Be so thoroughly

"How many a very excellent woman, who is received into church fellowship among the people of God, and thinks herself one of the elect, is to be found full of wrath and bitterness, a slave of mischief and of sin, a tattler, a slanderer, a busybody; entering into other people's houses, and turning every thing like comfort out of the minds of those with whom she comes in contact---and yet she is the servant of God and of the devil too! Nay, my lady this will never answer; the two never can be served thoroughly. Serve your master, whoever he be.

If you do profess to be religious, be so thoroughly; if you make any profession to be a Christian, be one; but if you are no Christian, do not pretend to be. If you love the world, then love it; but cast off the mask, and do not be a hypocrite."

Charles Spurgeon Elijah's Appeal to the Undecided

Punishment & Perfect

“God requires two things of us: punishment for our sins and perfection in our lives. Our sins must be punished, and our lives must be righteous. But we cannot bear our own punishment, and we cannot provide our own righteousness. Therefore, God, out of His immeasurable love for us, provided his own Son to do both. Christ bears our punishment, and Christ performs our righteousness. And When we receive Christ, all of his punishment and all of his righteousness is counted as ours.”

- John Piper, This Momentary Marriage

The God of the gospel

“The gospel shows us that God is far more holy and absolute than the moralists’ god, because he could not be satisfied by our moral efforts, even the best! On the other hand, the gospel shows us that God is farmore loving and gracious than the relativists’ god. They say that God (if he exists) just loves everyone no matter what they do. The true God of the gospel had to suffer and die to save us, while the god of the relativist pays no price to love us.”

- Timothy Keller, “Being the Church in Our Culture” (2006)

He never breaks His promises

"but I will not take my love from him

nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant

or alter what my lips have uttered."

Psalms 89:33-34

Seeing how small our lives are

"The length of our days is seventy years--

or eighty, if we have the strength;

yet their span is but trouble and sorrow

for they quickly pas,

and we fly away.

Who knows the power of your anger?

For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

Teach us to number our days aright

that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:10-12

We are blessed

“Why am I so blessed? I am blessed because, in the most painful moment in human history, Jesus willingly subjected himself to the rejection of his Father. He took on my sin and allowed himself to be rejected. In this unthinkable moment of substitution, the Trinity was torn apart as the Father turned away the Son. Here is what you and I have to understand: Jesus was willing to suffer the horrible rejection of his Father so that you and I would never, ever have to experience it ourselves.”

- Paul David Tripp

Why we can rejoice always

"Sometimes he "comes through" for us. But sometimes he doesn't, or so it seems. What's going on when we cast our dependence fully on God and he seems so unresponsive? Here we must be reminded that as we depend on the power of the Holy Spirit, he transforms us according to his plan and timetable-- which are rarely if ever in perfect conformity with our own. The reason he withholds empowerment from us is not that he lacks power or ability to transmit power to us. It's because in His infinite wisdom, sovereignty, mercy and love, he empowers only what is best for us."

"The Bookends of the Christian Life"- by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington

Christ is enough

Joy in Christ is not the opposite of suffering. The fight for faith or the fight for the joy of faith is not a fight for the prosperity gospel. It is not a fight for health, wealth and prosperity. What I would in fact argue is that it’s a fight for that alone which can enable you to suffer. It’s a fight for a relationship with Jesus that enables you to say “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth fo knowing Christ Jesus my lord.” That’s what I want more than anything. I want to be so related to Jesus that if my wife dies and I get a phone call tonight and my little girls dies…. if that happened and my wife and child were gone I would say "Christ is all." And He will be there. And I will not ever abandon Him. I will not ever fault Him for anything thing. I will always embrace Him. I will always fly to Him. That’s the way I want to relate to Jesus. That’s saving faith.

-John Piper

Our short life

Only one life,’Twill soon be past;
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

The crossed out I Hymn

Not I, but Christ, be honored, loved, exalted,
Not I, but Christ, be seen, be known, be heard,
Not I, but Christ, in every look and action,
Not I, but Christ, in every thought and word.

Not I, but Christ, to gently soothe in sorrow,
Not I, but Christ, to wipe the falling tear,
Not I, but Christ, to lift the weary burden,
Not I, but Christ, to hush away all fear.
Not I, but Christ, no idle word e’er falling,

Christ, only Christ, no needless bustling sound,
Christ, only Christ, no self-important bearing,
Christ, only Christ, no trace of I be found.
Not I, but Christ, my every need supplying,
Not I, but Christ, my strength and health to be;

Christ, only Christ, for body, soul, and spirit,
Christ, only Christ, live then Thy life in me.
Christ, only Christ, e’re long will fill my vision;
Glory excelling soon, full soon I’ll see
Christ, only Christ, my every wish fulfilling—
Christ, only Christ, my all in all to be.

