Links & Quotes

link quote

“Hope is not some vague emotion that comes out of nowhere, like a stomachache. Hope is the confidence that the stupendous future promised to us by the Word of the Spirit is going to really come true. Therefore, the way to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with His Word. The way to have the power of the Spirit is to believe the promises of His Word.” —John Piper

“God never fits His Word to suit me; He fits me to suit His Word.” —Oswald Chambers

Good food for thought: Let’s Bring Conversation Back.

Seth Godin has more great insight in More Trouble Than It’s Worth.

An interesting discussion on the state of the United States Armed Forces: The World Is Becoming More Dangerous.

Charles Spurgeon On Grieving The Holy Spirit

C.H. Spurgeon“Grieve the Holy Spirit, and you will lose all Christian joy; the light shall be taken from you, and you shall stumble in darkness; those very means of grace which once were such a delight, shall have no music in your ear. Your soul shall be no longer as a watered garden, but as a howling wilderness. Grieve the Spirit of God, and you will lose all power; if you pray, it will be a very weak prayer—you will not prevail with God. When you read the Scriptures, you shall not be able to lift the latch and force your way into the inner mysteries of truth. When you go up to the house of God, there shall be none of that devout exhilaration, that running without weariness, that walking without fainting. You shall feel yourself like Samson when his hair was lost, weak, captive, and blinded. Let the Holy Spirit depart, and assurance is gone, doubts follow, questionings and suspicions are aroused. Grieve the Spirit of God, and usefulness will cease: the ministry shall yield no fruit….” —Charles Spurgeon

Links & Quotes

link quote

“Puffery in doctrine leads to its dishonor.” —Charles Spurgeon

“In love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.” —Dr. James Stewart

“Don’t bother about the idea that God ‘has known for millions of years exactly what you are about to pray.’ That isn’t what it’s like. God is hearing you now, just as simply as a mother hears a child. The difference His timelessness makes is that this now (which slips away from you even as you say the word now) is for Him infinite. If you must think of His timelessness at all, don’t think of Him having looked forward to this moment for millions of years: think that to Him you are always praying this prayer. But there’s really no need to bring it in. You have gone into the Temple (‘one day in Thy court is better than a thousand’) and found Him, as always, there. That is all you need to bother about.” ―C.S. Lewis

“The itch of self-regard craves the scratch of self-approval. That is, if we are getting our pleasure from feeling self-sufficient, we will not be satisfied without others seeing and applauding our self-sufficiency.” —John Piper

Some godly women on the front lines of the war against the sex industry.

Links & Quotes

link quote

“When the body is about to be led into a sinful action by some fear or craving, we are to take the sword of the Spirit and kill that fear and that craving. In my experience, that means mainly severing the root of sin’s promise by the power of a superior promise. … Having promises at hand that suit the temptation of the hour is one key to successful warfare against sin…. Be constantly adding to your arsenal of promises. But never lose sight of the chosen few that God has blessed in your life. Do both. Be ever-ready with the old. And every morning look for a new one to take with you through the day.” —John Piper

“At the heart of the Hebrew concept of marriage is the notion of covenant—a legally binding agreement with spiritual and emotional ramification (Proverbs 2:17). God serves as a witness to the marriage covenant, blessing its faithfulness but hating its betrayal (Malachi 2:14-16). The Lord’s intimate involvement renders this legal commitment a spiritual union, ‘so they are no longer two, but one’ (Matthew 19:6). The purpose of marriage as articulated in the Bible is to find true companionship (Genesis 2:18; Proverbs 18: 22), produce godly offspring (Malachi 2:15; 1 Corinthians 7:14) and fulfill God’s calling upon an individual’s life (Genesis 1:28). … Marriage binds husband and wife together into an entity greater than either partner as an individual, and it does so in order to assure continuity of the family lineage.” —Archeological Study Bible

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” —Theodore Roosevelt

Eric Metaxas, in his commentary A Murderous Mother, tells how the environmentalists have gotten off track, and how Christians are really the only one who can help us.

“In our esteem, the joys of earth are little better than husks for swine compared with Jesus the Heavenly Manna. I would rather have one mouthful of Christ’s love, and a sip of His fellowship, than a whole world full of carnal delights. What is the chaff to the wheat? What is the sparkling paste to the true diamond? What is a dream to the glorious reality?” —Charles Spurgeon

I really like this post—Is There A Spiritual Side To Sex?

Abortion, Inc. documents the $500 million Planned Parenthood gets in your tax dollars to keep killing innocent children.

