• “People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.” — J. C. Ryle

• “True education is not giving in the answer, it’s in showing them how to find it.” — Kelly Crawford

• “[N]ot one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God.” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.3.6)

• “The cold water of persecution is often thrown on the church’s face to fetch her to herself when she is in a swoon of indolence or pride.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “The very familiarity of blessings sometimes makes us insensible to their value."— J. C. Ryle

• “Luther once said, ‘The devil hates goose quills,’ and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit’s blessing, have done his kingdom much damage.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “Man does not need to know exhaustively in order to know truly and certainly.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” — Unknown

• “The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.” — La Rochefoucauld

• “Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your own living room by people you wouldn’t have in your house.” — David Frost

• “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell

• “I’m not lost.” — Frank Churchill

• “Non-Christian investigators of nature are as successful as they are because they work with stolen capital.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” — St. Augustine

• “If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear everything.” — Dan Horn

• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Sir Richard Steele

• “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.” — Jackie Mason

• “People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke

• “A ship in the harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd

• “I will keep the ground that God has given me and perhaps in his grace, he will ignite me again. But ignite me or not, in his grace, in his power, I will hold the ground.” — John Knox

• “Heaven is eternity in the presence of God through a Mediator. Hell is eternity in the presence of God with no Mediator.” — Tony Reinke

• “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” 
— Martin Luther

• “I began my education at a very early age—in fact, right after I left college.” — Winston Churchill

• “Self-righteousness is being more aware of and irritated by the sins of others than you are conscious of and grieved by your own.” — Paul Tripp

• “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.” — Elias Boudinot

• “A lot of men have a wishbone where they ought to have a backbone.” — Unknown

• “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they simply make the best of everything they have.” — Unknown

• “People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.” — Thomas Sowell

• “My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “Paul’s life was a prophetic book for Jews to read and see how to be saved, so our lives should be an easy to read book for the lost on how they can easily be saved.” — Ken Ham

• “One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon. Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine.” — Richard Baxter

• “What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.” — J. C. Ryle

• “Thanks, modest girls. Appreciated by a male whose time studying the ground is proportional to each degree of rising temperature.” — Unknown

• “Question everything but Scripture.” — Geoff Botkin

• “Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain

• “Even if you are on the right track, but just sit there, you will still get run over.” — Will Rogers

• "When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy." — Corrie ten Boom

• “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” — George Washington

• “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” — C. S. Lewis

• “The measure of a great teacher isn’t what he or she knows; it’s what the students know.” — John C. Maxwell

• “Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.” — Paxton Hood

• “[T]he ministry of Satan is employed to instigate the reprobate, whenever the Lord, in the course of his providence, has any purpose to accomplish in them...” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.4.5)

• “Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.” — Martin Luther

• “When she married you, she gave you her life to spend. Are you spending your life wisely?” — Dan Horn

• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
 — Edmund Burke

• “Drag and Drop for Windows users: DRAG your peecee off your desk, and DROP it in the trash.” — some forum member’s tagline

• “I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx

• “We should never do what we cannot pray God to bless.” — James Smith

— March 26th, 2012 —

“Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right,” by Samuel Rodigast

At church tonight a friend and I were discussing hymns. I was lamenting that in some churches we have such a limited number of hymns we draw from on a regular basis. We cycle through our six, seven, maybe eight most well-known hymns; and while they may indeed be solid, they’ve become somewhat polarized. We’ve worn them out. “Surely,” I posited to my friend, “out of the eighteen hundred years’-worth of hymns that have been written—surely there are maybe just a few more that are worth singing?”
 
The fact of the matter is that there are many, many, many rich, beautiful, excellent psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs that we (as a rule) just don’t sing. Why don’t we sing them? I’m not really sure. Perhaps it’s because some of those old hymns and psalms are just hard to sing (which they are, sometimes!); perhaps it’s just a widespread case of unfamiliarity—the old hymns have been forgotten. I know that of the older hymns I love and appreciate, I never loved or appreciated any one of them until I’d first been exposed to it, that’s for sure!
 
So. With that in mind: while I’m neither traveling any dark roads nor drinking any bitter cups right now, this hymn is still, to me, a beautiful statement of trust in the perfect sovereignty of the Lord; and often, when I feel the twinge of anxiety (and maybe more than just a twinge), the first few words of this hymn come to mind. It’s one of my favorites.
 

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Holy his will abideth;
I will be still whate’er he doth;
And follow where he guideth:
He is my God: though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall:
Wherefore to him I leave it all.
 
Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He never will deceive me;
He leads me by the proper path;
I know he will not leave me:
I take, content, what he hath sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait his day.
 
Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it, all unshrinking:
My God is true; each morn anew
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.
 
Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet am I not forsaken;
My Father’s care is round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall:
And so to him I leave it all.
 
Samuel Rodigast (German, 1675)

 
What’s one of your favorite hymns, and why?

Posted on March 26th, 2012 by Kyle Shepherd | Tags: ,Hymns, music, poetry |