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Reflecting on Romans chapter 8 and the nature of prayer, Tim Keller offers this wise summary: “Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.”
– Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
If the gospel has never broken you, you have never really heard it.
—Matt Papa
The beginning of man’s rebellion against God was, and is, the lack of a thankful heart.
—Francis Schaeffer
The weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith.
—Sinclair Ferguson
I am going to judge my circumstances by Jesus’ love, not Jesus’ love by my circumstances.
—Tim Keller
God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.
—John Piper
The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.
—D.A. Carson
To know that God knows everything about me and yet loves me is indeed my ultimate consolation.
—R.C. Sproul
I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time or eternity.
—David Livingstone
It is better to preach five words of God’s Word than five million words of man’s wisdom.
—C.H. Spurgeon
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you… Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.
– C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Had any other condition been better for you than the one you are in, Divine Love would have put you there.
—C.H. Spurgeon
God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.
—Randy Alcorn
Salvation is not a reward for the righteous, but a gift for the guilty.
—Steven Lawson
All the approval we ever need is already sitting at the right hand of God.
—Sammy Rhodes
Though sin often brings immediate pleasure, it gives no lasting joy.
—R.C. Sproul
I would soberly admonish any missionary candidate that the mission field is not all romance and radical adventure; it is also mingled with heartbreak, loss, and self-denial. But therein we discover God’s boundless love and wise providence. C. S. Lewis said in in his poem As the Ruin Falls, “The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains.”
Perhaps D. A. Carson says it best in his excellent book on suffering, How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil:
“The more the leaders are afflicted with weakness, suffering, perplexity, and persecution, the more it is evident that their vitality is nothing other than the life of Jesus. This has enormously positive spiritual effects on the rest of the church. The leaders’ death means the church’s life. This is why the best Christian leadership cannot simply be appointed. It is forged by God himself in the fires of suffering, taught in the school of tears. There are no shortcuts.”
God loves his servants so much that he allows them to suffer, so that his grace will sustain them in order to make his glory known. Our weakness is the God-ordained instrument through which the Holy Spirit fills us with the power of Christ.
– Evan Burns, “The Missionary Life: No Shortcuts”