02.07.08
Trust
Hebrews 2:13
I will put my trust in Him.
If you put your trust in banks you could lose all your money. If you put your trust in Christ you will gain everything.
02.05.08
Spirituality and the Holy Spirit’s Work
SPIRITUALITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT’S WORK
If we ask the New Testament authors, “What is the nature of the Spirit’s work?” we receive a plethora of information. It is the Holy Spirit, for example, who is the one who makes God’s love real for us–”God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5). In a sense, it is he who stands at the threshold of the Christian life, for only he can enable us to embrace Christ as Savior and Lord–”no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). Then, it is the Spirit who gives us the boldness to come into the presence of the awesome and almighty Maker of heaven and earth and call him “Dear Father”–”God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). It is the Spirit who enables believers, from various racial, social and religious backgrounds, to find true unity in Christ and together worship God (Eph. 2:18). In fact, without the Spirit, worship and the glorification of Jesus Christ cannot take place (Phil. 3:3). And it is the Spirit who is the true Guarantor of orthodoxy (2 Tim. 1:14).
An excellent summary statement of the range of the Spirit’s work is Galatians 5:25, which speaks so plainly about the Spirit as the Source from which we are to live our lives: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” The Spirit thus undergirds and empowers the entirety of our lives as Christians. To paraphrase John 15:5: apart from the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing of any true eternal value.
–Michael A. G. Haykin, THE GOD WHO DRAWS NEAR: AN INTRODUCTION TO BIBLICAL SPIRITUALITY, Webster, NY: Evangelical Press USA, 2007, xix-xx. ISBN-13 978-0-85234-638-9. www.evangelicalpress.org
[Gleaned from WQOTW@wqotw.org, downloaded 02/05/08]
01.09.08
Golden Rule
Matthew 7:12 | … whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them …
John MacArthur
The golden rule instructs us as to how we are to love other people … How we treat others is not to be determined by how we expect them to treat us or by how we think they should treat us, but by how we want them to treat us. Herein is the heart of the principle, an aspect of the general truth that is not found in similar expressions in other religions and philosophies.
—– [The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Matthew 1-7, Chicago: Moody Press, 1985, p. 446] —–
12.19.07
Concerning Election
John Broadus
From the divine side, we see that the Scriptures teach an eternal election of men to eternal life simply out of God’s good pleasure.
12.11.07
The Power of God Unto Salvation
Where the gospel is fully and powerfully preached, with the Holy [Spirit] sent down from heaven, our churches do not only hold their own, but win converts; but when that which contitutes their strength is gone - we mean when the gospel is concealed, and the life of prayer is slighted - the whole thing becomes a mere form and fiction. For this our heart is sore grieved.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
11.29.07
Spot Secret faults Before They shatter Your World
O.S. Hawkins
Earthquakes don’t just happen. They’re caused by hidden faults deep below the earth’s surface. These faults start small, growing gradually until one day - without warning - the built up stress causes an earthquake that brings down everything in its path.
Moral earthquakes follow the same pattern. What seems like a small unimportant spiritual laspe can be the first step toward a disaster with far-reaching aftershocks that ripple out beyond the immediate circle of those affected to touch the lives of many with broken marriages, broken lives, and broken ministries.
—– [Moral Earthquakes and Secret Faults: Protecting Yourself from Minor Moral Lapses that Lead to Major Disaster, Dallas: Southern Baptist Convention, 1996, book-jacket] —–
A Sinner’s Pardon
Every pardon a sinner hath is written in Christ’s blood..
– Thomas Watson
11.26.07
2007 in retrospect …
Daniel Webster
“If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evagelical volumne does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end.” [1823]
Enough said.
Bruce
11.24.07
Why We Go and Tell
Tom Wells
God is worthy to be known and proclaimed for who He is, and that fact is an important part of the missionary motive and message. … Those who know the most about God are the most reponsible and best equipped to tell of Him.
—– [A Vision For Missions, Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985, p. 9] —–
Mark 5:19-20
[Jesus said to the Gadarene (us)], Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you. And he [the Gadarene] departed and began to proclaim … all that Jesus had done for him; and all marveled.
11.19.07
Reality of Conversion
Jonathan Edwards
I. Man’s happiness consists in his union with his Creator.
II. Reason teaches that man never can be happy in union with and the enjoyment of his Creator with an unholy nature, for holiness of nature is conformity of nature with God.
III. Experience shows that mankind are, as they are born into the world, universally of an unholy nature and, therefore, they can’t be made holy but by a change of nature.
IV. Reason teaches that men’s nature, that they are born with, can’t be changed but by a supernatural work of the Creator upon them.
V. If we consider how great things this change is wrought for, reason teaches that it must be a great change.
VI. The testimony of Scripture is express that there must be such a change.
—– [The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader (1999, Yale Press) - p. 84-85] —–
John 3:3, 7
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. … Do not marvel … You must be born again.