“None can hope in vain who believe God.” Ethelbert William Bullinger (1837-1913)
Sunday, November 29, 2009
December 12, 2009
The soul is the theatre where moral actions, both good and bad, are performed. 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.' What we will, that we morally do. This doctrine suggests, that the world is really worse than it appears. It appears bad enough; its outward features and procedures are most repulsive to the eye of reflective virtue; but not a tithe of the heart’s dispositions does the body represent. The soul has a word of sentiment that neither tongue nor pen expresses; it is conscious of hosts of volitions that the muscles and limbs never carry into effect. We thank God that the body is too frail, fully to work out the latent wishes of a depraved world. (David Thomas; 1813-1894)
December 11, 2009
“The goodness of God is a spiritual sunbeam to melt the heart into tears. Oh, says the soul has God been so good to me? Has He reprieved me so long from hell, and shall I grieve His Spirit any more? Shall I sin against goodness? Thomas Watson (1620-1686)
December 10, 2009
“He is so kind that he cannot deceive us, so true that he cannot break his promise. Faithful is he who hath promised, who also will do it. He was good in making the promise, and therefore will be upright in performing it.” Matthew Henry (1662-1714)
December 9, 2009
“With the growth in goodness grows the sense of sin. One law fulfilled shows a thousand neglected. Moral advancement, as a natural consequence, destroys the sense of merit, and produces that of sin.” (Moztley)
December 8, 2009
“God is a Being, whose will acknowledges no cause, neither is it for us to prescribe rules to His sovereign pleasure, or call Him to account for what He does. He has neither superior nor equal, and His will is the rule of all things.” Jerome Zanchius (1516-1590)
December 7, 2009
Our devotion to a tradition is wholesome only when we recognize in that tradition, not the authority of the fathers, but the authority of God’s Word. (John Murry; 1898-1975)
December 6, 2009
“Vanity is nothing, but there is a condition worse than nothing. Confidence in the things or persons of this world, but most of all a confidence in ourselves, will bring us at last to that state wherein we would fain be nothing, and cannot.” (John Donne; 1572-1631)
December 5, 2009
Confessions force and bind the conscience of the believer, subjecting him to doctrines of men rather than to the Word of God only. (Herman Hoeksema; 1886)
December 4, 2009
“Blessed is the man whom eternal Truth teacheth, not by obscure figures and transient sounds, but by direct and full communication. The perceptions of our senses are narrow and dull, and our reason on those perceptions frequently misleads us. He whom the eternal Word condescendeth to teach is disengaged at once from the labyrinth of human opinions.” Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
December 3, 2009
“For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee;” here is not only a gathering after a forsaking, but great mercies” to make amends for “a small moment.” He who hath engaged to be our God forever, cannot depart forever.” Timothy Cruso (1656-1697)
December 2, 2009
“It should be well established to all believers that at such a time as God blesses and promotes one of His servants, Satan will react with a hostile vengeance and seek to destroy the progress.” (Anonymous)
December 1, 2009
“Nothing perhaps more strongly indicates the tone of a believer’s spirituality, than the light in which the Scriptures are regarded by him.” Octavius Winslow (1808-1878)
November 30, 2009
“Now, soul, thou art molested with many lusts that infest thee, and obstruct thy commerce with heaven; yea, thou hast complained to thy God, what loss thou hast suffered by them; is it now presumption to expect relief from him, that he will rescue thee from them; that thou mayest serve him without fear, who is thy liege Lord? You have the saints for your precedents; who, when they have been in combat with their corruptions, yea, been foiled by them, have even then exercised their faith on God, and expected the ruin of those enemies, which, for the present, have overrun them.” (William Gurnall; 1617-1679)
November 28, 2009
“He has prevented us with his goodness, when he saw nothing in us but impatience and unbelief, when we were like Jonas in the belly of hell, his bowels yearned over us, and his power brought us safe to land. What did we to hasten his deliverance, or to obtain his mercy? If he had never come to our relief till he saw something in us to invite him, we had not yet been relived. No more did we contribute to our restoration than we do to the rising of the sun, or the approach of day.” Timothy Rogers
November 27, 2009
