“The first thing which we ought to consider in this name is the divine majesty of Christ, so as to yield to him the reverence which is due to the only and eternal God. But we must not, at the same time, forget the fruit which God intended that we should collect and receive from this name. For whenever we contemplate the one person of Christ as God-man, we ought to hold it for certain that, if we are united to Christ by faith, we possess God.” — John Calvin’s Commentary on Matthew
Join the War
If the Church gives the impression to the world that she is but a collection of people who are holding one another’s hands and saying nice, comforting, sentimental things, she is finished and useless in a world such as this is today. The devil and his forces are active, and we need to fight! The Church is not a place in which people do little but sympathize with one another; that is a totally wrong conception of the Christian Church.
Onward, Christians, onward go,
Join the war, and face the foe.
from Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones
Are you content to follow Jesus from a distance?
Charles Spurgeon said:
Are you content to follow Jesus from a distance? O, let me affectionately warn you for it is a grievous thing when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Savior’s face. Let us work to feel what an evil thing this is – little love to our own dying Savior, little joy in our precious Jesus, little fellowship with the Beloved! Hold a true Lent in your in your souls, while you sorrow over your hardness of heart. Don’t stop at sorrow. Remember where you first received salvation. Go at once to the cross. There, and there only can you get your spirit aroused. No matter how hard, how insensible, how dead we may have become, let’s go again in all the rags and poverty, and defilement of our natural condition. Let’s clasp that cross, let’s look into those languid eyes, let’s bathe in that fountain filled with blood – this will bring us back to our first love; this will restore the simplicity of our faith, and the tenderness of our heart….The more we dwell where the cries of Calvary can be heard the more noble our lives become. Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.
We Grope for the Wall
Isaiah 59
9 Therefore justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not overtake us;
we hope for light, and behold, darkness,
and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
10 We grope for the wall like the blind;
we grope like those who have no eyes;
we stumble at noon as in the twilight,
among those in full vigor we are like dead men.
11 We all growl like bears;
we moan and moan like doves;
we hope for justice, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far from us.
12 For our transgressions are multiplied before you,
and our sins testify against us;
for our transgressions are with us,
and we know our iniquities:
13 transgressing, and denying the Lord,
and turning back from following our God,
speaking oppression and revolt,
conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.
14 Justice is turned back,
and righteousness stands far away;
for truth has stumbled in the public squares,
and uprightness cannot enter.
15 Truth is lacking,
and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
Charles de Foucauld Quote Two
To serve others, I need gentleness, humility, abjection, and charity. In every sick person I should see, not a human being, but Jesus, and so should show him respect, love, compassion, joy, and gratitude at being able to serve him, zeal and gentleness. I should serve the sick as I do the poor, making myself do the lowliest services for them all, as Jesus washed the apostles’ feet. I must tolerate the presence of evil people, as long as their wickedness is not corrupting others — as Jesus tolerated Judas.
Charles de Foucauld Quote
“Live as though you were going to have to die as a martyr today. The more we lack in this world, the more surely we discover the best thing the earth has to offer us: the cross. The more firmly we embrace the cross, the more closely we are bound to Jesus, our Beloved, who is made fast to it.”
Thought 3
“How to study the Bible is such a hard thing to explain. I feel like at times I am just staring at words on a page. But other times it’s like something opens up and I’m finally able to connect. I think a ton of it has to do with how I’m approaching the Scriptures. Am i putting myself above the scriptures? Or am I putting myself under them? Am I treating them like a recipe or like a river? Am using it to show God how He has screwed up this time? Or am I opening them to listen to God voice?”
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O GOD OF TRUTH, I thank thee for the holy Scriptures, their precepts, promises, directions, light. In them may I learn more of Christ, be enabled to retain his truth and have grace to follow it. Help me to lift up the gates of my soul that he may come in and show me himself when I search the Scriptures, for I have lines to fathom its depths, no wings to soar to its heights. By his aid may I be enabled to explore all its truths, love them with all my heart, embrace them with all my power, engraft them into my life. Bless to my soul all grains of truth garnered by thy Word; may they take deep root, be refreshed by heavenly dew, be ripened by heavenly rays, be harvested to my joy and thy praise. Help me to gain profit by what I read, as trasure beyond all treasure, a fountain which can replenish my dry heart, its waters flowing through me as a perennial river on-dawn by thy Holy Spirit. Enable me to distil from its pages faithful prayer that grasps the arm of thy omnipotence, achieves wonder, obtains blessings, and draws down streams of mercy. From it show me how my words have often been unfaithful to thee, injurious to my fellow-men, empty of grace, fully of folly, dishonouring to my calling. Then write thy own words upon my heart and inscribe them on my lips; So shall all glory be to thee in my reading of thy Word!
–A Prayer from “The Valley of Vision”
Thought 1
The only way we will ever change the world is if the practice of Christianity is valued more than, or at least equal to the instruction.
Chesterton Quote
A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter VI. THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY
