This is one of my personal favorite hymns as well as one of my church’s favorites.
How Will You Listen to Your Pastor This Weekend?
Sermons are dangerous things. None goes out of church as he came in, but either better or worse.
HT: @JohnPiper
I Will Become What Christ Promised
If I am not today all that I hope to be, yet I see Jesus and that assures me that I shall one day be like Him.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834 – 1892)
HT: @CSLCHSnMore
Your Heart’s Desire
When God has given you your heart’s desire, what have you done with your heart’s desire?
Jeremiah Burroughs (1600-1646)
HT: @challies
Pride Is Idolatry, Worshiping a Caricature God of One’s Own Image
How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God.
Preacher, Do You Tremble before the Word You Preach?
The more the preacher has ‘trembled’ at God’s Word himself (eg. Ezra 9.4; 10.3; Isa. 66.2, 5), and felts its authority upon his conscience and in his life, the more he will be able to preach it with authority to others.
Still, My Soul, Be Still
Forgiveness Is Possible
Forgiveness is possible when the Holy Spirit works in our heart, directing our faith to the person and work of Christ, for the glory of God our Father – who forgave us and adopted us as his own.
Alfred Poirier, The Peacemaking Pastor (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 151.
Special thanks to Tammy H. who typed this week’s posts for me.
Forgiveness Is about Us, Not Me
Forgiveness does not begin and end with the person who is forgiving, nor is its emphasis on how forgiveness can help me. Whatever benefit forgiveness may have to me personally, it is not about me – it is about us. It is about people created by God to live in relationship with him and one another. As such, we are in the depths of our identity lovers of people and restorers of broken relationships. We are indeed our brother’s keeper!
original emphasis, Alfred Poirier, The Peacemaking Pastor (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 148-149.
Christ Has Not Dismissed Sin; Instead, He Has Paid Its Price in Full
When we call a person to forgive another who has offended him or her, we are not asking the offended person to minimize the extent to which the offender is responsible for his or her sin (“Well, everyone sins”) or to minimize the offense (“It was nothing”). True forgiveness is when the offended looks upon the offender and see the offender’s sin as justly deserving the wrath of God in light of God’s great holiness.
Christian forgiveness, then is granted from a position not of weakness but of true moral strength and clarity of vision. Because biblical forgiveness alone recognizes the heinousness of sin against a holy God, it alone understands the immensity of the gift given in uttering the words, “I forgive you.”
This gift, of course, is full payment for sin, which is exactly what the gospel declares that Christ has given us! The forgiveness that is won by Christ comes at the price of his death for real offense, for true guilt.
Christ has not dismissed sin; instead, he has paid its price in full.
original emphasis, Alfred Poirier, The Peacemaking Pastor (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 147.
Life Is Worship 