Adversity has slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.
— Thomas Brooks
From EBC
Adversity has slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.
— Thomas Brooks
There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on forever.
— J. I. Packer
The central basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God, but how unshakably his heart is set on us.
— Tim Keller
One generation … believed the gospel and held… that there [are] certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything.
– D. A. Carson
Question 30: How does Christ execute the office of a king? Answer: Christ executes the office of a king, in subduing us to Himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all His and our enemies.
– Keach’s Catechism, 17th Century
Almighty God, who for our redemption gave your onlybegotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
— Book of Common Prayer, Easter Vigil 295
Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.
— John Updike
It is right to praise you, Almighty God, for the acts of love by which you have redeemed us through Jesus Christ our Lord. On this day he entered the holy city of Jerusalem in triumph, and was proclaimed as King of kings by those who spread garments and branches along his way. Let these branches be for us signs of his victory, and grant that we who bear them in his name may ever hail him as our King, and follow him in the way that leads to eternal life.
— The Book of Common Prayer
“Anyway, to answer your question, well . . . I used to believe in those things but in this job . . . well . . . I guess I’ve seen too much corruption in people to believe them anymore. We’re not just rooted to this world, we’re also a part of it. I don’t think we can ever be perfectly free or pure. We can’t rise above who we are.” After a long pause that stretched into awkwardness, Tessa asked softly, “Can someone else lift us?”
– Steven James, The Rook
There is an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ. There do we meet in Jesus Christ infinite highness and infinite humility. He is higher than the kings of the earth for He is King of kings and Lord of lords. So great is He that all men, kings, and princes are as worms of the dust before Him. . . . And yet . . . none are so low or inferior, but Christ’s condescension is sufficient to take a gracious notice of them. His condescension is great enough to become our friend, to become our companion, to unite our souls to Him in spiritual union, to take our nature upon Him, to become one of us, that He may be one with us.
– Jonathan Edwards
Here might I stay and sing– No story so divine! Never was love, dear King, Never was grief like Thine. This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend.
– Samuel Crossman
The love of Christ is rich and free; Fixed on his own eternally; Nor earth, nor hell, can it remove; Long as he lives his own he’ll love.
– William Gadsby
Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious:
See the Man of Sorrows now;
From the fight returned victorious,
Every knee to Him shall bow.
Crown Him! Crown Him!
Crowns become the Victor's brow.
– Thomas Kelley
Order of Worship • Kids' Guide
The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay upon the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to Him is not to believe that He loves you.
– John Owen
Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.
– G. K. Chesterton
In Jesus’ mouth the human word becomes God’s Word. When we pray along with the prayer of Christ, God’s Word becomes again a human word. Thus all prayers of the Bible are such prayer, which we pray together with Jesus Christ, prayers in which Christ includes us, and through which Christ brings us before the face of God. . . . If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible, and especially the Psalms, we must not, therefore, first ask what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. We must ask how we can understand the Psalms as God’s Word, and only then can we pray them with Jesus Christ.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible. But I often spent a quarter of an hour to an hour on my knees struggling to pray while my mind wandered. Now I rarely have this problem. As my heart is nourished by the truth of the Word, I am brought into true fellowship with God. I speak to my Father and to my Friend (although I am unworthy) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.
—George Muller
The Christian call to evangelism is a call not simply to persuade people to make decisions but rather to proclaim to them the Good News of salvation in Christ, to call them to repentance, and to give God the glory for regeneration and conversion. We don’t fail in our evangelism if we faithfully present the Gospel and yet the person is not converted; we fail only if we don’t faithfully present the Gospel at all.
—Mark Dever
If a seminary graduate is of average gifts, we think he should pastor a church. If he has above-average gifts, we think he should pastor a large church. But if he has exceptional gifts, we think he should teach in seminary. I say in schools of theology that this is not the way it should be.
In my view, the worst should teach, the more gifted men should pastor churches, and the very best should be missionaries. Paul and Barnabas were the best and they were missionaries.
—James Boice
If you have been truly born again you have a new and holy nature, and you are no longer moved towards sinful objects as you were before. The things that you once loved you now hate, and therefore you will not run after them. . . . The man who puts his trust in the Lord sees the pleasures of sin in a new light. . . . The flesh sees honey in the drink, but faith at once perceives that there is poison in the cup. Faith spies the snake in the grass and gives warning of it. Faith remembers death, judgment, the great reward, the just punishment and that dread word, eternity.
— C. H. Spurgeon