Links & Quotes

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Some good reading from today…

“The whole lesson of my life has been that no ‘methods of stimulation’ are of any lasting use. They are indeed like drugs—a stronger dose is needed each time and soon no possible dose is effective. We must not bother about thrills at all. Do the present duty—bear the present pain—enjoy the present pleasure—and leave emotions and ‘experiences’ to look after themselves.” —C.S. Lewis

“Hear not those that deny that the invisible God works visible miracles…. Wherefore God that made heaven and earth (both miracles) scorns not as yet to work miracles in heaven and earth, to draw men’s souls that yet desire visibilities, unto the worship of His invisible essence. But where and when He will do this, His unchangeable will only can declare; at whose disposing all time has been, and all to come is. He moves all things in time, but time moves not Him, nor knows future effects otherwise than as present.” —Augustine

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading from this weekend…

“I do not agree with a big way of doing things. What matters is the individual. If we wait till we get numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person.” —Mother Teresa

For anyone struggling with an addiction to pornography, this sounds like a helpful book: 10 Lies Men Believe About Pornography.

According to Cosmopolitan magazine, if you are pro-life political candidate you are automatically disqualified from getting support from any “enlightened” woman.

Obama & ISIS[INFOGRAPHIC] This is scary … do you know how much money ISIS makes every day from selling the oil they have captured?

“It is right to pour out our whole soul before Him that careth for us. But it is good, likewise, to unbosom ourselves to a friend, in whom we can confide.” —John Wesley

“That is always the way with a truly healthy Christian; God’s grace is externally manifested. There is the inner life within, it is active, and by and by when it is in a right state, it saturates everything. You talk with the gracious man, he cannot help talking about Christ; you go into his house, you will soon see that a Christian lives there; you notice his actions and you will soon see he has been with Jesus. He is so full of sap [Psalm 104:16] that the sap must come out. He has so much of the divine life within, that the holy oil and divine balsam must flow from him.” —Charles Spurgeon

“O God, of Thy goodness give me Thyself, for Thou art enough for me, and I may ask nothing that is less and find any full honors to Thee. God give me Thyself!” —Lady Julian

“Yes—at first one is sort of concussed and ‘life has no taste and no direction.’ One soon discovers, however, that grief is not a state but a process—like a walk in a winding valley with a new prospect at every bend.” —C.S. Lewis

A great post from Dave Barringer for married couples: Faking Your Death.

“Christianity is the only world religion whose primary source documents are in a language other than the founder of the religion. In other words, the New Testament texts are not in Aramaic, but in Koine Greek. … This makes a vitally important theological statement which so dramatically contrasts, for example, with Muslims who maintain that the Qur’an is untranslatable and that the Word of Allah can be conveyed truly and fully only in Arabic. For, at the very outset of the Christian message, the translatability of the gospel is enshrined in our primary source documents.” —Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary, The Translatability Of The Gospel

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading from today…

“Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.” —Mother Teresa

“Many people don’t achieve their dream because it’s out of reach, but because they quit.” —John Maxwell

Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.” —C.S. Lewis

Want some free music from U2? They released a new album free on iTunes.

More reasons to be skeptical of so-called “global warming” alarmists.

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading from today…

“One doesn’t realize in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied.” —C.S. Lewis

“The Savior looks at sin through the glass of compassion; we often look upon it through the lens of Pharisaic pride.” —Charles Spurgeon

The longer the answer is delayed and the more effectually you pray, the more important He becomes and the less important the answer becomes.” Read more from David Wilkerson in his post Power In Prayer.

I always enjoy Tim Elmore’s insights into the youth mindset. Check out his post 4 Meta-Beliefs of Generation iY.

I think it is quite comical that so-called serious scientist says that a certain level of CO2 gas is “symbolic,” and how they extrapolate data with no regard to past data nor any mitigating future events. All in all, “climate change” proponents are more philosopher than they are scientist.

