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And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul; to join with you in prayer and other holy exercises; to watch over you and tell you of your sins and dangers, and to stir up in you the grace of God, and remember to you of the life to come, and cheerfully accompany you in the ways of holiness.Richard Baxter,A Christian Directoiy: or, Sum ofPractical7heology, and Cases of Conscience, 11.1 (7he Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter [London: James Duncan, 1830], IV, 30).
I take occasion to make the general remark that the great thing I always desired to find was a woman who was a real Christian, who was a real lady, and who was not a fool.AutoBiography (73)
Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself. The Reason for God (8)
The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. The Reason for God (181)
In 1950 the average age at marriage was twenty for women and twenty-two for men; by 2019 those numbers rose to twenty-eight for women and thirty for men.Remarriage in Early Christianity, Eerdmans, 7
Faith is not primarily a function of how you feel. Faith is living out and believing what truth is despite what you feel.
Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take
primary responsibility for Christlike servant-leadership, protection, and provision in the home.
Submission is the divine calling of a wife to honor
and affirm her husband's leadership, and help carry it
through according to her gifts.
The covenant is "I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God" (Exodus 6:7). The question is this: In light of the constant failures of the people to live up to their covenant promises to serve God, is the covenant conditional or unconditional? Will God say that it is conditional? ("Because you broke the covenant, I will cut you off, curse you, and abandon you forever.") Or will he say it is unconditional? ("Though you have rejected me, I will never wholly abandon you, but I will remain with you.") Which is it?....then Jesus comes, and as we see him crying "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" we realize the answer. Is the covenant between God and his people conditional or unconditional? Yes. Yes. Jesus came and fulfilled the conditions so God could love us unconditionally.Preaching, 72
In our culture, divine judgement is one of Christianity's most offensive doctrines. The Reason for God (69)
When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and reported that he had not found God, C.S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking for Shakespeare. If there is a God, he wouldn't be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play. The Reason for God (122)
Many a husband hath been won to Christ by the holy life of the wife; and many a wife hath been won to Christ by the holy life of the husband.
What right has the husband to require submission from his wife? None, unless God had appointed it.
The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God's help to do just that.
cross words aren't an indication of a bad marriage. They're an indication that the marriage is between two sinners. Also that there are times when we have to work things through in such a way that we get messy.Daddy Tried, 187
moralistic application doesn't work in the long term. I'm afraid a sermon that just tells people they should be generous because they have to is not dealing with the fears, false hopes, and lusts for approval and control that make people unwilling to give more. So they might give more once or twice but not actually become more generous... Unless you get to Jesus, you are just beating on their willsPreaching, 240
Without the help of the Holy Spirit, I believe all of us tend naturally toward being mainly warm and gentle or mainly forceful and authoritative in the pulpit. We must recognize our imbalance and seek the Lord for growth into the fullness of his holy character.Preaching, 200
the Achilles' heel of [the harm principle] is the assumption that we all know what "harm" is or that it can be defined without recourse to deep beliefs about right and wrong. One person says that it harms no one for a man to consume pornography privately in his own home. Others counter, however, that pornography will shape how he talks and acts with others, especially with women.Preaching, 141
Western secularists insist that their view of equal rights is simply self-evident to any rational person, but non-Western cultures do not agree... Because truly secular people can't admit the source of their main moral values in their Christian history, it makes them imperialistic.Preaching, 151
Another important grace-event pattern is the "order" of the Exodus and the lawgiving. God did not first give the law and then deliver the people. He first delivered the people and then he gave them the law. Thus we are not saved by the law but saved for the law.Preaching, 83
Mark is intentionally recapping the Jonah episode in Mark 4. He uses nearly identical words and phrases. Both Jesus and Jonah are in a boat. Both are in storms described in similar terms. Both boats are filled with others who are terrified of death. Both groups wake the sleeping prophets angrily, rebuking them. Both storms are miraculously calmed and the companions saved. And both stories conclude with the men in the boats more terrified after the storm is stilled than they were before.Preaching, 78
Hughes Old shows us that the original preaching of the church in its first five centuries used the lectio continua method - consecutive, verse-by-verse exposition through whole books of the Bible, taking years to bring the congregation through great swaths of biblical material.Preaching, 39
[Hughes Oliphant Old] names five basic types of sermons that he discerns over the centuries, which he calls expository, evangelistic, catechetical, festal, and prophetic.Preaching, 29
In the course of expounding a biblical text the Christian preacher should compare and contrast with the foundational beliefs of the culture, which are usually invisible to people inside it, in order to help people understand themselves more fully. If done rightly it can lead people to say to themselves, Oh, so that's why I tend to think and feel that way. This can be one of the most liberating and catalytic steps in a person's journey to faith in Christ.Preaching, 19-20
the essence of sin- that we don't "give thanks"? Is that such a big deal? Yes, it is. Think about plagiarism for a moment. Why is plagiarism taken so seriously? It is claiming that you came up with an idea yourself when you did not. It is not acknowledging dependence, that you got the idea from someone else. Plagiarism is a refusal to give thanks and give credit and is, therefore, a form of theft... Cosmic ingratitude is living in the illusion that you are spiritually self-sufficient.Prayer, 196
The term describes the direct sight of the glory of God. This is what the redeemed will have in heaven fully, by sight, and what believers have now on earth partially, by faith and not yet with our literal eyes. While Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas made this the centerpiece of his thought, very few Protestant theologians have touched on it at all.Prayer, 176
Top Authors
1. Charles Spurgeon (115)
2. J.C. Ryle (111)
3. Thomas Watson (108)
4. John Calvin (83)
5. John Piper (82)
6. J.I. Packer (76)
7. George Swinnock (69)
8. Louis Berkhof (62)
9. A.W. Pink (60)
10. C.S. Lewis (51)
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2. J.C. Ryle (111)
3. Thomas Watson (108)
4. John Calvin (83)
5. John Piper (82)
6. J.I. Packer (76)
7. George Swinnock (69)
8. Louis Berkhof (62)
9. A.W. Pink (60)
10. C.S. Lewis (51)
11. Francis Schaeffer (48)
12. Gerald Bray (47)
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14. John Owen (44)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (43)
16. Tim Keller (42)
17. Joe Boot (42)
18. Abraham Kuyper (40)
19. John Flavel (38)
20. Thomas Brooks (36)
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