“All experience teaches that, the holier men become, the more convinced they are of their own sinfulness.” (Alfred Plummer; 1841-1926)
November 26. 2009
“And so it ever proceeds, between the beginning and the end; there is the constant need to know how to obey, and to suffer, and to use for salvation what God has given.” Rudolf Stier (1800-1862)
Sunday, November 8, 2009
November 25, 2009
When the specific purpose of God is to divorce one from self, God usually leaves one by oneself. (Anonymous)
November 24, 2009
“The Lord alone has authority to impute righteousness, as it is entirely an act of grace to the penitent transgressor.” ( James G. Murphy; 1808-1896)
November 23, 2009
“Make him your counsellor and friend; you cannot please him better than when your hearts rely wholly upon him.” (John Berridge; 1716-1793)
November 22, 2009
The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own. (Milton; 1608-1674)
November 21, 2009
Believer, stay your soul on the rock of the promises. They are as immovable as He who speaks them. At the set moment you shall march in triumph to your Canaan. (Henry Law; 1797-1844)
November 19, 2009
“The fruit of the Lord’s putting his own in straits, is to make them and all men see, that he hath ways of deliverance, more than they know of; and that he will save his own when men count their case desperate: for, salvation belongeth to the Lord.” David Dickson (1583-1662)
November 18, 2009
What is essential is a daily emptying of self, a crucifying, and a killing of the flesh, which results in the denial of our own ambitions and being completely submissive to the God of heaven and earth. This, to say the least, is a substantial undertaking. (Unknown)
November 17, 2009
“Not that repentance is a cause of remission, but a sign of our hearty reception thereof.”
(John Buyan 1628-1688)
November 16, 2009
“It is the voice of the eternal God we hear in Scripture and his glory is revealed. When the day will dawn and the day star arise in our hearts, we shall find no discrepancy between the witness of Holy Scripture and the glory then manifested.” John Murray (1898-1975)
Sunday, November 1, 2009
November 15, 2009
“To enter the place of a doer before you have occupied that of a listener, is to reverse God’s order, and throw everything into confusion.” Unknown (1859)
November 14, 2009
The great act of sovereignty was God’s decree for making the world; and of doing, or permitting to be done, whatever should be in it, to the folding of it up. The heavens and the earth, and all the hosts of them, as yet had no being; it was at his pleasure whether he would make them or not; and if he would, what being he would give them, to what end, and how that end should be accomplished. And that these were all ascertained by the decree is evident; for “known unto God were all his works,” which he would do in time, 'from the beginning of the world.'"
(Elisha Coles; 1608-1688)
November 13, 2009
“And so with God. To be “Almighty,” He must be able to carry out His own will and purpose to the uttermost.” (Andrew Jukes; 1815-1901)
November 12, 2009
“Is not the reason of our finding so little to praise, to be sought in our having no eyes for his daily miracles?” (Augustus F. Tholuck; 1856)
November 11, 2009
“The believing soul is convinced of its own weakness and helplessness, and inability to resist its enemies, its insufficiency to keep itself, and so commits itself to Christ, that He would be its keeper.” Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
November 10, 2009
“Few can bear great and sudden mercies without pride and wantonness, till they are hampered and humbled to carry it moderately.” Samuel Lee (1677)
November 9, 2009
“Sincere personal conviction, with a life corresponding, is needed to make the faith in the objective sense of any virtue.” Alexander Balmain Bruce (1831-1899)
November 8, 2009
“We want men who have neither the vanity to suppose that they have fully sounded the depths of theological truth, nor the arrogance of pronounce those heretic who neither adopt their notions nor use their nomenclature; but who, on the contrary, have grace to believe in their own fallibility, and, like John, in a teaching higher than their own.” David Thomas (1813-1894)
November 7, 2009
“A rich man, who is able to despise in himself whatever there is in him by which pride can be puffed up, is God’s poor man…Such men “confess their poverty with as great humility of spirit, and pray for grace with as great earnestness, as beggars ask alms of the rich.”
(Augustine; 354–430)
November 6, 2009
“No sooner are the eyes of a sinner’s understanding opened than he begins to see the exceeding sinfulness of sin in his heart and life. He sees his innumerable provocations, and discerns that malignity in sin which he never saw before.” (John Colquhoun 1748-1827)
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