You call Me master, and obey Me not;
You call Me light, and see Me not;
You call Me the way, and walk Me not;
You call Me life, and live Me not;
You call Me wise, and follow Me not;
You call Me fair, and love Me not;
You call Me rich, and ask Me not;
You call Me eternal, and seek Me not.
If I condemn thee, blame Me not.
Author Unknown
While satan’s authority is not absolute, neither is it trifling. He wields all kinds of destructive influence over all levels of life and exerts his greatest hostility against God’s redemptive purpose in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Clinton E. Arnold, POWERS OF DARKNESS
I never have any difficulty believing in miracles, since I experienced the miracle of a change in my own heart.
Augustine
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
Augustine
By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.
Augustine
For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them. Augustine
We want to reach the kingdom of God, but we don't want to travel by way of death. And yet there stands Necessity saying:‘This way, please.' Do not hesitate, man, to go this way, when this is the way that God came to you.
Augustine
God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.
Augustine
Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.
Augustine
Thou has made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless until they find their rest in Thee.
Augustine
He, through whom time was made, was made in time;
And He, older by eternity than the world itself, was younger in age than many of His servants in the world;
He, who made man, was made man;
He was given existence by a mother whom He brought into existence;
He was carried in hands which He formed;
He nursed at breasts which He filled;
He cried like a babe in the manger in speechless infancy – this Word without which human eloquence is speechless!!
SERMON ON CHRISTMAS by Augustine of Hippo
God had one Son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
Augustine
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Augustine
There is sufficient clearness to enlighten the elect, and sufficient obscurity to humble them. There is sufficient obscurity to blind the reprobate, and sufficient clearness to condemn them, and make them inexcusable.
Augustine
What does love look like: It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
Augustine
Insensibility of God’s hand inflicting trials, is as different from Christian patience, as a deathly coma is different from the quiet, soft sleep of health. Nothing kindles God’s anger more, than neglecting His direct agency in sending the trial. It is a symptom of a wretched state of soul.
Bates
Everything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time.
Henry Ward Beecher
God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
Henry Ward Beecher
We are not simply a society, in which we recognize the existence of, and the differences between, a variety of religious beliefs, but one in which we declare all such beliefs are to be equally valid… In granting plausibility to everything, we may grant certainty to nothing. Tolerance has been embraced at the expense of truth…
Alistair Begg
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings
As the strongest yet calmest thing in the world is light, so should a Christian life be the strongest and greatest, as well as the calmest and brightest. As the only perfectly straight line is a ray of light, and as the only pure substance is sunshine, so should our course be, and so should we seek to shine as lights in the world – reflections of Him who is its light – the one straight, pure thing on earth.
Horatio Bonar, GOD’S WAY OF HOLINESS
Holiness may be called spiritual perfection, as righteousness is legal completeness; and both are exhibited in Christ…Likeness to Him is holiness, He that is holy is conformed to His image. Every other ideal is vanity. We must learn from the four Gospels what living holiness is; and for a doctrinal exposition of it we must turn to the Epistles. Thus we shall understand both what it is not and what it is.
Horatio Bonar, GOD’S WAY OF HOLINESS
The Christian life is a great thing, one of the greatest things on earth…It does not need to be a long life; a short one may be as true and holy as a long one…John the Baptist’s was perhaps the shortest…yet it was one of the greatest successes.
Horatio Bonar, GOD’S WAY OF HOLINESS
Christ is the wisdom of God; and in the knowledge of this Christ there is wisdom for you. Not wisdom only, but life, forgiveness, peace, glory, and an endless kingdom! Study Him! Acquaint yourself with Him! Whatever you are ignorant of, be not ignorant of Him.
Horatius Bonar
We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
...everything which hinders us from loving God above all things and acts as a barrier between ourselves and our obedience to Jesus is our treasure, and the place where our heart is.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
By his willingly renouncing self-defense, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
That the lie portrays the truth as lie is the ultimate possible rebellion. It is the abyss of the lie that it lives because it sets itself up as truth and condemns the truth as lie.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes…and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.