Links & Quotes

link quote

“That is the religion of ninety-nine English people out of every hundred who know nothing of divine grace—we are to be as good as we can; we are to go to church or to chapel, and do all that we can, and then Jesus Christ died for us, and we shall be saved. Whereas the gospel is, that He did not do anything at all for people who think they can rely on themselves, but gave Himself for lost and ruined ones. He did not come into the world to save self-righteous people; on their own showing, they do not want to be saved.” —Charles Spurgeon

Twitter stands up to ISIS. About time!

bu-030415-1Interesting research results from The Barna Group in What Millennials Want When They Visit Church.

“The engagement of God’s power never takes the place of the engagement of our will! The power of God in sanctification never makes us passive! The power of God engages itself beneath or behind and within our will, not in place of our will. … God will never appear with power in your will in any other form than a good resolve that you make and keep.” —John Piper

“Jesus is Amen as to His righteousness. That sacred robe shall remain most fair and glorious when nature shall decay. He is Amen in every single title which He bears; your Husband, never seeking a divorce; your Head, the neck never being dislocated; your Friend, sticking closer than a brother; your Shepherd, with you in death’s dark vale; your Help and your Deliverer; your Castle and your High Tower; the Horn of your Strength, your confidence, your joy, your all in all, and Amen in all.” —Charles Spurgeon

Read this in my Archeological Study Bible and thought this rang true for our generation still today: “This generation was not guilty of the gross idolatry of its forefathers. Rather, these Israelites had embraced a kind of dead orthodoxy, in which they tried to get by with the minimum that their faith required.”

Links & Quotes

link quote

“There is a burden of care in getting riches; fear in keeping them; temptation in using them; guilt in abusing them; sorrow in losing them; and a burden of account at last to be given concerning them.” —Matthew Henry

“Don’t imagine I doubt for a moment that what God sends us must be sent in love and will all be for the best if we have grace to use it so. My mind doesn’t waver on this point; my feelings sometimes do. That’s why it does me good to hear what I believe repeated in your voice….” ―C.S. Lewis

“Our comfort comes not from the powerlessness of our enemies, but from our Father’s sovereign rule over their power.” —John Piper

Have you seen all the videos of one of Obamacare’s architects, Jonathan Gruber? Here is the story behind the man, Rich Weinstein, who unearthed all of these clips and exposed the outright lies and hypocrisy. And this video compilation is just a sampling of the lies—

Charles Spurgeon On Humility

C.H. Spurgeon“How careful should we be when we do anything for God, and God is pleased to accept of our doings, that we never congratulate ourselves. The minister of Christ should unrobe himself of every rag of praise. ‘You preached well,’ said a friend to John Bunyan one morning. ‘You are too late,’ said honest John, ‘the devil told me that before I left the pulpit.’ The devil often tells God’s servants a great many things which they should be sorry to hear. Why, you can hardly be useful in a Sunday School but he will say to you ‘How well you have done it!’ You can scarcely resist a temptation, or set a good example, but he will be whispering to you ‘What an excellent person you must be!’ It is, perhaps, one of the hardest struggles of the Christian life to learn this sentence—‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory.’ Now God is so jealous on this point that, while He will forgive His own servants a thousand things, this is an offense for which He is sure to chasten us. Let a believer once say, ‘I am,’ and God will soon make him say ‘I am not.’ Let a Christian begin to boast, ‘I can do all things,’ without adding ‘through Christ which strengtheneth me,’ and before long he will have to groan, ‘I can do nothing,’ and bemoan himself. Many sins of true Christians, I do not doubt, have been the result of their glorifying themselves. Many a man has been permitted by God to stain a noble character and to ruin an admirable reputation, because the character and the reputation had come to be the man’s own, instead of being laid, as all our crowns must be laid, at the feet of Christ.” —Charles Spurgeon

Links & Quotes

link quote

“May we have none of our own-manufactured graces about us. May we have nothing but that which is minted in Heaven, and is therefore made of the pure metal. May we have no grace, pray no prayer, do no works, serve God in nothing except as we depend upon His strength and receive His Spirit.” —Charles Spurgeon

“Above God, there are no higher courts. If God is the One Who acquits you—declares you righteous in His sight—no one can appeal, no one can call for a mistrial, no one can look for other counts against you. God’s sentence is final and total. So hear this, all who will believe on Jesus, and become united to Christ, and show yourself among the elect: God is the One who justifies you. Not a human judge. Not a great prophet. Not an archangel from heaven. But God, the Creator of the world and Owner of all things and Ruler of the universe and every molecule and person in it, God is the One Who justifies you [Romans 8:33].” —John Piper

Here is a very nice article about the En Gedi Youth Center, the organization for which I have the privilege of serving as the director.

