Holiness

What Holiness Is – John Owen

Holiness is nothing but the implanting, writing, and realizing of the gospel in our souls.

– John Owen –
1616-1683

The Joy of Trials and Struggles – John Flavel

Have we not with joy observed how those very things that sense and reason tell us are opposite to our happiness have been the most blessed instruments to promote it! How has God blessed crosses to mortify corruption, wants to kill our wantonness, disappointments to wean us from the world! O we little think how comfortable those things will be in the review, which are so burdensome to present sense!

– John Flavel –
from The Mystery of Providence, 1678

Lose Your Life and Find God’s Love – Elisabeth Elliot

With what misgivings we turn over our lives to God, imagining somehow that we are about to lose everything that matters. Our hesitancy is like that of a tiny shell on the seashore, afraid to give up the teaspoon of water it holds lest there not be enough in the ocean to fill it again. Lose your life, said Jesus, and you will find it. Give up, and I will give you all. Can the shell imagine the depth and plenitude of the ocean? Can you and I fathom the riches, the fullness, of God’s Love?

– Elisabeth Elliot –
from The Path of Loneliness