"Though troubles assail, And dangers affright, Though friends should all fail, And foes all unite; Yet one thing secures us, Whatever betide, The scripture assures us, The Lord will provide." - John Newton
"Soon the battle will be over. It will not be long now before the day will come when Satan will no longer trouble us. There will be no more domination, temptation, accusation, or confrontation. Our warfare will be over and our commander, Jesus Christ, will call us away from the battlefield to receive the victor's crown." - Thomas Watson
"To believe that He will preserve us is, indeed, a means of preservation. God will certainly preserve us, and make a way of escape for us out of the temptation, should we fall. We are to pray for what God has already promised. Our requests are to be regulated by His promises and commands. Faith embraces the promises and so finds relief." - John Owen
"The tragedy is that many of us are living desperate Christian life. Sunday comes and we get some strength, and then we lose some on Monday; a good deal is gone by Tuesday and we wonder whether we have anything left. On Wednesday it has all gone and then we exist. Or perhaps refreshment comes in some other way, some meeting we attend, some friends we meet. Now that is the old order of things, that is not the new. He puts a well within us. We are not always drawing from somewhere outside. The well, the spring, goes on springing up from within into everlasting life." - Martin Lloyd Jones
"You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan." - John Bunyan
"Prayer is not appointed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but it is designed as a confession to Him of our sense of the need. In this, as in everything, God's thoughts are not as ours. God requires that His gifts should be sought for. He designs to be honoured by our asking, just as He is to be thanked by us after He has bestowed His blessing." - A. W. Pink
"Any battle for victory, power, and deliverance - from ourselves and from sin - which is not based constantly upon the gazing and the beholding of the Lord Jesus, with the heart and life lifted up to Him, is doomed to failure." - Alan Redpath
"I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches, might be given me." - William Tyndale
"Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers." - John Owen
"When old companions, old lusts, and sins crowd in upon you, and when you feel that you are ready to sink, what can save you, sinking sinner? This alone - I have a high priest in heaven, and he can support in the hour of affliction. This alone can give you peace - I have a high priest in heaven. When you are dying - when friends can do you no good - when sins rise up like spectres around your bed - what can give you peace? This - "I have a high priest in heaven" - Robert Murray McCheyne
"Without the heart it is not worship; it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really a hypocrite. We may truly be said to worship God-though we lack perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we lack sincerity." - Stephen Charnock
"When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God." - Stephen Charnock
"For the believer all pain has meaning; all adversity is profitable. There is no question that adversity is difficult. It usually takes us by surprise and seems to strike where we are most vulnerable. To us it often appears completely senseless and irrational, but to God none of it is either senseless or irrational. He has a purpose in every pain He brings or allows in our lives. We can be sure that in some way He intends it for our profit and His glory." - Jerry Bridges
"Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God. They love with a love that glows. They serve with a faith that kindles. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They hate sin with fierceness that burns. They rejoice with a joy that radiates. Love is perfected in the fire of God." - Samuel Chadwick
"True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on our Divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, "I will not be afraid;" it is wisdom and peace to say, "I will trust and not be afraid." - Alexander MacLaren
"If there be ground for you to trust in your own righteousness, then, all that Christ did to purchase salvation, and all that God did to prepare the way for it is in vain." -Jonathan Edwards
"A readiness to believe every promise implicitly, to obey every command unhesitatingly, to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God, is the only true spirit of Bible study." - Andrew Murray
"Measure not God's love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof." - Richard Sibbes
The Sunday church Bulletin for the Menifee Valley Church, Menifee, CA., for Sunday, August 5, 2007, listed the hymns to be sung. One of the hymns was “Our God Reigns”. However, the Bulletin listed the hymn as “Our God Resigns”! We have heard of C.E.O.’s, politicians, business leaders and even Leaders in Christian ministries who have resigned for various reasons. What if God, being fed up with this notorious, noxious and noisy world suddenly decided to resign? He can’t resign – He is the eternal God. He is in control and we can rest assured that He will never resign.
