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I find great help in thinking about the Bible as God’s guidebook to joy. Isn’t the Bible a Divine Prescription of how to cure us from all unhappiness in the long run? Now, the medicine that the Bible prescribes is not always fun to take. It might involve suffering. But the cure, the cure that it brings, is infinite and eternal joy at God’s right hand.-John Piper, sermon called Get Wisdom, 5-24-1981
Over the course of time, preaching the gospel to myself every day has made more of a difference in my life than any other discipline I have ever practiced...
I have also found that when I am absorbed in the gospel, everything else I am supposed to be toward God and others seems to flow out of me more naturally and passionately. Doing right is not always easy, but it is never more easy than when one is breathing deeply the atmosphere of the gospel.
-Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians, p.6
This morning let us hear the Lord Jesus speak to each one of us: “I will help thee.” “It is but a small thing for me, thy God, to help thee. Consider what I have done already. What! not help thee? Why, I bought thee with my blood. What! not help thee? I have died for thee; and if I have done the greater, will I not do the less? Help thee! It is the least thing I will ever do for thee; I have done more, and will do more. Before the world began I chose thee. I made the covenant for thee. I laid aside my glory and became a man for thee; I gave up my life for thee; and if I did all this, I will surely help thee now. In helping thee, I am giving thee what I have bought for thee already. If thou hadst need of a thousand times as much help, I would give it thee; thou requirest little compared with what I am ready to give. 'Tis much for thee to need, but it is nothing for me to bestow. ‘Help thee?’ Fear not! If there were an ant at the door of thy granary asking for help, it would not ruin thee to give him a handful of thy wheat; and thou art nothing but a tiny insect at the door of my all-sufficiency. ‘I will help thee.’”-Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, January 16, Morning
The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there. The life of the godly is not an Interstate through Nebraska, but a state road through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee. There are rock slides and precipices and dark mists and bears and slippery curves and hairpin turns that make you go backwards in order to go forwards. But all along this hazardous, twisted road that doesn't let you see very far ahead there are frequent signs that say, "The best is yet to come." And at the bottom right corner written with an unmistakable hand are the words, "As I live, says the Lord!"
-John Piper
But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
- The Lord Jesus Christ, Luke 6:27-28
What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us...
A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.
-A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 1-2
“To run and work the law commands,
Yet gives me neither feet nor hands;
But better news the gospel brings:
It bids me fly and gives me wings.”
- Attributed to John Bunyan, quoted by Jason C. Mayer in The End of The Law (Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing, 2009), 2.
