preaching

You reproach me for my lack of style. What has style to do with it? Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the secret of preaching.

- Girolamo Savanarola

on ecclesiastical reform

“We must not pass over in silence the decay in the church. Better to provoke a scandal than to abandon the truth.”

- Bernard of Clairvaux

leading leaders

"in doing good to one scholar, you may do good to a whole parish or city."

Henry Wilkinson, Three Decades of Sermons, pt. 2, 78.

qtd. in Tyacke, The History of the University of Oxford, in reference to Oxford's nightly devotional and catechizing

Nero, sit.

T.R. Glover, the British writer reminds us, that the day would come when we would name our cats Felix, our dogs Nero, and our sons Paul!

quoted by FF Bruce

purity of heart

Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.

- Augustine

taking counsel

Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.

C.S. Lewis

Incarnation

The results of the incarnation of the Savior are such and so many, that anyone attempting to enumerate them should be compared to a person looking upon the vastness of the sea and attempting to count its waves.

Athanasius

mercy and correction

Let a man mercifully correct what he can; let him patiently bear what he
cannot correct, and groan and sorrow over it with love.

- Cyprian

the pastor's power

None of us will find this "pleasure of the Lord to prosper in our hands," except every effort is grounded upon the practical conviction, that no strength but the arm of Omnipotence is sufficient for the work.

Conscious helplessness sinks under the depressing weight of responsibility.

Thus discouragements, properly sustained and carefully improved, become our most fruitful sources of eventual encouragement...

Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry, p. 16-17

study church history

Let us not bury in forgetfulness the grace of God.

- Calvin

scotland

The most important event in the history of Scotland was when John Knox went upstairs to pray.

- Charles Spurgeon

Why we always play music

"People today are afraid to be alone. This fear is a dominant mark of our society. Many now ceaselessly sit in the cinema or read novels about other people's lives or watch dramas. Why? Simply to avoid having to face their own existence... No one seems to want (and no one can find) a place of quiet -- because, when you are quiet, you have to face reality. But many in the present generation dare not do this because on their own basis reality leads them to meaninglessness; so they fill their lives with entertainment, even if it is only noise..."

Francis Schaeffer, No Little People

The Pride of Humility

"Its easy to be humble when you're the center of attention."

- John MacArthur


"pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all the virtues together."

- Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees

quit living by the polls

"I hear it said... leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture."


Winston Churchill, on leaders who are captive to public opinion

Spurgeon, the Outdoorsman

He who forgets the humming of the bees, the cooing of the pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day’s breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours’ ramble in the beech woods’ umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind’s face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is the next best.

- Charles Spurgeon

mature christianity

Every movement of God to redeem a culture begins with frustration and as a reaction. But those reactions and frustrations are seasons that must be quickly passed through, like puberty, so that maturity, vision, mission, and the hope of the gospel can become the primary issues for God's people on reformission.

- Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission

serving others

There is never a wasted minute for Jesus.

- Pastor Noel, a native pastor in poverty-stricken Manila, talking about serving in ways that are foolish to the world.

don't waste your life

People often ask us why in the world we would waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they, too, are investing their lives. And when the bubble has burst they will have nothing to show for the years they have wasted.

- Nate Saint, shortly before he was killed in the jungles of Ecuador by the people group he was trying to serve

big government

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

- PJ O'Rourke

rest

Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart cannot rest until it rests
in Thee.

Augustine

liberty

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it, ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

- Abraham Lincoln

Liberalism

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

- H. Richard Niebuhr, Kingdom of God in America


I’m delighted that liberal theologians do their best to do what Pio Nono said shouldn’t be done – try to accommodate Christianity to modern science, modern culture, and democratic society. If I were a fundamentalist Christian, I’d be appalled by the wishy-washiness of [the liberal] version of the Christian faith. But since I am a non-believer who is frightened of the barbarity of many fundamentalist Christians (e.g. their homophobia), I welcome theological liberalism. Maybe liberal theologians will eventually produce a version of Christianity so wishy-washy that nobody will be interested in being a Christian anymore. If so, something will have been lost, but probably more will have been gained.

- Richard Rorty

Don't give up the field

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ...Wherever the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that one point.

- Fritz in The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family, by Elizabeth Rundle Charles, 1864

- commonly attributed to Luther

Whatever you do...

Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”

What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and cares for it in other ways; and as she busies herself with other duties and renders help and obedience to her husband. These are truly golden and noble works. . . . Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.

- Luther

close minded theists

"Like everybody else, I'd sure like to not be a freak. I'd love to be hip, and enlightened, like one of those Freethinkers. (Remember: "Freethinking" means ruling out the supernatural without evidence, while being "Closed-Minded" means allowing that it's possible.)"

