Peace

See in the meantime that your faith brings forth obedience, and God in due time will cause it to bring forth peace. John Owen

Creation's Purpose?

“The material universe is but scaffolding for the Church of Christ. It is but the temporary structure upon which the amazing mystery of redeeming love is being carried on to perfection.”

C. H. Spurgeon

Fascinating comment by Spurgeon. Contemplate this fact....that all of creation is put forth by God for the body of Christ. I would add that the creation is also purposed to point to the amazing magnificence of God's glory. It is subject to futility for a time, because of sin, but not forever.

Questions About Christianity

“If the Gospel of God is true, it can stand any quantity of questioning. I am more afraid of the deadness and lethargy of the public mind about religion than any sort of enquiry or controversy about it. As silver tried in the furnace is purified seven times, so is the Word of God—and the
more it is put into the furnace, the more it will be purified—and the more beauteously the pure ore of Revelation will glitter in the sight of the faithful.”— Charles Spurgeon

Restlessness

Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.



-Augustine, Confessions

Rest

Plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in His immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.



C. H. Spurgeon

Easily Pleased

We re half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can not imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are too easily pleased.
-C. S. Lewis


“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. "

Isa 55:1-2


“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him”

1 Cor 2:9

Saving Faith

Saving faith, then is the opposite of damning unbelief. Both issue from the heart: unbelief, from a heart that is alienated from God, which is in a state of rebellion against Him; saving faith, from a heart which is reconciled to Him and so has ceased to fight against Him. Thus, an essential element or ingredient in saving faith is a yielding to the authority of God, a submitting of myself to His rule. It is very much more than my understanding assenting and my will consenting to the fact that Christ is a Savior for sinners, and that He stands ready to receive all who trust in Him. To be received by Christ, I must not only come to Him renouncing all my own righteousness (Romans 10:3), as an empty-handed beggar (Matthew 19:21), but I must also forsake my self-will and rebellion against Him (Psalm 2:11,12; Proverbs 28:13). Should an insurrectionist and seditionist come to an earthly king seeking his sovereign favor and pardon, then, obviously, the very law of his coming to him for forgiveness, requires that he should come on his knees, laying aside his hostility. So it is with a sinner who really comes savingly to Christ for pardon; it is against the law of faith to do otherwise.

Saving faith is a genuine coming to Christ: Matthew 28; John 6:37, etc. But let us take care that we do not miss the clear and inevitable implication of this term. If I say, "I came to the U.S.A.," then I necessarily indicate that I left some other country to get here. Thus it is in "coming" to Christ: something has to be left. Coming to Christ not only involves the abandoning of every false object of confidence, but it also includes and entails the forsaking of all other competitors for my heart. "For ye were ‘as sheep going astray;’ but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls" (1 Peter 2:25). And what is meant by "ye were (note the past tense—they are no longer so doing) as sheep going astray"? Isaiah 53:6 tells us: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." Ah, that is what must be forsaken before we can truly "come" to Christ—that course of self-will must be abandoned. The prodigal son could not come to his father while he remained in the far country.

Dear reader, if you are still following a course of self-pleasing, you are only deceiving yourself if you think you have come to Christ.
Nor is the brief definition which we have given above, of what it means to really "come" to Christ, any forced or novel one of our own. In his book, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, John Bunyan wrote: "Coming to Christ is attended with an honest and sincere forsaking all for Him—(here he quotes Luke 14:26,27). By these and like expressions elsewhere, Christ describeth the true comer: he is one that casteth all behind his back. There are a great many pretended comers to Jesus Christ in the world. They are much like the man you read of in Matthew 21:30 that said to his father’s bidding, ‘I go sir, and went not.’ When Christ calls by His Gospel, they say, ‘I come, Sir,’ but they still abide by their pleasures and carnal delights." C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon on John 6:44 said, "Coming to Christ embraces in it repentance, self-abnegation, and faith in the Lord Jesus, and so sums within itself all those things which are the necessary attendants of those great steps of heart, such as the belief of the truth, earnest prayers to God, the submission of the soul to the precepts of His Gospel." In his sermon on John 6:37, he says, "To come to Christ signifies to turn from sin and to trust in Him. Coming to Christ is a leaving of all false confidences, a renouncing of all love to sin, and a looking to Jesus as the solitary pillar of our confidence and hope."

