Some Quotations To Think About

1. If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he can not imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. C. S. LEWIS - Weight of Glory

2.The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. from the HEIDELBERG CATECHISM

3. Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon Yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I am not. MARTIN LUTHER

4. Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling; Naked, come to thee for dress. Helpless, look to thee fro grace: Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me Savior, or I die.Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee. AUGUSTUS TOPLADY - Rock of Ages

4. This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we shall be but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified. MARTIN LUTHER

5. Let men count it folly or frenzy or whatsoever. We care for no knowledge, no wisdom in the world but this - that man has sinned and God has suffered, that God has been made the sin of man and man is made the righteousness of God. RICHARD HOOKER

6. Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not. MARTIN LUTHER

7. ...the first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration is to give the heart a Divine taste or sense; to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature. JONTHAN EDWARDS

8. The change that takes place in a man when he is converted and sanctified, is not that his love for happiness is diminished but only that it is regulated with respect to its exercises and influences, and the course and objects it leads to...when God brings a soul out of a miserable state and condition into a happy state of conversion, he gives him happiness that before he had not (namely in God), but he does not at the same time take away any of his love of happiness. JONATHAN EDWARDS

9.True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures..." JONATHAN EDWARDS - Religious Affections

10, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him....the capacity to taste a thing must precede our desire for its sweetness...the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever and of living by faith in future grace...the essence of faith is being satisfied with all God is for us in Jesus. JOHN PIPER - Future Grace

11. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all the saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. WESTMINSTER CONFESSION

12. ...The first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration is to give the heart a divine taste or sense to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature. JONATHAN EDWARDS - Treatise of Grace

13. The change that takes place in a man, when he is converted and sanctified, is not that his love for happiness is diminished, but only that it is regulated with respect to its exercises and influence, and the courses and objects it leads to...when God brings a soul out of a miserable state and condition into a happy state, by conversion, he gives him happiness that before he had not (namely God), but he does not at the same time take away any of his love of happiness. JONATHAN EDWARDS - Charity and Its Fruits

14. He loves too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake. AUGUSTINE

15. Just as the Holy Spirit came upon the womb of Mary, so He came upon the brain of a Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Paul, a John and the rest of the writers of the divine library. The power of the Highest overshadowed them, therefore that holy thing which was born of their minds is called the Holy Bible, the word of God. The writing of Luke will, of course, have the vocabulary of Luke and the work of Paul will bear the stamp of Paul s mind. However, this is only in the same manner that the Lord Jesus might have had eyes like his mother s or hair that was the same color and texture as hers. He did not inherit her sins because the Holy Spirit has come upon her. If we ask, how could this be, the answer is God says so. And the writings of men of the Book did not inherit the errors of their carnal minds because their writings were conceived by the Holy Spirit and born out of their personalities without partaking of their fallen nature. If we ask, how could this be, again the answer is God says so. DONALD GREY BARNHOUSE, The Invisible War

16. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be a lunatic - on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make a choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at this feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to . C.S LEWIS, Mere Christianity

17. Jesus Christ is the center of everything, and the object of everything, and he that does not know Him knows nothing of nature and nothing of himself. BLAISE PASCAL

18. I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less that God wishes - that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens - that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the staRs in their course. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebush is as much fixed sa the march of the devastating pestilence - the fall of...leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

19. There is not an inch of any sphere of life over which Jesus Christ does not say, "Mine." ABRAHAM KUYPER

20. Jesus will judge us not only for what we did, but also for what we could have done and didn't. GEORGE OTIS

21. God almost never calls his people to a fair fight. GEORGE OTIS

22. If God does not exist, everything is permissible. DOSTOEVSKY

23. If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so . G. K. CHESTERTON

24. You never met a mere mortal....remember the people you see are eternal; if you knew what they d become you d fall down and worship. C. S. LEWIS

25. There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus. BLAISE PASCAL

26. Oh God, Thou hast made us for thyself, and ours hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee. St. AUGUSTINE

27. We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. THOMAS MERTON

28. There is a conscience in man; therefore there is a God in heaven. EZEKIEL HOPKINS

29. Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures. ST. AQUINAS

30. Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. SAMUEL SMILES

31. There are three kinds of people in the world; those who have sought God and found Him and now serve Him, those who are seeking Him but have not yet found Him, and those who neither seek Him nor find Him. The first are reasonable and happy, the second reasonable and unhappy, and the third unreasonable and unhappy. BLAISE PASCAL

32. There are only two kinds of people in the end; those who say to God, Thy will be done , and those to whom God says in the end, Thy will be done All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. C.S. LEWIS, The Great Divorce

33. Seek Christ, and you will find Him, and with everything else thrown in. C.S. LEWIS

34. Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world. CHARLES HODGE

35. So many Christians interpret Christ s words to witness rather than to be a witness. And they see it as an activity instead of what it really is; the state of our being - what you do emerges from who you are. CHUCK COLSON

