Author Archives: Matt Jury
Are You Trying To Do Church without Love?
There is no use trying to do church work without love. A doctor, a lawyer may do good work without love, but God’s work cannot be done without love.
Christ Reveals the Possibilities of Life
Queen Elizabeth broke the mirror on seeing her gray hairs and furrowed face. Our knowledge of God in Jesus Christ reveals to us the defects and weaknesses of our lives, and yet reveals to us also the possibilities of life, so that we never know until we see Him what we are nor what we can become.
Joy Has Dawned upon the World
God Is Valuable for His Own Sake
If we have regarded religion merely as a means of getting things — even lofty and unselfish things — then when the things that have been gotten are destroyed, our faith will fail. When loved ones are taken away, when disappointment comes and failure, when noble ambitions are set at naught, then we turn away from God. We have tried religion, we say, we have tried prayer, and it has failed. Of course it has failed! God is not content to be an instrument in our hand or a servant at our beck and call.
Has it never dawned on us that God is valuable for His own sake, that just as personal communion is the highest thing that we know on earth, so personal communion with God is the sublimest height of all? If we value God for His own sake, then the loss of other things will draw us all the closer to Him; we shall then have recourse to Him in time of trouble as to the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. If here and now we have the one inestimable gift of God’s presence and favour, then all the rest can wait till God’s good time.
J. Gresham Machen What Is Faith? (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 73-74.
What It Means To Be Humble
Being humble is not a matter of pretending to be worthless, but is a form of realism, not only regarding the real badness of one’s sins and stupidities and the real depth of one’s dependence on God’s grace, but also regarding the real range of one’s abilities. Humble believers know what they can and cannot do. They note both their gifts and their limitations, and so are able to avoid both the unfaithfulness of letting their God-given powers lie fallow and the foolhardiness of biting off more than they can chew.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), 48.
Pray in the Words of the Scriptures
Prayers which are cast in the mould of God’s own revelation of Himself will not fail of answer. True prayer catches up the promises that flutter down to us, and flings them up again like arrows.
Real Answers to Prayer
Make me sensible of real answers to actual requests, as evidence of an interchange between myself on earth and my Saviour in heaven.
Your Value in God’s Sight
God’s valuation of His people is established by His valuation of Christ
D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992), 176.
Carol of Joy
Life Is Worship 