Quotes (754)

For so hath God contrived and constituted things, in his dispensations towards his own people, that when their love decays, and the exercises of it fail, or become weak, fear should arise; for then they need it to restrain them from sin, and to excite them to care for the good of their souls, and so to stir them up to watchfulness and diligence in religion: but God hath so ordered, that when love rises, and is in vigorous exercise, then fear should vanish, and be driven away ; for then they need it not, having a higher and more excellent principle in exercise, to restrain them from sin, and stir them up to their duty. There are no other principles, which human nature is under the influence of, that will ever make men conscientious, but one of these two: fear or love; and therefore, if one of these should not prevail as the other decays, God’s people, when fallen into dead and carnal frames, when love is asleep, would be lamentably exposed indeed.

And therefore God has wisely ordained, that these two opposite principles of love and fear should rise and fall, like the two opposite scales of a balance; when one rises the other sinks. As light and darkness necessarily and unavoidably succeed each other; if light prevails, so much does darkness cease, and no more; and if light decays, so much does darkness prevail; so it is in the heart of a child of God: if divine love decays and falls asleep, and lust prevails, the light and joy of hope go out, and dark fear and doubting arises; and if, on the contrary, divine love prevails and comes into lively exercise, this brings in the brightness of hope, and drives away black lust, and fear with it.

Jonathan Edwards
1703–1758

Quotes (753)

Gary Gilley The temptation arises for a church to change, or at least hide, who they are so that they appeal to unchurched Harry. Additionally, the church is tempted to alter its message to correspond with what Harry wants to hear and thinks he needs. The end result is a felt-need gospel that appeals to Harry’s fallen nature in an effort to entice him to come to Christ, the ultimate felt-need supplier, so that he is fulfilled and feels better about himself.

– Gary Gilley

Quotes (752)

Let us beware of attempting to add anything to the word of God, as necessary to salvation. It provokes God to give us over to judicial blindness. It is as good as saying that His Bible is not perfect, and that we know better than He does what is necessary for man’s salvation. It is just as easy to destroy the authority of God’s word by addition as by subtraction, by burying it under man’s inventions as by denying its truth. The whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, must be our rule of faith nothing added and nothing taken away.

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

Quotes (750)

“He humbled Himself.” – Philippians 2:8

Jesus is the great teacher of lowliness of heart.  We need daily to learn of Him.  See the Master taking a towel and washing His disciples’ feet!  Follower of Christ, wilt thou not humble thyself?  See Him as the Servant of servants, and surely thou canst not be proud!  Is not this sentence the compendium of His biography, “He humbled Himself”?  Was He not on earth always stripping off first one robe of honor and then another, till, naked He was fastened to the cross, and there did He not empty out His inmost self, pouring out His life-blood, giving up for all of us, till they laid Him penniless in a borrowed grave?  How low was our dear Redeemer brought!  How then can we be proud?  Stand at the foot of the cross, and count the purple drops by which you have been cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark His scourged shoulders, still gushing with encrimsoned rills; see hands and feet given up to the rough iron, and His whole self to mockery and scorn; see the bitterness, and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief, showing themselves in His outward frame; hear the thrilling shriek, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”  And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground before that cross, you have never seen it; if you are not humbled in the presence of Jesus, you do not know Him.  You were so lost that nothing could save you but the sacrifice of God’s only begotten.  Think of that, and as Jesus stooped for you, bow yourself in lowliness at His feet.  A sense of Christ’s amazing love to us has a greater tendency to humble us than even a consciousness of our own guilt.  May the Lord bring us in contemplation to Calvary, then our position will no longer be that of the pompous man of pride, but we shall take the humble place of one who loves much because much has been forgiven him.  Pride cannot live beneath the cross.  Let us sit there and learn our lesson, and then rise and carry it into practice.

– Charles Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

Quotes (749)

Man has become so fallen that he cannot keep the law. Sooner might the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots, than he that is accustomed to do evil learn to do well (Jeremiah 13:23); but what man cannot do, by reason of the perversity of the flesh, God performs within him, working in him to will and to do of his good pleasure. Oh, what amazing grace is this, which while it forgives our want of will, also removes our want of power!

And, dear friends, is it not a wonderful proof of grace that God does this without destroying man in any degree whatever? Man is a creature with a will,—a “free will” as they sometimes call it,—a creature who is responsible for his actions; so God does not come and change our hearts by a physical process, as some seem to dream, but by a spiritual process in which he never mars our nature, but sets our nature right.

If a man becomes a child of God, he still has a will. God does not destroy the delicate machinery of our nature, but he puts it into proper gear. We become Christians with our own full assent and consent; and we keep the law of God not by any compulsion except the sweet compulsion of love. We do not keep it because we cannot do otherwise, but we keep it because we would not do otherwise, because we have come to delight therein, and this seems to me the greatest wonder of divine grace.

See, dear friends, how different is the Lord’s way of working and ours. If you knock down a man who is living an evil life, and put him in chains, you can make him honest by force; or if you set him free, and hem him round with Acts of Parliament, you may make him sober if he cannot get anything to drink, you may make him wonderfully quiet if you put a gag in his mouth; but that is not God’s way of acting.

He who put man in the Garden of Eden, and never put any palisades around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but left man a free agent, does just the same in the operations of his grace. He leaves his people to the influences that are within them, and yet they go right, because they are so changed and renewed by his grace that they delight to do that which once they loathed to do.

I admire the grace of God in acting thus. We should have taken the watch to pieces, and broken half the wheels, and made new ones, or something of the kind. But God knows how to leave the man just as much a man as he was before his conversion, and yet to make him so entirely a new man that old things have passed away, and all things have become new.

And this is very beautiful, too, that when God writes his law in his people’s hearts, He makes this the way of their preservation. When God’s law is written in a man’s heart, that heart becomes divinely royal property, for the King’s name is there, and the heart in which God has written his name can never perish.

– Charles Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

HT: Pyro

Quotes (748)

Gary Gilley While we do not affirm that everything modern is evil or that everything ancient was excellent, there is no doubt that the greater part of the boasted “progress” in Christendom of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a progress downward and not upward—away from God and not toward Him, into the darkness and not the light.

– Gary Gilley

Quotes (747)

A W PinkIf we are daily concerned in seeking to please God in all the details, great and small, of our lives, He will not leave us in ignorance of His will concerning us. But if we are accustomed to gratify self and only turn up to God for help in times of difficulty and emergency, then we must not be surprised if he mocks us and allows us to reap the fruits of our folly.

– A.W. Pink

1886 – 1952

Quotes (746)

Scripture declares clearly, and without a doubt, that there is only one cleansing agent for the sin of believers. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Yet, Rome diverts its people from the Savior’s blood and instead offers a place called purgatory as a dreadfully contrived hoax.

– Mike Gendron

Quotes (745)

We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther and Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel under ground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents. Persecuted alike by Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect, yet there has never existed a Government holding Baptist principles which persecuted others; nor, I believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right to put the consciences of others under the control of man. We have ever been ready to suffer, as our martyrologies will prove, but we are not ready to accept any help from the State, to prostitute the purity of the Bride of Christ to any alliance with Government, and we will never make the Church, although the Queen, the despot over the consciences of men.

– Charles Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

Quotes (744)

It may seem a harsh sentiment; but he who in his soul believes that man does of his own free-will turn to God, cannot have been taught of God, for that is one of the first principles taught us when God begins with us, that we have neither will nor power, but that He gives both; that He is “Alpha and Omega” in the salvation of men.

– C.H. Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

Quotes (743)

“Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” —2 Tim. 1:13

 “Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.”—Titus 1. 9.

But let us not forget that this testimony for the “form of sound words which we have heard of” the apostles must be borne “in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” Unhallowed is that zeal for the truth which is animated merely by rivalry, or the spirit of party, which is not founded in solemn convic­tion, the result of faithful study and earnest prayer, which con­tends for wrath, and not for conscience’s sake. The apostle here teaches us, in two words, what is that spirit of orthodoxy which God requires. It values revealed truth because it has humbly received it with adoring reverence, as the gift and trust of infinite wisdom and love, and because it sees in those doc­trines the instruments of glory to God and endless blessing to blind, erring man; yea, to our enemies and opposers. Let us, then, while we hold fast to the pattern of sound words, ever study to do it in faith and love.

