Links & Quotes

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“You may claim to love Jesus but your life proves you are still walking in darkness—confused, befuddled and foggy! When you are truly in love with Jesus, conversing with Him, He turns up the light. There is no darkness at all in His presence. The worst possible darkness to mankind is not in the hearts of God-hating Communist leaders or Christ-hating atheists. It is, rather, the horrible darkness that blinds so-called Christians who refuse to walk in the light.” —David Wilkerson

“It is not your business to succeed (no one can be sure of that) but to do right: when you have done so, the rest lies with God.” ―C.S. Lewis

“O how quickly we are given to defending God, or sometimes the truth, from words that are only for the wind. If we had discernment, we could tell the difference between the words with roots and the words blowing in the wind. There are words with roots in deep error and deep evil. But not all grey words get their color from a black heart. Some are colored mainly by the pain, the despair. What you hear is not the deepest thing within. There is something real within where they come from. But it is temporary—like a passing infection—real, painful, but not the true person. Let us learn to discern whether the words spoken against us or against God or against the truth are merely for the wind—spoken not from the soul, but from the sore. If they are for the wind, let us wait in silence and not reprove. Restoring the soul, not reproving the sore, is the aim of our love.” —John Piper

“What must you do so that you may know that your sins are taken away by the blood of Christ, and that, when He comes, He will shield you from the wrath of God and bring me into eternal life? The answer is this: trust Christ in a way that makes you eager for Him to come.” —John Piper

John Stonestreet has a great take on worldviews in Radical Islam, Secularism & Christianity.

“O beloved, what a defense is God to His church! Ah, the devil cannot cross this broad river of God. Between me and you, O fiend of hell, is my God. Do remember this, Christian; between you and your arch-enemy is your God; satan has to stand on the other side, and how he wishes he could dry up that stream, but God is omnipotent.” —Charles Spurgeon

 

Links & Quotes

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“O I would beloved, that the Holy Spirit would make you feel the promise as being spoken to you; out of this vast assembly forget the rest and only think of yourself, for the promises are unto you, meant for you. O grasp them. It is ill to get into a way of reading Scripture for the whole church, read it for yourselves, and specially hear the Master say to you, ‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.’” —Charles Spurgeon

“Freedom from greed comes from faith in God’s future grace.” —John Piper

John Piper has a great reminder in his post What God Can Do In Five Seconds.

Seth Godin suggests another story for “failure” in his post Failure Imagined (24 Variations).

History buffs will love this―The Real Story Of George Washington’s Christmas Attack At Trenton.

“My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart, and to heal the broken one” —John Newton

[VIDEO] John Maxwell and Nick Vujicic on the uniqueness that is you―

Links & Quotes

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“God has done astonishing and costly things to draw us near. He has sent His Son to suffer and to die so that through Him we might draw near. It’s all so that we might draw near. And all of this is for our joy and for His glory.” —John Piper

“The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.” —C.S. Lewis

Detroit Tiger fans know that Alan Trammell should be in the MLB Hall of Fame.

Chilly Chilton has a deathwish, and you should read about it.

“Your business is to go and ‘tell to sinners round what a dear Savior you have found’, for that is God’s way of using you to complete the unity of His Church.” —Charles Spurgeon

“The most important thing a church can have going for it is strong, biblical preaching.  It can do with or without an app, a Facebook page, a glitzy web site, streaming sermons, online giving, a fancy building, free wi-fi, or a clearly defined brand.  But it cannot fulfill God’s purpose without power in the pulpit.” —Mark Atteberry

“Nothing fosters courage like a clear grasp of grace. And nothing fosters fear like an ignorance of mercy.” —Max Lucado

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[VIDEO] I loved watching Stuart Scott on ESPN SportsCenter. This video is a great tribute to his life.

