The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity – hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory – because at the Father’s will Jesus became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.
In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.
Im amazed at the amount of time people spend on the Internet.
Im saying that an editorial process that is preparing the material for publication counts as part of the inspiring process whereby God, in his sovereignty, gave every word.
I’m not against technology, but all tools should be used to their best advantage. We should be spending our time on things that have staying power, instead of on the latest thought of the latest blogger – and then moving on quickly to the next blogger.
Man is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled; man is divinely controlled, though he is also a responsible moral agent.
The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God.
Many humanists in the West are stirred by a sense of outrage at what professed Christians, past and present, have done; and this makes them see their humanism as a kind of crusade, with the killing of Christianity as its prime goal.
One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.
Sanctification has a double aspect. Its positive side is vivification, the growing and maturing of the new man; its negative side is mortification, the weakening and killing of the old man.
A simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Savior than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct.
Wherever Christianity has produced what historians call a ‘popular piety’ claiming to be part of the national heritage, anti-Christian reaction among the intelligentsia has followed.
If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it’s bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.
Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle however do.
God made us thinking beings, and he guides our minds as we think things out in his presence.
The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.
The more you praise, the more vigor you will have for prayer; and the more you pray, the more matter you will have for praise.
There is unspeakable comfort in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good.
What we often feel in ecstatic moments in this world – ‘I don’t ever want this to stop’ – will be the constant thought of our hearts in that world. We shall think it, knowing that in fact it never WILL stop.
Evangelizing includes the endeavor to elicit a response to the truth taught.
I must ask the Lord to direct the Holy Spirit within me to drain the life out of sin and in prayer.