_Christ, Only Christ by A. B. Simpson

We give ourselves more credit than we give Jesus

Perhaps the deepest underlying personal factor in Helen’s tension
was the need she felt to do her very best and, if possible, to be the very
best. God called her to Africa where that was not possible. There were
continuing lessons for her: learning to treat malaria by symptoms
rather than with prescribed lab tests, having to operate without having
been trained as a surgeon, needing to make bricks rather than spending
the day with patients.

Perhaps that is an issue for some of us—struggling with the reality
that God has called us to do less than we want to do or less than
what we believe is best. That can happen in any setting. For me, it’s
been especially true in my years with small children—“I got a college
degree for this?” Maybe our problem is the way we see ourselves.
Maybe we think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

If anyone was too good to die, it was Jesus. If anyone should have
done greater things than walking dusty roads and talking with people
too dense to understand him, it was Jesus. In Philippians 3, the passage
that headlines Helen’s story, is the verse, “that I may know him and
the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming
like him in his death” (verse 10). When God called Helen to less than
she expected, he was helping her become like Christ, rather than like
the best doctor or missionary she knew of. Who is it that we want to
be like?

_Noel Piper on Helen Rosevere
"Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God"

Being healthy to maintain spiritual health.

The outward circumstances of Helen Roseveare’s life may be different
from that of many of us, but her inner battles were the same. And
as we all know, our inner battles don’t stay inside. They spill out and
injure innocent bystanders, usually the people that we care about the
most.

The joy and excitement of the first three years suddenly seemed
to drain away. . . . Work began to get on top of me; unhappiness,
loneliness, fear, inferiority, all began to be acutely present.
At the same time Bible study and prayer became perfunctory
instead of joyous. . . . Witness continued, but with no real faith
or expectation of seeing results. Looking back it is easy to real-
ize that at least part of the explanation lies in the fact that, like
many of my fellow medical students, I was suffering from overwork
and strain resulting from a very full programme. . . . I . . .
thought this exhaustion meant spiritual failure.277

That is a good lesson for us to remember. Inasmuch as we have a
choice, we need to make good choices about sleeping and eating and
other things that affect our health, so that we don’t open ourselves to
sin that undermines our spiritual well-being.
And from the other side, we need to work hard to keep our connection
with God strong, through his Word and our prayer, so that we
have the perception to see when we are sliding into bad attitudes and
the likelihood of glossing over and justifying sin in our lives.

God often uses other people to drag us back when we’ve slidden
into the sins that flourish in spiritual dryness. We see this happen in
Helen’s life. It’s a humbling thing to have other people point out our
weaknesses, our sins. My inclination is to justify myself, thinking they
just don’t know all the factors that made me do or speak as I did.

_Noel Piper on Helen Rosevere
"Faithful women and their Extraordinary God"

We shouldnt be pleading for missionaries.

Since 1973, I have been living in the United Kingdom, and
seeking to present the desperate need of the three thousand
million people, alive today, who have never yet heard of our
Lord Jesus Christ and of the redemption He wrought for them
at Calvary. These are the “hidden peoples” in more than ten
thousand ethnic groups around our world. As I try to present
their needs, I pray earnestly that the Holy Spirit will stir hearts
to make a response. It seems so obvious to me that Christian
young people . . . should rise up and go. . . .”
Why is the response so poor? . . .
Is it that we Christians today have an inadequate understanding
of God’s holiness and therefore of His wrath against
sin and of the awfulness of a Christless eternity? If we were
gripped by the two facts—of the necessity for judgment of sin
because God is holy; and of the necessity of holiness in the
Christian that he may represent such a God to others—would
we not “hunger and thirst after righteousness” whatever the
cost, and would not others then see Christ in us, and be drawn
to Him?
In other words, if we [understood] the Scriptural teaching
on the need of Holiness in the life of every believer, we should
not need to plead for missionaries.

_Roseveare, Living Holiness, p. 32.

Faith in His love

“You are not called to believe in your love to God, but in God’s love to you! Do not argue, ‘I cannot love God! I have striven to my uttermost to do so, but have failed in all my endeavors, until in despair I have abandoned the thought and relinquished the attempt.’ Be it so- no effort of your own can strike a spark of love to God from your heart. Nor does God demand the task at your hands. All that He requires of you is faith in His love, as embodied and expressed in Jesus Christ to poor sinners.”

