"I Want to Be Saved!" Then Come, Don't Wait! - Tim Conway

Steven Lawson On Being A True Disciple

John MacArthur on Baptism

The Son's Glory

The New Birth Is Monergistic

"The new birth is monergistic, that is it is the single work of almighty God. Infants do not cooperate in their birth. Infants do not induce their own procreation. And no more than those who are dead in trespasses and sin give themselves life, it is the work of almighty God. The verb here makes you passive, you were born again. You didn't give birth to yourself, God did it...God did it. It is thus an irresistible work. It is the work of God "An unwilling people are made willing in the day of God's power." 

John MacArthur

( HT Calvinistic "Quotes" )

Longing For What Is Yet To Come

 "God limits the happiness and pleasure we have now precisely so we might not become attached to this world or dependent upon it or fearful of leaving it (dying), as well as to stir in our hearts a longing and yearning and holy anticipation for what is yet to come."

Sam Storms

The Beauty of Jesus Christ - Paul Washer

Contentment

"Christians can be and ought to be content with the simple necessities of life…First, when you have God near you and for you, you don’t need extra money or extra things to give you peace and security…God is always better than gold…Second, we can be content with the simplicity because the deepest, most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart’s capacity for joy…Third, we should be content with the simple necessities of life because we could invest the extra we make for what really counts (God’s kingdom)".

John Piper - Desiring God, 1996, P. 102-103

Unless We Are Born Of The Spirit

"The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him. He is the One who takes the initiative to restore our souls. Without Him we can do nothing of righteousness. Without Him we would be doomed to everlasting alienation from His holiness. We can love Him only because He first loved us. To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.

R.C. Sproul - The Holiness of God

( HT Blogging Theologically )

The Doctrine Of Election Is Good News

"The doctrine of unconditional election is good news because when, by grace through faith, you know yourself loved by God, forgiven, justified, accepted, this doctrine of election assures you that the roots of your salvation – the roots of God’s almighty commitment to save you – are not shallow, but go down deep into the counsels of eternity. It is good news to know that the root of your salvation goes down forever and ever into eternal grace and never gets to a point where it is contingent and fragile and dependent on your foreseen faith or your foreseen good works."

John Piper

David Platt - Founder's Week 2013

Trusting God

"Our first priority in times of adversity is to honor and glorify God by trusting Him. We tend to make our first priority the gaining of relief from our feelings of heartache or disappointment or frustration. This is a natural desire, and God has promised to give us grace sufficient for our trials and peace for our anxieties (2 Corinthians 12:9, Philippians 4:6-7). But just as God’s will is to take precedence over our will (Jesus Himself said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” Matthew 26:39), so God’s honor is to take precedence over our feelings. We honor God by choosing to trust Him when we don’t understand what He is doing or why He has allowed some adverse circumstance to occur. As we seek God’s glory, we may be sure that He has purposed our good and that He will not be frustrated in fulfilling that purpose."

Jerry Bridges - Trusting God, p. 52.

Unremitting Triviality

"It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. Don’t waste your life is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television. So we have never had a TV in 40 years of marriage (except in Germany, to help learn the language). I don’t regret it."

John Piper

John Piper - Don't Want To Be Rich

C.H. Spurgeon - A Cure For Present Worry

"A full belief in the statement of our text is A CURE FOR PRESENT WORRY. O Lord, if my times are in thy hand, I have cast my care on thee, and I trust and am not afraid! Why is it, my sister — for this habit of worrying abounds among the gracious sisterhood — why do you vex yourself about a matter which is in the hand of God? If he has undertaken for you, what cause have you for anxiety? And you, my brother — for there are plenty of men who are nervous and fretful — why do you want to interfere with the Lord’s business? If the case is in his hand, what need can there be for you to be prying and crying?

You were worrying this morning, and fretting last night and you are distressed now, and will be worse tomorrow morning. May I ask you a question? Did you ever get any good by fretting? When there was not rain enough for your farm, did you ever fret a shower down? When there was too much wet, or you thought so, did you ever worry the clouds away? Tell me, did you ever make a sixpence by worrying? It is a very unprofitable business. Do you answer, “What, then, are we to do in troublous times”? Why, go to Him into whose hand you have committed yourself and your times. Consult with infinite wisdom by prayer; console yourself with infinite love by fellowship with God. Tell the Lord what you feel, and what you fear. Ten minutes praying is better than a year’s murmuring. He that waits upon God, and casts his burden upon Him, may lead a royal life: indeed, he will be far happier than a king." – C.H. Spurgeon

Folly Of Worry

"A Christian’s freedom from anxiety is not due to some guaranteed freedom from trouble, but to the folly of worry...and especially to the confidence that God is our Father, that even permitted suffering is within the orbit of His care."

John Stott - The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 167-168.

Lust and Eternal Security - John Piper

This past September I spoke to the student body of Wheaton Christian High School. I took as my topic, "Ten Lessons for Fighting Lust." Lesson number 6 was, "Ponder the eternal danger of lust."

My text on that point was Matthew 5:28–29 where Jesus says, "Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell." I pointed out that Jesus said heaven and hell are at stake in what you do with your eyes and with the thoughts of your imagination.

After the message one of the students came up to me and asked, "Are you saying, then, that a person can lose his salvation?"

This is exactly the same response I got a few years ago when I confronted a man about the adultery he was presently living in. I tried to understand his situation and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, "You know Jesus says that if you don't fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever."

He looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, "You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?"

So I have learned again and again from first hand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the warnings of the Bible and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical threats. And this doctrine is comforting thousands on the way to hell.

Jesus said, if you don't fight lust, you won't go to heaven.

The stakes are much higher than whether the world is blown up by a thousand bombs. If you don't fight lust, you won't go to heaven (1 Peter 2:11; Colossians 3:6; Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:10; Hebrews 12:14).

The great error that I am trying to explode in these messages is the error that says, faith in God is one thing and the fight for holiness is another thing. Faith gets you to heaven and holiness gets you rewards. You get your justification by faith, and you get your sanctification by works. You start the Christian life in the power of the Spirit, you press on in the efforts of the flesh. This is the great evangelical error of our day. The battle for obedience is optional, they say, because only faith is necessary for salvation.

Our response: the battle for obedience is absolutely necessary for salvation because it IS the fight of faith. The battle against lust is absolutely necessary for salvation because it is the battle against unbelief. Faith alone delivers from hell and the faith that delivers from hell delivers from lust.

John Piper

Jonathan Edwards On Love And Fear

"So hath God contrived and constituted things in his dispensations toward his own people that when their love decays and the exercises of it fail or become weak, fear should arise; for then they need it to restrain them from sin and to excite them to care for the good of their souls and so to save them up to watchfulness and diligence in religion: but God hath so ordered that when love rises and is in vigorous exercise, then fear should vanish and be driven away for then they need it not, having a higher and more excellent principle in exercise to restrain them from sin and stir them up from their duty.

There are no other principles which human nature is under the influence of that will ever make men conscientious but one of these two, fear or love: and therefore if one of these should not prevail as the other decayed, God’s people when fallen into dead and carnal frames, when love is asleep would be lamentably exposed indeed. And therefore God has wisely ordained, that these two opposite principles of love and fear should rise and fall like the two opposite scales of a balance; when one rises the other sinks…

Fear is cast out by the Spirit of God, no other way than by the prevailing of love: nor is it ever maintained by his Spirit but when love is asleep…"

Jonathan Edwards - Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections (London, 1796), p. 102

( HT Desiring God )

Bob Jennings - Lessons Learned From Cancer

We Are Far Too Easily Pleased

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, 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 Weight of Glory, 26