Encouragement for the Discouraged
“The storms of life no more indicate the absence of God than clouds indicate the absence of the sun.” (John Blanchard)
“God is our portion, Christ our companion, the Spirit our Comforter, Earth our lodge, and Heaven is our home.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
“The church is a school for sinners, not a museum for saints.” (Anthony Thiselton)
“God’s design in our pain enables us to look back and say: He loves me enough to take me where I would have never wanted to go in order to produce in me what I never could have achieved on my own.” (Paul David Tripp)
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (C. S. Lewis)
Spiritual Depth
“You can be as straight as a gun barrel theologically—and be as empty as one spiritually.” (A.W. Tozer)
“Every command in holy writ is only a covered promise.” (John Wesley)
“There can be no peace between you and Christ while there is peace between you and sin.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
“Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.” (Sinclair Ferguson)
“Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.” (Elisabeth Elliot)
“No one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labor, study, or inquiry.” (William Wilberforce)
“The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.” (George Muller)
Prayer
“It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
“Prayer and praise are the oars by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge of Christ.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
The Cross of Christ
“Your approval before God is woven into the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, not what other men and women think about you.” (Matt Chandler)
“The Son of God came to seek us where we are in order that he might bring us to be with him where he is.” (J.I. Packer)
“The essence of apostasy is changing sides from that of the crucified to that of the crucifier.” (John Stott)
“Look, the memory of your sins is no cause to beat yourself up and wallow in guilt. Instead, it should lead you to rejoice in the redemption you have in Jesus. […] And in remembering these sins, you hold fast to Jesus. This remembrance does not encourage you to shrink back from God but to draw near, seeking him because of the hope of the gospel. When you remember your sins, you learn humility, love Jesus, and make much of the gospel.” (Joe Thorn – from Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself)
Caring for the Lost
“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and un-prayed for.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
Trusting God
“When we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping.” (J.I. Packer)
“Don’t believe everything you think. You cannot be trusted to tell yourself the truth. Stay in The Word.” (Jerry Bridges)
Christian Living
“We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed.” (G.K. Chesterton)
“Our sense of humor is a gift from God which should be controlled as well as cultivated.” (Oswald Sanders)
“Christianity can be summed up in the two terms faith and love…receiving from above [faith] and giving out below [love].” (Martin Luther)
Sam Storms defines legalism: “the tendency to regard as divine law things that God has neither required nor forbidden in Scripture, and the corresponding inclination to look with suspicion on others for their failure or refusal to conform.”
“Not even in this world does sin pay its servants good wages.” (C.H. Spurgeon)
“The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” (C. S. Lewis)
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” (C. S. Lewis)
“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” (C. S. Lewis)
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” (C. S. Lewis)
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (C. S. Lewis)
“Whatever and whenever God blesses, Satan curses. What God creates, Satan counterfeits.” (Sam Storms)
“Kindness makes a person attractive. If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.” (Alexander MacLaren)
“Man is indeed lost, but that does not mean that he is nothing. We must resist humanism, but to make a man a zero is not the right way to resist it … [The] Christian position is that man is made in the image of God and even though he is now a sinner, he can do things that are tremendous – he can influence history for this life and the life to come, for himself and for others…From the biblical viewpoint, man is lost, but great.” (Francis Schaeffer)
Leadership
“The passionate leader is driven by the knowledge that the right beliefs, aimed at the right opportunity, can lead to earth-shaking changes.” (Dr. Al Mohler)
John Wesley’s Rule: “Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all times you can, to all the people you can, As long as ever you can.”