Give yourself time and quietness in this Advent season and seek this experience. Pray for yourself the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 3:14–19 – “that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” – that you may have power “to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
Christmas split history. Foretastes of the future abound. Drink deeply on what he achieved for us. And be filled with hope for all that is coming.
Prayer is not for the enhancement of our comforts but for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.
If we abandon the fullness of the gospel to make racial and ethnic diversity quicker or easier, we create a mere shadow of the kingdom, an imitation.
So I arrive at this definition of gratitude. Gratitude is a species of joy which arises in your heart in response to the goodwill of someone who does or tries to do you a favor.
It is true that God can be known and enjoyed in every legitimate vocation; but when he deploys you from one place to the next, he offers fresh and deeper drinking at the fountain of his fellowship. God seldom calls us to an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of his sustaining grace.
Think and mull and ponder and chew until you see God the way they see God – namely, as precious and valuable and beautiful and desirable. This is how the Word serves joy. Thus, even as the Spirit and the Word are inseparable in our lives, so prayer and meditation are inseparable. The fight for joy always involves both. Prayer without meditation on the Word of God will disintegrate into humanistic spirituality. It will simply reflect our own fallen ideas and feelings – not God’s.
May the pulpits of the land ring with exposition of the Word of God and exultation in the God of the Word.
Jesus warns that the word of God, the gospel, which is meant to give us life, can be choked to death by riches.
Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.
If you are like me, you may have strong longings from time to time for the mighty working of the holy Spirit in your life... But what I have found most often in my own life is the failure to open myself to the full measure of the Spirit’s work by believing the promises of God.
If you hold a grudge, you doubt the Judge.
This is the message of the coronavirus: Stop relying on yourselves and turn to God. You cannot even stop death. God can raise the dead.
Brand-new truths are probably not Truths.
No One Is a Relativist at the Bank.
Look to Jesus this Christmas. Receive the reconciliation that he bought. Don’t put it on the shelf unopened. And don’t open it and then make it a means to all your other pleasures. Open it and enjoy the gift. Rejoice in him. Make him your pleasure. Make him your treasure.
God and his word are the reality we need – the Rock under our feet.
Whatever it takes, Lord, keep me desperate for You because I tend to wander when I stop feeling my need for You.
The aim of the climb is not intellectual satisfaction. The aim is worship. God gets more honor when we worship on the basis of what we know about him than he gets if we worship on the basis of what we don’t know.
Theology is a means to enjoying and worshiping God, or it is useless.