Author Archives: Matt Jury
God’s Love Is Holy Love
If God’s love is holy love, as it is, then it is concerned not only to act in holiness (as in the cross of Christ), but also to promote holiness (in the people of God).
John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 309.
The Highest Secret of Bible Study
The highest secret of Bible study is that teachable spirit which is inseparable from obedience…. Our Lord says, “If any man will do His will He shall know of the doctrine” (John 7.17); in other words, obedience is the organ of the spiritual revelation. Insight into the Scriptures is never independent of the obedient frame, but is conditioned upon actual conformity to their precepts and sympathy with their spirit. True biblical learning is not so much mental as experimental. There are professed teachers and preachers who no more grasp the truth they nominally hold than does a sparrow grasp the message that passes through the telegraph wife on which it perches.”
original emphasis, Arthur T. Pierson, Knowing the Scriptures (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 1994), xi.
Daily Insurrections in the Heart
My heart is like a country but half subdued. Mutinies and insurrections are daily happening.
HT: Miscellanies
Hearing the Voice of Christ
Unless as a result of your study of the Bible you hear the imperial tone, the voice of the living Christ talking in your inmost soul, your Bible knowledge is a mere technique that will burn and ruin you…. No man or woman, young man or young woman, youth or maiden, will cultivate the habit of waiting to listen for the direct message of Christ and be disappointed. Then your Bible will be a new book.
In Honor of Mothers
You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, training them up in God’s fear, minding the house, and making your household a church for God as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.
Excuses Are the Devil’s Currency
Reasons will never be wanting in our minds why we cannot be bright and eminent Christians just now. It is very possible to admire a high standard of spirituality in others, while we are content with very low practice ourselves. We persuade our selves there is something peculiar in our particular case which makes it almost impossible to shine…. [Excuses] are generally the Devils coinage. Let us settle it firmly in our hearts, that there are few of us indeed who cannot glorify God just where we are without any change. All our excuses are as dust in the balance when placed against that promise “my grace is sufficient for thee.” Let us not deceive ourselves. By the grace of God we may be bright saints even now.
J. C. Ryle, Consider Your Ways (London: Wertheim & Macintosh, 1849), 22.
“I Just Can’t Forgive Myself”
If God forgives us we must forgive ourselves otherwise its like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.
HT: @CSLewisDaily
Prayer Draws Us to God
We do not say that prayer really changes the purpose of God, though it may be sometimes so expressed in condescension to our infirmities ; but we say his course of dealing is quite different with those who pray and those who do not. We may think, indeed, that we are drawing God nearer to us, when we in truth draw nearer to him, as a person with a boat-hook which he fixes to the shore is ready to think when he draws the boat, that he is moving the land towards him, when in fact he himself is coming nearer the land.
This the Power of the Cross
The power that kept [Christ] on the cross was a far mightier one than would have been necessary to leave it. It was not by the nails through His hands and feet that He was held, nor by the ropes with which His arms were bound, nor by the soldiers watching Him; no, but by invisible hands — by the cords of redeeming love and by the constraint of a divine design.
James Stalker, The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966), 108-109.
Life Is Worship 