Christian Life

Don’t Be Encumbered With Things That Hinder – John Bunyan

It is but a vain thing to talk of going to heaven, if thou let thy heart be encumbered with those things that would hinder. Would you not say that such a man would be in danger of losing, though he run, if he fill his pockets with stones, hang heavy garments on his shoulders, and great lumpish shoes on his feet? So it is here. Thou talkest of going to heaven, and yet fillest thy pockets with stones; that is, fillest thy heart with this world; lettest that hang on thy shoulders with its profits and pleasures. Alas, alas! thou art widely mistaken. If thou intendest to win, thou must strip, thou must lay aside every weight, thou must be temperate in all things. Thou must so run.

– John Bunyan –

What Do You Take Pleasure In? – Keith Green

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 –

Soul Winning & Evangelism – Charles Spurgeon

With all that you can do your desires will not be fulfilled, for soul-winning is a pursuit which grows upon a man; the more he is rewarded with Conversions the more eager he becomes to see greater numbers born unto God. Hence you will soon discover that you need help if many are to be brought in. The net soon becomes too heavy for one pair of hands to drag to shore when it is filled with fishes; and your fellow-helpers must be beckoned to your assistance. Great things are done by the Holy Spirit when a whole church is aroused to sacred energy: then there are hundreds of testimonies instead of one, and these strengthen each other; then advocates for Christ succeed each other and work into each other’s hands, while supplication ascends to heaven with the force of united importunity; thus sinners are encompassed with a cordon of earnest entreaties, and heaven itself is called into the field. It would seem hard in some congregations for a sinner to be saved, for whatever good he may receive from the pulpit its frozen out of him by the arctic atmosphere with which he is surrounded: and on the other hand some churches make it hard for men to remain unconverted, for with holy zeal they persecute the careless into anxiety. It should be our ambition, in the power of the Holy Ghost, to work the entire church into a fine missionary condition, to make it like a Leyden jar charged ‘to the full with divine electricity, so that whatever comes into contact with it shall feel its power. What can one man do alone? What can he not do with an army of enthusiasts around him? Contemplate at the outset the possibility of having a church of soulwinners. Do not succumb to the usual idea that we can only gather a few useful workers, and that the rest of the community must inevitably be a dead weight: it may possibly so happen, but do not set out with that notion or it will be verified. The usual need not be the universal; better things are possible than anything yet attained; set your aim high and spare no effort to reach it. Labor to gather a church alive for Jesus, every member energetic to the full, and the whole in incessant activity for the salvation of men. To this end there must be the best of preaching to feed the host into strength, continual prayer to bring down the power from on high, and the most heroic example on your own part to fire their zeal: then under the divine blessing a common-sense management of the entire force cannot fail to produce the most desirable issues. Who among you can grasp this idea and embody it in actual fact?

– Charles Spurgeon –
from Lectures to My Students

Union with Jesus Christ – AB Simpson

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 & Sanctification – Oswald Chambers

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 –

Cream of the Morning – Charles Spurgeon

“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