June 2011
56 posts
6 tags
It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion, of inner dishonesty, or is it a sign that we are guided without our knowing, or is it both?
Today the reading speaks dreadfully harshly of God’s incorruptible judgement. He certainly sees how much personal feeling, how much anxiety there is in today’s decision, however...
May 2011
78 posts
It’s Not About You →
It’s Not About You www.nytimes.com America needs to adjust its message to college graduates.
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Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in Him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the...
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There is no misery of mind or spirit to compare with estrangement from God through sin and the refusal to confess it in penitence; and there is no joy like fellowship with God through repentance, confession, and forgiveness.
- John Stott, Confess Your Sins
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Then there are those who are unable to say [that they are children of God]...
– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
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I threw myself into the [ministry] in a very unchristian and rather arrogant...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter to Elizabeth Zinn
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May God grant us honesty as we face this terrifying truth, this truth we shall...
– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies on the Sermon on the Mount
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What’s bothered me most about the fundamentalists is that they seem...
– Bono, Bono: In Conversation
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Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years
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If you only watch to see whether a man is going to say things that are...
– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies on the Sermon on the Mount
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Lay aside your sackcloth and ashes, and rise to the dignity of your true...
– C.H. Spurgeon
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We cannot deny of others what we demand for ourselves.
– Bono
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The Church of God for many a day has been trying to mix certain incompatibles....
– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies on the Sermon on the Mount
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Anytime a community hinders us from coming before Christ as a single individual,...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship
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We are to adopt towards no one in the church, nor require anyone to adopt...
– John Stott, Confess Your Sins
Ecce homo! —Behold the man! In [Christ] the world was reconciled to God....
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
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What you see in your spiritual life today is the direct result of what...
– Joshua Harris, Not Even a Hint
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The greatest single secret of spiritual development lies in personal, humble,...
– John Stott, Confess Your Sins
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We can put off our mask before one who is pledged to secrecy, and put it on...
– Jack Winslow
The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity
The Christian is essentially a unique and special kind of person. This is...
– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies on the Sermon on the Mount
I think we need a good deal of correction on this point, indeed, I must admit...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
There was a day when I died, utterly died, to George Mueller and his opinions,...
– George Mueller
We all know that Christ has, in effect, been eliminated from our lives. Of...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity
When we go before God in prayer with a cold, dull heart, and in a lifeless and...
– Jonathan Edwards, Christ’s Agony
Tuesday, August 17, 1742. Exceedingly depressed in spirit; it cuts and wounds my...
– David Brainerd, The Life and Diary for David Brainerd.
What Jesus Left Behind →
So scant a corporeal trace did Jesus leave that some have claimed he was a myth. The only things he left behind were people who believed his gospel. Jesus left his Word (teaching) and his church (a few hundred people).
The older the world grows, the more heated becomes the conflict between Christ...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
To ‘sow to the flesh’ is to pander to it, to cosset, cuddle and...
– John Stott, The Message of Galatians
In the bleak light of the Depression: Rare colour... →
Q: Did you ever have an imaginary friend?
A: Yes. Sometimes I am two people....
– Entry in Tara Cash’s personal book Dad, Share Your Life with Me from The Man Called Cash
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Mark this also, if God send thee to the sea, and promise to go with thee, and to bring thee safe to land, he will raise up a tempest against thee, to prove whether thou wilt abide by his word, and that thou mayest feel thy faith, and perceive his goodness. For if it were always fair weather, and thou never brought into such jeopardy, whence his mercy only delivered thee, thy faith should be but...
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Like infants, when they are born into the world, God’s children are not...
– J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century
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Christianity preaches the unending worth of the apparently worthless and the...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity
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Let me know you, for you are the God who knows me; let me recognize you as you...
– St. Augustine, Confessions
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I would have you sit down and count the cost; and if you cannot find it in your...
– Jonathan Edwards
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Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ....
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
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The cross of Christ is the supreme illustration, and the argument of the New...
– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross
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We become Christians through faith and repentance, and we grow as Christians...
– Tim Chester, You Can Change
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You never depart from us, yet it is hard for us to return to you.
– St. Augustine, Confessions
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Quality is the greatest enemy of any kind of mass-leveling…Quantities are...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years BLOG
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The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is...
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
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I walked in the sunshine with a scholar who had effectively forfeited his...
– J. I. Packer, Knowing God (via scho)
In the next paragraph…
“Constantly we find ourselves slipping into bitterness and apathy and gloom as we reflect on [our crosses] which we frequently do. The attitude we show to the world is a sort of dried up stoicism, miles removed from the...
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It is recognized in Christian theology—and indeed on a lower plane it is...
– T.S. Eliot, The ‘Pensées’ of Pascal
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Do I want to be strong like Christ, so I will be admired as strong, or so that I...
– John Piper
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God created the world in an instant, and it was a...
Timothy Keller, King’s Cross
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I used to talk glibly as thought I knew the meaning of it all, but unless I had...
– St. Augustine