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."

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."