Minimizing the importance of transformed feelings makes Christian conversion less supernatural and less radical. It is humanly manageable to make decisions of the will for Christ. No supernatural power is required to pray prayers, sign...

If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don’t get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.

humility is beyond our reach. if it were a product of reaching, we would instinctively be proud of reaching it. it is a gift.

On the contrary, Christian Hedonists are persuaded with Edwards that the only affections that magnify God’s value are those that come from true apprehensions of His glory. If the feast of worship is rare in...

If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the...

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The...

The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the...

But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that...

Knowing and thinking exist for the sake of love — for the sake of building people up in faith. Thinking that produces pride instead of love is not true thinking.

All heroes are shadows of Christ

We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings...

He came to destroy sin because it is fatal.

Paul’s antidote for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine. . . .everything that exists—including evil—is ordained by a holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. We don’t make God. He...

God is calling us to live for the sake of Christ and to do that through suffering. Christ chose suffering; it didn’t just happen to Him. He chose it as the way to create and...

The ultimate difference between God’s wisdom and man’s wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God’s grace in Christ crucified. God’s wisdom makes the glory of God’s grace our supreme treasure. But man’s...

The teaching that diminishes the urgency for reaching all the unreached peoples of the world with the only news that can save them is a teaching that opposes people. Listen to these severe words spoken...

Suffering in the path of Christian obedience, with joy – because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3) – is the clearest display of the worth of God in our...

It is better to lose your life than to waste it.

Our obedience is God’s pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God....

But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when...

Christmas cut history in two ages, the Age of Promise, and the Age of Fulfillment.

God without Christ is no God.

The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn...

The “war” is being fought along the line between sin and righteousness in every family. It is being fought along the line between truth and falsehood in every school… Between justice and injustice in every...

I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.

Therefore everything that you enjoy in Christ – as a Christian, as a person who trusts Christ – is owing to the death of Christ.

The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature

The Bible says he was raised not just after the blood-shedding, but by it. This means that what the death of Christ accomplished was so full and so prefect that the resurrection was the reward...

The call of Christ is a call to live a life of sacrifice and loss and suffering–a life that would be foolish to live if there were no resurrection from the dead.

Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven...

Without a spiritual wakefulness to divine purposes and connections in all things, we will not know things for what they truly are.

Husbands and wives, recognize that in marriage you have become one flesh. If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But...

…for poets, at least, experiencing something inexpressible does not mean silence. It’s precisely the inexpressible something that poetry is meant to help us see or feel. If it were merely expressible – if there were...

We can say that true gratitude does not give rise to the debtor’s ethic because it gives rise to faith in future grace. With true gratitude there is such a delight in the worth of...

That’s who Jesus Christ is. He became the final Priest and the final Sacrifice. Sinless, he did not offer sacrifices for himself. Immortal, he never has to be replaced. Human, he could bear human sins....

I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person’s theology was the effect it has on one’s prayers.

Let the freedom to fail give you the hope to fight.

This point is often missed by evangelical feminists. They conclude that a difference in function necessarily involves a difference in essence; i.e., if men are in authority over women, then women must be inferior. The...

God is not an employer looking for employees. He is an Eagle looking for people who will take refuge under his wings. He is looking for people who will leave father and mother and homeland...

Go, send, or disobey.

Faith is born and sustained by the Word of God, and out of faith grows the flower of joy.

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.

The only people who soul can truly magnify the Lord are…people who acknowledge their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension of the magnificent God.

If we were perfect—if there were no remaining corruption in our hearts—there would be no fight. There would be no obstacles to overcome. We won’t fight for joy in heaven. But we are not there...

One great function of Bible verses: To keep us from drawing false inferences from other Bible verses.

So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is God’s giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever...

The world will brin its condemnation. They may even put their sword behind it. But we know that the highest courst has already ruled in our favor. ‘If God is for us, who can be...

The most precious gifts you can think of are not ends in themselves. They all lead to God. Ultimately, that is what all His gifts are for.

…the gospel has an answer to both pride and guilt.

If truth does not lead to falling in love, it fails.