"Two Kinds of Regret, One Kind of Hope"

An encouraging post from Jon Bloom at Desiring God ministries.

The Tables Divinely Turned

"Satan was caught in the snare he laid for the Lord; nailed to the cross upon which he hoped to crucify him."

-- Basil [cp. Col. 2:14-15; Heb. 2:14-15]

"Going Soft Against Wrath"

"A soft answer turns away wrath, 
but a harsh word stirs up anger."

What is the wise response to an angry person who says something cruel, false or demanding? Proverbs 15:1 helps us in those awkward moments at home, at work, in our churches.

For the rest of Ray Ortlund's  helpful post, go here.

Born for What Purpose?

“I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and obey.”

-- C.S. Lewis in ‘Breakfast Table and other Reminiscences.’

Conversion is no small matter...

“Conversion is another kind of work than most are aware of. It is not a small matter to bring an earthly mind to heaven and to show man the amiable excellencies of God, to be taken up in such love to him that can never be quenched; to make him flee for refuge to Christ and thankfully embrace him as the life of his soul; to have the very drift and bent of his life change so that a man renounces that which he took for happiness, and places his happiness where he never did before.”

– Richard Baxter( Puritan Evangelism; A Biblical Approach; p. 48)

The Gospel Is the Food of Faith

"The new life in Christ, just like all natural life, must be nourished and strengthened. This is possible only in communion with Christ in the Holy Spirit and through the word of Scripture. Enlightened by the Spirit, believers gain a new knowledge of faith. The gospel is the food of faith and must be known to be nourishment. Salvation that is not known and enjoyed is no salvation. God saves by causing himself to be known and enjoyed in Christ."

— Herman Bavinck,  "Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation"
(Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Academic, 2008), 96

HT: firstimportance.org

"How to Describe a Christian"

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.  1 John 5:1

Preaching on this verse in 1694, John Howe described what it looks like for a person to be “born of God,” that is, regenerate:

“. . . a mighty power from God coming upon their souls, conforming them to God, addicting them to God, uniting them with God, making them to center in God, taking them off from all this world. . . . It is a great thing to be a Christian!”

-- Edmund Calamy, editor, "The Works of the Rev. John Howe" (London, 1846), page 896
HT:  Ray Ortlund, Jr..

"...There is no such thing as not worshipping..."

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship— be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles— is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

"If you worship money and things— if they are where you tap real meaning in life— then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.  On one level, we all know this stuff already— it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

"Worship power— you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart— you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.”

– David Foster Wallace, in a speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College in 2005,  quoted by James K. A. Smith (2013-02-15). Imagining the Kingdom : Volume 2 (Cultural Liturgies): How Worship Works (Kindle Location 681). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

A prodigal daughter

From Justin Taylor:    Barbara Miller Juliani—daughter of evangelist and pastor Jack Miller (1928-1996) and sister of Paul Miller (A Praying Life)—shares the story of leaving the Christian faith at the age of 18 and how the Lord drew her back.... (click here)

Friendship

“Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.”

― Charles H. Spurgeon

The Source of True Obedience

:Until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that naught is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience; no, unless they place their entire happiness in him, they will never yield up their whole selves to him in truth and sincerity."

— John Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion
I.2

"Simply Irresistible"

"The Gospel to me is simply irresistible. Being the man I am, being full of lust and pride and envy and malice and hatred and false good, and all accumulated exaggerated misery - to me the Gospel of the grace of God, and the Redemption of Christ, and the regeneration and sanctification of the Holy Ghost, that Gospel is to me simply irresistible, and I cannot understand why it is not equally irresistible to every mortal man born of woman." - Pascal.

What Is Your Stance Toward Your Sins?

“The difference between an unconverted man and a converted man is not that one has sins and the other does not; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins.”

-- William Arnot, "Laws From Heaven for Life On Earth" (London, 1884), page 311.

Puritan Wisdom Regarding Contentment

“My brethren, the reason why you have not got contentment in the things of the world is not because you have not got enough of them. That is not the reason. But the reason is because they are not things proportionable to that immortal soul of yours that is capable of God himself. Many men think that when they are troubled and have not got contentment, it is because they have but a little in the world, and if they had more then they would be content. That is just as if a man were hungry, and to satisfy his craving stomach he should gape and hold open his mouth to take in the wind, and then should think that the reason why he is not satisfied is because he has not got enough of the wind. No, the reason is because the thing is not suitable to a craving stomach.”

“Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10).

Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Edinburgh, 1964), page 91.

The Path to Peace

"The path to peace begins when I stop focusing on my hurts and others' sins and start working on others' hurts and my sins."

-- Rick Warren (especially in light of what he and his family have recently experienced, that quote is particularly compelling)