– R.L. Dabney

1820 – 1898

Quotes (742)

We believe that much that is called evangelism today is little more than psychology and salesmanship; we are appalled by the superficial work which goes on under the name of evangelism; we are appalled by the pressures, gimmicks, and schemes all calculated to produce “decisions” and impressive statistics but which work havoc in the souls of men. No! Because we believe in evangelism does not mean that we are going to cooperate with every scheme which bears that name. We believe that in evangelism as in everything else . . . we must be governed by the Word of God. The message of evangelism must be according to the Scriptures, and the method of evangelism must be governed by the Word of God!

– William Payne

1938 – 1997

Quotes (740)

A false faith can only float in smooth water, but true faith, like a life-boat, is at home in storms. If our religion does not bear us up in time of trial, what is the use of it? If we cannot believe God when our circumstances appear to be against us, we do not believe Him at all. We trust a thief as far as we can see him, shall we dare to treat our God in that fashion?

– Charles Spurgeon

1834 – 1892

Quotes (739)

Let me ask you, where in Scripture do you find the teaching that we are to treat false teachers with charity and the apostles of apostasy with Christian love? That is exactly the opposite of the teaching of 2 John . . . . Scripture terms the purveyors of false doctrine as “grievous wolves.” The faithful shepherds of history have not dialogued with grievous wolves.

– John Ashbrook

Quotes (738)

Gary Gilley The gospel is not about helping [un-churched] ‘Harry’ feel better about himself and his circumstances; it is about his rebelliousness against a holy God who will ultimately condemn him to Hell if he does not repent and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of his sins. The distinction between the market-driven approach and the biblical approach lies largely in understanding this fundamental difference.

– Gary Gilley

Quotes (737)

Nothing is a greater bar to a minister’s usefulness, or renders him more contemptible than a known attachment to money, a gripping fist and a hard heart.

A day will come when mercenary preachers will wish they had begged their bread from door to door or had been chained to the oar of a galley for life rather than have presumed to intrude into the church such base and unworthy views.

– John Newton

1725 – 1807

Quotes (736)

Lawson new Noah’s message from the steps going up to the Ark was not “Something good is going to happen to you!” Amos was not confronted by the high priest of Israel for proclaiming, “Confession is possession!” Jeremiah was not put into the pit for preaching, “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.” Daniel was not put into the lion’s den for telling people, “Possibility thinking will move mountains!” John the Baptist was not forced to preach in the wilderness and eventually beheaded because he preached, “Smile, God loves you!” The two prophets of the tribulation will not be killed for preaching, “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world!”

The message of the true God-sent missionary will be like the message of Noah – “Repent from your sins, for judgment is coming!” It will be like that of Jonah – “Repent from your sins, for judgment is coming!” It will be like that of John the Baptist – “Repent from your sins, for judgment is coming!”

The message of the true God-sent missionary will resemble none of the fluff found in many of today’s pulpits, but will be hard-hitting and will point out the truth that the gospel message is trans-cultural!

The message of the true God-sent missionary will not seek to provide health, wealth or prosperity. It will not provide for the stomachs or well-being of the heathen with no concern for their eternal destiny!

– Steve Lawson

HT: Desert Pastor

Quotes (735)

Brian Borgman I honestly, for the life of me, do not understand how somebody who professes to be in Christ can still continue to take God’s name in vain. And I will tell you I hear it all the time. Not in the profane ways of the world but in using the word God as an expletive. If you’re in Christ and Christ dwells in your heart then what comes out of your mouth should be words of praise and thanksgiving to God, not using God’s name in vain. The same filth that used to come out of your mouth is now cleaned up; why? because Christ lives in you. . . . I was an alter boy, and I went to Holy Family Catholic School, and I was surrounded by all this religious atmosphere, but you know what, I was excellent at was cussing. Most alter boys do cuss by the way. . . . I was a prolific swearer at twelve years old. When God saved me there was an immediate sense that those words no longer fit inside of this mouth. To be in union with Christ affects the way that you think, it affects the way that you speak, it affects the way that you use your body.

– Brian Borgman