“[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)
“Question everything but Scripture.” — Geoff Botkin
“Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell
“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
“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
“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
“I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” — Martin Luther
“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
“If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear everything.” — Dan Horn
“[N]ot one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God.” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.3.6)
“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
“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
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." — Edmund Burke
“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” — C. S. Lewis
“Man does not need to know exhaustively in order to know truly and certainly.” — Cornelius Van Til
“Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” — George Washington
“Heaven is eternity in the presence of God through a Mediator. Hell is eternity in the presence of God with no Mediator.” — Tony Reinke
“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 very familiarity of blessings sometimes makes us insensible to their value."— J. C. Ryle
“Thanks, modest girls. Appreciated by a male whose time studying the ground is proportional to each degree of rising temperature.” — Unknown
“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
“The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.” — La Rochefoucauld
“My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.” — C. H. Spurgeon
“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
“I’m not lost.” — Frank Churchill
“I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.” — Jackie Mason
"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
“Non-Christian investigators of nature are as successful as they are because they work with stolen capital.” — Cornelius Van Til
“True education is not giving in the answer, it’s in showing them how to find it.” — Kelly Crawford
“I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx
“I began my education at a very early age—in fact, right after I left college.” — Winston Churchill
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Sir Richard Steele
“When she married you, she gave you her life to spend. Are you spending your life wisely?” — Dan Horn
“A ship in the harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd
“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
“We should never do what we cannot pray God to bless.” — James Smith
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” — St. Augustine
“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
“A lot of men have a wishbone where they ought to have a backbone.” — Unknown
“People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke
“People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.” — Thomas Sowell
“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they simply make the best of everything they have.” — Unknown
“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
“Even if you are on the right track, but just sit there, you will still get run over.” — Will Rogers
“Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain
“The measure of a great teacher isn’t what he or she knows; it’s what the students know.” — John C. Maxwell
“Drag and Drop for Windows users: DRAG your peecee off your desk, and DROP it in the trash.” — some forum member’s tagline
— May 28th, 2012 —
Sometimes it just hits me: God didn’t have to make life anything more than functional. He didn’t have to give us colors, or beauty, or music, or emotions. But He did, and we often take it for granted. A while back I ran across this article written by Jon Acuff on this subject and I thought he did a great job. Acuff says it better than I could.
Last summer I got stung four times by jellyfish while visiting Tybee Island. If you don’t follow me on Twitter than you probably missed that fascinating series of tweets that mostly involved me saying stuff like “Got stung by a jelly fish again today! Why does this keep happening?”
Looking back on it a year later it’s pretty obvious why it kept happening. I was in the ocean. Where jellyfish live. And I have amazing skin. Pores most people kill for. Just completely irresistible to most forms of marine life. The bigger question is, “Why am I not constantly getting stung by jellyfish, even when I’m not in the ocean? What is keeping them away from me in the grocery store or when I’m playing jai lai?”
Once I had chopped some wood and wrestled a bear so I could forget the pain of the stings, two activities I regularly do to offset the lack of manliness my unbelievable skin generates, I forgot all about the jellyfish.
Until the aquarium.
I saw a trio of jellyfish floating in the water and the first thought I had was one I was not expecting,
“The world didn’t have to be beautiful.”
Have you ever thought about that?
Jellyfish didn’t need to look like canopied dreams, flying underwater with a grace that shames ballet dancers.
Sunsets didn’t have to look like paint sets exploded against the wall, slowly falling down the horizon.
The tide on this planet didn’t need to dance with the pull of a glowing sphere thousands of miles away.
God didn’t have to make the world beautiful.
He could have designed sunsets like we designed light switches. On, off. He could have been utilitarian. Function meets function with form nowhere to be found. Instead, the deeper we explore the planet, the more we see the creativity he’s whimsically hidden on every inch.
Fish that provide their own light. Slugs that are neon and fireworked. Hundreds of species of butterflies migrating thousands of miles on wings that are gossamer thin. He’s playful in his design, curious and colorful in ways we can barely scratch the surface of.
Though we often paint God in two colors, “gray” and “angry,” the more I see the world, the harder it is for me to think he’s vanilla.
— February 13th, 2012 —
We hate God.
We are born into this world hating Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. From our cribs we squeak in rebellion against our parents, against the authorities He has placed in our lives; and we would shake our little fists at Almighty God Himself—if only we could roll over onto our backs to do so.
We want to see His skull crushed under our heel; we want to see His Kingdom made our footstool and see all things put under us. We cry out for His death even while, in the next breath, we cry for sustenance. The God Who fills our lungs with breath, Who upholds our life, Who created our amazing body, Who provides food for us—this God we seek to destroy.
Shocking? Yes. Surprising? Not really. Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30); and until the Spirit quickens us, we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1)—and this period of deadness, of course, spans the entire time between the moment we were conceived (Psalm 51:5) and the moment of our rebirth in Christ. During this period, “we [are] enemies” (Romans 5:10), we are not for Him—and that leaves only one other option. It’s an either-or case.
But in His infinite grace, He reached down and plucked us out of our muddy hatred of Him, sprinkled us with clean water, and gave us new life. “[W]hile we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). For no reason understood by us, God in His sovereign mercy sent His Son and poured out His unfathomable wrath upon Him that we might have life; Christ willingly gave His life and submitted to His Father and drank the cup of wrath (Jeremiah 25) that we, who gnash our teeth for His death, might have eternal life and fellowship with the Father. What wondrous love, what amazing grace, is this?
Shocking? Yes. Surprising? No doubt. After all, what have we done? Why would He do this for us?
We have done absolutely nothing to merit His grace and mercy. In fact, we are born with a legal case against us, and the only possible pardon is found through the shedding of blood, for “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). We owe an infinite debt we cannot repay. While we cried out for Jesus’ death, the Firstborn, the Spotless Lamb of God, suffered separation from His Father and took the infinite punishment upon Himself as the final sacrifice (Hebrews 9:26), that God’s justice might be satisfied and our legal case before Him might be finished—paid in full. It was on Golgotha, “The Place of a Skull,” that the skull of the serpent was crushed.
We say, “He came to Christ”; we ought to say, “He was dragged to Christ”: for this is exactly what happens. He puts a new heart in us against our will (which “free will,” I might add, is nothing more than the free will to choose sin over righteousness) and draws us to Him in His infinite kindness.
Why were we chosen? Why not the next man? Why did God not see fit to save him, too? Why us? Such is His sovereign will—that is the only answer we have. In fact, until we are regenerated, there is no difference between us and the most evil man to ever live as far as our moral status before God is concerned. None at all—and this fact only adds to the amazingness of His grace. We are left with no ground to stand on. We truly, honestly, have nothing to say. We have done nothing—we can take no credit to ourselves for any part we played. How can I say it any clearer? “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8).
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul;
What wondrous love is this, O my soul—
What wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul?
Doubtless, some will say I am being extreme. I refer them to the Scriptures as the basis for my words, and challenge them to show me a more biblical position.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. (Romans 11:33–36)