: 1946. Pg 81.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Lead them to Repentence through their Pleasure

"What I want to argue is that the most powerful and painful acts of radical obedience, beginning with remorse for sin, must be motivated by an awakened taste for pleasure in God, and that the preaching that kindles this must constantly portray God as supremely and everlastingly satisfying."
- John Piper

Source: Piper, John. Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. B&H Books, 2002. 121. Print.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

A Painful Discovery

"We may not like the fact that we have this lifelong struggle with sin, but the more we realize and accept it, the better equipped we will be to deal with it. The more we discover about the strength of indwelling sin, the less we feel its effects."
- Jerry Bridges

Source: Bridges, Jerry. The Pursuit of Holiness. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2006. Print. 59.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Entry to Heaven

"It is the Lord's kindness that He will take the scum off us in the fire. Who knows how needful winnowing is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven, that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and self-love, and idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may throng in, stooping low, and creeping through that narrow and thorny entry."
- Samuel Rutherford

Source: Rutherford, Samuel. The Loveliness of Christ. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2007. Pg 7.