Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian woman who, along with her family, was imprisoned by the Nazis because they had been seeking to hide Jews from detention. Corrie witnessed the death of her beloved family members and, therefore, had an understandable hatred for the guards who treated them so terribly. Yet, after the war, when facing one of those guards, Corrie remembered how Christ had forgiven her and asked for help to forgive the guard. As she extended her hand to this man in obedience to God, she felt overwhelming love. Writing about this experience in her book, The Hiding Place, she says, “And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on [Christ’s]. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself” (p. 247).
When we worship, we are the performers and God is the audience. This is true whether we’re gathered together with others or whether we’re praising God in our personal devotions.
Søren Kierkegaard
The underlining motivation of our prayer life should be the recurring reminder that God is far better to us than we will ever deserve or could ever imagine.
Dustin Benge
Biblical manhood and womanhood begin in the same place — in Christ.
Dustin Benge
God gives us not the answers we want, but the answers we need. He calls upon us to trust Him even when life seems to make no sense.
Randy Alcorn
God will not throw up His arms in exasperation and walk away from the mission dejected. No, God doesn’t need us for His already victorious mission, but He does invite us to participate, to join Him in victory. He is in control.
God takes that which is insufficient and uses it to accomplish His purpose. He took an elderly, childless couple and made a people more numerous than the stars. He used a small group of people in a house to start His global church. Our God can take whatever is given in faith and multiply its impact in unfathomable ways for His mission. God is about multiplication.
Sacrifice drives out comfort. Sacrifice is uncomfortable. But sacrificial giving is what we find celebrated in Scripture. God looked favorably on Abel’s offering because he sacrificed his best. God blessed Abraham because he was willing to sacrifice his son. Jesus pointed out the widow with two coins because she gave all she had. Biblical giving is sacrificial. And God uses the sacrifice to shape the giver’s heart and advance His Kingdom. Multiplication often requires sacrifice.
God wants us to trust him with our possessions and work to advance his Kingdom. But ultimately, it is not our possessions or work that will cause the multiplication. We give and work, knowing that it is God who is in control, and it is His work that causes multiplication. While we eagerly participate in His mission, He multiplies the bread and fish. Multiplication is a result of God’s work, not our work.
At times, we are in circumstances that are personally crucifying. We are in situations where everything so obviously requires the mighty work of God. If He does not prove faithful on our behalf, there will be no way out of the agonizing dilemma. When our Lord is so clearly our only hope (and then He comes through faithfully), we again grow in a deeper knowledge of Him and His ways.
So I’ll cherish
the old rugged Cross,
Till my trophies at
last I lay down;
I will cling
to the old rugged Cross,
And exchange it someday
for a crown.
“The Old Rugged Cross.” It is arguably the most beloved hymn of all time.
George Bennard
Worship is the activity of the new life of a believer in which, recognizing the fullness of the Godhead as it is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and his mighty redemptive acts, he seeks by the power of the Holy Spirit to render to the living God the glory, honor, and submission which are his due.
~Robert G. Rayburn~
“To be a true minister to men is to accept new happiness and new distress,” wrote Pastor Phillip Brooks. “The man who gives himself to other men can never be a wholly sad man; but no more can he be a man of unclouded gladness. To him shall come with every deeper consecration a before untasted joy, but in the same cup shall be mixed sorrow that was beyond his power to feel before.”
A man must be able to affirm, I know for certain, that what I teach is the only Word of the high Majesty of God in heaven, his final conclusion and everlasting, unchangeable truth, and whatsoever concurs and agrees not with this doctrine, is altogether false, and spun by the devil.
~Martin Luther~
There are three important questions to ask when discerning true doctrine: Did Jesus teach it in the Gospels? Is it taught in the book of Acts? Is it taught in the Epistles? If it is, then it is sound doctrine. If it is not taught in all these places in Scripture, then do not accept those teachings.
Raul Ries
Entranced by this concept, St. Augustine wrote, “The harmony between the single and the double...has been naturally so implanted in us (by whom indeed, if not by Him who created us?) that not even the illiterate can remain unaware of it.”
The Trinity 4.2.4, tr. Stephen McKenna, in The Fathers of the Church, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari (Catholic University of America Press, 1963), Vol. 45, p.134.
When we are in hopeless despair, our sufferings seem to be pointless. Yet, our difficulties have this invaluable purpose-built into them: "that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead." Living by grace requires humility and faith. God gives grace to the humble, and faith accesses grace. In the trials of life, God is working on developing these relational realities (spiritual realities that become real through a growing relationship with Jesus).
Bob Hoekstra
Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world and lost your soul. Was it worth it?
~Billy Graham~
Whether or not they realize it, all people lean on —depend on —something: physical strength, intelligence, beauty, wealth, achievements, family, friends, and so on. Until we come to the realization it is God who provides we are always striving without rest. Jesus said come to me who are wiery and heavy laden and I will give you rest.
It was sin, that made our bodies mortal ... therefore do not yield obedience to such an enemy.
~Matthew Henry~
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