Time is short. Eternity is long. It is only reasonable that this short life be lived in the light of eternity.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Holiness
Christians Who Bear Willingly the Cross for God’s Glory – Richard Wurmbrand
In a letter smuggled out secretly, the Underground Church said, ”We dont pray to be better Christians, but that we may be the only kind of Christians God means us to be: Christlike Christians, that is, Christians who bear willingly the cross for Gods glory.”
– Richard Wurmbrand –
from Tortured for Christ
The Greatest Need of My People – Robert Murray M’Cheyne
The greatest need of my people [as their pastor] is my personal holiness.
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne –
Do Not Merely Divert Sin – John Owen
A sin is not mortified when it is only diverted.
– John Owen –
from The Mortification of Sin, 1656
Do I Love God’s Law – George Burder
Do I love God’s law? Do I delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man, not wishing it less strict and holy, but loving it because it is holy? Am I as willing to take Christ for my King to rule over me, as for my Priest to atone for me? Do I hunger and thirst after righteousness? Do I pant and long and pray to be holy? Do I wish to be holy, as I wish to be happy? Do I hate all sin, especially that sin which most easily besets me, and labor daily to mortify it and to deny myself? Do I sigh for complete deliverance from remaining corruption, and rejoice in the hope of it, through a holy Jesus? Do I long for heaven, that there I may be satisfied with his likeness?
– George Burder –
1752-1832
Need Time Alone With God – Austen Phelps
It has been said, that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained, by one who did not take time to be often, and long, alone with God.
– Austen Phelps –
from The Still Hour: Communion with God in Prayer, 1859
Clinging to Christ – John Owen
The first effect of a true love for Christ is our clinging to him. The believer’s soul is knit to Christ’s soul as David’s was to Jonathan’s (1 Samuel 18:1). Love produces a firm clinging to Christ crucified that makes a soul in some sense always present with Christ on the cross.
– John Owen –
from The Holy Spirit, 1674
How You Can Know How Spiritual You Are – Leonard Ravenhill
Not how many meetings you go to.
Not how many gifts you have.
Not how many sermons you preach.
Not how many records you’ve made.
Tell me what time you spend alone with God …
and I’ll tell you how spiritual you are.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
A Profession of Religion Without Practice – JC Ryle
I must honestly declare my conviction that, since the days of the Reformation, there never has been so much profession of religion without practice, so much talking about God without walking with Him, so much hearing God’s words without doing them, as there is in England at this present date. Never were there so many empty tubs and tinkling cymbals! Never was there so much formality and so little reality. The whole tone of men’s minds on what constitutes practical Christianity seems lowered. The old golden standard of the behaviour which becomes a Christian man or woman appears debased and degenerated. You may see scores of religious people (so-called) continually doing things which in days gone by would have been thought utterly inconsistent with vital religion. … The ancient tenderness of conscience about such things seems dying away and becoming extinct, like the dodo; and when you venture to remonstrate with young communicants who indulge in them, they only stare at you as an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, fossilized person, and say, “Where is the harm?” In short, laxity of ideas amoung young men, and “fastness” and levity among young women, are only too common characteristics of the rising generation of Christian professors.
– JC Ryle –
1816-1900 AD