Jesus Christ

There is only one Physician -
Very flesh, yet Spirit too;
Uncreated, and yet born;
God-and-Man in One agreed,
Very-Life-in-Death indeed,
Fruit of God and Mary's seed;
At once impassible and torn
By pain and suffering here below:
Jesus Christ, whom as our Lord we know.

Ignatius of Antioch, in
M Haykin
Rediscovering the Church Fathers
Crossway
p43

The need for Church Leaders

There is an average of 178,000 people coming to Christ daily around the world. The latest statistics indicate there are 3.2 million pastors worldwide who are untrained or under trained. Many of these pastors have families, jobs and live on less than $40 dollars a month. It is estimated that 7,000 new church leaders are needed daily to care for the growing church and 85% of the churches of the world are led by people who have no formal training in theology or ministry. Leaders from every non-Western region say their number one need is leadership training.

 Equip Pastors

Is the Bible the Word of God?

Is the Bible the Word of God? Then mind that you do not neglect it. Read it! Begin to read it this very day. What greater insult to God can a man be guilty of than to refuse to read the letter God sends him from heaven? Oh, be sure, if you will not read your Bible, you are in fearful danger of losing your soul!

Is the Bible the Word of God? Then be sure you always read it with deep reverence. Say to your soul, whenever you open the Bible, “O my soul, you are going to read a message from God!”

Is the Bible the Word of God? Then be sure you never read it without fervent prayer for the help and teaching of the Holy Spirit. Humble prayer will throw more light on your Bible than any commentary that ever was written. You will not understand it unless your heart is right. You will find it a sealed book without the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Its contents are often hidden from the wise and learned, and revealed to babes.

Is the Bible the Word of God? Then let us all resolve from this day forward to prize the Bible more. God has given us the Bible to be a light to guide us to everlasting life. Let us not neglect this precious gift. Let us read it diligently, and walk in its light.

JC Ryle
Abridged from:
Old Paths
BoT
p31-35

Salvation in Christ alone

There is nowhere else we ought to look for our salvation than in Christ. You cannot trust Christ truly unless you trust Christ alone. No matter how much you boast of Christ or talk of your love for Christ or passion for Christ, if you add anything to Christ, your boasting and love and passion are all in vain. There is no "both-and" with Jesus, only "either-or." Either Jesus is the only Saviour, the perfect Saviour, and your only comfort in life and in death, or Jesus is for you no Saviour at all.

K DeYoung
The Good News we Almost Forgot
Moody
p65

Obedience - out of love

From slavery to sonship - this is the message of Paul's letter to the Galatians. It is also the transition the Tuyuca people made when they first encountered that message. The Tuyucas live in the eastern jungles of Colombia, along the border with Brazil. As they worked with the missionary Janet Barnes to translate Galatians, they had trouble understanding salvation by grace. "If all we have to do to be saved is to believe," one of them asked, "well, then what? How do we live after that?"

The answer, the Tuyucas learned, is that Christians live out their faith by obeying the will of God. They do this not because they are slaves who must satisfy their Master, but because they are children who want to please their Father. "I understand now," said one of the Tuyucas, finally grasping the gospel message of Galatians. "My grandfather said it is better for a son to obey his father out of love than out of fear of being punished. That is how God wants us to obey him - out of love."

P Ryken

Galatians

P&R

p168

A Faithful Minister

I see a man cannot be a faithful minister, until he preaches Christ for Christ's sake - until he gives up striving to attract people to himself, and seeks only to attract them to Christ. Lord, give me this!

R M'Cheyne, in

A Bonar

Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M'Cheyne

Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier

p54

Church

Do we go to God's house expecting something to happen? Or do we go just to listen to a sermon, and to sing our hymns, and to meet with one another? How often does this vital idea enter into our minds that we are in the presence of the living God, that the Holy Spirit is in the church, that we may feel the touch of his power? How much do we think in terms of coming together to meet with God, and to worship him, and to stand before him, and to listen to him? Is there not this appalling danger that we are just content because we have correct beliefs? And we have lost the life, the vital thing, the power, the thing that really makes worship worship, which is in Spirit and truth.

DM Lloyd-Jones
Revival
Marshall Pickering
p72

Pray, and do not lose heart!

I was recently giving a series of lectures and sermons at the church where one of my seminary's graduates had been made the senior pastor. At the first teaching session, I noticed the presence of someone who seemed vaguely familiar to me, though I could not remember ever having met her. After the discussion time following the lecture, this person came and introduced herself to me. It turned out that I had known her father for many years and also one of her brothers. The father was one of the most godly, faithful people I have ever met. The brother was a cherished fellow elder in the denomination in which I served for many years. I had seen the family resemblance. This woman (now in her early sixties) told me how she had come to faith while she and the family were singing hymns around her father's deathbed - after decades of unbelief and wandering since turning away from God as a teenager. I am sure that she was a person for whom many thousands of prayers had been offered. I am also sure that praying with confidence was at times very difficult for that family and for others who loved them. Yet it is in just such situations that Jesus encourages us that we "ought always to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).

J Barrs
The Heart of Prayer
P&R
p80 

On Prayer

Christ went more readily to the cross than we do to the throne of grace.

T Watson, in
R Rushing, Ed
Voices from the Past
BoT
p345

Drawing near to God

Drawing near to God is our chief good. It is our happiness to seek him.The nearer anything is to the principle of something, the better off it is. Nearer to the sun, the more light; nearer the fire, the more heat; nearer to goodness, the more good; nearer to happiness, the more happiness. Therefore it must be the greatest happiness to draw near to God.

R Sibbes, in
R Rushing, Ed
Voices from the Past
BoT
p334