– Octavius Winslow, The Foot of the Cross

From Zero

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brothers:
not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,
not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
God chose what is low and despised in the world,
even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus,
whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and
sanctification and redemption.
Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts,
boast in the Lord.”

1 C O R I N T H I A N S 1 : 2 5 - 3 1

His Strength in my Weakness

But [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses,
insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 C O R I N T H I A N S 1 2 : 9 - 1 0



Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
I S A I A H 4 0 : 2 8 - 3 1

Death: Physical and Eternal

In an age when death hovered so closely—
from war, illness, wild animals, infection, childbirth, and injury—I
would expect parents to grasp their children tightly to them, to keep
them always in sight. On the contrary, Jonathan and Sarah, already living
in Stockbridge on the treacherous edge of the wilderness, allowed
their ten-year-old Jonathan Jr. to travel with an evangelist even further
west on a mission to Indians in the mountains—their ten-year-old!
This didn’t mean they were ignorant of the perils. This was the
time that Jonathan wrote to Jonathan Jr. about the death of a playmate.
“This is a loud call of God to you to prepare for death. . . . Never give
yourself any rest unless you have good evidence that you are converted
and become a new creature.” No, they were all too aware of the nearness
of physical death. But the death of the body was not what called
forth prayers for and pleas to their children.
The imminence of physical death made them fear not the removal of life,
but the absence of life eternal.

-Noel Piper
"Faithful Women of an Extrodinary God"

Sarah Edward's Letter to Esther

A week and a half after Edwards dies,
Sarah writes to her daughter Esther who lost her husband 6 months prior.

My very dear child, What shall I say? A holy and good God
has covered us with a dark cloud. O that we may kiss the rod,
and lay our hands upon our mouths! The Lord has done it.
He has made me adore his goodness, that we had him so
long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. O what a legacy
my husband, and your father, has left us! We are all given to
God; and there I am, and love to be.

Your affectionate mother,
Sarah Edwards

Jonathan Edwards on raising a family

“Every family ought
to be . . . a little church, consecrated to Christ and wholly
influenced and governed by His rules. And family education
and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all
other means are like to prove ineffectual.”

-Jonathan Edwards

Gazing at the saints

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.
Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
H E B R E W S 1 3 : 7 - 8

That’s why I read biography. To remember people who’ve led the
way on the path with God, to consider their lives, and to imitate their
faith. Because we have the same God, and he is the same yesterday,
today, and forever.

-Noel Piper

The bigger picture behind redemption

“The object of the work of redemption is not limited to the salvation of individual sinners, but extends itself to the redemption of the world, and to the organic reunion of all things in heaven and on earth under Christ as their original head.

The final outcome of the future, foreshadowed in the Holy Scriptures, is not the merely spiritual existence of saved souls, but the restoration of the entire cosmos, when God will be all in all under the renewed heaven on the renewed earth.”

—Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson 2008), 105-106

God is sovereign and He is good.

The great importance this has for my purpose here is to stress that this deep confidence in God's overarching providence through all calamity and misery sustained him to the end. He said, "If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings."

-John Piper, on Adoniram Judson

Paul loves Philippi

Philippians 1:9-11

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depeth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through jesus Christ-- to the glory and praise of God.

Call for help

Psalm 17:1-5

Hear, O LORD, my righteous plea;
listen to my cry
Give ear to my prayer--
It does no rise from deceitful lips
May my vindication come from you;
may your eyes see what is right.

Thought you probe my heartand examine me at night
though you test me,
you will find nothing
I have resolved that my mouth will not sin
As for the deeds of men--by the word of your lips
I have kept myself from the ways of the violent.
My steps have held to your paths;
My feet have not slipped.

I will not be shaken

Psalm 16:7-8

I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me
I have set the LORD always before me
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.

--

The Holiest Christian's main focus

“The holiest Christians are not those most concerned about holiness as such, but whose minds and hearts and goals and purposes and love and hope are most fully focused on our Lord Jesus Christ.”

- J.I. Packer

Remembering the gospel

Martin Luther once wrote that he taught the gospel "again and again, because I greatly fear that after we have laid our head to rest, it will soon be forgotten and will again disappear," That's my great fear as well-- that after hearing about the cross, we'll lay down our heads to rest and quietly forget it, instead of dwelling upon it and deriving the continual strength and assurance we need. We have a constant tendency to stop remembering the cross, and to start depending on legalism and self-effort.


-The Christ-Centered Life" by CJ Mahaney