36. Preach the gospel all the time; if necessary, use words. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

37. Duty is ours; consequences are God s. GENERAL STONEWALL JACKSON

38. God did not call us to be successful, but to be faithful. - MOTHER THERESA

39. God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature of man. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER

40. The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these others men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after men. THOMAS ARNOLD

41. Everyone may be entitled to his own opinion but everyone is not entitled to his own truth. Truth is but one. DOUG GROOTHIUS

42. Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not suggestions but ten commandments. TED KOPPEL, Duke commencement address

43. I ve learned to hold everything loosely because it hurts when God pries my fingers from it. CORRIE TEN BOOM

44. I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. C. S. LEWIS

45. It can be exalting to belong to a church that is 550 years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up. - JOSEPH SOBRAN

46. One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe - a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the power behind death and disease and sin. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong..it is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion and we are living in part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy occupied territory - that is what the world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage. C. S. LEWIS, Mere Christianity

47. In a sense, it (Christianity) creates rather than solves the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving. C. S. LEWIS, The Problem of Pain

48. For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game, he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience from trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile. DOROTHY SAYERS

49. It is the duty of every Christian to be Christ to his neighbor. MARTIN LUTHER

50. No one can truly say that Jesus is Lord, unless Thou take the veil away, and breathe the living word. Then only then, we feel our interest in His blood. JOHN WESLEY, hymn Spirit of Faith, Come Down

51. It is never on account of its formal nature as a psychic act that faith is conceived in Scripture to be saving...It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or nature of faith, but in the object of faith. B. B. WARFIELD

52. The church is: a conspiracy of love for a dying world, a spy mission into enemy occupied territory ruled by the powers of evil; a prophet from God with the greatest news the world has ever heard, the most life changing and most revolutionary institution that has existed on earth. PETER KREEFT

53. The good news makes no sense unless you believe the bad news first. A free operation is not good news if you don t think you have a mortal disease. Once the main obstacle to believe in Christianity was the good news. It seemed like a fairy tale; too good to be true. Today, the main obstacle is the bad news; people just don t believe in sin even though that is the only Christian doctrine that can be proven by reading daily newspapers. Calling a person sinful is not to deny that his being remains good, any more than calling the statute of Venus de Milo a damaged work of art means denying that its sculptor created a masterpiece. Humanity is a good thing gone bad, the image of God in rebellion against God, God s beloved in a state of rebellion. PETER KREEFT

54. In this modern world of ours many people seem to think that science has somehow made such religious ideas as immortality untimely or old fashioned. I think science has a real surprise for the skeptics. Science, for instance, tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. If God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn t it make sense to assume that He applies it to the masterpiece of His creation, the human soul? Dr. WARNER VON BRAUN, founder of U.S. space exploration program

56. Any sin is more or less heinous depending upon the honor and majesty of the one whom we had offended. Since God is of infinite honor, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infinite consequence. The slightest sin is nothing less than cosmic treason when we realize against whom we have sinned. JONATHAN EDWARDS, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners

57. We can not grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God s holiness is not simply the best we know, infinitely better. We know nothing like divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. Only the spirit of the Holy can impart to the human spirit the knowledge of the holy. A. W. TOZER

58. No attribute of God is more dreadful to sinners than His holiness. MATTHEW HENRY

59. I am convinced that the first step toward attaining higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin. J. C. RYLE

60. We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing. A. W. TOZER

61. "The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meatand drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand." HEIDELBERG CATECHISM

62. An ineffably holy God, who has the utmost abhorrence of all sin, was never invented by any of Adam's fallen descendants. A. W. PINK

63. Right now counts forever. R. C. SPROUL

64. We are called to live Coram Deo - in the presence of God, under the authority of God and to the glory of God. R. C. SPROUL

65. I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. ST. ANSELM of Canterbury

66. We are consecrated and dedicated to God; therefore, we may not hereafter think, speak, meditate or do anything but with a view to his glory...We are God s; to him, therefore, let us live and die. JOHN CALVIN, The Institutes

67. Who is unhappy at not being a king, except a deposed king? All of these miseries of man prove man s greatness. They are the miseries of a deposed king. BLAISE PASCAL

68. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. An you cannot go on indefinitely being an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. C. S. LEWIS

69. Among the Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He as God...Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was part of God, or one with God:There would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. C. S. Lewis

70. It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition. SOREN KIERKEGAARD

71. Christianity is not a system of philosophy, nor a ritual, nor a code of laws; it is the impartation of a divine vitality. Without the way there is not going, without the truth there is no knowing, without life there is no living. MERRILL TENNEY on Jn 14:6

72. The London Times once asked a number prominent people to write essays on the topic, What s Wrong with the World. G. K. Chesterton reply is the shortest and most to the point in history:
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON

73. The medievals had a saying; we are dwarfs standing in the shoulders of giants. We see farther than the ancients not because we are taller than they but because we have their shoulders to stand on. PETER KREEFT

74. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline and virtue. For the modern mind, the cardinal problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique. C. S. LEWIS, The Abolition of Man

75. Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ, Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our death, of God or of ourselves. PASCAL

76. From heaven even the most miserable life will look like one bad night at an inconvenient hotel. St. THERESA

77. Men of sound judgment will always be sure that a sense of divinity which can never be erased is engraved upon men s minds. JOHN CALVIN

78. The picture of fallen man as given in Scripture is that he knows God but does not want to recognize Him as God. CORNELIUS VAN TIL

79. Astronomers are curiously upset by..proof that the universe had a beginning. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the scientific mind - supposedly a very objective mind - when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith of their own profession. ROBERT JASTROW, astronomer

80. What is behind the universe is more like mind than it is like anything else we know...It is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. C.S. LEWIS

81. Even the common folk and the most untutored, who have been taught only by the aid of the eyes, cannot be unaware of the excellence of divine art, for it reveals itself in this innumerable and yet distinct and well-ordered variety of the heavenly host. JOHN CALVIN

82. Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life s problems fall into place of their own accord. J.I. PACKER

83. According to Scripture, God is incomprehensible yet knowable, absolute yet personal. HERMAN BAVINCK

84. There is nothing so abominable in the eyes of God and of men as idolatry, whereby men render to the creature that honor which is due only to the Creator. BLAISE PASCAL

85. The first chapters of the Bible tell us of the sin of man. The guilt of that sin had rested upon every single one of us, it guilt and its terrible results..but..it also tells us of something greater still; it tells us of the grace of the offended God. J. GRESHAM MACHEN

86. This passage in (Romans 1:18), therefore, stands in its insistence that even in the most excellent men, however endowed with law, righteousness, wisdom, and all virtues, free will, their most excellent part, is nonetheless ungodly, and unrighteous, and merits God s wrath. MARTIN LUTHER

87. According to Scripture the essence of man consists in this, that he is the image of God. As such he is distinguished from all other creatures and stands supreme as the head and crown of the entire creation. LOUIS BERKOF

88. Once man ceases to recognize the infinite value of the human soul...then all he can recognize is that man is something to be used. HELMUT THIELICKE

89. The ethic of the bible reflects the character of the God of the Bible. Remove from Scripture the transcendent holiness, righteousness and truth of God and its ethic disappears. JOHN MURRAY

90. Love is the sum of all virtue, and love disposes us to do good. JONATHAN EDWARDS

91. Two things, belief and conduct, are indissolubly bound together; they are part of one whole, as roots and fruit are both alike parts of one tree, organically connected. LIONEL SPENCER THORNTON

92. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption which you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. C. S. LEWIS, The Weight of Glory

93. The Bible is the only book that has been written not just by human characters inside the story but also by the divine author of the story. Its perspective is double, that of the characters and that of the author, or that of the human authors and that of the divine author. Like Christ - the word of God in person - the Bible, the word of God in writing, is the Word of God in words of men. It has both a human nature and a divine nature. PETER KREEFT, God s Love

94. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. JIM ELLIOTT (from his wife Elizabeth s book, Through Gates of Splendor

95. We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain kind. C. S. LEWIS, Mere Christianity

96. My identity and my eternal destiny are determined by my love. For what I love becomes my end, and my end is my destiny. PETER KREEFT God s Love

97. A sculptor can leave his work and come back to it another day, and take up where he left off. But it is not so with the growth of the soul. The work of grace in us either waxes or wanes, flows or ebbs. ANDREW ANDERSON

98. Spiritual growth consists most in the growth of the root, which is out of sight. MATTHEW HENRY

99. Some people s religion reminds me of a rocking horse, which has motion with progress. ROWLAND HILL

100. Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair of the smallness of our accomplishments. JOHN CALVIN

101. The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God. LEO TOLSTOY

102. Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: To know what he ought to believe, to know what he ought to desire, and to know what he ought to do. THOMAS AQUINAS

103. Holiness is the end of redemption, for Christ gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. CHARLES HODGE

104. The world invents its own good works and persuades itself that they are good. But Paul declares that good and right according to the world are to be judged by the commandments of God. JOHN CALVIN

105. For the Christian, this world is an arena, not an armchair. ANONYMOUS

106. The Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have begun thinking less of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this . Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither. 107. Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. WILLIAM RALPH INGE

108. All the danger is when the world gets into the heart. The water is useful for sailing the ship; all the danger is when the water gets into the ship; so the fear is when the world gets into the heart. THOMAS WATSON

109. I more fear what is within me than what comes from without. MARTIN LUTHER

110. Even the sinning of the regenerate man differs essentially from that of the unregenerate man. R. B. KUIPER

111. Now a thing operates in accordance with its nature. THOMAS AQUINAS

112. Though we as Christians are like Christ, having the first fruits of the Spirit, yet we are unlike Him, having the remainders of the flesh. THOMAS WATSON 113. Original sin is in us, like the beard. We are shaved today and look clean, and have a smooth chin; tomorrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. MARTIN LUTHER

