Quotes for Reflection

[Garland-Green]

"God decided canon, man only recognized canon."
- Unknown  

[Garland-Green]

"I do not ask for answers, I just believe." This sounds spiritual, and it deceives many fine people. These are often young men and women who are not content only to repeat the phrases of the intellectual or spiritual status quo. They have become rightly dissatisfied with a dull, dusty, introverted orthodoxy given only to pounding out the well-known clichés. The new theology sound spiritual and vibrant, and they are trapped. But the price they pay for what seems to be spiritual is high, for to operate in the upper story using undefined religious terms is to fail to know and function on the level of the whole man. The answer is not to ask these people to return to the poorness of the status quo, but to a living orthodoxy which is concerned with the whole man, including the rational and the intellectual, in his relationship to God.

- Francis Schaeffer

Defense is proper and necessary because in every age historic Christianity will be under attack. Defense does not mean being on the defensive. One must not be embarrassed about the use of the word defense. The proponents of any position who are alive to their own generation must give a sufficient answer for it when questions are raised about it. Thus, the word defense is not used here in a negative sense, because in any conversation, in any communication which is really dialogue, answers must be given to objections raised. Such answers are necessary in the first place for myself as a Christian if I am going to maintain my intellectual integrity, and if I am to keep united my personal, devotional and intellectual life.

- Francis Schaeffer  

[Garland-Green]

What reason have they for saying that we cannot rise from the dead? What is more difficult, to be born or to rise again; that what has never been should be, or that what has been should be again? Is it more difficult to come into existence than to return to it? Habit makes the one appear easy to us; want of habit makes the other impossible. A popular way of thinking!
- Blaise Pascal  

[Garland-Green]

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

- Abraham Lincoln (Washington, D.C. March 30, 1863)  

[Garland-Green]

A. W. Tozer on faith:
It is fear of falling into the hands of God that makes us so eager to get things reduced to a formula. We feel that if we can learn the “secret” of salvation or the “steps” into the blessed life, we can control our future and (though we would not admit it) control God Himself to a large degree. This saves face and preserves our self-confidence, but it also mutes the voice of power in the gospel and weakens the operations of God in the soul. Only the despairing heart can know the inward witness.

In the final analysis, no one can lead another to God. All he can do is to lead the inquirer to the door of the kingdom and urge him onward. Between God and the returning soul there is a zone of obscurity through which he cannot see. It is the light that no man can approach unto and past which no one can go on his feet or by means of reason or theological knowledge. There faith must make its leap of pure trust into the arms of God crying with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15), or with Newton, “O Lord, I trust in Thee completely, and if I go to hell I’ll go down standing on Thy Word.”

It is this utter desperation that brings the witness, and yet I cannot tell anyone how to reach such a state. All I can do is to urge everyone to repent and believe on Jesus Christ. If the repentance is genuine and the faith real, all human confidence will come crashing down and the humbled soul will be forced to make its leap of faith alone. The reader that cannot find his way from here is in all probability still impenitent. And let him beware of seeking cheap comfort from a text jockey who will cry “ `Peace, peace,’. . . when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). He had better by far take his Bible and retire to the secret place to seek God alone. If there’s hope for him, he’ll find it there. But he’ll find it nowhere else.  

[SolaceSerenitySerendipity]

1 Peter 3:8
Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.

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I pray to the Father in the name of His Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit that I may do this today and every day.  

[SolaceSerenitySerendipity]

Garland-Green

"God decided canon, man only recognized canon."
- Unknown

BTW, that's a really good and true quote!
I love it, man!  

[Garland-Green]

 

[Garland-Green]

 

[Garland-Green]

We can no longer remain silent while silent screams go unheard. Deep repentance must take place at the individual and national level; our consciences have been seared. Our job is to preach the totality of God’s word, including those things that are hard to hear, so that both conviction and comfort take place. When human life is devalued, atrocities such as the holocaust, slavery, sex-trafficking, and abortion occur. God help us when we ignore our calling to confront evil. Pastors are to be pillars who support truth. When was the last time your pastor discussed this controversial topic from the pulpit? Change will not occur until we confront sin rather than hide from it. “We need more prophets in our pulpits and less puppets” (Leonard Ravenhill).  

[Garland-Green]