Grace is Greater than our Sin

 "I thought, surely Christ is not willing to save me.

My sins were too many,
my heart too cold,
my repentance just too weak...
Grace always feels too good to be true when the sinner truly sees his sin."

– John Bunyan

Water in a sieve

 He that will keep water in a sieve must use more than ordinary diligence. -- John Bunyan. The heart is an unreliable container of truth. (In other words, we need daily and constant reminders of God's Word.)

Without the Spirit, hearing is in vain.

 

DISTINGUISHING LOVE

 

Dark Clouds bring Waters

 

BURN BY PRAYER

 The truths that I know best I have learned on my knees. I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer.

John Bunyan

Christ is All the Armour

 

SEEING MORE CLEARLY

There is a difference between growing worse and worse, and thy seeing more clearly how bad thou art.

—John Bunyan, Works 1.287

 We are sinful out of measure, but see it not to the full, until an hour of temptation comes. But when it comes, it does as a painter does, sketching out our heart… yet the sight of what we are should not keep us from coming to Jesus Christ.

—John Bunyan, Works 1.287

There is a difference between growing worse and worse, and thy seeing more clearly how bad thou art.

—John Bunyan, Works 1.287There is a difference between growing worse and worse, and thy seeing more clearly how bad thou art.

—John Bunyan, Works 1.287

There is a difference between growing worse and worse, and thy seeing more clearly how bad thou art.

—John Bunyan, Works 1.287

There is a difference between growing worse and worse, and thy seeing more clearly how bad thou art.

—John Bunyan, Works 1.287

DOST THOU UNDERSTAND

SET MY HEART ON CHRIST

Many times I am forced in my prayers first to beg God that He would take my heart, and set it on Himself in Christ, and when it is there, that He would keep it there.
—John Bunyan

THE DELIGHT OF THE FATHER

"Christ is the desire of nations, the joy of angels, the delight of the Father. What solace then must that soul be filled with, that has the possession of Him to all eternity!"

- John Bunyan

DOUBLE IMPUTATION

"Our sins, when laid upon Christ, were yet personally ours, not his; so his righteousness, when put upon us, is yet personally his, not ours."

- John Bunyan

LET NO MAN SAY

Let no man say then, that because God is so famous in his mercy and
patience, in this day of his grace, that therefore he will not be fierce, and
dreadful in his justice, in the day of judgment; for judgment and justice, are
the last things that God intends to bring upon the stage, which will then be
to the full, as terrible, as now his goodness and patience, and long-sufferance
are admirable.

John Bunyan

God may and God does

So then, God may reprobate, may suffer the reprobate to sin, may fore-determine his infallible damnation, through the pro-consideration of him in sin, and may also forbear to work that effectual work in his soul that would infallibly bring him out of this condition, and yet neither be the author, contriver, nor means of man’s sin and misery.

-John Bunyan

OWEN AND BUNYAN

There was no sufferer whose behalf John Owen exerted more his influence more earnestly than John Bunyan.

It is well known that, as a preacher, Bunyan excited, wherever he went, an interest not surpassed even by the ministry of Baxter. When Bunyan preached in barns or on commons, he gathered eager thousands around him; and when he came to London, 1200 people would be found gathered together at seven on the dark of morning of a winter working-day to hear him expound the Word of God. Among these admiring multitudes John Owen had often been discovered;-- the most learned of the Puritans hung for hours, that seemed like moments, upon the lips of this untutored genius.

The King is reported to have asked Owen on one occasion, how a learned man like him could go "to hear a tinker prate;" to which the great theologian answered, "May it please your majesty, could I poosess the tinker's abilities for preaching, I would willingly relinquish all my learning."

Volume 1. The Works of John Owen, page. XCII

CONTEMPT

Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.

-- JOHN BUNYAN

RIGHTEOUSNESS

“One day as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul: ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And with the eyes of my soul I saw Jesus at the Father’s right hand. ‘There,’ I said, ‘is my righteousness!’ So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, ‘Where is your righteousness?’ For it is always right before him.

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

Now I could look from myself to him and could reckon that all my character was like the coins a rich man carries in his pocket when all his gold is safe in a trunk at home. Oh I saw that my gold was indeed in a trunk at home, in Christ my Lord. Now Christ was all: my righteousness, sanctification, redemption.”

- John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

http://firstimportance.org/2009/09/24/thy-righteousness-is-in-heaven-2/

SUCCESS

"Real success is not getting results at any cost. It is not prosperity, power, prominence, popularity, or any of the other worldly notions of success. Real success is doing the will of God regardless of the consequences."

- John MacArthur

"Prick John Bunyan anywhere and he will bleed Bible." Let it not be said of the King's heralds: 'Prick him and he bleeds movies."

- Unknown

(both from Mark Calhoun)

UNTIL YOU HAVE

“You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”

-- John Bunyan;

source: JoyCourville

BUTCHERY

"I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience."

~John Bunyan

(source: Jason Martin)