114. The natural response to denials of Satan s existence is to ask, Who then runs his business. J.I. PACKER

115. Satan watches for those vessels that sail without convoy. GEORGE SWINNOCK

116. It is a serious thing..to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspections proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics...It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

117. God is not only holy, but the source and pattern of holiness: He is the origin and the upholder of the moral order of the universe. He must be just. The Judge of all the earth must do right. Therefore it was impossible by the necessities of his own being that he should deal lightly with sin, and compromise the claims of holiness. If sin could be forgiven at all, it must be on the same basis which would vindicate the holy law of God, which is not a mere code, but the moral order of the whole creation. But such vindication must be supremely costly. Costly to whom? Not to the forgiven sinner, for there could be no price asked from him for his forgiveness; both because the cost is far beyond his reach, and because God loves to give and not to sell. Therefore God himself undertook to pay a cost, to offer a sacrifice, so tremendous that the gravity of his condemnation of sin should be absolutely beyond question even as he forgave it, while at the same the Love which impelled to pay the price would be the wonder of angels, and would call forth the worshiping gratitude of the redeemed sinner. On Calvary this price was paid by God: the Son giving himself, bearing our sin and its curse; the Father giving the Son, his only Son whom he loved. But it was paid by God become man, who not only took the place of the guilty man, but also was his representative...The divine Son, one of the three persons of the one God, he through whom, from the beginning of the creation, the Father has revealed himself to man (Jn 1:18), took man s nature upon him, and so became our representative. He offered himself as a sacrifice in our stead, bearing our sin in his own body on the tree. He suffered, not only awful physical anguish, but also the unthinkable spiritual horror of becoming identified with the sin to which he was infinitely opposed. He thereby came under the curse of sin, so that for a time even his perfect fellowship with his Father was broken. Thus God proclaimed his infinite abhorrence of sin by being willing himself to suffer all that, in place of the guilty ones, in order that he might justly forgive. Thus the love of God found its perfect fulfillment, because he did not hold back from even that uttermost sacrifice, in order that we might be saved from eternal death through what he endured. Thus it was possible for him to be just, and to justify the believer, because as Lawgiver and as Substitute for the rebel race of man, he himself had suffered the penalty of the broken law. H. E. GUILLEBAUD, Why the Cross?

118. ...if the death of Christ on the cross is the true meaning of the Incarnation, then there is no gospel without the cross. Christmas by itself is no gospel. The life of Christ is no gospel. Even the resurrection, important as it is in the total scheme of things, is no gospel by itself. For the good news is not just that God became man, nor that God has spoken to reveal a proper way of life for us, or even that death, the great enemy, is conquered. Rather, the good news is that sin has been dealt with (of which the resurrection is a proof); that Jesus has suffered its penalty for us as our representative, so that we might never have to suffer it; and that therefore all who believe in him can look forward to heaven. ...Emulation of Christ s life and teaching is possible only to those who enter into a new relationship with God through faith in Jesus as their substitute. The resurrection is not merely a victory over death (though it is that) but a proof that the atonement was a satisfactory atonement in the sight of the Father (Rom 4:25); and that death, the result of sin, is abolished on that basis. Any gospel that talks merely of the Christ-event, meaning the Incarnation without the atonement, is a false gospel. Any gospel that talks about the love of God without pointing out that his love led him to pay the ultimate price for sin in the person of his Son on the cross is a false gospel. The only true gospel is of the one mediator (1 Tim. 2:5-6), who gave himself for us. Finally, just as there can be no gospel without the atonement as the reason for the Incarnation, so also there can be no Christian life without it. Without the atonement the Incarnation theme easily becomes a kind of deification of the human and leads to arrogance and self advancement. With the atonement the true message of the life of Christ, and therefore also of the the life of the Christian man or woman, is humility and self sacrifice for the obvious needs of others. The Christian life is not indifference to those who are hungry or sick or suffering from some other lack. It is not contentment with our own abundance, neither the abundance of middle class living with home and cars and clothes and vacations, nor the abundance of education or even the spiritual abundance of good churches, Bibles, Bible teaching or Christian friends and acquaintances. Rather, it is the awareness that others lack these things and that we must therefore sacrifice many of our own interests in order to identify with them and thus bring them increasingly into the abundance we enjoy...We will live for Christ fully only when we are willing to be impoverished, if necessary, in order that others might be helped. JAMES MONTGOMERY BOICE, Foundations of the Christian Faith

119. Jenny, God has made me for a purpose - for China; but he has also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure. ERIC LIDDELL, Chariots of Fire

120. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end,'thy will be done. C. S. LEWIS

121. [Our] original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all...rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather. FREDERICK BUECHNER, Telling Secrets

122. If God speaks to us at all other than through such official channels as the Bible and the church, then I think that he speaks to us largely through what happens to us...if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we can come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however little we may understand of it, his word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling. FREDERICK BUECHNER, Now and Then

123. We wake, if ever we wake at all, to mystery. ANNIE DILLARD

124. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moments when are last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even at best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your hear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, "Here at last is the thing I was made for." WE cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all. C. S. LEWIS

