Quotes to Ponder
Zephaniah 3:17
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing. (ESV)
Mark 7:5–13
[5] And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” [6] And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
[7] in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
[8] You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
[9] And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! [10] For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ [11] But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—[12] then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, [13] thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (ESV)
Jeremiah 9:23–24
[23] Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, [24] but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (ESV)
“The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.” – Hudson Taylor
Charles G. Finney:
“Evermore the Law must prepare the way for the gospel. To overlook this in instructing souls is almost certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false standard of Christian experience, and to fill the church with false converts.”
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“The moral law of God is the only law of individuals and of nations, and nothing can be rightful government but such as is established and administered with a view to its support.”
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“The end for which Christ lives, and for which He has left His church in the world, is the salvation of sinners.”
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“If you do not make it a matter of study, how you may successfully act in building up the kingdom of Christ, you are acting a very wicked and absurd part as a Christian.”
General William Booth:
“I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”
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“Not called!' did you say?
'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.
Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.”
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"Most Christians would like to send their recruits to Bible college for five years. I would like to send them to hell for five minutes. That would do more than anything else to prepare them for a lifetime of compassionate ministry."
Robert Murray McCheyne:
"The Christian is a person who makes it easy for others to believe in God."
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"Give yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray."
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"It is the mark of a hypocrite to be a Christian everywhere but home."
Arthur W. Pink:
“Here is a fundamental difference between the man of faith and the man of unbelief. The unbeliever is 'of the world', judges everything by worldly standards, views life from the standpoint of time and sense, and weighs everything in the balances of his own carnal making. But the man of faith brings in God, looks at everything from His standpoint, estimates values by spiritual standards, and views life in the light of eternity. Doing this, he receives whatever comes as from the hand of God. Doing this, his heart is calm in the midst of the storm. Doing this, he rejoices in hope of the glory of God.”
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“We must not forget that the issues of Eternity are settled in Time.”
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“There is only one safeguard against error, and that is to be established in the faith; and for that, there has to be prayerful and diligent study, and a receiving with meekness the engrafted Word of God. Only then are we fortified against the attacks of those who assail us.”
Jonathan Edwards:
“Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.”
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“Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”
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“Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.”
Charles Spurgeon:
That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.”
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“Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.”
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“Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are not won by flowery speeches.”
G. Campbell Morgan:
“The reason why men do not look to the Church today is that she has destroyed her own influence by compromise.”
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“Nothing is more needed among preachers today than having the courage to shake ourselves free from the trivialities that waste our time and strength, and resolve to continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the Word.”
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“The Church did the most when the Church was the least like the world.”
George Whitefield:
"True conversion means turning not only from sin but also from depending on self-made righteousness. Those who trust in their own righteousness for conversion hide behind their own good works. This is the reason that self-righteous people are so angry with gospel preachers, because the gospel does not spare those who will not submit to the righteousness of Jesus Christ!"
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"John Wesley tells of a dream he had. In the dream, he was ushered to the gates of Hell. There he asked, "Are there any Presbyterians here?" "Yes!", came the answer. Then he asked, "Are there any Baptists? Any Episcopalians? Any Methodists?" The answer was Yes! each time. Much distressed, Wesley was then ushered to the gates of Heaven. There he asked the same question, and the answer was No! "No?" To this, Wesley asked, "Who then is inside?" The answer came back, "There are only Christians here.""
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"Study to know Him more and more, for the more you know, the more you will love Him."
Henry Allen Ironside:
"God is looking for broken men who have judged themselves in the light of the cross of Christ. When He wants anything done, He takes up men who have come to the end of themselves, whose confidence is not in themselves, but in God."
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"All self-effort is but sinking sand. Christ alone is the Rock of our salvation."
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"If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord."
Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.
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"The nearer a man gets to God, the greater he sees his sin."
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"The most vital question to ask about all who claim to be Christian is this: Have they a soul thirst for God? ... Is their life centered on Him? Do they press forward more and more that they might know Him."
A.W. Tozer:
"The most important thing you think is what you think about God."
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"A whole new generation of Christians has come up believing that it is possible to 'accept' Christ without forsaking the world."
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"People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks: 1. they are facing only one direction, 2. they can never turn back, and 3. they no longer have plans of their own."
Leonard Ravehill:
No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.
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If you want to be popular, preach happiness. If you want to be unpopular, preach holiness.
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If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified.
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Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?
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Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live!
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The early Church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.
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When there's something in the Bible that churches don't like, they call it 'legalism.'
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Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need.
C.T. Studd
“Some want to live within the sound
Of church or chapel bell;
I want to run a rescue shop,
Within a yard of hell.”
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“Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
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“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
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Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy... Don't hedge! Time flies! ... Enlist!