good news if you're sick (or poor)...

Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.

—Richard Sibbes

today is a gift

"So here it is, another day. I did nothing to deserve it. I just woke up this morning, and there it was. I may have expected it to be there, but I had no right to. Just like Christmas morning, I got up to find a present waiting for me, a brand new day.Yes, today is a gift. And it has my name on the tag. This present from God has been custom-made for me. God has filled it with blessings, some obvious and some in disguise. Its difficulties and challenges are tailored to fit my size. It may not be exactly what I asked for, but it is exactly what I need."

-Russell Board, World Magazine, November 18, 2006

today is the first day of the rest of your life

" I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age."

-Jonathan Edwards July 8, 1723.

How To Glorify God

"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him"

-John Piper

"God, ...what are you up to?"

"God is to be trusted when his providences seem to run contrary to his promises. God promised to give David the crown, to make him king; but providence ran contrary to his promise. David was pursued by Saul, and was in danger of his life, but all this while it was David’s duty to trust God. Pray observe, that the Lord by cross providences often brings to pass his promise. God promised Paul the lives of all that were with him in the ship; but the providence of God seemed to run quite contrary to his promise, for the winds blew, the ship split and broke in pieces. Thus God fulfilled his promise; upon the broken pieces of the ship they all came safe to shore. Trust God when providences seem to run quite contrary to promises."

-Thomas Watson, “The Providence of God” from A Body of Divinity

Christ cures broken hearts for free

It is not the healthy who need a doctor--but the sick. Luke 5:31

"Christ is the most cheap physician, he takes no fee. He desires us to bring nothing to him but broken hearts; and when he has cured us he desires us to bestow nothing on him but our love."

-Thomas Watson, from a sermon called "The Soul's Malady and Cure"

Praise God For True Gospel Preaching

"Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching - where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus."

-C. H. Spurgeon, from a sermon called The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Spirit, April 16th, 1885

Puritan Richard Sibbes on God's Love and Our Feelings

"Measure not God's love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof."

-Richard Sibbes

Tozer on Biblical Paradoxes

"If all this appears self-contradictory - Amen, be it so. The various elements of truth stand in perpetual antithesis, sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known. The truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in the truth but in our sin-damaged minds."

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, p.36

The Gospel: The Power of God for Salvation

"The work of conversion is completed by the ingenerating and acting of faith in God, by Jesus Christ... To this purpose it is necessary that the gospel, that is the doctrine of it concerning redemption, righteousness, and salvation by Jesus Christ, be declared and made known to sinners."

-John Owen, The Holy Spirit, p.240-241

Gospel Efficacy

"Trying to stop the gospel is like pouring water on a grease fire. The gospel explodes in the face of opposition."

-Steven Altrogge, Twitter (2010)

Church and politics

"It is for this reason that all the calls to "reclaim America for Christ" leave me cold. Our real need is to reclaim the church for Christ. When Christ is exalted in His church, when He is loved and revered and cherised with passion by those who bear His Name--in other words, when the church starts living like the church--then His body cannot help but make an impact on culture."

- Tom Ascol, http://www.founders.org/blog/2005/08/church-and-politics.html

God: the Reformer of our rebellious free will

" 'God worketh in us to will and to do' (Phil. 2:13). The act of willing is of God's operation, and though we ourselves will, yet it is he who causes us to will and to do of his own good pleasure."

-John Owen, The Holy Spirit, p.208