-Brant Hansen

kings, presidents, dogs, and swine

"'God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' This qualification must render the person that has it excellent and happy indeed, and doubtless is the highest dignity and blessedness of any creature. This is the peculiar gift of God, which he bestows only on his special favorites. As to silver, gold and diamonds, earthly crowns and kingdoms, he often throws them out to those whom he esteems as dogs and swine."

- Jonathan Edwards, Works, II:50

the danger of grinding intellectual work without joyful rest

Up to the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds…gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare…. Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music.… I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

- Charles Darwin, Autobiography and Select Lectures

a relevant ministry

The Church is puzzled by the world’s indifference. She is trying to overcome it by adapting her message to the fashions of the day. But if, instead, before the conflict, she would descend into the secret place of meditation, if by the clear light of the gospel she would seek an answer not merely to the question of the hour but, first of all, to the eternal problems of the spiritual world, then perhaps, by God’s grace, through His good Spirit, in His good time, she might issue forth once more with power, and an age of doubt might be followed by the dawn of an era of faith.

- J. Gresham Machen

Death of a loved one

Suppose you are a gardener employed by another. It is not your garden, but you are called upon to tend it. You come one morning into the garden, and you find that the best rose has been taken away. You are angry. You go to your fellow servants and charge them with having taken the rose. They declare that they had nothing to do with it, and one says, "I saw the master walking here this morning; I think he took it." Is the gardener angry then? No, at once he says, "I am happy that my rose should have been so fair as to attract the attention of the master. It is his own. He has taken it, let him do what seems good. It is even so with your friends. They wither not by chance. The grave is not filled by accident. Men die according to God's will. Your child is gone, but the Master took it. Your husband is gone, your wife is buried — the Master took them. Thank him that he let you have the pleasure of caring for them and tending them while they were here. And thank him that as he gave, he himself has taken away.

- Charles Spurgeon

Rousseau, on Jesus

Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing – the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Long term ministry

Plant down your forces in the heart of one tribe or race, where the same language is spoken. Work solidly from that center, building up with patient teaching and life-long care a Church that will endure. . . Rush not from land to land, from people to people, in a breathless and fruitless mission. Kindle not your lights so far apart, amid the millions and wastes of Heathendom, that every lamp may be extinguished without any of the others knowing, and so leave the blackness of their night blacker than ever. The consecrated common sense that builds for eternity will receive the fullest approval of God in time.
- John G. Paton

The historical Jesus

It is, indeed, difficult to restrict a discussion of the New Testament writings to the purely historical plane; theology insists on breaking in. But that is as it should be; history and theology are inextricably intertwined in the gospel of our salvation, which owes its eternal and universal validity to certain events which happened in Palestine when Tiberius ruled the Roman Empire.

- F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

doctrine

"I neither hate you nor despise you; nor do I wish to persecute you; but I would be as hard as iron when I behold you insulting sound doctrine with so great audacity."

- John Calvin, personal correspondence to Michael Servetus

For more info go here or here.

True Greatness

I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of people would die for Him.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Was Luther Emergent?

I am not permitted to let my love be so merciful as to tolerate and endure false doctrine. When faith and doctrine are concerned and endangered, neither love nor patience are in order.... when these are concerned, neither toleration nor mercy are in order, but only anger, dispute, and destruction - to be sure, only with the Word of God as our weapon.

- Martin Luther

two on smoking... kinda

For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

- C.S. Lewis

The fellows are in my room now on the last Sunday night, smoking the cigars and eating the oranges which it has been the greatest delight I ever had to provide whenever possible. My idea of delight is a Princeton room full of fellows smoking. When I think what a wonderful aid tobacco is to friendship and Christian patience, I have sometimes regretted that I never began to smoke.
- J. Gresham Machen

Rappers are not tough when compared with Luther

As for me, the die is cast; I despise alike the favor and fury of Rome; I do not wish to be reconciled with her; or even to hold any communication with her. Let her condemn and burn my books; I, in turn, unless I can find no fire, will condemn and publicly burn the whole pontifical law, that swamp of heresies.

- Martin Luther, in response to the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which threatened Luther to recant or be excommunicated

Generosity

Ah! Dear friend! I am concerned for the poor, but more for you. I know not what Christ will say to you in that Great day. I fear there are many hearing me who may know now well that they are not Christians because they do not love to give. To give largely and liberally, not grudging at all requires a new heart; an old heart would rather part with its life-blood than its money. Oh my friends! Enjoy your money, make the most of it; give none away, enjoy it quickly for I can tell you, you will be beggars throughout eternity.

- R.M. McCheyne

Thoughtful evolutionists

...chance contradicts the ways we ordinarily explain things. You see, an appeal to chance is not an explanation at all. It is an appeal to agnosticism, an agnosticism which violates all the canons of science. So when a scientist looks at any immediate reality, he operates under the assumption that we live in a regular, predictable, and knowable universe, one in which the orderly procession of cause and effect holds. Yet, when the naturalist comes to ultimate or metaphysical questions—questions like the origin of the universe—he abandons the principle of sufficient reason and he appeals to chance.

