Tag Archives: Sanctification
Don’t Assume Someone Else’s Motives
Thanks for your patience as I took a brief break from blogging.
Man cannot know the thoughts and intents of the hearts of man.
Ian Paisley (1926-2014)
HT: @sermonindex
Are You in Danger of Becoming Too Good?
We can never have too much humility, too much faith in Christ, too much holiness, too much spirituality of mind, too much charity, too much zeal in doing good to others. Then let us be continually forgetting the things behind, and reaching forth unto the things before (Phil. 3.13). The best of Christians in these matters is infinitely below the perfect pattern of his Lord. Whatever the world may please to say, we may be sure there is no danger of any of us becoming “too good”.
A Very Dangerous Thing to Do
The most dangerous thing you can do is…take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.
The Most Important Thing about Each of Us
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
HT: @GospelApplied
God Gave You a Mind for a Reason!
The main reason God has given us minds is that we might seek out and find all the reasons that exist for treasuring him in all things and above all things. He created the world so that through it and above it we might treasure him.
John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 15.
Nothing without the Bible
God uses His Word to make us what we could not be on our own.
Bryan Chapell, Christ-centered Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 269.
The Combined Forces of the Trinity
The Father is intimately involved in our lives so that our circumstances train us in godliness. The Son has set us free from both the penalty and the power of sin so that we now live under the reign of grace. The Spirit gives us a new attitude toward sin and a new power to change.
The combined forces of the Trinity are at work in our lives to set us free and make us holy.
Tim Chester, You Can Change (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 53.
The Church Is a Hospital Where Everyone Is Sick
Grace, while we live here, is in souls which, because they are imperfectly renewed, dwell in bodies subject to several humours, and these will incline the soul sometimes to excess in one passion, sometimes to excess in another…. We must supply out of our love and mercy that which we see wanting in them. The church of Christ is a common hospital, wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, so all have occasion to exercise the spirit of wisdom and meekness.
Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2011), 33-34.
Satan Could Be the Greatest Disciple Ever If…
While all true disciples are theologians, not all theologians are true disciples. If knowing the Bible and understanding theology were reliable measures of discipleship, Satan would be the greatest disciple ever. After all, his knowledge of Scripture is exceptional and he’s been observing the spiritual realm for quite a long time.
Greg Dutcher, Killing Calvinism
Life Is Worship 