“It is very possible that if we were more thoroughly Christians the world would more heartily detest us, and if we would cleave more closely to Christ we might expect to receive more slander, more abuse, less tolerance, and less favor from men.” —Charles Spurgeon

[VIDEO] Amazing time-lapse pictures of solar activity from NASA—

9 More Quotes From “The Blood Of The Cross”

The Blood Of The CrossThere were way too many quotes from The Blood Of The Cross by Horatius Bonar that I wanted to share, so here is the second installment. You can read the first set of quotes by clicking here, and you can read my review of this must-read book by clicking here.

“It is not my looking to the blood in conjunction with my looking to my own act of seeing that brings this peace. It is my simple and direct looking to the blood. It is in looking that I am blessed; not in thinking about my looking. To look to the blood is to be cleansed; to look away from the blood, or too self, or to the world, or to sin, is to arrest the cleansing process and to neutralize the healing power. The more I see of the matchless value of that blood, and understand the substitution of life for life, which that blood proclaims, and to which it is ever pointing, the more will my peace be like a river.”

“The Lamb has been slain, the Lamb of God, as it is written, ‘It pleased the Lord to bruise Him’ (Isaiah 53:10). His blood has been shed, and sprinkled, and accepted; and that shed blood is for the remission of sin, and for reconciling us to God. That blood is intended to set us in the place of the innocent; to bring us nigh to God just as if we had never separated; to be our recommendation to God, so that coming with it as our plea, we may expect to be treated by God as HE is treated Whose blood we thus recognize and rest on.”

“To come with anything else than the blood as our introduction is most certainly to secure or for ourselves rejection; but to come with it alone is to ensure that blessed welcome which the blood has never yet failed to obtain for the vilest sinner that ever went to God with it as his only plea.”

“That blood is valuable enough to answer for yours, and God is willing to accept the exchange. Nay, it was He Who first proposed it; it is He Who is pressing this exchange upon your notice and entreating you to receive it, so that there maybe nothing left for you to pay.”

“It loses none of its efficacy by time or repetition. It is the same in this age as when it was shed at first. It is the same today as when first we applied to it for healing and for cleansing. Nothing can rob it of its potency. It has cleansed millions; it can cleanse millions more; it has washed out stains, in number past calculation, in dye most thoroughly crimson. Yet it is unpolluted. It has taken on no stain. It is still as able to pacify the conscience and to release the soul from guilt.”

“Realizing these things, the saint moves on his joyful course. The blood is ALL to him. It is his peace; it is his medicine; it is his daily comforter. And resting in it he rejoices in hope hope of the glory to be revealed.”

“Thou hast gone near enough to the gates of hell; yet go not in. Turn back. It is not yet too late. Even thou mayest be saved. The gate of light stands as widely open as the gate of darkness. The way of life, the narrow way, is as free to thee as is the way of death. There is still forgiveness. And the glad tidings of it are as glad as ever. No sin of thine has altered that gladness or made the tidings a forbidden joy to thee. We can tell you as truly as ever that ‘these things are written that thou mightest believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing thou mayest have life through His name’ (John 20:31).”

“That nonconductor is unbelief. It interposes between the soul and all heavenly blessing, all divine intercourse. It may seem a thing too slight to effect so great result; yet it does so inevitably. It shuts off the communication with the source of all glad tidings. It isolates man, and forbids the approach of blessing. That conductor is faith. In itself it is nothing, but in its connection everything. It restores in a moment the broken communication; and this, not from any virtue in itself, but simply as the conducting link between the soul and the fountain of all blessing above.”

“In Jesus there is salvation—salvation without a price—salvation for the most totally and thoroughly lost that this fallen earth contains. Go and receive it.”

Links & Quotes

link quote

Have you subscribed to get the overview of each book of the Bible from The Overview Bible Project? You will enjoy it! Here’s the latest overview on the book of Jonah.

“This [Luke 14:13-14] is a radical call for us to look hard at our present lives to see if they are shaped by the hope of the resurrection. Do we make decisions on the basis of gain in this world or gain in the next? Do we take risks for love’s sake that can only be explained as wise if there is a resurrection? May God help us to rededicate ourselves for a lifetime to letting the resurrection have its radical effects.” —John Piper

“No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of His presence.” —C.S. Lewis

hitler-cartoonIn 1933, an Assembly of God publication called on Christians to oppose dictators who deny God.

“The most obvious practitioner of racism in the United States today is Planned Parenthood, an organization founded by the eugenicist Margaret Sanger and recently documented as ready to accept money to eliminate black babies.” —Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here’s the revolting video proof.

Is your representative in Congress one of the 110 sponsors of this vital pro-life bill? In either case, please contact your House Representative to tell them you support this bill.