We serve a God who specializes on things that are impossible with man. Nothing is too difficult for Him. We serve a God who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all we could ever ask or think. And I want you to take that care, that burden, whatever it is and roll it all over to the Lord right now. Just give it to Him. Cast your burdens upon the Lord. Just let it go.
—Don Moen
There is a body of doctrine worth contending for, and there are secondary applications of those doctrines which we should not contend with each other about.
But mark it down in your mind: there is truth worth contending for. There is truth worth dying for. That is hard for our relativistic culture to understand. We might be able to imagine dying for people, but not many today consider any truths so precious they will contend for them or even die for them.
—John Piper
Just because the brilliant Commander in Chief promises victory on the beaches doesn’t mean the troops can throw their weapons overboard. The promise of victory assumes valor in battle. When God promises that his church will be kept from defeat, his purpose is not that we lay down our sword and go to lunch, but that we pick up the sword of the Spirit and look confidently to God for the strength to fight and win. Wherever the promised security of God is used to justify going AWOL, we may suspect there is a traitor in the ranks.
—John Piper
John Owen on mortification:
[To mortify means to kill,] and the end aimed at in this duty is destruction, as it is in all killing: the utter ruin, destruction and gradual annihilation of all the remainders of this cursed life of sin. Indwelling sin has been dethroned and dealt its death blow through the believer’s union with Christ in His death. Now, with the Spirit’s aid, the Christian must spend his lifetime draining sin’s lifeblood. We may not relax, for sin “will no otherwise die, but by being gradually and constantly weakened; spare it and it heals its wounds, and recovers strength.”
Christian holiness is the implanting, writing and realizing of the gospel in our souls… the word changed into grace in our hearts. [Christian] growth is nothing but increase in conformity to that word.
Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing of their natures from the pollution and uncleanness of sin, renewing in them the image of God, and thereby enabling them from a spiritual and habitual principle of grace, to yield obedience unto God.
Or more briefly, it is the universal renovations of our natures by the Holy Spirit into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.
—John Owen, Triumph Over Temptation
Jojo Agot 