If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence…? You’d be bored to tears in heaven, if you’re not ecstatic about God now!
– Keith Green –
Christianity may mean nothing more than a religious system. The Christian life may mean nothing more than an earnest and honest attempt to follow and imitate Christ. The Christ life is more than these and expresses our actual union with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is actually in us as the life and source of all our experience and work. This conception of the highest Christian life is at once simpler and more sublime than any other. We do not teach that the purpose of Christ’s redemption is to restore us to Adamic perfection, for if we had it we should lose it tomorrow. Rather, it is to unite us with the second Adam, and to lift us up to a higher plane than our first parents ever knew. This is the only thing that can reconcile the warring elements of diverse schools of teaching with respect to Christian life. The Spirit of God will lead us to have no controversy respecting mere theories. Rather, we are simply to hold to the person and life of Jesus Christ Himself and the privilege of being united to Him through living in constant dependence upon His keeping power and grace.
– AB Simpson –
Consecration is our part, sanctification is God’s part; and we have deliberately to determine to be interested in that only in which God is interested. The way to solve perplexing problems is to ask—”Is this the kind of thing which Jesus Christ is interested in, or the kind of thing the spirit that is [opposite] of Jesus is interested in?”
– Oswald Chambers –
“To show forth thy loving kindness in the morning.” Psalms 92:2
We are full of vigor then. We will be tired before night comes round. Perhaps in the heat of the day we will be exhausted. Let us take care, while we are fresh, to give the cream of the morning to God.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from Spurgeon on Praise
The most uncontrollable and unchanging thing on earth is the base element in human nature. Though advancement may be made in science, medicine, and standards of living, still the sinfulness of man remains the same through the centuries. The list of sins in Noah’s day, in Jesus’ day, and today are identical. However, there is a universal remedy for the problem. All can be saved to the uttermost, including those from the uttermost (the down-and-out) to the uppermost (the up-and-out)…Christ is the answer, and the only answer, to the problems of guilt and sin. He is the Door and the only Door that provides entrance to eternal life. He is the Key, and the only Key that unlocks an imprisoned world. He is the Mediator, and the only Mediator who can reconcile sinners unto God. He is the Intercessor, and the only Intercessor who can get a verdict of acquittal for the vilest transgressor.
– Mendell Taylor –
What is our knowledge and faith, but to know and believe that heaven consists in the glory and love of God there manifested, and that it was purchased by his covenant?
– Richard Baxter –
from Dying Thoughts, 1683
Let us fear to leave Him. Let us be always with Him. Let us live and die in His presence.
– Brother Lawrence –
from The Practice of the Presence of God
The effect of scripture: it converts people, and even although it is completely contrary to their thinking and desires, it wins them to itself.
– William Perkins –
from The Art of Prophesying, 1592
He did not only die, but died such a death, as indeed cannot be expressed. He was content to be counted the sinner: yea, to be counted the sin of the sinner, nor could this but be odious to so holy a Lamb as he was, yet willing to be this and thus for that love that he bare to men.
– John Bunyan –
from All Loves Excelling, 1692