โOne reason sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.โ
Billy Sunday
โThe gospel is preached in the ears of all men; it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacherโs learning; otherwise it could consists of the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it โ the Holy Ghost changing the will of man. O Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as preach to humanity unless the Holy Ghost be with the word, to give it power to convert the soul.โ
Charles H. Spurgeon
โMade for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world … That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.โ
N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
โWe now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals…The tragic results of this spirit all all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies…the glorification of men, trust is religious externalities….salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such of these are the symptoms of an evil disease.โย
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
โTo be really Bible-believing Christians we need to practice, simultaneously, at each step of the way, two biblical principles.
One principle is that of the purity of the visible church. Scripture commands that we must do more than just talk about the purity of the visible church; we must actually practice it, even when it is costly.
The second principle is that of an observable love among all true Christians. In the flesh we can stress purity without love, or we can stess love without purity; we cannot stress both simultaneously. To do so we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ and to the Holy Spirit. Without that, a stress on purity becomes hard, proud, and legalistic; likewise without it a stress on love becomes sheer compromise.
Spiritually begins to have real meaning in our lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God. We never do this perfectly, but we must look to the living Christ to help us do it truly.โ
Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster
Godโs providence is not in baskets lowered from the sky, but through the hands and hearts of those who love Him.ย The lad without food and without shoes made the proper answer to the cruel minded woman who asked, โBut if God loved you wouldnโt He send you food and shoes?โย The boy replied, โGod told someone, but he forgot.โ
George A. Buttrick
โI think the greatest weakness in the church today is that almost no one believes that God invests His power in the Bible. Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed itโHis Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.โ
R.C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord
Here I sit in the middle of eternity.ย This wheelchair has helped me sit still.ย Iโve observed with curiosity the way we Christians grasp for the future, as if the present didnโt quite satisfy.ย How we, in spiritual fits and starts, scrape and scratch our way along, often missing the best of life while looking the other way, preoccupied with shaping our future.ย In my least consistent moments I too try to wrest the future out of his hands.ย Or worse, I sink back into the past and rest on long-ago laurelsย But God is most concerned with the choices I make now.ย God, standing silently and invisibly and presently with us in the middle of eternity, is interested in a certain kind of change.ย He brings us choices through which we never-endingly change, fresh and new into his likeness.
Joni Eareckson Tada
โChristian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.โ
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
โAnd above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panellingโฆthe question should never be: โDo I like that kind of service?โ but โAre these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, ormy mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper?โย
C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity
โWe are a culture that relies on technology over community, a society in which spoken and written words are cheap, easy to come by, and excessive. Our culture says anything goes; fear of God is almost unheard of. We are slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry.โ
Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
โThe central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lordโs work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.โ
Francis A. Schaeffer –ย No Little People
โWhen believers have a low view of God, everything focuses on meeting felt needs within the body of Christ. When the church adopts such a perspective, it often offers people nothing more than spiritual placebos. It centers on psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, and a myriad of other diversions to attempt to meet perceived and felt needs.โ
John MacArthur, Alone With God
Recently Iโve been learning that life comes down to this:ย God is in everything.ย Regardless of what difficulties I am experiencing at the moment, or what things arenโt as I would like them to be, I look at the circumstances and say, โLord, what are you trying to teach me?โ
Catherine Marshall

Life is not life without God by our side.
He is the reason why we are alive.
He is everything.
Offer your prayer of thanks, and stay full with Godโs love.
Have a meaningful New Year! ๐
The church is always to be under the Word; she must be; we must keep her there. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. She did not do so in the New Testament times; she has not done so since. Without being constantly reformed by the Word the church becomes something very different. We must always keep the church under the Word.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
โThe terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man’s troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.โ
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
It is easy to follow a personโs footprints if we walk close behind him, but if we walk some distance back, we might fail to see them as clearly.ย Similarly, if we follow close after the Lord, we would easily see the footsteps along the way, but if we try to follow afar off, we would find it difficult to know the path of His will.
Andrew Bonar
“There is nothing which I know of which is more unscriptural, and which is more dangerous to the soul, than to divide doctrine from life… The reason for this is that if your life and your mode of living is not the outcome of your doctrine, it is not Christian living; it is something else.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans – The Gospel Of God
โWhy are there wars in the world? Why is there this constant international tension? What is the matter with the world? Why war and all the unhappiness and turmoil and discord amongst men? According to this Beatitude, there is only one answer to these questions-sin. Nothing else; just sin.โ
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
โToo often, we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated. We are simply disobedient. It might be good if we stop using the terms victory and defeat to describe our progress in holiness. Rather, we should use the terms obedience and disobedience. When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility. I am saying something outside of me has defeated me. But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me. We may in fact be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.
We need to brace ourselves up and to realize that we are responsible for thoughts, attitudes, and actions. We need to reckon on the fact that we died to sin’s reign, that it no longer has any dominion over us, that God has united us with the risen Christ in all His power and has given us the Holy Spirit to work in us. Only as we accept our responsibility and appropriate God’s provisions will we make any progress in our pursuit of holiness.โ
Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
โTime is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time. When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.
It is not enough to just say relationships are important; we must prove it by investing time in them. Words alone are worthless. “My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action.” Relationships take time and effort, and the best way to spell love is “T-I-M-E.โ
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
โIt is amazing how little we know about ourselves. God has to take us through all kinds of failures to reveal the self-focused pride that lies dormant in the corners or our character.
The only way we can be of any use to God is to respond with discernment to our disappointments. Discernment leads us to truth- and the truth punctures our pride, all for His purpose of molding us to the image of His Son.โ
June Hunt, Success Through Failure
โGive me all of you!!! I donโt want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I donโt want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.โ
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

โWhere Is Your Sanctuary? Where do you go when youโre hurting? Letโs say itโs been a terrible day at the office. You come home and go โ where? To the refrigerator for comfort food like ice cream? To the phone to vent with your most trusted friend? Do you seek escape in novels or movies or video games or pornography? Where do you look for emotional rescue? The Bible tells us that God is our refuge and strength, our help in times of trouble โ so much so that we will not fear though the mountains fall into the heart of the sea (Ps. 46:1 โ 2). That strikes me as a good place to run. But itโs so easy to forget, so easy for us to run in other directions. Where we go says a lot about who we are. The โhigh groundโ we seek reveals the geography of our values.โ
Kyle Idleman, Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart
The story is told of a church that secured a new preacher, and the word spread around town about how well he preached.ย The church members were abuzz about what an improvement he was over their former preacher, and how much more attention they gave to his sermons.ย When the town cynic asked what made this new preacher so much better than his predecessor, he was told, โThe old preacher told us that weโre all sinners, and that if we didnโt repent, weโd burn in hell forever!โย This cynic then asked, โAnd what does this new one say?โย The answer was, โThat weโre all sinners, and that if we donโt repent, weโll burn in hell forever!โย When the cynic responded that he didnโt see any difference between the two of them, he was told, โThis new preacher says it with tears in his eyes.โ
Tony Campolo
โDon’t believe something just because you want to, and don’t embrace an idea just because you’ve always believed it. Believe what is biblical. Test all your assumptions against the precious words God gave us in the Bible.โ
Francis Chan, Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We’ve Made Up
โAnd so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case off the floor and set it on the floor.
Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said.
I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.
It’s too heavy,” I said.
Yes,” he said, “and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.โ
Corrie ten Boom –ย The Hiding Place
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