125. We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it...Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand. G. K. CHESTERTON, Orthodoxy

126. We live in narrative, we live in story. Existence has a story shape to it. We have a beginning and an end, we have a plot, we have characters." EUGENE PETERSON

127. [I] had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician...I had always felt life firs as a story; and if there is a story there is a storyteller. G. K. CHESTERTON

128. It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name...That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. FREDERICK BUECHNER, The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

129. The heart has it reasons that reason knows not of. BLAISE PASCAL

130. So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about - He is looking for us. SIMON TUGWELL

131. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. C. S. LEWIS

132. ...it (is) not in them, it only comes through them and what (comes) through them (is) longing...They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited. C. S. LEWIS

133. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant t our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. C. S. LEWIS, The Weight of Glory

134. The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way.

Psalms 115:1 Not to us O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory because of your love and faithfulness.

Exod. 9:16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Isa. 43:7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

Isa. 42:8 I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.

Isa. 48:11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.

Ezek. 20:9 But for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations they lived among and in whose sight I had revealed myself to the Israelites by bringing them out of Egypt.

Ezek. 20:14 But for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

Ezek. 20:22 But I withheld my hand, and for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

Ezek. 20:44 You will know that I am the LORD, when I deal with you for my name's sake and not according to your evil ways and your corrupt practices, O house of Israel, declares the Sovereign LORD.

Ezek. 36:22 Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone.

Ezek. 36:32 I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign LORD. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, O house of Israel!

Dan. 9:18 Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we a Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we as and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.

Ps. 23:3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Ps. 106:8 Yet he saved them for his name's sake, to make his mighty power known.

1Cor 10:31 Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.Exod. 9:16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

180. "post tenebras lux" - after darkness, light

181. Trust the pst to God's mercy, the present to God's love, and the future to God's providence. St AUGUSTINE

182. He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake. - AUGUSTINE 183. Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. MARTIN LUTHER

184. A good hymn book is a wonderful companion to the Bible. Francis Schaeffer

185. The Godward Life:

"Delight yourself in the LORD." - Ps. 37:4

"Serve the LORD with gladness." - Ps. 100:2

"..the steadfast love [of the LORD] is better than life." - Ps. 63:3

"Whom have I in heaven but you? Besides you I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." - Ps. 73:25-26

"You are my Lord; I have no good besides you." - Ps.16:2

"As a deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirst for God, for the living God." - Ps. 42:1-2

"O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory." - Ps. 63:1-2

186. Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill thy law's demands; Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears for ever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and thou alone. Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling; Naked, come to thee for dress, Helpless, look to thee for grace; Foul, I to the Fountain fly; Wash me, Savior, or I die. Let the water and the blood, From thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt and power, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee. AUGUSTUS TOPLADY,"Rock of Ages", 1776

187. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. C. S. LEWIS

188. If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals. PLATO

189. No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point. JEAN PAUL SARTE

190. Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity. R. C. SPROUL

191. My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got the idea of just and unjust? Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. C. S. LEWIS

192. The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. DIETRICH BONHOFFER

193. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. JIM ELLIOT

194. ...the Lord rewards faithfulness above fruitfulness, which puts us all on the same footing, whether famous for our effectiveness or unknown in our faithfulness. JOHN PIPER

195. I am a creature of a day. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God. I want to know one thing: the way to heaven. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price give me the book of God. Let me be a man of one book. JOHN WESLEY

196. We have a homing insinct, a "home detector'," and it doesn't ring for earth. That why nearly every society in history except our own instinctively beleives in life after death. Like the grwat mythic wanders, like Ulysses and Aeneas, we have been trying to get home. Earth just doens't smell like home. However good a road it is, however, good a motel it is, however a good training camp it is, it is not home. Heaven is. PETER KREEFT

197. There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondfering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. C. S. LEWIS

198. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the Nrew Testament are rustling wit the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. C. S. LEWIS

199. For though we very truly hear that the kingdom of God will be filled with splndor, joy, happiness and glory, yet when these things are spoken of, they remain utterly remote from our perception, and as it were, wrapped in obscurities, until that day when he will reveanl to us his gory, that we may behold it face to face. JOHN CALVIN

200. To pretend to describe the excellence, the greatness or duration of the happness of heaven by the most artful composition of words would be but to darken and cloud it; to talk of raptures and ecstasies, joy and singing, is but to set forth very low shadows of the reality. JONATHAN EDWARDS

201. What might this life be like? Perhaps the only way we can conceive of the nature of heaven is by earthly analogies. What does not appear in our experience (yet) cannot be defined, only related to what does appear in our experience by analogy. For instance, a suburban house in Long Island is to a slum in Calcutta what a castle in Switzerland is to a suburban house on Long Island. Even if you never lived in a castle, you know something about it by this analogy. The problem is that we do not have a proper proportion with heaven as we do with Switzerland. If Calcutta is 2, Log Island 6, and Switzerland 18, heaven is not 54 but infinmity. We must fator in the principle of transformation. Thus a better analogy would be that heaven is to earth as the butterfly is to the caterpillar. PETER KREEFT and RONALD K. TACELLI