"Notice the words: “The work of the Lord.” The Lord’s work is the oldest work, it is the greatest work, it is the grandest work, it is the only work, the fruits of which, last forever! " - J. Don Jennings
"The Bible is God's declaratory revelation to man containing the great truths about God, about man, about history, about salvation, and about prophecy that God wanted us to know. The Bible could be trusted just as much as if God had taken the pen and written the words Himself." - John Walvoord
"Here is a cord of love let down, and the upper end of it is fastened to Christ's heart, and the lower end of it hanging down the length of your hearts. And, O! shall not Christ's heart and yours be knit together this day. Here is a cord to bind His heart to your heart, and your heart to His heart." - Ralph Erskine
"Trials should not surprise us, or cause us to doubt God's faithfulness. Rather, we should actually be glad for them. God sends trials to strengthen our trust in him so that our faith will not fail. Our trials keep us trusting; they burn away our self confidence and drive us to our Saviour.' - Edmund Clowney
"I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed and not I who robbed." - Matthew Henry
"Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers." -John Owen
"We may sing beforehand, even in our winter storm, in the expectation of a summer sun at the turn of the year; no created powers can mar our Lord Jesus' music, nor spill our song of joy. Let us then be glad and rejoice in the salvation of our Lord; for faith had never yet cause to have wet cheeks, and hanging-down brows, or to droop or die." - Samuel Rutherford
"God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings. There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through." - George Whitefield
I have received great blessing from meditating on the words, “He is your praise, and he is your God.” It tells us that God is both the subject of our praise: “He is your praise,” and He is the object of our praise: “He is your God.” – J. Don Jennings
"Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God's holiness and sovereignty. acknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours." - J. I. Packer
"Let us give ourselves to be intercessors. Let us cry with importunity to God when we see people who need help, when the spirit of compassion stirs within us, when we feel our own powerlessness to help, or when we see obstacles in the way of our getting an answer. God alone can help. And in answer to our prayers, He will help."
"The particularity of each New Testament author was in no way smothered by the unique process of inspiration. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit first prepared, and then used, their individuality of upbringing, experience, temperament and personality, in order to convey through each some distinctive and appropriate truth." -John Stott
"Adversity is hard to endure, and can even be harder to understand. If God were really in control, why would He allow the tragic auto accident or crucial job loss? How could He permit cancer in a loved one or the death of a child? Grappling with His concern for us we ask, "Why is God allowing this?" or "What have I done wrong?" - Jerry Bridges
"Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as "in all points tempted like as we are," bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us." - Alexander MacLaren
"We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it." - John Newton
"Leave not off reading the Bible till you find your hearts warmed. Read the word, not only as a history, but labour to be affected with it. Let it not only inform you, but inflame you. "Is not my word like a fire? saith the Lord": Jer 23:29. Go not from the word till you can say as those disciples, "Did not our hearts burn within us?" Lu 24:32. -Thomas Watson
"If any occupation or association is found to hinder our communion with God or our enjoyment of spiritual things, then it must be abandoned. Anything in my habits or ways which mars happy fellowship with the brethren or robs me of power in service, is to be unsparingly judged and made an end of-- 'burned.' Whatever I cannot do for God's glory must be avoided." - A. W. Pink
"Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act." - Richard Baxter
"How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven." - George MacDonald
"A person's life is his most precious possession. Consequently, to rob him of it is the greatest sin we can commit against him, while to give one's own life on his behalf is the greatest possible expression of love for him. This, then, is the ultimate contrast: Cain's hatred issued in murder, Christ's love (issued) in self-sacrifice." - John Stott
"He came the first time to die; He is coming again to raise the dead. When He came the first time, they questioned whether He was King; the next time the world will know that He is King of kings and Lord of lords. The first time He wore a crown of thorns; the next time He will be wearing a crown of glory. The first time He came in poverty; the next time He is coming in power. The first time He had an escort of angels; the next time He will come with ten thousands of His saints. The first time He came in meekness; He is coming again in majesty." -Adrian Rogers
"Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration; and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only." - Alexander MacLaren
"We may sing beforehand, even in our winter storm, in the expectation of a summer sun at the turn of the year; no created powers can mar our Lord Jesus' music, nor spill our song of joy. Let us then be glad and rejoice in the salvation of our Lord; for faith had never yet cause to have wet cheeks, and hanging-down brows, or to droop or die." - Samuel Rutherford
"To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God's care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence." - George MacDonald
J. Oswald Sanders, author and missionary statesman wrote, “This ministry of consolation and encouragement is not to be regarded as inferior and of secondary importance. Did we but discern it, we are daily surrounded by lonely, aching and sometimes broken hearts.” The Christian encourager is a person who has one primary purpose in mind and that is to help build up others by a kind word or deed. - from J. Don Jennings
"Any man can work when every stroke of his hands brings down the fruit rattling from the tree but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement... that requires a heroism which is transcendent." - Henry Ward Beecher
"His great act of condescension in becoming man and His willingness to be completely humiliated in the death on the cross is set before us here as the supreme example of what our attitude should be. If Jesus Christ the Lord of glory was willing to be obedient unto death, how much more should sinners saved by grace who owe everything to God give back to the God who saved them the life which He has redeemed." John Walvoord
"We should go into His presence as a child goes to his father. We do it with reverence and godly fear, of course, but we should go with a childlike confidence and simplicity." Martin Lloyd-Jones
"There are basically only two kinds of religion in the world: those based on human achievement and those based on divine accomplishment. One says you can earn your way to heaven; the other says you must trust in Jesus Christ alone." - John MacArthur