“When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.” —Stuart Scott

“Hang this text up in your house; read it every day; take it before God in prayer every time you bend the knee, and you shall find it to be like the widow’s cruse, which failed not, and like her handful of meal, which wasted not: it shall be unto you till the last of December what now it is when we begin to feed upon it in January.” —Charles Spurgeon, commenting on Hebrews 2:18

“This verse is full of encouragement for imperfect sinners like us, and full of motivation for holiness. It means that you can have assurance that you stand perfected and completed in the eyes of your heavenly Father not because you are perfect now, but precisely because you are not perfect now but are ‘being sanctified,’ ‘being made holy’—that, by faith in God’s promises, you are moving away from your lingering imperfection toward more and more holiness.” —John Piper, commenting on Hebrews 10:14

Seth Godin has a great way to help anyone gain a huge advantage over his/her peers in his post Doing Calculus With Roman Numerals.

Links & Quotes

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Sheriff David Clarke has a great take on what is behind so many of the protests against the police. Be sure to watch the video of his CNN interview too.

“The fullest obedience and the smallest faith obtain the same thing from God: mercy. A mere mustard seed of faith taps into the mercy of tree-moving power. And flawless obedience leaves us utterly dependent on mercy. The point is this: Whatever the timing or form of God’s mercy, we never rise above the status of beneficiaries of mercy. We are always utterly dependent on the undeserved. Therefore let us humble ourselves and rejoice and ‘glorify God for His mercy!’” —John Piper

“Isn’t it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?” —Sean Covey. Read more of the post The Year Of Speaking Kindly.

Are you single? Check out Being The Third Wheel Is Underrated.

Are you ready to be disgusted? Last year Planned Parenthood not only ended 327,653 lives through abortion, but they also were given $528 million of your tax dollars!

What Is Your Aim?

John PiperThis is a devotional from John Piper which I found so intriguing that I wanted to share the entire thing with you.

What Is Your Aim?

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. (Hebrews 10:24)

When you get up in the morning and you face a day, what do you say to yourself about your hopes for the day? When you look from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, what do you want to happen because you have lived?

If you say, “I don’t even think like that, I just get up and do what I’ve got to do,” then you are cutting yourself off from a basic means of grace and a source of guidance and strength and fruitfulness and joy. It is crystal clear in the Bible, including this text, that God means for us to aim consciously at something significant in our days.

God’s revealed will for you is that when you get up in the morning, you don’t drift aimlessly through the day letting mere circumstances alone dictate what you do, but that you aim at something—that you focus on a certain kind of purpose. I’m talking about children here, and teenagers, and adults—single, married, widowed, moms, and every trade.

Aimlessness is akin to lifelessness. Dead leaves in the back yard may move around more than anything else—more than the dog, more than the children. The wind blows this way, they go this way. The wind blows that way, they go that way. They tumble, they bounce, they skip, they press against a fence, but they have no aim whatsoever. They are full of motion and empty of life.

God did not create humans in his image to be aimless, like lifeless leaves blown around in the backyard of life. He created us to be purposeful—to have a focus and an aim for all our days. What is yours today?

By the way, you can sign up for lots of helpful devotionals through BibleGateway.

Links & Quotes

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I love studying my Bible, and I have loved discovering the great work at The Overview Bible Project! They have a new free email course that will send you a weekly email with a summary of every book of the Bible. Please sign up for this course by clicking here.

“If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.” —C.S. Lewis

“God’s grace was God’s acting in Paul to make Paul work hard. So when Paul says, ‘Work out your salvation,’ he adds, ‘it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure’ (Philippines 2:13). Grace is power from God to do good things in us and for us.” —John Piper

“Society will be better off if the facts about pornography use and its consequences are widely and effectively circulated so that people from all walks of life can take account of them.” Read more in this post: Is Porn To Blame For The Declining Marriage Rate?