202. The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of teh real story. All their lifwe in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. C. S. LEWIS

203. Let us always remember that the end of the resurrection is eternal happiness, of whose excellence scarcely the minutist part can be described by all that human tongues can say. For though we are truly told that the kingdom of God will be full of light, and gladness, and felcity, and glory, yet the things meant by these words remain most remote from sense, and as it were involved in enigma, until the day arrive on which he will manifest his glory to us face to face. JOHN CALVIN

204. There is no need to be worried by facetius people who try to make the Christian hope of "heaven" ridiculous by saying they do not want "to spend eternity playing harps." The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptual imagery (harps, crowns, gold etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolic attempt to express the inexpressable. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest thew fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs. C. S. LEWIS

205. Hearts on earth say in the course of a joyful experience, "I don't want this ever to end." But it invariably does. The hearts of those in heaven say, "I want this to go on forever." And it will. There is no better news than this. J. I. PACKER

206. Prior to creation God had no means of revealing one pinnacle attribute of His glory, mercy. While He could within the fellowship of the Trinity express love and maintain justice, mercy inherently requires some injustice or inadequacy before loving-kindness can be expressed in forgiveness. For this reason God set in motion redemptive history - to manifest His glory by revealing this very capacity to redeem, mercy. DANA OLSON

207. God wants to reveal the richness of His mercy "to the praise of His glory" (Eph 1:6). This is precisely the reasoning of Romans 9:22-23. "What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath - prepared for destruction?" What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory? In His final judgment God will display the power of His wrath. But God could not demonstrate His capacity for mercy apart from ordaining a world of sin and a way for redemption. He endures with great patience the impenitent, so that He can magnify His all-glorious mercy in the eyes of those who put their hope in Him! JOHN ENSOR

208. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God'. To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat. C. S. LEWIS

209. ...everybody's a tick in search of a dog LARRY CRABB

210. We all tend to make ourselves the center of the universe. FREDERICK BUECHNER

211. I sometimes feel that I am living just as long as I have something great to work for. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

212. God's quest to be glorified and our quest to be satisfied reach their goal in this one experience: our delight in God overflows in praise. For God, praise is the sweet echo of His own excellence in the hearts of His people. For us, praise is the summit of satisfaction that comes from living in fellowship with God. JOHN PIPER, Desiring God

213. We never really adore Him, until we arrive at the moment when we worship Him for what He is in Himself, apart from any consideration of the impact of His divine Selfhood upon our desires and our welfare. Then we love Him for Himself alone. Then we adore Him, regardless of whether any personal benefit is in anticipation or not...That is pure adoration. Nothing less is worthy of the name. ALBERT DAY, An Autobiography of Prayer

214. The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in. R. C. SPROUL

215. "Which kind of church are you the minister of in Wales?" "Really a Presbyterian Church, the name of the denomination - the strongest one in Wales - is the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church." "Surely there's a mistake somewhere," I opined, "please say that over again." Once more the name rolled out, a civil war in language. "I'm bewildered," was my confession. "Surely the term'Calvinistic Methodist' is about as harmonious as 'white black-bird' or 'east-west wind'. Are they not antipodal terms?" "Not at all - you evidently think that John Wesley was the only Methodist who ever lived. George Whitefield was a Calvinist - that's why he and Wesley quarrelled." - MARTYN LLOYD-JONES being interviewed by a Canadian reporter in 1932.

216. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. C. S. LEWIS

217. One thing is past all question; we shall bring our Lord most glory if we get from Him much grace. C. H. SPURGEON

218. It is just like someone who is sick, and who believes the doctor who promises his full recovery. In the meantime, he obeys the doctor's orders in the hope of the promised recovery, and abstains from those things which he was told to lay off, so that he may in no way hinder the promised return to health...Now is this sick man well? He is sick in reality - but he is well on account of a sure promise of the doctor, whom he trusts, and who reckons him as already being cured...So he is at one and the same time time both a sinner and righteous. He is a sinner in reality, but righteous by the sure imputation and promise of God that he will continue to deliver him from sin until he has completely cured him. So he is entirely healthy in hope, but a sinner in reality. MARTIN LUTHER, commenting on Romans

219. God promises to deliver us from the penalty of sin (justification), the power of sin (sanctification) and the presence of sin (glorification). DAVE BROWN

220. We are justified propter Christum per fidem - that is, on acount of Christ, through faith. The basis of God's decision to place us in right relationship with Him lies in Christ Himself. We are justified on account of His obedience during His lifetime and His death upon the cross. It is because of Him, and nor because of anything we have done or will do, that we are made right with God. But the means by which we are justified is faith. Faith is like a channel through which the benefits of Christ flow to us...both the external foundation and the internal means of appropriation of justification are God-given. Faith is not something we can achieve; it is something achieved within us by God. ALISTER McGRATH