"Our sins are debts that none can pay but Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can testify for our sins. Christ must pay all, or we are prisoners forever." - Thomas Brooks
"Now what greater comfort is there than this, that there is one presides in the world who is so wise he cannot be mistaken, so faithful he cannot deceive, so pitiful he cannot neglect his people, and so powerful that he can make stones even to be turned into bread if he please!" - Stephen Charnock
"In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it--all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27)." - Albert Barnes
"Let us, then, have it fixed down in our minds that the sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within. It is not the result of bad training in early years. It is not picked up from bad companions and bad examples, as some weak Christians are too fond of saying. No! It is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and with which we are born." - J. C. Ryle
"The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people." - A. W. Tozer
"The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people." - A. W. Tozer
"Oh, is the Lord Jesus Christ a believer's life? Why, then, let no believer be disquieted, nor overwhelmed and dejected, for any loss or for any sorrow or suffering that he meets with for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake. Oh, what should a man then do for Jesus Christ, who is his life!" -Thomas Brooks
"God looks not at the oratory of your prayers, how elegant they may be; nor at the geometry of your prayers, how long they may be; nor at the arithmetic of your prayers, how many they may be; not at logic of your prayers, how methodical they may be; but the sincerity of them he looks at." - Thomas Brooks
"If you have felt the power and authority of the word upon your conscience; if you can say as David, "Thy word hath quickened me." Christian, bless God that he has not only given thee his word to be a rule of holiness, but his grace to be a principle of holiness." - Thomas Watson
"Again, the glory of one attribute is more seen in one work than in another: in some things there is more of His goodness, in other things more of His wisdom is seen, and in others more of His power. But in the work of redemption all His perfections and excellencies shine forth in their greatest glory." - Thomas Boston
"I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the church, the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the public service which now passes for worship among us." A. W. Tozer
"Worry is a lot like fog. The Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. put out an article about the composite elements of fog. It said that a dense fog that covers a city block 100 ft. deep is composed of approximately one 16 oz. glass of water divided into 60,000 million drops. There is not much substance to fog, but it can cripple an entire city. Worry is like fog. There is not much to it - a few drops of fear, anxiety and imagination and we are all fogged up with worry! " - J. Don Jennings
"To the individual believer indwelt by the Holy Spirit there is granted the direct impression of the Spirit of God on the spirit of man, imparting the knowledge of His will in matters of the smallest and greatest importance. This has to be sought and waited for." - G. Campbell Morgan
"It is possible for you to do all things through Christ strengthening you, even to overleap the highest walls, to break bows of steel in pieces, and wade through the deepest fords in your way." - Ralph Erskine
"What can botanists tell you of the lily of the valley? You must study this book for that. What can geologists tell you of the Rock of Ages, or mere astronomers about the Bright Morning Star? In those pages we find all knowledge unto salvation; here we read of the ruin of man by nature, redemption by the blood, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost. These three things run all through and through them." - D. L. Moody
"Our sins are debts that none can pay but Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can testify for our sins. Christ must pay all, or we are prisoners forever." - Thomas Brooks
"If the Lord be with us, we have no cause of fear. His eye is upon us, His arm over us, His ear open to our prayer - His grace sufficient, His promise unchangeable." - John Newton
"Prayer is the window that God has placed in the walls of our world. Leave it shut and the world is a cold, dark house. But throw back the curtains and see His light. Open the window and hear His voice. Open the window of prayer and invoke the presence of God in your world." - Max Lucado
"Jesus is hungry but feeds others; He grows weary but offers others rest; He is the King Messiah but pays tribute; He is called the devil but casts out demons; He dies the death of a sinner but comes to save His people from their sins; He is sold for thirty pieces of silver but gives His life a ransom for many; He will not turn stones to bread for Himself but gives His own body as bread for people." - D. A. Carson
"Until we taste the bitterness of our own misery we will never relish the sweetness of God's mercy. Until we see how foul our sins have made us we will never pay our tribute of praise to Christ for washing us... If you would know the heart of your sin then you must know the sins of your heart!" - William Secker
"Lord, whatever you want, wherever you want it, and whenever you want it, that's what I want." - Richard Baxter
"When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God." - Stephen Charnock
"If any occupation or association is found to hinder our communion with God or our enjoyment of spiritual things, then it must be abandoned. Anything in my habits or ways which mars happy fellowship with the brethren or robs me of power in service, is to be unsparingly judged and made an end of-- 'burned.' Whatever I cannot do for God's glory must be avoided." - A. W. Pink
"Christ died He left a will in which He gave His soul to His Father, His body to Joseph of Arimathea, His clothes to the soldiers, and His mother to John. But to His disciples, who had left all to follow Him, He left not silver or gold, but something far better - His PEACE!" -Matthew Henry
"We know not the matter of the things for which we should pray, neither the object to whom we pray, nor the medium by or through whom we pray; none of these things know we, but by the help and assistance of the Spirit." - John Bunyan
"Men come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season, and then fall silent and impotent. He abides. They die, but He lives. They are lights kindled, and, therefore, sooner or later quenched; but He is the true light from which they draw all their brightness, and He shines for evermore." - Alexander MacLaren
“CHRIST, THE CENTER OF THE CHRISTIAN’S LIFE”
"The Word of God is not to be used as a lottery; nor is it designed to instruct us by shreds and scraps, which, detached from their proper places, have no determinate import; but it is to furnish us with just principles, right apprehensions to regulate our judgments and affections, and thereby to influence and direct our conduct." - John Newton
"In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it--all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27)."
"Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," to tempt Him withal, He did not stand and look upon them, viewing their glory, and pondering their empire.... but instantly, without stay, He cries, "Get thee hence, Satan." Meet thy temptation in its entrance with thoughts of faith concerning Christ on the cross; this will make it sink before thee. Entertain no parley, no dispute with it, if thou wouldst not enter into it." - Albert Barnes
"There will be no retreat in those who walk in the true light. When you open your shades at night, darkness does not come in and flood the room. Rather the light shines out into the darkness because light is stronger than darkness. The darker it becomes, the brighter our light will be. Where sin abounds, grace will that much more abound." - Rick Joyner
"A great emphasis in prayer is what God desires to do in us. He desires to get us under His loving authority, dependent on His Spirit, walking in the Light, motivated by His love, and living for His glory. The collective essence of these five truths is an abandonment of one's life to the Lord and a continual openness, dependence, and responsiveness to His loving control." - William Thrasher
“The only difference in death between a Christian and one who is not is that the Christian is ready to meet Jesus. A Christian is dead already - dead to the world, but alive to Christ. Death for you as a child of God is to fall asleep in His arms and awake in the other world, alive forever beyond the power of pain, safe forever from all sickness and suffering.” Winkie Pratney
"Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, the nourishment of the mind with His truth, the purifying of the imagination of His beauty, the opening of the heart to His love, the surrender of the will to His purpose." - William Temple
"Prayer is not appointed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but it is designed as a confession to Him of our sense of the need. In this, as in everything, God's thoughts are not as ours. God requires that His gifts should be sought for. He designs to be honoured by our asking, just as He is to be thanked by us after He has bestowed His blessing." - A. W. Pink
"The all-seeing eye of God beheld our deplorable state; infinite pity touched the heart of the Father of mercies; and infinite wisdom laid the plan of our recovery.' - David Brainerd
"Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God's Word written, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over men." - John R. W. Stott
"We are brought into God's Kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve and, finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God's grace." - Jerry Bridges
"O Lord, since Thou hast died To give Thyself for me, No sacrifice could be too great For me to make for Thee Lord, send me anywhere; Only go with me. Lay any burden on me; Only sustain me. Sever any tie, Save the tie that binds me to Thy heart. Lord Jesus, my King, I consecrate my life, Lord, to Thee." -David Livingstone
"There is many a thing which the world calls disappointment, but there is no such a word in the dictionary of faith. What to others are disappointments are to believers intimations of the way of God." - John Newton
"Withhold no part of the precious truth, but speak what you know and declare what you have seen. Do not allow the toil or darkness or possible unbelief of your friends to dissuade you. Let us rise and march to the place of duty, and there declare what great things God has shown to our soul." - Alistair Begg
"True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on our Divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, "I will not be afraid;" it is wisdom and peace to say, "I will trust and not be afraid." -Alexander MacLaren
"When life has been well spent; when there is a conscience without reproach; when there is faith in the Saviour; when there is a well-founded hope of heaven, there can be nothing that should disquiet us." - Albert Barnes
"When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer." - William Barclay
"The Church is the Body of Christ, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. He fills the Body, directs its movements, controls its members, inspires its wisdom, supplies its strength. He guides into truth, sanctifies its agents, and empowers for witnessing. The Spirit has never abdicated His authority nor relegated His power." - Samuel Chadwick
"True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on our Divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, "I will not be afraid;" it is wisdom and peace to say, "I will trust and not be afraid." - Alexander MacLaren
"A believer longs after God: to come into His presence, to feel His love, to feel near to Him in secret, to feel in the crowd that he is nearer than all the creatures. Ah! dear brethren, have you ever tasted this blessedness? There is greater rest and solace to be found in the presence of God for one hour, than in an eternity of the presence of man." - Robert Murray McCheyne
"The promise to the Church is a promise of persecution, if faithful in this world, but a promise of a great inheritance and reward hereafter. In the meantime, she is to be a pilgrim body, passing through this scene, but abiding above." - C. I. Scofield
