Mike Ross

"Hypocrisy is robbing God of his glory and claiming it for yourself...it is taking what is meant for God's glory and using it for my own."

Mike Ross

Oswald Chambers

"The work we do is of no account when compared with the compelling purpose of God.  It is simply the scaffolding surrounding His work and His plan."

Oswald Chambers, quoted by Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p. 119Publish Post

Justin Martyr

"The greatest grace God can give anyone is to send a trial which cannot be born with one's own powers - and then sustain that person with His own grace so he may endure to the end and know the true source of salvation." - St. Justin Martyr

Thomas Watson

On the relationship between a Christian and sin he wrote, "Though sin lives in him, yet he does not live in sin."...The apostle John in the verses cited above [1 John 5:13; 1 John 3:7; 1 John 3:9-10] is making the point that you cannot be a true believer and embrace sin as a way of life.

Harry Schaumburg quoting Thomas Watson on the relationship between a Christian and sin, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p. 113

Harry Schaumburg

"Conviction is a deep sorrow for sin. It is not disgust or the shame of being caught.  True conviction is founded on convincing evidence of our wickedness and that God has good reason for having placed us under His wrath.  Conviction is the full persuasion of the truth of God, found in the gospel, of our unholy condition and God's holy state."

Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p. 104

Oswald Chambers

"The conviction of sin is one of the most uncommon things that ever happens to a person.  It is the beginning of an understanding of God."

Oswald Chambers, quoted by Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p. 104

John Piper

"When dealing with the impurity of inward sexual lust, Jesus demands whatever it takes to defeat it because our souls are at stake."

John Piper on Matthew 5:29-30, quoted by Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p. 104

Charles Spurgeon

"Oh, if men could but see the slime of the serpent upon their pleasurable sins, the venom of asps upon their dainty lusts, and the smoke of hell upon their proud and boastful thoughts, surely they would loathe that which they now delight in.  If sin connects us with the devil himself, let us flee from it as from a devouring lion.  The expression [sin as works of the devil] is a word of detestation: may it enter into our hearts and make sin horrible to us."

Charles Spurgeon preaching on 1 John 3:8 in 1883, quoted by Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p. 103

John Calvin

"What is proclaimed concerning the mercy of God is seized by some as an occasion of licentiousness; while others are hindered by slothfulness from meditating on 'newness of life.'  But the manifestation of the grace of God unavoidably carries along with it exhortation to a holy life."


John Calvin, quoted by Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Redemption for  Broken Relationships, p. 103

David Powlison

David Powlison, paraphrasing John Calvin, wrote, “The evil in our desires often lies not in what we want, but in the fact that we want it too much.” It’s difficult to improve upon this insight. The “cravings of sinful man” are legitimate desires that have become false gods we worship. It’s wanting too much the things of this fallen world. A sinful craving is when a legitimate desire for financial success becomes a silent demand for financial success; an interest in clothes and fashion becomes a preoccupation; love of music morphs into an obsession with the hottest band; or the desire to enjoy a good movie becomes a need to see the latest blockbuster.

There may be nothing wrong with these desires in and of themselves; but when they dominate the landscape of our lives, when we must have them or else!-we’ve succumbed to idolatry and worldliness. And as Calvin says, our hearts are a perpetual factory of idols. We’re pumping out these thingson a regular basis.

Harry Schaumburg

Putting God first is the first of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament.  In the New Testament Jesus reiterates this primary commandment: "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and will all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30).  That is why idolatry is the essence of sin.  If we seek our own will and what we want to do, we seek what satisfies us before we seek God; we first seek out what feeds our well-being---and we can end up seeking spirituality above seeking God and His will.  Thus we end up placing our values above God Himself.  And the result is that God is not God in our hearts!  It is not "my utmost for His highest;" it is "my utmost for myself."

Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships, p.101

Harry Schaumburg

"Sin is a failure to let God be God"

~ Harry Schaumburg, Undefiled: Redemption from Sexual Sin, Restoration for Broken Relationships,  p,101

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He was subsequently defeated in every election for public office until he became Prime Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up."

Jim Valvano

“Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding”-Jim Valvano

Jim Valvano

“I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can't trust em.”

David Augburger

“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” –David Augsburger

Michael Card

“The best way to demonstrate that you love people is to listen to them.” –Michael Card

Mike Ross

"No one understands the grace of God like a hard working farmer"


Mike Ross teaching on 2 Timothy 2 at the Christ Covenant Men's Retreat 2010

Mike Ross

Some Quotes from Mike Ross on the Fear of Failure from the Christ Covenant Men's Retreat 2010
"You can only become what God has gifted you to be"

"Lost Boys [men today] can't handle failure"

"The most fearful sex is male because we believe that failure is not manly"

"Men will fail and it is often better for us that we fail"

"If you haven't failed, you probably are not a man."

Mike Ross

"Falsehood cannot bear the weight of reality, only truth can."

Mike Ross, Christ Covenant Men's Retreat 2010

John Wesley

John Wesley’s Dying Words

At 88 years of age, John Wesley passed away on Wednesday, March 2, 1791. His last words were spoken twice, with great fervour, "The best of all is, God is with us." He lifted his arms and said again, "The best of all is, God is with us."

Mike Ross

"Being a man is the most difficult thing in the world because it is the most opposed thing in the world"

~ Mike Ross, Christ Covenant Men's Retreat 2010

Mike Ross

"Distort gender and you will distort God. The gender of God portrays something essential about Himself."

~ Mike Ross, Christ Covenant Men's Retreat 2010

Tim Chester

“Telling a slave to be free is to add insult to injury. But telling a liberated slave to be free is an invitation to enjoy his new freedom and privileges.”

Tim Chester, You Can Change (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010), 49.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Octavius Winslow

“Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; — but the Father, for love!”

Octavius Winslow, quoted by John Stott in The Message of Romans (Downers Grove, Ill.; Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 255

Edward Welch

"One of God's remarkable words to us has been that faith is not a leap into the unknown.  Maybe some people can leap based merely on one person's word, but not anyone with a smidgeon of fear or anxiety.  Faith, instead, is a shift of confidence and trust to One who has always proven faithful."


Edward Welch, Running Scared, p. 306

Benjamin Franklin

"Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden but it is forbidden because it's hurtful. Nor is a Duty beneficial because it is commanded, but it is commanded, because it's beneficial."

C.S. Lewis

"He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only."

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Leslie Flynn

“Two chickens tied at the legs and thrown over a clothes line may be united, but they do not have unity.”

Leslie Flynn, Great Church Fights
taken from Swindoll's Ultimate Book of Illustrations and Quotes

Gabe Sylvia

"It's not legalistic to be obedient"

Kris Decker

Oh God our Father, Jesus our Brother, Holy Spirit our helper and comforter,
Remove the calloused heart and replace it with a heart after your heart oh God.
Open blind eyes.
Open deaf ears.
Warm cold emotions and set us aflame with warmth and passion for Christ.
Strengthen weary and apathetic hands and feet to serve God’s people, His Church.
Awake and prepare us who are asleep and lazy, unaware of the return of our Judge, King, Friend, Savior, and Lord.
Revive us Oh Lord that we your people may rejoice in you.
Make us ready to meet Jesus.
Amen.

Kris Decker - Renovatus Prayer

Kris Decker

"What Jesus requests, he provides"

Lynn Deshazo

Lord, You are more precious than silver.
Lord, You are more costly than gold.
Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds,
And nothing I desire compares to You.

Lord, Your Love is higher than mountains.
Lord, Your Love is deeper than seas.
Lord, Your Love encompasses the nations,
And yet, You live right here inside of me!

Who can weigh the value of knowing You?
Who can judge the worth of who You are?
Who can count the blessings of loving You?
Who can say just how great You are?

Lord, You are more precious than silver.
Lord, You are more costly than gold.
Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds,
And nothing I desire compares to You.

And nothing I desire compares to You.

Kris Decker

"Love is sacrificial action"

Gabe Sylvia

"Love is being committed to someone else's good or glory"

Dallas Willard

"Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone."

Matthew Stephen Soleto

Still Holding Me

The world around us, it does crumble, and the wind pushes waves on the seas,
and nothing that is here is constant except for change.
There is a Beacon with a light that's steady, and it points to safety from the rocky shores,
where sailing souls can find their only rescue - a peace that is found amidst the storm.

(chorus)
He's still holding you; He's still holding me, and He's the One still calming raging seas.
He never left us here; He still calms our fears; He wipes away our tears; His name is Jesus.

Only Christ can fix the problems we are facing. Only He knows what we really need.
He alone can give us passage to the harbor so that with Him we can ever be.
He is constant, yes He's always shining, pointing to our Father, God above;
bringing peace to us and reconciliation between Him and us and others that He loves.

Augustus Toplady

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
let me hide myself in thee; 
let the water and the blood, 
from thy wounded side which flowed, 
be of sin the double cure; 
save from wrath and make me pure. 
 

Not the labors of my hands 
can fulfill thy law's commands; 
could my zeal no respite know, 
could my tears forever flow, 
all for sin could not atone; 
thou must save, and thou alone. 

Nothing in my hand I bring, 
simply to the cross I cling; 
naked, come to thee for dress; 
helpless, look to thee for grace; 
foul, I to the fountain fly; 
wash me, Savior, or I die. 

While I draw this fleeting breath, 
when mine eyes shall close in death, 
when I soar to worlds unknown, 
see thee on thy judgment throne, 
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
let me hide myself in thee. 

J. I. Packer

"I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face"

J. I. Packer, My Path of Prayer, p. 56

D. A. Carson

"Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray.  We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer.  We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray.  That means we must self-consciously set aside time to do nothing but pray...What we actually do reflects our highest priorities.  That means we can proclaim our commitment to prayer until the cows come home, but unless we actually pray, our actions disown our words."

