On Buying Books

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Erasmus
Quoted on Ryan Holiday's blog.

Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman

John may intend a contrast between the woman of this narrative [John Ch. 4] and Nicodemus of Ch. 3. He was learned, powerful, respected, orthodox, theologically trained; she was unschooled, without influence, despised, capable only of folk religion. He was a man, a Jew, a ruler; she was a woman, a Samaritan, a moral outcast. And both needed Jesus.

DA Carson
The Gospel According to John
IVP
p216

Government

The fall from kingdom to tyranny is easy; but it is not much more difficult to fall from the rule of the best men to the faction of a few; yet it is easiest of all to fall from popular rule to sedition.

J Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion
The Westminster Press
p1493

Death

The Bible reveals that God is the one who takes life as he is the one who gives it... As God's rightful posession, life is God's to take when he pleases. He does not need to consult with anyone else because his authority as Creator, Sustainer and Owner of life puts it totally at his disposal. He is not doing any evil when he takes back the life he gave whenever he chooses.

J Piper
A Godward Life
Multnomah
p268

Our Greatest Need

  If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, He would have sent an economist.
  If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist.
  If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician.
  If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor.
  But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death, and he sent us a Savior.

DA Carson
A Call to Spiritual Reformation
Baker
p109 

God's Glory

How serious do you think God is about his glory? Does God's glory matter this much to you? Do you think it is a serious crime that all the humans whom God made to know him and glorify him have used God's gifts to rebel against him? Do you find it heinous and deplorable that humanity has turned the world God made as a theater for his glory into a theater of idolatry and rebellion and sin? Do you think human sin warrants the kind of judgement that we see in this chapter? [Revelation 8]

If you think that God is overreacting, your view of God is too small. The scope of this devastation is meant to show us how great God is. The fury of this wrath is meant to declare how serious God is about his word.

J Hamilton
Revelation (Preaching the Word)
Crossway
p204

The Law

Any repentant rebel will tell you, you don't break the law of God, it breaks you.

T Johnson
The Parables of Jesus.
CFP
p77

One Family Under God

A ten-year-old Christian has more in common with an eighty-year-old Christian than with ten-year-old unbelievers.

T Ascol
Tabletalk Magazine
March 2013
p27

I asked the Lord that I might grow

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, His face.

‘Twas He who taught me thus to pray,
And He, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once He’d answer my request;
And by His love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“‘Tis in this way”, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in Me.”

J Newton