Category: Random

The reason grace means very little to us is because we do not consider ourselves as great sinners who desperately need forgiveness. We think of ourselves as fine people with few minor character flaws that could easily be excused. We have these cute ideas about ourselves that yes, indeed, we are imperfect but at least we are honest (as if honesty absolves us of sin). In doing that, we diminish the grace of God, we underestimate the value of the shed blood of Jesus and we brush off Jesus’ sacrifice as something trivial and probably unnecessary.

Without discipleship, we are just a bunch of people fattening our souls under wonderful sermons while passively disobeying the Lord’s Great Commission. The act of weekly slogging with our discipleship groups is what makes us grow stronger, faster and sharper in the spirit.

F.B. Meyer on expository preaching:

“We possess nothing so precious, we value nothing so much; we have no source of good so full, fruitful and enduring; we have nothing to compare to the Lord Jesus Christ;. To Him we bear witness.” “Whom we proclaim,” cried the apostle, “admonishing every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.”

Brethren, let strive and labour towards the same end! Let our Lord Jesus be the one abiding reality with us, in our innermost thought, our private devotions, our ministry, and our preaching! Let Him be first, and last, and midst, and all-in-all! Let us wake with Him in the morning, walk with HIm all day, and lie down to sleep in the quiet sense of His presence! To present Him to men, by life and ministry and written and spoken speech, must be the thread on which are strung all the incidents of our varied experiences!

Knowing history and biography will protect us from trendiness in the ministry and will reveal the blind spots of our own age and enrich us with the insights that other generations have received.

— John Piper

Our world is dripping with God’s presence and calling us to worship Him alone. But our eyes are dim and our understanding is darkened. Eternity is lost in the immediacy of our world.

—Kyle Strobel

Wholesale rejection of past theological viewpoints simply because they are old is just as narrow-minded a perspective as the refusal to consider anything that is new.

— Michael A. G. Haykin