Author Archives: Matt Jury

The Nature of Love

Posted on by under D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

Now this is the very nature of love. It must express itself; it is always active; and if our love does not do that, I say it is not true love. You see, the real trouble with the person who is seated there in the study reading beautiful poems or books about love and who feels that he is controlled by it and that he is a fine Christian is this: What is really happening to that person is that he is simply in love with himself, because he appreciates these elevating thoughts. He is loving himself because he thinks he is in love. He has turned in upon himself, and that is the very antithesis to love; love does not look at itself – it is absorbed in the object of its love.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Love Rules: The Ten Commandments for the 21st Century

HT: Reformed Quotes

Our Highest Thought

Posted on by under Thomas Watson

To glorify God is to set God highest in our thoughts, and to have a venerable esteem of him. Psa xcvii 9. ‘Thou art exalted far above all gods.’ There is in God all that may draw forth both wonder and delight; there is a constellation of all beauties; he is prima causa, the original and spring head of being, who sheds a glory upon the creature. We glorify God, when we are God-admirers; admire his attributes, which are the glistering beams by which the divine nature shines forth; his promises which are the charter of free grace, and the spiritual cabinet where the pearl of price is hid; the noble effects of his power and wisdom in making the world, which is called ‘the work of his fingers.’ Psa viii 3. To glorify God is to have God-admiring thoughts; to esteem him most excellent, and search for diamonds in this rock only.

Thomas Watson (1620—1686)

HT: Reformed Quotes

Prayer, the Mirror of the Gospel

Posted on by under Paul Miller

The gospel, God’s free gift of grace in Jesus, only works when we realize we don’t have it all together. The same is true for prayer. The very thing we are allergic to—our helplessness—is what makes prayer work. It works because we are helpless. We can’t do life on our own.

Prayer mirrors the gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help. We look at the inadequacy of our praying and give up, thinking something is wrong with us. God looks as the adequacy of his Son and delights in our sloppy, meandering prayers.

Paul Miller, A Praying Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2009), 55

HT: Of First Importance