221. Now the saints are always awae of their sin and seek righteousness from God in accordance with his mercy. And for this very reason, they are regarded as righteous by God. Thus in their own eyes (and in reality!) they are sinners - but in the eyes of God they are righteous, because he reckons them as such on acount of their confession of their sin. In reality they are sinners; but they are righteous by the imputation of a merciful God. They are unknowningly righteous, and knwingly sinner. They are sinner in fact, but righteous in hope. MARTIN LUTHER

222. The great paradox of faith is that we find our perfect freedom only when become slaves - slaves to God...In the ancient world, slaves judged their self-worth in relation to the importance of their masters. The greater the social status of a master, the greater the esteem of the slave. Christians are slaes of the greatest and kindest Master of all... ALIStER McGRATH

223. Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. As Paul teaches us, Christ and the soul become one flesh by this mystery (Eph 5:31-32). And if they are one flesh, and if marriage is for real - indeed, it is the most perfect of all marriages, and human marriages are poor examples of this one true marriage - then it follows that everything that they have is held in common, whether good or evil. So the believer can boast of and glory of whatever Christ possesses, as though it were his or her own; and whatever the believer has, Christ claims as his own. Let us see how this works out, and see how it benefits us. Christ is full of grace, life and salvation. The human soul is full of sins, eath and damnation. Now let faith come between them. Sins, death and damnation will be Christ's. And grace, life and salvation will be the believer's. MARTIN LUTHER

224. I think I should like to take Thomas' Guide to Practical Ship Building. G. K. CHESTERTON, when what book he would take along if he knew he would be shipwrecked on an island.

225. I will not glory because I am righteous but because I am redeemed, not because I am clear of sin, but because my sins are forgiven. SAINT AMBROSE

226. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God.' To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search fro the cat.C. S. LEWIS

227. No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. C. S. LEWIS

228. We may sum up the relationship between God's love and wrath with the statement, so vital for understanding His plan in redemptive history, that God's kindness...is His free, ultimate work in which His soul finally and fully delights, whereas God's wrath in punishment is His necessary, penultimate work. Though He finds no pleasure in punishing the wicked, He nevertheless does it as somehting He must do, so that without devaluing His glory, He can fully rejoice in being merciful to the penitent. DANIEL FULLER

229. God's quest to be glorified and our quest to be stisfied reach their goal in this one experience: our delight in God overflows in praise. For God, praise is the sweet echo of His own excellence in the heartsof this people. For us, praise is the summit of satisfaction that comes from living in fellowship with God. JOHN PIPER

230. Sheep and swine can both end up in the mire. Yet the essential difference in their two natures is quie visible from the reaction each has to its fallen condition. While sheep do stray and stumble into the mire, they quickly loathe the situation and struggle to get free. They may be dirty, but they desire to be clean. They may be stuck, but they bleat for their shepard to come and save them out of the muck. But swine, in keeping with their nature, wallow in the muck, content to stay there all day. JOHN ENSOR

231.The important thing is to stop lying to yourself. A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself. FYDOR DOSTOEVESKY, The Brothers Karamazov

232. Yet the kind of community small groups create is quite different from the communities in which people lived in the past. These communities are more fluid and more concerned with the emotional states of the individual. Some small groups merely provide occasions for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others. What's more, the social contract binding members together asserts only the weakest obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone's opinion. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied. Families would never survive by following these operating norms. Close-knit communities in the past did not, either...A majority of small-group members says they joined because they wanted to deepen their faith and that their sense of the sacred has been profoundly influenced by their participation. But small groups are not simply drawing pople back to the God their fathers and mothers. They are dramactically changing the way God is understood. God is now less of an external authority and more of an internal presence. The sacred becomes more personal, but, in the process, also becomes more manageable, more serviceable in meeting individual needs, and more a feature of the group process itself...The deity of small groups is a God of love, comfort, order and security. Gone is the God of judgment, wrath, justice, mystery and punishment. Gone are concerns about the forces of evil. Missing from most groups, even, is a distinct interest in heaven and hell, except for the small heavens and hells that people experience in their everyday lives. ROBERT WITHNOW, "How Small Groups Are Transforming Our Lives." Christianity Today,2/7/94

233. All men seek hapiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attending with differernt views. The will never takes the least step but to this objective. This is the motive of every man, even those who hang themselves...There was once in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the dark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not find in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say only by God himself...There are only three kinds of persons: those who serve God, having found him; others who are occupied in seeking Him, not having found Him; while the remainder live without seeking Him, and without having found Him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy; those between are unhappy and unreasonable. ...BLAISE PASCAL

234. To lift up the hands of prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand or a woman with a slop pail gives him glory, too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. - GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

235. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are not worthy of Him. A. W. TOZER

236. No one is ever really at ease in facing what we call "life and death" issues without a religious faith. The trouble with many people today is that they have not found a God big enough for modern needs. While their life experience has grown in a score of directions, and their mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and by scientific discoveries, their ideas about God have remained largely static. J. B. PHILLIPS. Your God Is Too Small