E.M. Bounds
As we grow in holiness, we grow in hatred of sin; and God, being infinitely holy, has an infinite hatred of sin.
Jerry Bridges
That which should distinguish the suffering of believers from unbelievers is the confidence that our suffering is under the control of an all-powerful and all-loving God; our suffering has meaning and purpose in God's eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good.
Jerry Bridges
Your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and heaven shall make amends for all.
Thomas Brooks
A Christian knows that death shall be the funeral of all…his sins, his sorrows, his afflictions, his temptations, his vexations, his oppressions, his persecutions. He knows that death shall be the resurrection of all…his hopes, his joys, his delights, his comforts, his contentments. He knows that death shall bring him to a more clear, full, perfect, and constant enjoyment of God! This makes him sweetly and triumphantly to sing out, ‘O death! Where is your sting? O grave! Where is your victory?’ (1 Cor. 15:35-37)
Thomas Brooks, THE TRANSCENDENT EXCELLENCY OF A BELIEVER’S PORTION ABOVE ALL EARTHLY PORTIONS
Unfaithfulness in the key relationships of life is a common failure for many people in contemporary society. This lack leads to so much misery. We who trust Christ must not allow the world to squeeze us into its mould. What wonderful blessings flow from faithfulness in keeping our vows. Examine your life. Is it characterized by faithfulness? God is faithful. He keeps His promises to us. Keep your promises to God and to those with whom you have entered into covenant.
Harry Buis
If you have sinned, do not lie down without repentance; for the want of repentance after one has sinned makes the heart yet harder and harder.
John Bunyan
One leak will sink a ship and one sin will destroy a sinner.
John Bunyan
For no man is damned precisely because God hath not chosen him, because he is not elected, but because he is a sinner, and doth willfully refuse the means of grace offered.
Anthony Burgess
…he who has God as his portion is destitute of nothing which is requisite to constitute a happy [and holy] life.
John Calvin
The one who judges according to the word and law of the Lord, and forms his judgments by the rule of charity, always begins with subjecting himself to examination, and preserves a proper medium and order in his judgments.
John Calvin
The implications of the name ‘Immanuel’ are both comforting and unsettling. Comforting, because He has come to share the danger as well as the drudgery of our everyday lives. He desires to weep with us and to wipe away our tears. And what seems most bizarre, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, longs to share in and to be the source of the laughter and the joy we all too rarely know.
Michael Card
God’s sovereignty is always to His people in wisdom and in love. This is the difference between sovereignty in God and sovereignty in man. We dread the sovereignty of man, because we have no security of its being exercised in mercy, or even justice: we rejoice in the sovereignty of God, because we are sure it is always exercised for the good of His people.
Alexander Carson
The universal witness of the New Testament is that apostasy if persisted in not only damns but shows that salvation was never real in the first place. The New Testament reveals how close one may come to the kingdom – tasting, touching, perceiving, understanding. And it also shows that to come this far and reject the truth is unforgivable.
D. A. Carson
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.
Oswald Chambers
I can never find reality by looking within; the ony way I can get at reality is by dumping myself outside myself on to Someone else, namely, God. As soon as I do I am brought in touch with reality.
Oswald Chambers
Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself.
Oswald Chambers MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST
Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. Are we prepared for what that will cost? It will cost everything that is not of God in us.
Oswald Chambers MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHTEST
There is only one basis for really enjoying life, and that is, to walk in the way in which God leads you. Then you are prepared to find delight in all sorts of wayward incidents....When a man is drifting through life, seeking nothing outside of self-gratification, the world must become increasingly a barren and forbidding wilderness. But it is wonderful how many delights fall to the lot of him who is led by God.
H. Cuyler
The Bible makes much of determination. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. Strive to enter in at the strait gate. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. Quench not the Spirit. Escape for thy life. All this style of admonition and direction shows that the sinner has a host of obstacles between him and Heaven; and he must push his way through, or perish.
H. Cuyler
