Would you be holy?

Thinking about the putting off of sin and the world and the putting on of Christ and grace, I’ve been thinking on the following statement from J. C. Ryle: Would you be holy? Would you become a new creature? Then you must begin with Christ. You will do just nothing at all and make no […]

Are you pure in heart?

A believer in Christ is to be pure. In one sense, he already is. The blood of Christ has been applied to his life, and all the impurity of his life — past, present, and future — has been removed. He stands guiltless before God. (That’s an amazing sentence!) But in another sense, he is […]

What’s important?

We wrestle often with the question of “What is the meaning of life?” As Packer has noted, it is not such a difficult question: We also need to recover a true understanding of human life, a sense of the greatness of the soul. We need to recover the awareness that God is more important than […]

One must be lost

A man must be lost before he can be found by the grace of Christ. One must be in desperate straights before he might be saved by God’s salvation. A man must be cognizant of and convicted by his unworthiness before God will redeem his sin and use that man for God’s own glory. A […]

Regeneration is the profoundest change

Continuing the thought from yesterday’s sermon of Paul’s presupposition that salvation will always produce transformation, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote this: …regeneration is the profoundest change in the world, and that therefore we must always keep this in the forefront of our minds. A Christian is not just a man who has decided to be a little […]

In the world, but not of it

How the believer in Christ relates to the world is an old question. Both Christ and the apostles addressed the question. “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take […]

God as our portion

The man who has God, though he has nothing else, has everything. And the man who has everything, but does not have God, has nothing. So posited C. S. Lewis. And echoing his thoughts is Jonathan Edwards, who meditates on the importance of our readiness to let go of all possessions for the sake of […]

Impoverished believers

Mark Dever and Paul Alexander identify one of the things that makes a believer impoverished and weak in his spiritual life — and their assertion is in contradiction to the call of our day and culture: While our individual walks are crucial, we are impoverished in our pursuit of God if we do not avail […]

How God uses sin for our good

Romans 8:28 is a well-known, often-quoted, hard-to-believe verse. That God uses the beneficent acts of our lives for our good is comprehensible. We do not struggle to understand how God is working good in our lives when we are recipients or instigators of gracious words and activities. But when the worst things in life invade […]

Thinking about our thoughts

David longed for words and meditations that were acceptable to God — words both inward and outward that reflected a heart conformed to the character of God. Solomon notes that the inward thoughts of a man reveal the very character of a man — it is not what he does but what he thinks that […]

Tozer on spiritual maturity

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been thinking on Sunday morning about spiritual maturity as both the goal and result of ministry. All our efforts in the church and in our relationships are to see spiritual maturity produced in others, and when we make that our goal, God will accomplish that very thing! This […]

Believers and the omnipresence of God

If a fool has reason to fear the omnipresence of God, then believers have reason to delight in His omnipresence. Thomas Watson explains: If God be everywhere present, then for a Christian to walk with God is not impossible. God is not only in heaven, but he is in earth too. Isa 66:6: Heaven is […]

The cry from the cross

Two quotes to stimulate your thinking as you contemplate the crucifixion of Christ on this Good Friday morning and His cry from the cross — “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?’ that is, ‘MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?’” (Mt. 27:46; NASB) […]

What disobedience ultimately is

What is disobedience? Ask any child or teen and you will likely get a response something like, “not doing what I was told to do.” That answer is not significantly different from what most adults might say — “disobedience is a failure to do something commanded by a superior or authority figure in one’s life.” […]

It is good for you…

Suffering appears in many different forms. As many different lives as there are, so there are that many different kinds and degrees of suffering. One thing we might be assured of, however. Every person will experience some measure of suffering in life. For the believer, the suffering is an examination to see if he will […]