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."

Thomas Brooks

"a soul truly gracious can say : In having nothing I have all things, because I have Christ; having therefore all things in him, I seek no other reward, for he is the universal reward.  Such a soul can say : Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it; honours, nor riches, nor the smiles of creatures, are not sweet to me no farther than I see Christ, and taste Christ in them."

Mo Udall

"If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong."

Samuel Chadwick

"If successful, don't crow; if defeated don't croak."

E.M. Bounds

"They [Great leaders of the Bible] were not leaders because of brilliancy of thought, because they were exhaustless in resources, because of their magnificent culture or native endowment, but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God."

J. Oswald Sanders

"It is not the prayer that moves people, but the God to whom we pray."

Hudson Taylor

"It is possible to move men, through God, by prayer alone."

J. Oswald Sanders

Both our Lord and His bondslave Paul made it clear that true prayer is not a dreamy reverie. "All vital praying makes a drain on a man's vitality.  True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice," wrote J. H. Jowett.  Jesus performed miracles without a sign of outward strain, but "he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears" (Hebrews 5:7)

J. Oswald Sanders

"Try to explain exactly how prayer works and you will find quickly run against some very difficult puzzles.  But people who are skeptical of prayer's validity and power are usually those who do not practice it seriously or fail to obey when God reveals His will.  We cannot learn about prayer except by praying.  No philosophy has ever taught a soul to pray.  The intellectual problems associated with prayer are met in the joy of answered prayer and closer fellowship with God."

C.J. Vaughan

"If I wished to humble anyone, I should question him about his prayers.  I know nothing to compare with this topic for its sorrowful self-confessions."

Richard Baxter

“Consider well of the office, the bloodshed, and the holy life of Christ — His office is to expiate sin, and to destroy it. His blood was shed for it: his life condemned it. Love Christ, and thou wilt hate that which caused his death. Love him, and thou will be made more like him.”

Tim Keller

“In fear-based repentance, we don’t learn to hate the sin for itself, and it doesn’t lose its attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake. But when we rejoice over God’s sacrificial, suffering love for us – seeing what it cost him to save us from sin – we learn to hate the sin for what it is. We see what the sin cost God. What most assures us of God’s unconditional love (Jesus’s costly death) is what most convicts us of the evil of sin. Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.”

William Blake

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."

Albert Camus

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

Oscar Wilde

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

Robert Orben

"Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch."

Cornelius Plantinga

“To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way. Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to misunderstand its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler. Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life. To concentrate on our rebellion, defection and folly — to say to the world, ‘I have some bad news and I have some bad news’ — is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior.  To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom.”

Carl Sagan

"Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves."

Charles Spurgeon

“One thing is past all question; we shall bring our Lord most glory if we get from Him much grace.”

Samuel Brengle

"If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it. The moment he throws it aside; it becomes only old iron. O that I may never lose sight of this."

Unknown Author

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection.  Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men:
Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
Wisdom is humble, that he knows no more.

C.S. Lewis

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less."

Charles Spurgeon

“When a believer has fallen into a low, sad state of feeling, he often tries to lift himself out of it by chastening himself with dark and doleful fears. Such is not the way to rise from the dust, but to continue in it. As well chain the eagle’s wing to make it mount, as doubt in order to increase our grace. It is not the law, but the gospel which saves the seeking soul at first; and it is not a legal bondage, but gospel liberty which can restore the fainting believer afterwards. Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesus’ bosom.”

Tim Keller

"In many ways, adversity is not as spiritually dangerous as prosperity.  In adversity we are shown our true weakness and need for God.  In adversity, we come to see the things our hearts trust rather than God.  In prosperity, we are not forced to see any of this."

Tim Keller

"Anger, fear, discouragement come because of 'idols' - good things have become things we feel (at an emotional level) will really save us and give us worth.  It is only when these things are threatened or removed that we turn and find our safety and significance in the Lord.  That makes us stable and deep."