“We can preach the Gospel of Christ no further than we have experienced the power of it in our own hearts.” —George Whitefield
“I cannot blame him [George Washington] for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” —Martha Washington
“All of the examples that we have in the Bible illustrate that glad and devoted and reverent worship is the normal employment of moral beings. Every glimpse that is given us of heaven and of God’s created beings is always a glimpse of worship and rejoicing and praise because God is who He is.” —A.W. Tozer
“It’s tough to say which is worse: denying a victim’s humanity or acknowledging it and hurting them anyway.” Read more of Adam Peters’ post How Planned Parenthood Dehumanizes Its Prey.
“Accept these [euphoric] sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.” —C.S. Lewis
“Discipline motivates—Punishment mortifies.
Discipline is based on trust—Punishment is based on fear.
Discipline is time in—Punishment is time out.
Discipline is practice—Punishment is penalty.” Read more from Ken Davis in his post The Power Of The D Word.
“Before you go anywhere else with your disappointments, go to God. Maybe you don’t want to trouble Him with your hurts. ‘He’s got famines and wars; He won’t care about my little struggles,’ you think. Why don’t you let Him decide that? He cared enough about a wedding to provide the wine. He cared enough about Peter’s tax payment to give him a coin. He cared enough about the woman at the well to give her answers. He cares about you! Your first step is to go to the right person. Go to God.” —Max Lucado
“Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be vain if, as secondary aids to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known. Augustine therefore justly warns that godliness and peace of mind ought to come first if a man is to understand anything of such great matters.” —John Calvin
Our culture has a sexualized agenda. Just look at how Hollywood portrays us today:
Few happy marriages.
Lots of sex-crazed, inept husbands with strong wives who use or withhold sex as a reward or punishment.
Flawlessly beautiful actors (not a zit to be seen).
No consequences for sex—no pregnancy, STDs or AIDS.
No depression for broken relationships; no anxiety or eating disorders because of the psychological pain.
Sex outside of marriage is normal, and those who abstain are the weird ones.
We cannot stand on our soapboxes and rail against culture.
We cannot just tell them what we’re against, but we’ve got to tell them what we’re for.
We’ve got to give them the compelling truth for the beauty, joy, and fulfillment of sex God’s way.
The Gospel—the Good News—is an invitation, not an ultimatum. We’ve got to share with others what’s good about God’s counter culture way concerning sex!
“I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it.” —C.S. Lewis
All Hollywood knows is the “chocolate” of people acting on their immediate feelings, with no understanding of long-term consequences.
Better sex comes from doing things God’s way = one man and one women married for life.
Proverbs 5 presents the advantages of being married and being intimate with just one person. I especially love this passage—
Drink water from your own well—share your love only with your wife.Why spill the water of your springs in the streets, having sex with just anyone?You should reserve it for yourselves. Never share it with strangers. Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.She is a loving deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you always. May you always be captivated by her love.Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman, or fondle the breasts of a promiscuous woman? (verses 15-20)
This is better sex because it’s pure:
No sharing sexually transmitted diseases from previous partners.
No comparison to how you are in bed compared to previous partners.
No psychological fall-out.
Intimacy without reservation.
A release of dopamine (the feel-good hormone) unlike you’ll ever get with “casual” sex.
And most importantly: A relationship God can—and does!—bless.
Hollywood knows nothing about real love and a truly satisfying, fulfilling sex life. But God does! That’s why the Apostle Paul tells us, “Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20), because God created your body and knows how it can get the highest, purest pleasure.
Here are the links to some interesting reading I found today.
“It is right and inevitable that we should be much concerned about the salvation of those we love. But we must be careful not to expect or demand that their salvation should conform to some ready-made pattern of our own.” —C.S. Lewis
“What we practice, not (save at rare intervals) what we preach, is usually our great contribution to the conversion of others.” —C.S. Lewis
“What a bondage it is when the child of God is sold under sin, held in chains by satan, deprived of his liberty, robbed of his power in prayer and his delight in the Lord! Let us watch that we come not into such bondage; but if this has already happened to us, let us by no means despair. But we cannot be held in slavery forever. The Lord Jesus has paid too high a price for our redemption to leave us in the enemy’s hand. The way to freedom is, ‘Return unto the Lord your God.’” —Charles Spurgeon
I recently re-read C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles (you can read my full book review by clicking here). As you may have noticed, after reading and reviewing books on this blog, I also like to share some quotes that caught my attention. Doing this with Lewis is difficult, because in order to get the context of a particular quote, I think I would have to cite almost a full page or more. So over the next few weeks I plan to share some quotes from Miracles that require not as much context, or I will provide a bit of background to set the stage.
Lewis called the Incarnation of Jesus the grandest miracle of all. Here he discusses how God didn’t have to scramble to create an alternative plan because satan tempted Adam and Eve to sin, and thus need a Savior, but that God used satan’s own strong point to defeat him.