D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, p. 19

Edward Welch

...the psalmist says, "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?  But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared" (Ps. 130:3-4).
Do you ever think that your sins are too bad, and that forgiveness for those sins requires you to get your act together first?  If so, you don't fear God.  You are minimizing his forgiveness.  You are acting as though his forgiveness is ordinary, just like that of any person or make-believe god.  If you think like that, you don't believe he is holy.  In contrast, the fear of the Lord leads us to believe that when God makes promises too good to be true, they are indeed true."

Edward Welch, Running Scared, p. 195

Edward Welch

"We can work up the motivation to approach someone in love, but when we are rebuffed we might find that our goal was not so much to love as to find a different strategy to help us be loved.  Persistence in rebalancing* demands the impossible.  It demands the work of the Spirit of love."

*Ed Welch asserts that a person will walk in freedom if they are loving more than they are needing love.  This recalibrating of giving more love than the love that you need is what he is referring to as "rebalancing".

Edward Welch, Running Scared, pg. 186-187

Thomas Brooks

“Everything that a man leans upon but God—will be a dart which will certainly pierce his heart through and through. He who leans only upon Christ—lives the highest, choicest, safest and sweetest life.”

William Temple

“It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear, and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it — I can’t. And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it — I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like this. And if the Spirit could come into me, then I could live a life like his.”

John Calvin

“Those who are truly religious experience what sort of punishments are shame, confusion, groaning, displeasure with self, and other emotions that arise out of a lively recognition of sin.

Yet we must remember to exercise restraint, lest sorrow engulf us. For nothing more readily happens to fearful consciences than falling into despair. And whomever Satan sees overwhelmed by the fear of God he more and more submerges in that deeper whirlpool of sorrow that they may never rise again.

In this way we flee from God, who calls us to himself through repentance.”

Ed Welch

“The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies, bringing them to the wedding feast, and then marrying them rather than crushing them.”

Geerhardus Johannes Vos

“The Christian has the assurance which no heir in temporal things can ever have. He knows with absolute certainty that the inheritance will not merely be kept for him, but that he will be kept for it.”

Matt Chandler

"What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ? And what robs you of those affections? Many of the things that stifle growth are morally neutral. They’re not bad things. Facebook is not bad. Television and movies are not bad. I enjoy TV, but it doesn’t take long for me to begin to find humorous on TV what the Lord finds heartbreaking.

The same goes for following sports. It’s not wrong, but if I start watching sports, I begin to care too much. I get stupid. If 19-year-old boys are ruining your day because of what they do with a ball, that’s a problem. These things rob my affections for Christ. I want to fill my life with things that stir my affections for him. After a funeral I walked around the cemetery and found a grave of a guy who died when he was my age. I felt my mortality in that moment and it made me love the Lord. It really did. Some types of epic films do that for me, and so does angst-filled music.

We want our people to think beyond simply what’s right and wrong. We want them to fill their lives with things that stir their affections for Jesus Christ and, as best as they can, to walk away from things that rob those affections—even when they’re not immoral."

Unknown Author

"Cheer up! You are much worse than you think! Cheer up! God's grace is much greater than you think!"

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: It is your doing, not God’s. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present."

Charles Spurgeon

“It will always give a Christian the greatest calm, quiet, ease, and peace, to think of the perfect righteousness of Christ. How often are the saints of God downcast and sad! I do not think they ought to be. I do not think they would if they could always see their perfection in Christ.

There are some who are always talking about corruption, and the depravity of the heart, and the innate evil of the soul. This is quite true, but why not go a little further, and remember that we are perfect in Christ Jesus. It is no wonder that those who are dwelling upon their own corruption should wear such downcast looks; but surely if we call to mind that Christ is made unto us righteousness, we shall be of good cheer. What though distresses afflict me, though Satan assault me, though there may be many things to be experienced before I get to heaven, those are done for me in the covenant of divine grace; there is nothing wanting in my Lord, Christ hath done it all.”

Julius Hodge

“Every big person’s favorite person in the world is almost always a little person”

Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."

Augustine

"He that willingly takes from my good name unwillingly adds to my reward"

Tim Keller

“Why can we have the tree of life? Because Jesus Christ climbed the cross, the tree of death. And because Jesus climbed the tree of death you can have the tree of life.”

John Calvin

“The true looking of faith, I say, is placing Christ before one’s eyes and beholding in Him the heart of God poured out in love. Our firm and substantial support is to rest on the death of Christ as its only pledge.”

Thomas Brooks

"wisdom that is from above will never work in a man to reason thus: I have no comfort, therefore I have no grace; I have lost that joy that once I had, therefore my condition is not good, was never good.  But it will enable a man to reason thus: Though my comfort is gone, yet the God of my comfort abides; though my joy is lost, yet the seeds of grace remain.  The best men's joys are as glass, bright and brittle, and evermore in danger of breaking."