Don’t be afraid to admit you have issues. Be afraid if you’ve deluded yourself to think you have no issues. God knows your issues—go to him.
Archive for the ‘Quotes’ Category
Issues
A Continual Looking Forward
A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
C.S. Lewis
Poor Sinners’ Faith
To come to Christ as a saint is very easy work. To trust to a doctor to cure you when you believe you are getting better is very easy. But to trust to your physician when you feel as if the sentence of death were in your body, to bear up when the disease is rising in your skin and when the ulcer is gathering its venom, to believe even then in the efficacy of the medicine–that is faith.
And so, when sin gets the master of you, when you feel that the law condemns you–then, even then, especially then–as a sinner, to trust Christ is the most daring feat in all the world. The faith that shook down the walls of Jericho, the faith that raised the dead, the faith that stopped the mouths of lions, was not greater than that of a poor sinner who dares to trust the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ when he is in the jaws of all his sins.
Charles Spurgeon
He Drank Damnation Dry
The whole of the punishment of his people was distilled into one cup; no mortal lip might give it so much as a solitary sip. When he put it to his own lips, it was so bitter, he well nigh spurned it.—“Let this cup pass from me.” But his love for his people was so strong, that he took the cup in both his hands, and
“At one tremendous draught of love
He drank damnation dry,”for all his people. He drank it all, he endured all, he suffered all; so that now for ever there are no flames of hell for them, no racks of torment; they have no eternal woes; Christ hath suffered all they ought to have suffered, and they must, they shall go free.
Charles Spurgeon
Grace-Driven Effort
People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
Good
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
C.S. Lewis
The Gospel in a Sentence
We are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
Tim Keller
Satisfaction
Whoever is not satisfied with Christ alone strives after something beyond absolute perfection.
John Calvin
Most Destructive
The sin that is most destructive in your life right now is the one you are most defensive about.
Tim Keller
Worth Considering
A compassionate open home is part of Christian responsibility, and should be practiced up to the level of capacity.
Francis Schaeffer
The True Spirit of Prayer
The true spirit of prayer is no other than God’s own Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the saints. And as this Spirit comes from God, so doth it naturally tend to God in holy breathings and pantings. It naturally leads to God, to converse with him by prayer.
Jonathan Edwards
A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.
C.S. Lewis
Last Words
If you would make your last words worth the hearing, let your whole life be worth the seeing.
Charles Spurgeon
Death is His Gain
It is impossible that any ill should happen to the man who is beloved of the Lord; the most crushing calamities can only shorten his journey and hasten him to his reward. Ill to him is not ill, but only good in a mysterious form. Losses enrich him, sickness is his medicine, reproach is his honor, death is his gain. No evil in the strict sense of the word can happen to him, for everything is overruled for good. Happy is he who is in such a case. He is secure where others are in peril, he lives where others die.
Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Vol. 2, Part 2, 93
Worth My Having
That only is worth my having which I can have for ever. That only is worth my grasping which death cannot tear out of my hand.
C.H. Spurgeon
Big Difference
Legalism says “I do, therefore I’m loved.” The gospel says “I’m loved, therefore I do.”
Tim Keller