Posted in faith, Prayer, tagged faith, Prayer on May 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Make it your daily prayer that you may have an increase of faith. According to your faith will be your peace. Cultivate that blessed root more, and sooner or later, by God’s blessing, you may hope to have the flower. You may not perhaps attain to full assurance at once: it is good sometimes to be kept waiting; we do not value things that we get without trouble. But though it tarry, wait for it. Seek on, and expect to find.
~ J.C. Ryle
Tract: Faith and Assurance
Posted in Uncategorized on May 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
When is the last time you heard a sermon about envy? Even a whole Sunday School lesson devoted to it?
Is envy a sin? If so, why don’t we ever talk about it? What does it look like? How does it act?
Tim Challies addresses this sin in a three-part series. If you haven’t thought about envy much or for awhile, take some time to click below and remember these words: “Envy is the great leveler: if it cannot level things up, it will level them down … rather than have anyone happier than itself, it will see us all miserable together.” –Dorothy Sayers.
Posted in Christian life, suffering, tagged God's love, suffering on May 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
What a great lesson from life. This story will take you less than five minutes to read but may stick with you for a lot longer.
Here’s the first few sentences from R. W. Glenn:
Many of you know that I’ve been suffering with a herniated disc in my neck. It’s been going on for about five weeks, but the first three were just excruciatingly painful. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, night after night, writhing and crying out in pain. It was almost unbearable.
Well, one of those nights as I woke up, I decided I was going to put God on trial. I said, “Lord, what gives? Why are you doing this to me? What’s the problem?” I was so frustrated and uncomfortable.
But then, almost immediately, I remembered what happened last summer to my three year-old, Isaac. . . .
Keep reading “A Herniated Disc, A Three-Year Old’s Stitches, and the Love of the Father.”
Posted in Evangelism, tagged Evangelism, the gospel on May 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Thabiti Anyabwile quotes and then reflects on what Charles Spurgeon preached about soul-winning years ago. . . but Spurgeon’s teaching is still so applicable today. Start reading here.
An excerpt:
1. ”I take it that one of its main operations consists in instructing a man that he may know the truth of God“ (p. 10).
To try to win a soul for Christ by keeping that soul in ignorance of any truth, is contrary to the mind of the Spirit; and to endeavour to save men by mere claptrap, or excitement, or oratorical display, is as foolish as to hope to hold an angel with a bird-lime, or lure a star with music. The best attraction is the gospel in its purity. The weapon with which the Lord conquers men is the truth as it is in Jesus. the gospel will be found equal to every emergency; an arrow which can pierce the hardest heart, a balm which can heal the deadliest wound. Preach it, and preach nothing else. Rely implicitly upon the old, old gospel. You need no other nets when you fish for men; those your Master has given you are strong enough for the great fishes, and have meshes fine enough to hold the little ones. Spread these nets and no others, and you need not fear the fulfillment of His Word, “I will make you fishers of men.” (p. 13)
2. “Secondly, to win a soul, it is necessary, not only to instruct our hearer, and make him know the truth, but to impress him so that he may feel it“ (p. 13).
A sinner has a heart as well as a head; a sinner has emotions as well as thoughts; and we must appeal to both. A sinner will never be converted until his emotions are stirred. Unless he feels sorrow for sin, and unless he has some measure of joy in the reception of the Word, you cannot have much hope of him. The Word must be like a strong wind sweeping through the whole heart, and swaying the whole man, even as a field of ripening corn waves in the summer breeze. Religion without emotion is religion without life. (p. 14)
You and I must continue to drive at men’s hearts till they are broken; and then we must keep on preaching Christ crucified till their hearts are bound up; and when this is accomplished, we must continue to proclaim the gospel till their whole nature is brought into subjection to the gospel of Christ. Even in these preliminaries you will be made to feel the need of the Holy Ghost to work with you, and by you; but this need will be still more evident when we advance a step further, and speak of the new birth itself in which the Holy Spirit works in a style and manner most divine. (p. 16).
Posted in Uncategorized on May 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coat tail and the heavens hailing your heart — to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth!”
Jim Elliot, diary, 15 January 1951, quoted in HIS, April 1956, page 9. (HT: Christ is Deeper Still).
