Entries from September 2007 ↓

Joshua Harris posted a great quote from Charles Spurgeon on how Christ fits within the other elements of Christianity.

My brother Ian has arisen and begun to blog once again about the opportunities that he has here at TMC. Go, read, and be encouraged.

Thoughts of a Young Man

I just realized that I have posted many quotes recently, but I guess that’s because [1] I’ve been reading a lot, and [2] these men say things better than I ever could. Such is the case with this quotation from John Walvoord, in which he gives the importance and implications of the pastor preaching the Gospel.

If those who are shepherds of the flock never make clear the necessity of the new birth and do not proclaim accurately the depravity and sin of the human heart and the divine remedy provided alone in the salvation offered by the crucified Christ, one can hardly expect the church itself to be better than those who lead it. The result is Church-ianity, membership in an organization without biblical Christianity and without membership in the Body of Christ accompanied by the miracle of the new birth.

My friend Dan Warne posted this quotation from A.W. Tozer on all of our lives being worship. I appreciate the simplicity and passion with which he speaks.

I mean it when I say that I would rather worship God than to do anything else. You may reply, ‘If you worship God you do nothing else.’

But that only reveals that you have not done your homework. The beautiful part of worship is that it prepares you and enables you to zero in on the important things that must be done for God.

Listen to me! Practically every great deed done in the church of Christ all the way back to the apostle Paul was done by people blazing with the radiant worship of their God.

A survey of church history will prove that it was those who were the yearning worshipers who also became the great workers. Those great saints whose hymns we so tenderly sing were active in their faith to the point that we must wonder how they ever did it all.

…if we give ourselves to God’s call to worship, everyone will do more than he or she is doing now. Only, what he or she does will have significance and meaning to it. It will have the quality of eternity in it - it will be gold, silver and precious stones, not wood, hay and stubble.

This quotation hit home for me tonight. It answered a couple of questions for me that I’ve had for a while. What do you think? You can read more quotes here.

How can I be sincere and yet corrupt? In other words, how can I express my complete commitment to God at one moment and then yell at a driver who cuts me off five minutes later? What changed? Was I insincere when I told God that I was completely His? No. I was sincere. But the subject changed. People tell God they’re completely committed to Him when they’re in the context of missions, for example. But when the subject changes and there’s a different sacrifice to be made, often things change. That’s the dark side of all of us. We’re both saints and sinners. You don’t have to be a saint to be a saint. That’s the gospel.