Joshua

“No room remains empty for long.  If God is driven out, the gods come trooping in.”

Lesslie Newbigin

“Idols are non-gods and as such are much more congenial to us than God, for we not only have the pleasure of making them, using our wonderful imaginations and skills in creative ways, but also of controlling them.  They are gods with all the God taken out so that we can continue to be our own gods.”

Eugene Peterson

“Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love . . . Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

Jonah 2:8-9

“By April 1970 I had grown sick to death of the church viewed as “religious cushion” and me as chief cushioner. I had been a pastor for more than a decade and instructor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia for four years. I had given it all my best shot. But as a change agent I had bombed out. I was awash with cynicism about the prospects of the Christian church and went around with continual sorrow in my heart over the state of the churches around me. In a mood of dark despair I resigned both from the seminary faculty and from my pastorate . . . I began an intensive study of the promises of God in Scripture. I spent long hours tracing out great themes of grace predicted in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Joel, Habakkuk, and Zechariah. Sometimes, like a man dying of thirst, I drank in the Gospel of John and the enormous promises presented in it . . . As the weeks passed, my mind also began to be captured by the vastness of God’s promises. I was awed by what the risen Lord had promised to me in my weakness, utterly silenced in my soul like an astronomer unexpectedly seeing a whole new galaxy when he was only searching for a single planet! . . . The promises are the handles we grab in our weakness in order to secure His Presence.” 

Jack Miller, Outgrowing the Ingrown Church

“There is more in God’s promises to comfort than in this world to perplex.” 

Thomas Watson

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” 

Hebrews 11:13-16

“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” 

Hebrews 12:2-3

“Lo! The Incarnate God, ascended;
Pleads the merit of His blood.
Venture on Him; venture wholly,
Let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus
Can do helpless sinners good.” 

Joseph Hart

“Your God is too small.” 

J.B. Phillips

“Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbi Dei” (“the church is Reformed and always [in need of] being reformed according to the Word of God”) 

Jodocus van Lodenstein

“The awareness of sin used to be our shadow. Christians hated sin, feared it, fled from it, grieved over it. Some of our grandparents agonized over their sins. A man who lost his temper might wonder whether he could go to Holy Communion. A woman who for years envied her more attractive and intelligent sister might worry that this sin threatened her very salvation. But the shadow has dimmed. Nowadays, the accusation you have sinned is often said with a grin, and with a tone that signals an inside joke.  At one time, this accusation still had the power to jolt people. Catholics lined up to confess their sins; Protestant preachers rose up to confess our sins. And they did it regularly . . . The word sin now finds its home mostly on dessert menus. “Peanut Butter Binge” and “Chocolate Challenge” are sinful; lying is not. The new measure for sin is caloric.” 

Cornelius Plantinga

“Answer me this question, and I will tell you — Has God the Spirit taught you that you are accursed? Has he made you feel the bitterness of sin? Has he made you cry, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner?’ Then, my dear friend, Christ was cursed for you; and you are not cursed. You are not cursed now. Christ was cursed for you. Be of good cheer; if Christ was cursed for you, you cannot be cursed again.” 

Charles Spurgeon

“How strange it is that a widow with only a handful of meal should be commanded to offer hospitality! It is once again the impossible that is set before us.  It would have been a dull commonplace to have fed the prophet from the overflowing larder of the rich man’s palace.  But to work from an almost empty cupboard – that is the surprising way of the LORD!  He delights to hang great weights on apparently slender wires, to have great events turn on seeming trifles, and to make poverty the minister of the unsearchable riches of Christ.” 

J.H. Jowett

“The feel of faith is not strength, but dependent weakness.” 

Rev. Joe Novenson

“In the Christian life, weakness is the way. The way of weakness has two aspects. One is that the watching world sees you as weak in the sense of being limited and inadequate. The second aspect is that you yourself are very conscious of being limited and inadequate.” 

J.I. Packer

“Nothing makes us more merciful and patient with the faults of others than seeing our own.” 

Francois Fenelon

“We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is, “Where does my little life fit into the great story of God’s mission?” 

Christopher Wright

“We must not lag behind the king in some kind of unwarranted pessimism as though his first coming and present reign do not make a difference. We must not run ahead of the king in some kind of unwarranted triumphalism as though we’re going to make utopia here before he comes again. We keep in step with the king.” 

David Jones

“Who is on the Lord’s side? Who will serve the King?
Who will be His helpers, other lives to bring?
Who will leave the world’s side? Who will face the foe?
Who is on the Lord’s side? Who for Him will go?
By Thy call of mercy, by Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord’s side. Savior, we are Thine!”

Frances Havergal

“Resolved: At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.” 

Clyde Kilby

“The feel of faith is not strength, but dependent weakness.” 

Rev. Joe Novenson

“The worldling blesses God while he gives him plenty, but the Christian blesses him when he smites him: he believes him to be too wise to err and too good to be unkind; he trusts him where he cannot trace him, looks up to him in the darkest hour, and believes that all is well.” 

Charles Spurgeon

“When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Death of death, and hell’s destruction,
Land me safe on Canaan’s side.
Songs of praises, I will ever give to Thee;
Songs of praises, I will ever give to Thee.”

William Williams

“I never wanted to follow Jesus.
I never wanted to follow Jesus.
I never wanted to follow Jesus.
He rescued me, He rescued me.
No turning back, no turning back.”

Red Mountain Music

“There’s a direct correlation between the accuracy of our memory and the effectiveness of our mission.  If we’re not teaching people how to be saved, it’s perhaps because we’ve forgotten the tragedy of being lost. If we’re not teaching the message of forgiveness, it may be because we don’t remember what it was like to be guilty. And if we’re not preaching the cross, it could be that we’ve subconsciously decided that—God forbid—somehow we don’t need it.” 

Max Lucado

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast.” 

Ephesians 2:8-9

“As we might guess, far from gradually becoming extinct in adulthood, our fears increase throughout our lives. What was once a small family of worries quietly conducts an aggressive breeding program to become a teeming community of palpable fears and private anxieties. The code by which fear and anxiety live is primal: multiply. As we possess more things, care about more people, accumulate more bad experiences, and watch the evening news, it is as if we absorb fear. If they are not obvious in your own life, perhaps it’s because you have been living in a war zone your entire life. At first you noticed every gunshot. After a while the mayhem blends in with the rustle of the trees, the TV, and the children playing in the other room. Fear gradually becomes the background noise of everyday life.” 

Ed Welch, Running Scared

“Oh! I love God’s ‘shalls’ and ‘wills.’ There is nothing comparable to them. Let a man say ‘shall,’ what is it good for? ‘I will,’ says man, and he never performs; ‘I shall,’ says he, and he breaks his promise. But it is never so with God’s ‘shalls.’ If He says ‘shall,’ it shall be; when He says ‘will,’ it will be.” 

Charles Spurgeon