- Dr. Michael Williams, Covenant Seminary

Jesus: the center of history

	I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history. - H.G. Wells

D-A-M-N-A-T-I-O-N

	There is enough dust on some of your Bible's to write damnation with your fingers. - CH Spurgeon

Complaining

In the worst of times, there is still more cause to complain of an evil heart than of an evil world.

- Robert Fleming (1630-1694)

German theologians

If German theologians saw two doors, one marked "heaven," and the other marked "discussion on heaven," they would choose the second.

- Helmut Theilicke

Risky Christianity

	Without an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith. - attributed to J. Hudson Taylor

Faith

	God's work, done in God's way, will never lack God's resources. - J. Hudson Taylor

Plan big

Expect great things, attempt great things.

-William Carey, at the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society

My second favorite Mexican president...

after whoever is in office now.

	Poor Mexico, so close to the United States, so far from God. - Porfirio Diaz, 43rd & 45th President of Mexico

Deception

	No one will doubt that Christians of today must state their beliefs in terms of modern thought. Every age has a language of its own and can speak no other. Mischief only comes when, instead of stating Christian beliefs in terms of modern thought, an effort is made, rather, to state modern thought in terms of Christian belief. - BB Warfield

Preach it

	Let us arouse ourselves to the sternest fidelity, labouring to win souls as much as if it all depended wholly upon ourselves, while we fall back, in faith, upon the glorious fact that everything rests with the eternal God. - C.H. Spurgeon

babies

	The weakness then of an infant's limbs, not its will, is its innocence. - St. Augustine

Gutsy

			It is said to have been an expression of the wisest of kings, 'When the lion roars, all the beasts of the field are quiet': the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is now roaring in the voice of His Gospel, and it becomes all the petty kings of the earth to be silent - Robert Bruce, when King James VI would not stop talking during a sermon

Dedication

	If I had 1,000 lives, I'd give them all for China - Hudson Taylor

Grace

	I am not what I ought to be I am not what I want to be I am not what I hope to be But by the grace of God I am not what I was. -Rev. John Newton

You've never met anyone as tough as A. Montoya!

	If it looks human, preach to it! - Alex Montoya

Remember the first time you heard this?

	Those who talk like this, 'Christ unites, doctrine divides,' have simply replaced a proposition with a word, and they think they've done something profound and fresh when in fact they've done something old and stale and deadly. - John Piper

justification by profits alone

Most Christian retailing is driven by the same capitalist impulse that animates Wall Street: at the end of the day, the accountants will declare us righteous or not, by imputing to us the virtue wrought by "the bottom line." - Rob Schlapfer

Spoken like a true Southern gentleman

	Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. - Mark Twain

book nerds beware

	Beware that you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge. - John Wesley

Bible thumpin' devil

	The devil, too, can quote Scripture and deceive men with it. But his use of Scripture is defective. He does not quote it completely but only so much as it serves his purpose. The rest he silently omits. - Martin Luther

One of my favorite quotes

	...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Can anything good come from Cyprian?

	Custom without truth is simply the antiquity of error. - Cyprian

Breakfast

	He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast in his heart. - C.S. Lewis

No tradition. Ha!

There never was a man in the world without a creed. What is a creed? A creed is what you believe. What is a confession? It is a declaration of what you believe. That declaration may be oral or it may be committed to writing, but the creed is there either expressed or implied. - B. H. Carroll, “Creeds and Confessions of Faith,” in Baptists and their Doctrines, eds. Timothy and Denise George (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 81.

Sin

	Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power and the contempt of his love. - John Bunyan

Valuable

	What is won dearly is priced highly and clung to firmly. - J.C. Ryle

Two Faithful Anglicans

	"The Anglican Church in Rwanda has been denied a grant of $100,000 for not supporting the election of Robinson (homosexual bishop)… but we can't sell our Lord with pieces of silver, can we?" - Archbishop Bernard Malango, head of the Anglican Church in Central Africa

Faithful Anglican

	"...those who are bent on creating a new religion in which anything goes, and have thereby chosen to walk a different path, may do so without us" - Archbishop Peter Akinola, upon deleting references to the Archbishop of Canterbury from his Church's constitution because of the North American Anglican church's "revisionist agenda on homosexuality”

A Tipsy Monk, the Word of God, and the Papacy

	I simply taught, preached, wrote God''s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And then, while I slept, or drank Wittenburg beer with my Philip and my Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it. I did nothing. The Word did it all. - Martin Luther

one for the book nerds

	When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. - Erasmus

Mopey Predestinarians

	I assure you that I am not a pessimist. I’m a Calvinist, and Calvinists by definition cannot be pessimistic. Seriously. - Phil Johnson

Discerning God's Will

Love God and do as you please.

- Augustine

the potential of a good idea

It's hard to kill a good idea. Good ideas outlive the individual.

-Ray Ortlund Jr.