237. Once we truly grasp the message of the New Testament, it is impossible to read the Old Testament again without seeing Christ on every page, in every story, foreshadowed or anticipated in every event and narrative. The Bible must be read as a whole, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation, letting promise and fulfillment guide our expectations for what we will find there. MICHAEL HORTON, We Believe

238. There is a hidden double standard. The past can be relativized simply by explaining the misconceptions of the ancient worldview. "The present, however, remains strangely immune from relativization...In other words, the New Testament writers are seen as afflicted with a false consciousness rooted in their time, but the contemporary analyst take the consciousness of his time as an unmixed intellectual blessing. The electricity- and radio-users are placed intellectually above the Apostle Paul. PETER BERGER

239. Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but he died for all God's elect, that they should belive. JOHN OWEN

240. The atonement was not the cause but the effect of God's love. A. W. PINK

241. Christ's blood has value enough to redeem the whole world, but the virtue of it is applied only to such as believe. THOMAS WATSON

242. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. G. K. CHESTERTON

243. There is not a word in the Bible which is extra cruem, which can be understood without reference to the cross. MARTIN LUTHER

244. No true Christian is his own man. JOHN CALVIN

245. The church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam. RICHARD HOOKER

246. In whatever dunghill God's jewels be hid, election will both find them out there and fetch them out from hence. JOHN AROWSMITH

247. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about man's search for God. For me, they might as well talk about the mouse's search for a cat... C. S. LEWIS

248. It is only as God seeks us that we can be found of him. God is seeker rather than sought. ARTHUR SKEVINGTON WOOD

249. Let a man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance before he goes to the university of election and predestination. GEORFE WHITEFIELD

250. As God did not at first choose you because you were high, so he will not forsake you because you are low. JOHN FLAVEL

251. God chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe. AUGUSTINE

252. God does not choose us for faith but to faith. THOMAS WATSON

253. None can know their election but by their conformity to Christ; for all who are chosen are chosen to sanctification. MATTHEW HENRY

254. Holiness is the only evidence of election. CHARLES HODGE

255. The doctrines of grace humble a man without degrading him and exalt a man without inflating him. CHARLES HODGE

256. The Holy Spirit does something more in each of God's elect than he does in the non-elect; he works in them 'both to will and to do of God's good pleasure.' A. W. PINK

257. The names and number of the elect are a secret thing, no doubt...But if there is one thing clearly and plainly laid down about election, it is this - that elect men and women may be known and distinguished by holy lives. J. C. RYLE

258. We can never know that we are elected of God to eternal life except by manifesting in our lives the fruits of election. B. B. WARFIELD

259. The ground of discrimination that exists among men is the sovereign will of God and that alone; but the ground of damnation to which the reprobate are consigned is sin and sin alone. JOHN CALVIN

260. God graciously elected some to salvation, and he decreed justly to leave others to their deserts. R. B. KUIPER

261. I believe in the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I would neverwould have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chose me afterward. C. H. SPURGEON

262. The marvel of marvels is not that God, in his infinite love, has not elected all this guilty race to be saved, but that he has elected any. B. B. WARFIELD

263. In the court of justification merits are nothing worth, insufficient; but in the court of sanctification...they are jewels and ornaments. RICHARD SIBBES

264. If God should justify a people and not sanctify them, he would justify a people who he could not glorify. THOMAS WATSON

265. Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain. JOHN CALVIN

266. When we invent our own ideas of God, we simply create him in our own image. KENNETH F. W. PRIOR

267. An idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand. A. W. TOZER

268. God made man of the dust of the earth and man makes a god of the dust of the earth. THOMAS WATSON

269. Long ago I ceased to count heads. Truth is usually in the minority in this evil world. C. H. SPURGEON

270. Unbelief was the first sin, and pride was the first-born of it. STEPHEN CHARNOCK

271. Alongside getting faith out of a heart that is utterly hostile and unbelieving, making a silk purse out of a sow's ear or getting blood from a turnip is child's play. JOHN GERTSNER

272. Regeneration is a single act, complete in itself, and never repeated; conversion, as the beginning of holy living, is the commencement of a series, constant, endless and progressive.A. A. HODGE

273. When God works in us, the will, being changed and sweetly breathed upon by the Spirit of God, desire and acts, not from compulsion, but responsively. MARTIN LUTHER

274. Just as in the beginning "God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light' so, at the moment he appointed for our new birth, he said, "Let there be life' and there was life. J. A. MOTYER

275. We are helpless to cooperate in our regeneration as we are to co-operate in the work of Calvary. IAIN MURRAY

276. Regeneration is essentially a changing of the fundamental taste of the soul. By taste we mean the direction of man's love, the bent of his affections, the trend of his will. AGUSTUS H. STRONG

GOD MOVES IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY
(originally Conflict: Light Shining Out of Darkness )

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.

You fearful saints, fresh courage take: The clouds you so much dread are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

Deep in unfathomable mind of never failing skill He treasures up His bright design and works His sovereign will.

Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.

WILLIAM COWPER

© 1997 coramdeo@erols.com

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