Leave it all in the Hands

 "Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you." -Elisabeth Elliot.

We don't need now

 "God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now."

-- Elisabeth Elliot.

Riches in Christ

"There are riches enough in Christ to pay all your debts, and to satisfy divine justice to the utmost farthing, without being beholden to your prayers, tears, or humiliations. Kings love no consorts; power is impatient of participation." -- Thomas Brooks:

Dragged Downward

 Earthbound Christianity will always collapse under its own weight.

If you are not pulled upward by the world to come, you will inevitably be dragged downward by the world you see.

Jeffery Perry

Always Forgiving

 “You are often sinning, but he is always forgiving you.”

— Charles Spurgeon

Looks at Himself

 “when the Christian looks at himself he can only have grounds for anxiety, indeed despair, but [in] fellowship with Christ, he can think of himself in no other way than as a member of Christ, thus making all the blessings of Christ his own.”

-John Calvin

Continually

 “I sin continually. But Christ has died and forever lives as my Redeemer, Priest, Advocate and King.”

-Martin Luther

Jeremiah 17:9

 The addicted heart.

Calvin on the natural man in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is especially inclined (procliue) toward every evil, and filled with corrupt desires (prauis cupiditatibus), and enslaved (addictum) to them, and obstinately rebellious against God. And though we sometimes display something that appears good, yet that inner disposition (animi affectus) of the soul remains in its own defilement (sordibus) and crooked perversity (obliqua perversitate).” Deeper than wrong doing is wrong loving. Pic: Calvin, *Institutio* (Basil, 1536), 44.

Who we embrace

 Godly living centers not on what we avoid, but on whom we embrace. Anytime we talk more about dos and don’ts than about Jesus, something’s wrong.

~Randy Alcorn

Hammer away

 “Hammer away ye hostile hands; your hammers break, God’s anvil stands.”

—inscription on a monument to the French Huguenots, testifying to their view of Scripture

Mere Notions

 If we satisfy ourselves in mere notions and speculations about the glory of Christ as doctrinally revealed unto us, we shall find no transforming power or efficacy communicated unto us thereby.

John Owen

FAITH IS WEAKENED

 Where any corrupt and inordinate affections, as love of the world, care about it, inclinations unto sensuality, or the like spiritual disorders do prevail, faith is weakened in its spiritual acts, especially in discerning and beholding the glory of Christ.

John Owen

Our Peace is Stable

 Our peace with God is not fragile; it is stable.

When we sin, God is displeased, and He will move to correct us and convict us of our sin. But he does not go to war against us. His bow is no longer bent, and the arrows of His wrath are no longer aimed at our hearts. He does not rattle His sword every time we break the treaty.

— R.C. Sproul

Help Me, Help Me, Help Me.

 As Christ hears the multitude of angels cry, "Holy, Holy, Holy" thundering in the heavens, He can still hear His people's daily cry of, "Help me, Help me, Help me."

Adam Ashoff

What God Ordains

 What God ordains is always good;

His will is just and holy.

As He directs my life for me,

I follow meek and lowly

My God indeed in ev'ry need

knows well how He will shield me;

to Him. then. I will yield me

 

What God ordains is always good;

He never will deceive me.

He leads me in His righteous way,

and never will He leave me

I take, content, what He has sent;

His hand that sends me sadness

will turn my tears to gladness

 

What God ordains is always good;

His loving thought attends me;

no poison can be in the cup

that my Physician sends me

My God is true; each morning new

I trust His grace unending,

My life to Him commending

 

 

 

What God ordains is always good;

He is my Friend and Father.

He suffers naught to do me harm

tho' many storms may gather

Now I may know both joy and woe;

some day I shall see clearly

that He has loved me dearly.

 

What God ordains is always good;

tho' I the cup am drinking

which savors now of bitterness,

I take it without shrinking

For after grief God gives relief,

my heart with comfort filling

and all my sorrow stilling

 

 

What God ordains is always good;

this truth remains unshaken

Tho' sorrow, need, or death be mine,

I shall not be forsaken

I fear no harm, for with His arm

He shall embrace and shield me;

so to my God I yield me

Every Hour

 "Let us not expect too much from our own hearts here below. At our best we shall find in ourselves daily cause for humiliation, and discover that we are needy debtors to mercy and grace every hour." - J. C. Ryle

Holy Ends

 God hath 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘺 ends in permitting sin, while man hath 𝘶𝘯𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘺 ends in committing it.

—Puritan Stephen Charnock, A Discourse on Divine Providence, Works 1:18

 God hath 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘺 ends in permitting sin,

while man hath 𝘶𝘯𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘺 ends in committing it.

—Puritan Stephen Charnock, A Discourse on Divine Providence, Works 1:18

Too Needy

 We are too needy to be satisfied by a mere creature.

-- John Owen.

We are too needy to be satisfied by the creation.

(Money, Houses, Land, Cars, Jobs, Arts, Entertainment, Amusement, Nature, Self).  

Much Alone with God

 Be much alone with God. Do not put Him off with a quarter of an hour morning and evening. Take time to get thoroughly acquainted. Talk everything over with Him. Pour out every thought, feeling, wish, plan, and doubt to Him. He wants converse with His creatures. Shall His creatures not want converse with Him? He wants, not merely to be on "good terms" with you, if one may use man's phrase, but to be intimate. Shall you decline the intimacy and be satisfied with mere acquaintance? What! Intimate with the world, with friends, with neighbors, but not with God? That would look ill indeed. Folly, to prefer the clay to the potter, the marble to the sculptor, this little earth and its lesser features to the mighty Maker of the universe, the great "All and in all!"

~ Horatius Bonar

Neck of the King

 “Even Macaulay had grudgingly to recognize the fortitude and commitment of the Puritan: ‘The Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, grati-tude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of the king.’

Scholarship in recent decades has recognized the vitality and power of the Puritan movement for its lasting impact not only in religion, but also in politics, education, economics, and science. The great increase in knowledge about the Puritans and the recognition of their influence has done little, however, to change the widespread perception of the Puritans as busybodies who sought to eliminate pleasure from life, by force if necessary, in the service of their arbitrary and unattractive God.

In the light of these attitudes it is truly remarkable that about fifty years ago two young scholars conceived the idea of holding a conference on Puritanism as a practical help for pastors and Christians generally. Surely a modern conference largely devoted to the study of Puritan thought as a vital resource for the contemporary church would not commend itself to many. But O.

Raymond Johnston and James I. Packer had an advantage over many: they had actually read the Puritans. They had so profited spiritually from their own study of the Puritans that they wanted others to share in the rich spiritual blessing that had been theirs.

In the late 1940s they consulted with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, minister at Westminster Chapel, London, who enthusiastically embraced the idea and offered the chapel as a meeting place for what became known as "The Puritan Conference.’”

Puritan Papers: 1:X.