I thought of the men I know and have known—pastors, teachers, seminary presidents, ministry executives, missionaries, evangelists—and I thought that the greatest thing they could do at any moment in their life is to please God. No amount of fruitfulness, obedience, productivity, or over-the-top performance could trump simply pleasing God. So, I sat beside the bed of my wife of thirty years as she lay there finishing well and pleasing God.
…a habit of procrastination indicates a worship problem: an unwillingness to do the work that God has appointed for us, or an inability to discern what he has given us and what he has not. The procrastinator loves to hoard her time for herself rather than work diligently in it on the errands and tasks God gives her. She would rather blame the chaos outside of her than the chaos in her heart.
–Staci Eastin in The Organized Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Conquering Chaos (Cruciform Press, 2011)
HT: Pure Church
"Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God or takes the relish off spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of your body over your mind-- this thing to you is sin."
-- Susannah Wesley
"In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first."
"A Christian is not of hasty growth, like a mushroom, but rather like the oak, the progress of which is hardly perceptible, but in time becomes a deep-rooted tree."
Effective ministry corresponds so much with the character of a minister that theologian John Sanderson advised people to play softball with pastoral candidates interviewing for a position. “Then on a close play at second base,” Sanderson said (with his tongue mostly in cheek), “call him out when he is really safe.
The historic Heidelberg Catechism asks one of the most honest questions in all theological discourse about the nature of obedience: “Since we are redeemed from our sin and its consequences by grace through Christ without any merit of our own, why must we do good works?” The paraphrase is simply, “If salvation is because of grace, why be good?” The answer is: “So that with our whole life we may show ourselves grateful to God for his goodness and that he may be glorified through us.” We offer service to God not to gain his affection but in loving thankfulness for his affection. The rewards that he grants—and that we may properly desire—in response to our obedience do not annul our chief desire to please him in response to his mercy. Such blessing would actually be empty of true satisfaction for Christians if the main purpose of their pursuit were pleasure. The Spirit makes our greatest pleasure what delights the Lord we love, and we cannot find deep joy in what fails to put his honor and glory first (Pss. 1:2; 37:4; 43:4; 119:35).
Three things confuse a Christian;
Yeah, four confound any man.
Unbelief masquerading as wisdom,
Enthusiasm presenting itself as faith,
Fear pretending to be patience,
and permissiveness claiming to be love.
He who lives without prayer, he who lives with little prayer, he who seldom reads the Word, and he who seldom looks up to heaven for a fresh influence from on high -he will be the man whose heart will become dry and barren.
-- Charles Spurgeon
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Failure to catch fire in the pulpit on Sunday often results from sacrificing our intimacy with God on the altar of the urgent throughout the week. Nothing is more urgent or pressing than fanning into flame the gift God has given us (2 Tim 1:6).
Powerful preaching comes at a price, and too few preachers today are willing to pay the price of holiness.