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading from today…

“Every deadly calamity is a merciful call from God for the living to repent.” —John Piper

“Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” —C.S. Lewis

“I ask you, dear Christian friends, to come nearer to it [the blood Jesus shed on the Cross] this morning than ever you have been. Think over the great truth of substitution. Portray to yourself the sufferings of the Savior. Dwell in His sight, sit at the foot of Calvary, abide in the presence of His Cross, and never turn away from that great spectacle of mercy and of misery. Come to it; be not afraid. You sinners, who have never trusted Jesus, look here and live! May you come to Him now.” —Charles Spurgeon

“Our most pressing obligation today is to do all in our power to obtain a revival that will result in a reformed, revitalized, purified church. It is of far greater importance that we have better Christians than that we have more of them.” —A.W. Tozer

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Some good reading & watching from today…

“James has in his mind a picture of people who use prayer to try to get from God something they desire more than God [James 4:2-4]. He calls these people—men and women—‘adulteresses.’ Why? Because in his mind God is like our Husband who is jealous to be our highest delight. If we then try to make prayer a means of getting from Him something we want more then we want Him, we are like a wife who asks her husband for money to visit another lover.” —John Piper

“The greatest outward troubles and calamities that we meet with…must needs appear very little things to the misery which we have deserved.” —Jonathan Edwards

“Our Enemy is a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the sea shore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore.’ Ugh! Don’t think He has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific Vision. He’s vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least—sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.” —C.S. Lewis, Screwtape writing to Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters. (In case you didn’t know, The Screwtape Letters are letters from an older demon [Screwtape] to his young apprentice demon [Wormwood]. So the “Enemy” in their correspondence is God.) 

Since I just reviewed Beyond IQ, I have been reading more about the workings of the human brain. This post—How To Rewire Your Brain For Greater Happiness—is interesting. Even though they are quoting scientific findings, everything they have “discovered” was already in the Bible!

Philip Nation has a great list of how God reveals Himself in every book of the Bible.

I love John Piper’s latest project called Look At The Book, which shows Piper teaching the Scripture. Check out this video—

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading and watching from today…

“Too much of our Christian witnessing is unconvincing because we have not been convinced. We are ineffectual because we have not yet capitulated to the Lord from glory.” —A.W. Tozer

“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that ‘his heart’s in the right place’ and ‘he wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.” —C.S. Lewis

“So think this way. Not: I must have faith and love so as to be worth God’s favor; but rather: God’s favor is free and it is infinitely worth trusting. Walking worthy of that favor means walking by faith because faith is the one thing that agrees with (and fits) our bankruptcy and God’s infinite worth.” —John Piper

“We are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years light behind us are already in death’s hand.” —Seneca

An interesting discovery about a Neanderthal skeleton.

[VIDEO] Ken Davis is hilarious! Check out his take on frog-faced Christians.

C.S. Lewis On Temptation

C.S. LewisAre you battling temptation? Do you feel like you keep giving in to it? This is part of a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to one who confessed to his ongoing battle—and seeming ongoing defeat—with temptation to sin.

“Perhaps, however, the most important thing is to keep on: not to be discouraged however often one yields to the temptation, but always to pick yourself up again and ask forgiveness. In reviewing your sins don’t either exaggerate them or minimize them. Call them by their ordinary names and try to see them as you would see the same faults in somebody else—no special blackening or whitewashing. Remember the condition on which we are promised forgiveness: we shall always be forgiven provided that we forgive all who sin against us. If we do that we have nothing to fear: if we don’t, all else will be in vain. Of course there are other helps which are more commonsense. We must learn by experience to avoid either trains of thought or social situations which for us (not necessarily for everyone) lead to temptations. Like motoring—don’t wait till the last moment before you put on the brakes but put them on, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off. ” —C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis At War (audio drama review)

C.S. Lewis At WarWow, C.S. Lewis At War by Focus On The Family’s Radio Theatre has so much to like! I recently read C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War (you can read my review of this book by clicking here), so this audio drama was the perfect companion to the book.

If you’re anything like me, you might find that when a book is dramatized in a movie or an audio format, you say something like, “That wasn’t how I read that book.” But once again FOTF’s Radio Theatre stays so true to the intent of the story that it’s hard to find any places they departed from the book, the man, or the history of the time. In fact, I’d say the opposite: this dramatization actually brought out some details that the book form couldn’t address as fully.

If you like C.S. Lewis, old-time-radio broadcasts, history, or just a really well-told story, I think you will enjoy C.S. Lewis At War.

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading from today…

William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect show us a successful model for positive social change.

Farshid Fathi is a Christian pastor imprisoned in Iran for his faith. His letter from prison is absolutely amazing!

So some of Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails have been found, and it is clear why she and the IRS wanted them not to be seen. Check out how liberal political agents attack their conservative opponents.

“The solution to life’s problems is spiritual because the essence of life is spiritual. It is astonishing how many difficulties clear up without any effort when the inner life gets straightened out.” —A.W. Tozer

“It’s natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds should show off their plumage—in the mating season. But the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period. I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all: for it is at the showing-off age that birds of both sexes have least sales resistance!” —C.S. Lewis