Saving faith consists of the complete surrender of my whole being and life to the claims of God upon me:
"But first gave their own selves to the Lord" (2 Corinthians 8:5).

It is the unreserved acceptance of Christ as my absolute Lord, bowing to His will and receiving His yoke. Possibly someone may object, Then why are Christians exhorted as they are in Romans 12:1? We answer, all such exhortations are simply a calling on them to continue as they began:
"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him" (Colossians 2:6).

Yes, mark it well, that Christ is "received" as LORD. O how far, far below the N.T. standard is this modern way of begging sinners to receive Christ as their own personal "Savior." If the reader will consult his concordance he will find that in every passage where the two titles are found together, it is always "Lord and Savior," and never vice versa: see Luke 1:46, 47; 2 Peter 1:11; 2:20; 3:18.

Until the ungodly are sensible of the exceeding sinfulness of their vile course of self-will and self-pleasing, until they are genuinely broken down and penitent over it before God, until they are willing to forsake the world for Christ, until they have resolved to come under His government—for such to depend upon Him for pardon and life is not faith, but blatant presumption; it is but to add insult to injury. And for one such to take His holy name upon his polluted lips and profess to be His follower, is the most terrible blasphemy, and comes perilously nigh to committing that sin for which there is no forgiveness. Alas, alas, that modern evangelism is encouraging and producing just such hideous and Christ-dishonoring monstrosities.

Saving faith is a believing on Christ with the heart:
"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness" (Romans 10:9,10).

There is no such thing as a saving faith in Christ where there is no real love for Him, and by "real love," we mean a love which is evidenced by obedience. Christ acknowledges none to be His friends save those who do whatsoever He commands them (John 15:14). As unbelief is a species of rebellion, so saving faith is a complete subjection to God: hence we read of "faith obedience" (Romans 16:26). Saving faith is to the soul what health is to the body: it is a mighty principle of operation, full of life, ever working, bringing forth fruit after its own kind.

From Studies on Saving Faith by A. W. Pink
http://www.reformed.org/books/pink/saving_faith/

Resources.

"Many Christians estimate difficulties in light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt. All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on his power and presence being with them."
--Hudson Taylor

Restrictions.

Love God, and do what you want.
--Augustine

Suffering.

Because human freedom is necessary for all that is meaningful in life (e.g., love, relationships, and acts of nobility) then God cannot create a meaningful world without letting people exercise their freedom. The same freedom that makes it possible to love makes it possible to hate. The same freedom that can lead to heaven can lead to hell. The heart of the appeal to free will is that freedom is worth the price of evil.

– C.S. Lewis


God is not like a senile old grandfather whose only concern is the temporal gratification of his grandchildren, but more like a skilled, benevolent surgeon who will do whatever it takes to eradicate the cancer of sin from the character of his creature, because he knows that ultimate health and happiness are impossible as long as any trace of the malignancy remains. In a fallen world this type of surgery often requires the scalpel of suffering. It is fortunate for us that God is perfectly willing to hurt us in order to bring about the ultimate healing of our souls.

– Alvin Plantinga

Edward's 56th Resolution

Resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken, my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

Jonathon Edwards

Can't Get No Satisfaction.

All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

C. S. Lewis

Tozer On Pride and Criticism

After a time of growth and successful labor comes the deadly psychology of self-congratulation. Success itself becomes the cause of later failure. Those who have already entered the state where they can no longer receive admonition are not likely to profit by this warning. After a man has gone over the precipice there is not much we can do for him; but we can place markers along the way to prevent the next traveler from going over. Here are a few:

1. Don’t defend yourself against criticism. If criticism is false, it can do no harm. If it is true, you need to hear it and do something about it.

2. Be concerned not with what you have accomplished but over what you might have accomplished if you had followed the Lord completely.

3. When reproved, pay no attention to the source. Do not ask whether it is a friend or an enemy that reproves you. An enemy is often of greater value to you than a friend because he is not influenced by sympathy.

4. Keep your heart open to correction of the Lord and be ready to receive His chastisement regardless of who holds the whip. The great saints all learned to take a licking gracefully – and that may be one reason why they were great saints.

A.W. Tozer

Resolution.

Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

-Jonathon Edwards, August 1723.