“So much for the sense in which human Death the result of sin and the triumph of satan. But it is also the means of redemption from sin, God’s medicine for Man and His weapon against satan. In a general way it is not difficult to understand how the same thing can be a masterstroke on the part of one combatant and also the very means whereby the superior combatant defeats him. Every good general, every good chess player, takes what is precisely the strong point of his opponent’s plan and makes it the pivot of his own plan. Take that castle of mine if you insist. It was not my original intention that you should—indeed, I thought you would have had more sense. But take it by all means. For now I move thus … and thus… and it is mate in three moves. Something like this must be supposed to have happened about Death. … Jesus tasted death on behalf of all others. He is the representative ‘Die-er’ of the universe: and for that very reason the Resurrection and the Life. Or conversely, because He truly lives, He truly dies, for that is the very pattern of reality. Because the higher can descend into the lower He who from all eternity has been incessantly plunging Himself in the blessed death of self-surrender to the Father can also most fully descend into the horrible and (for us) involuntary death of the body.”
Here are the links to some interesting reading I found this weekend.
“The Holy Spirit does not belong to you. Are you charismatic? He is bigger than your signs and wonders event. Are you Reformed? He will not be limited by your theology.” —R.T. Kendall
“The worst thing that can happen to a man is to succeed before he is ready.” —Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“It’s funny that many secularists believe that Christian myths about Jesus evolved over time until they were written down generations later. This is the thesis in Bart Ehrman’s latest book. It’s not accurate. It’s funny because there are things believed by some of the same secularists that actually are myths that evolved over time to create the impression that Christianity is a science stopper and anti-intellectual. One of these myths is about the scientific revolution that was purportedly initiated by Copernicus and the supposed subsequent opposition from the church to his heliocentric theories.” Read more of this eye-opening post: Copernicus And The Scientific Revolution.
“The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden— that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.” —C.S. Lewis
“When sin is pardoned, our greatest sorrow is ended, and our truest pleasure begins. Such is the joy which the Lord bestows upon His reconciled ones, that it overflows and fills all nature with delight. The material world has latent music in it, and a renewed heart knows how to bring it out and make it vocal.” —Charles Spurgeon
“There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say ‘Without their will’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies ‘How if they will not give in?’ … The doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.” —C.S. Lewis
A good reminder for pastors … “Let your preaching and teaching be motivated by love—for God and for those you instruct; and let your preaching and teaching equip others to love. The goal of preaching and teaching is not merely information transfer—learning more, or gaining more head knowledge about this or that passage or doctrine. The goal is love.” —T.M. Moore
“According to the Bible, we have because we ask, or we have not because we ask not. It does not take much wisdom to discover our next move. Is it not to pray, and pray again and again till the answer comes? God waits to be invited to display His power on behalf of His people. The world situation is such that nothing less than God can straighten it out. Let us not fail the world and disappoint God by failing to pray.” —A.W. Tozer
A story about a young man with autism that made me mad, and then made me laugh with joy: Movies With Max.
“Eternal life is worth a life’s battle. To escape the hurt of the second death is a thing worth struggling for throughout a lifetime.” —Charles Spurgeon
“The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven.” —C.S. Lewis
“Are you becoming more sweet-spirited, more like Jesus? Are you looking soberly in the mirror each day and praying, ‘Lord, I want to conform to Your image in every area of my life’? Or has your bitterness taken root, turning into rebellion and hardness of heart? Have you learned to shield yourself from the convicting voice of God’s Spirit?” —David Wilkerson
“Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful by comparison.” —A.W. Tozer
“I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing.” —C.S. Lewis
I recently re-read C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles (you can read my full book review by clicking here). As you may have noticed, after reading and reviewing books on this blog, I also like to share some quotes that caught my attention. Doing this with Lewis is difficult, because in order to get the context of a particular quote, I think I would have to cite almost a full page or more. So over the next few weeks I plan to share some quotes from Miracles that require not as much context, or I will provide a bit of background to set the stage.
Lewis referred to the Incarnation of Jesus (His coming to earth to live as a human being) the “central” or “grand” miracle. But equally as miraculous is that Creator God would fashion us in such a way that we would need Jesus as our Savior. The idea of a creator as a cosmic clockmaker, Who simply wound up His creation and let it run is a very safe, controllable god. But that is not how The Creator chose to create…
“Let Man be the only one among the myriad of rational species, and let him be the only one that has fallen. Because he has fallen, for him God does the great deed; just as in the parable it is the one lost sheep for whom the shepherd hunts. Let Man’s preeminence or solitude be one not of superiority but of misery and evil: then, all the more, Man will be the very species into which Mercy will descend. For this prodigal the fatted calf, or, to speak more suitably, the eternal Lamb, is killed. But once the Son of God, drawn hither not by our merits but by our unworthiness, has put on human nature, then our species (whatever it may have been before) does become in one sense the central fact in all Nature: our species, rising after its long descent, will drag all nature up with it because in our species the Lord of Nature is now included.”
Craig T. Owens 