Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it.
D. Martin Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)
HT: @leadershipbookz
Tag Archives: Christ
Do Not Make God into Your Own Image or Imagination!
If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where He is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find Him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, p. 137.
The Church’s Wedding Dress
Commenting on the fine linen worn by believers in Revelation 19.8:
It’s only because of the Bridegroom’s work that the chosen princess, the church, can enter the presence of her Lord. Yet her wedding dress is woven through her many acts of faithfulness while away from her Bridegroom on the fallen Earth. The picture is compelling. Each prayer, each gift, each hour of fasting, each kindness to the needy, all of these are the threads that have been woven together into this wedding dress. Her works have been empowered by the Spirit, and she has spent her life on Earth sewing her wedding dress for the day when she will be joined to her beloved Bridegroom.
Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2004), 199-200.
Something for Thee
Your Vote Matters in Eternity
Our vote for President of the United States . . . is important. We are held accountable . . . for the discharge of our ruling responsibilities in this life. But our vote for President is less important than our vote to receive new members for baptism into our churches. A President is term-limited and, for that matter, so is the United States (and every other nation). The reception of members into the church, however, marks out the future kings and queens of the universe. Our church membership rolls say to the people on them, and to the outside world, “These are those we believe will inherit the universe, as joint-heirs with Christ.”
Ivory Palaces
What Atonement Means
Sin is indeed always in us, and godly people feel it; but it is covered.
HT: @crossway
The Lord Hears Cries That Never Pierce the Human Ear
The Lord heard both the heart cries, and the needed succour was given. The Lord can hear cries that never pierce the human ear. There is no sigh so low as to escape His hearing. The faintest breath of an aspiration sounds like thunder in the ears of the King. “He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.”
Daily Failures and Sins
[The believer] has, indeed, his daily failures and sins, which must needs be confessed and put away; but his confessions are those of a child at the feet of his father, and the Father’s forgiveness in the death of Christ washes off those daily sins, and thus he is kept clean every whit (John 13.10). He never becomes and accused culprit at the bar of Justice. His appreciative sense of the Father’s love of him will ever prompt him to be sensitive to sin, and cause him to purify his daily conduct; or, if his appreciations grow faint and feeble, and thereby he be betrayed into more or less carelessness of living, then will the Father deal with him according to a father’s discipline, but he remains uncharged. God is no longer his judge, having already judged him in Christ. He is accused of nothing and never again condemned. His daily failures are dealt with in the intercourse of Father and Son. Perfect in the perfectness of Christ, the Father sees him as without blemish, and feels for him the very endearment with which He looks upon His Only Begotten and Well Beloved. Uncharged of every claim, all his life long, is he who is in Christ.
W. R. Nicholson, Oneness with Christ (Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Assoc, 1903), 116-117.
Inward Relationship versus Outward Religion
You may read your Bible, and pray over it till you die; you may wait on the preached Word every Sabbath-day, . . . [But] if you are not brought to cleave to him, to look to him, to believe in him, to cry out with inward adoration: “My Lord, and my God”—”How great is his goodness! How great is his beauty!”—then the outward observance of the ordinances is all in vain to you.
Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843)
HT: desiringgod.org
Life Is Worship 