The work of the Holy Spirit in the church is done in the context of persecution. The Spirit is not a guide and a helper for those on the straight way perfectly able to manage on their own. He comes to assist people caught up in the thick of battle and tried beyond their strength. Jesus makes it quite plain that the way before his followers is a hard and difficult way.
– Leon Morris –
Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.
– Heraclitus –
As for myself, I can truly say that Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the sum of all knowledge to me. He is the highest intellectualism! He is the grandest philosophy to which my mind can attain! He is the pinnacle that rises loftier than my highest aspirations and deeper than this great Truth of God I wish never to fathom! Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the sum total of all I want to know and of all the Doctrines which I profess and preach!
– Charles Spurgeon –
from his sermon: Christ Crucified
Keep within the limits of Christ, and Him crucified, and you have brought before men all the essentials for this life and for the life to come! You have given them the root out of which may grow both branch and flower and fruit of holy thought, word and deed.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from his sermon: The Man of One Subject
Learn to say, “No,” and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.
– Charles Spurgeon –
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 –
Remember that it is not hasty reading—but serious meditation on holy and heavenly truths, which makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the mere touching of the flower by the bee which gathers honey—but her abiding for a time on the flower which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most, but he who meditates most—who will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian.
– Thomas Brooks –
Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin! The time of waiting is past! The hour of God has struck! War is declared! In God’s Holy Name let us arise and build! ‘The God of Heaven, He will fight for us’, as we for Him. We will not build on the sand, but on the bedrock of the sayings of Christ, and the gates and minions of hell shall not prevail against us. Should such men as we fear? Before the world, yes, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we will dare to trust our God, we will venture our all for Him, we will live and we will die for Him, and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts. We will a thousand times sooner die trusting only our God, than live trusting in man. And when we come to this position the battle is already won, and the end of the glorious campaign in sight. We will have the real Holiness of God, not the sickly stuff of talk and dainty words and pretty thoughts; we will have a Masculine Holiness, one of daring faith and works for Jesus Christ.
– CT Studd –
Oh I want all I am to die
So all He is can come alive
Until everyone I talk to hears His voice
And everything I touch feels the warmth of His hand
Until everyone I meet
Sees Jesus in me
This is all I wanna be
I wanna be mistaken
For Jesus
Oh I wanna be mistaken
– Warren Barfield –