“The faith that… is able to warm itself at the fire of God’s love, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from other sources, is actually the root of holiness.”
—Richard Lovelace
God's Faithfulness Through Generations (Gen. 26:1-11)
“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.”
—Martin Lloyd Jones
Consequences of Loving Jesus (John 14:15-24)
“Come, our conscience to relieve from each sin remembered. Come, our savior’s blood to plead; naked we surrender. Sin hath left a wound revealing; Spirit, help us with your healing.”
—Come, O Spirit, by Isaac Wardell
A Living, Breathing Love (1 John 3:19-24)
“Very early in the morning on the first day of the week, before anyone had done a stroke of work or acquired a jot of merit, he rose from the sepulchre, bringing new life to his disciples. What then began had nothing to do with last week's work or last week's sins; they all seemed centuries away. The old world for Christ's disciples had ended in calamity, had gone down into a gulf of darkness; the earth had crumbled under their feet, they had nothing to stand upon. But here was something as new as the creation of the world where no world was; new life straight from the hands of the only living God.”
—Austin Farrer
Abide in Jesus, the Son will Set You Free (John 8:31-38)
“‘Learning’ virtue—becoming virtuous—is more like practicing scales on the piano than learning music theory: the goal is, in a sense, for your fingers to learn the scales so they can then play ‘naturally,’ as it were. Learning here isn’t just information acquisition; it’s more like inscribing something into the very fiber of your being.”
—James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love
Fear of the Lord Moving from Head to Heart
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
— C.S. Lewis
The Self-Reliant King (1 Samuel 26:6-12)
“So I’ll cherish the old rugged Cross
‘Til my trophies at last I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged Cross
And exchange it some day for a crown.”
—George Bennard
Christ Acting through the Church (Acts 15:36-16:15)
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
— The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church in Ephesus.