A Missionary God

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Matt Jury under G. Campbell Morgan

The God of the Bible is a missionary God.

G. Campbell Morgan, Hosea: The Heart and Holiness of God, p. 115

Spiritual Boredom

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Matt Jury under Jim Berg

The greatest sign that believers are not illuminated is that there is no delight and savor of spiritual things. They can logically defend their salvation… but they have never seen the beauty and glory of their salvation…. most believers are easily bored with spiritual things. That is never the condition of a believer who has seen a particular truth with illuminated eyes.

Jim Berg, Created for His Glory, pp. 98-99

A Thousand Times a Day

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Matt Jury under Roy Hession

Dying to self is not a thing we do once for all. There may be an initial dying when God first shows these things, but ever after it will be a constant dying, for only so can the Lord Jesus be revealed constantly through us (1 Cor. 4.10). All day long the choice will be before us in a thousand ways. It will mean no plans, no time, no money, no pleasure of our own. It will mean a constant yielding to those around us, for our yieldedness to God is measured by our yieldedness to man. Every humiliation, everyone who tries and vexes us, is God’s way of breaking us, so that there is a yet deeper channel in us for the life of Christ.

Roy Hession, The Calvary Road, p. 25

Worship = Love

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Matt Jury under J. Oswald Sanders

Worship flows from love. Where love is meager, worship will be scant. Where love is deep, worship will overflow.

J. Oswald Sanders, Enjoying Intimacy with God, p. 24

The Pastor and His Hymnal

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Matt Jury under Andrew Blackwood

Every pastor should know his church hymnal better than any other book except the Bible…. As in coming to know the Bible, the obvious way to master the hymnbook is to use it every day, each time with a definite aim.

Andrew Blackwood, The Fine Art of Public Worship, pp. 99-100

Won’t You Do More?

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Matt Jury under Richard Baxter

Is this all thy compassion for lost sinners? Wilt thou do no more to seek and to save them? … shall they die and be in hell before thou wilt speak to them one serious word to prevent it? Shall they there curse thee forever that thou didst no more in time to save them?

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, 204

The Stumblingblock Over Which Everyone Stumbles

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Matt Jury under D. T. Niles

In every case the problem lies here, that no one accepts that it is over Jesus that He stumbles. Everyone who stumbles claims that he stumbled simply over some unnecessary aspect of the Church’s teaching about Jesus.

D. T. Niles, The Preacher’s Task and the Stone of Stumbling, p. 16

Absolutes in a World of Relativity

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Matt Jury under John Owen

Without ‘absolutes’ revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice, and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers. We could never know who God is, how He is to be worshipped, or wherein true happiness lies. If virtue is sought … as a road to temporal happiness, the striving and the progress starts and ends in self — but selfishness is itself a vice! No attitude of mind which does not acknowledge dependence upon Almighty God and seek to glorify Him has any element of good or virtue in it.

John Owen, Biblical Theology, p. xl

Are You Frustrated with Your Church?

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Matt Jury under Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.

. . . let [the pastor or zealous member] nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein, (New York: HarperOne, 1954), 29.

HT: Desiring God blog