“‘Used to be,’ is not necessarily a mark of failure or even obsolescence. It’s more often a sign of bravery and progress. If you were brave enough to leap, who would you choose to ‘used to be’?” —Seth Godin

Book Reviews From 2014

BookshelfHere are the books I read and reviewed in 2014. Click a title to read the review…

12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid

A Call To Prayer

Beyond IQ

Bible Reading

C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War

Create

David Wilkerson

Did Jesus Rise From The Dead?

Discipleship In Crisis

Finding God In Hidden Places

Finding The Love Of Your Life

From This Day Forward

God’s Pursuit Of Man

High Adventure In Tibet

Holy Fire

How Do You Kill 11 Million People?

How High Will You Climb?

Humility

I Like Giving

Impertinent Poems

In His Steps

Inspire To Be Great

Jesus Daily

Keeping The Ten Commandments

Lincoln’s Battle With God

Mansfield’s Book Of Manly Men

Miracles

Pentecost

Pilgrim’s Progress

Pleasure & Profit In Bible Study

Sidelined

Smith Wigglesworth On Prayer, Power & Miracles

Stand Strong

Tactics

Taste And See

The Cell’s Design

The Christian’s Secret Of A Happy Life

The Facts On World Religions

The Furious Longing Of God

The Global War On Christians

The Greatest Words Ever Spoken

The Illustrated Guide To The Authors Of The Bible

The Love Of God

The Ministry Of God’s Word

The Moral Foundations Of Life

The Quick-Start Guide To The Whole Bible

The Solomon Seduction

There Is A God

This Day In Christian History

Transforming Grace

Winning With Principle

Yawning At Tigers

Here are my book reviews for 2011.

Here are my book reviews for 2012.

Here are my book reviews for 2013.

Links & Quotes

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“Where there is no true presence of Christ, the people seek only thrills.” —David Wilkerson

“Do not tell me you preach sound doctrine; you preach rotten doctrine, if you do not preach Christ—preach nothing up but Christ, and nothing down but sin.” —Charles Spurgeon

“So satan is real. satan brings misery. But satan is not ultimate or decisive. He is on a leash. He goes no farther than God decisively permits.” —John Piper

Physicians affirm abortion is never necessary to save the mother’s life.

…but abortion does open the door to some disgusting rulings from this judge.

Want some better sleep? Put down your iPad.

Links & Quotes

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“When we meet with our kinsfolk and acquaintances, let it be our prayer to God that our communion may be not only pleasant, but profitable; that we may not merely pass away time and spend a pleasant hour, but may advance a day’s march nearer heaven, and acquire greater fitness for our eternal rest.” —Charles Spurgeon

“When Scripture says that Christ died ‘for’ us, I think the word is usually υπερ (on behalf of), not αντι (instead of). I think the ideas of sacrifice, ransom, championship (over death), substitution et cetera are all images to suggest the reality (not otherwise comprehensible to us) of the atonement. To fix on any one of them as if it contained and limited the truth like a scientific definition would in my opinion be a mistake.” —C.S. Lewis

“Christ will really help us in our fight. He really will help you. He is on your side. He didn’t come to destroy sin because sin is fun. He came to destroy sin because it is fatal. It is a deceptive work of the devil and will destroy us if we don’t fight it. He came to help us, not hurt us.” —John Piper

A really cool timeline of the events surrounding Christ’s birth.

“You will not experience the real presence of Jesus until you have within you a growing hatred for sin—a piercing conviction for your failures and a deepening sense of your exceeding sinfulness. Those without Christ’s presence become less and less convicted by sin. The further they withdraw from His presence, the bolder, more arrogant and more comfortable in compromise they grow.” —David Wilkerson

Have you seen Unbroken or read the book? This post—Unbroken Uncut—is very interesting.

This is a disgusting twist of Scripture that perverts God’s Word to make it sound like those who are pro-abortion are the evildoers.

“You will never forgive anyone more than God has already forgiven you.” —Max Lucado

[VIDEO] A sweet video of a 10-year-old boy who finds out he is going to be a big brother—