A
A couple of items from Sisterlife, the publication of Feminists for Life. An outfit called TurboGrafix 16 has a video game called “Slaughterhouse.” The sixth level is named “The Womb.” There little babies in amniotic sacs float toward the hero, who must slay them because they will “jump on your back if you let them live,” according to the game book. Sisterlife comments: “At last, a toy that isn’t based on gratuitous violence but points kids toward a profitable career.” Then there is a report from Bonnie Shullenberger (a contributor to First Things) who is teaching in Uganda. She saw a new play by Uganda’s leading young playwright, Alex Mukulu, titled “Excuse Me, Muzungu” (“Muzungu” is a term for Europeans). In one scene a very proper white woman scolds several black men, “Why don’t you take responsibility for all the children you father?” A black man responds, “Excuse me, Muzungu! Where are the fathers of the all the babies you abort?” That might be called multiculturalism with a twist.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. December 1993.
Ignored by the press here but carried on UPI and published in the London Daily Telegraph is a report “that doctors at the state run Shenzhen Health Centre for Women and Children hand out bottles of thumbsized aborted babies to be made into meat cakes or soup with pork and ginger. Zou Qin, a doctor at the Luo Hu Clinic in Shenzhen, said the fetuses were ‘nutritious’ and that she had eaten one hundred herself in the last six months. ‘We don’t carry out abortions just to eat fetuses,’ said Qin. ‘[But they would be] wasted if not eaten.’ “ Two hundred and fifty years later, Dean Swift’s modest proposal might indeed seem modest to the hosts of the UN conference on women and human rights in Beijing.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. August/September 1995.
In Letters to Gabriel (Briefly Noted, October), Karen Garver Santorum includes a moment that should not be forgotten. In the Senate her husband Rick Santorum was in 1997 leading the fight on behalf of a ban on partial birth abortion. Senator Barbara Boxer of California, in opposition, thanked the women who had had such abortions for coming forward with their stories and declared, “They are crying. They are crying because they do not understand how Senators could take away an option. They are crying because they do not believe that those Senators truly understand what this meant for their families.” Santorum said in response, “The Senator said she hears the cries of the women outside this Chamber. We would be deafened by the cries of the children who are not here to cry because of this procedure.” The Washington Post described what happened next: “Republican Sen. Rick Santorum turned to face the opposition and in a high, pleading voice cried out, ‘Where do we draw the line? Some people have likened this procedure to an appendectomy. That’s not an appendix,’ he shouted, pointing to a drawing of a fetus. ‘That is not a blob of tissue. It is a baby. It’s a baby.’ And then, impossibly, in an already hushed gallery, in one of those moments when the floor of the Senate looks like a stage set, with its small wooden desks somehow too small for the matters at hand, the cry of a baby pierced the room, echoing across the chamber from an outside hallway. No one mentioned the cry, but for a few seconds, no one spoke at all.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. December 1998.
We’ve told the story before. One evening Jean Garton, cofounder of Lutherans for Life, was preparing some slides she was going to use in a presentation the next day. On the screen was a dismembered victim of abortion. Suddenly her threeyearold son, who she thought was safely in bed, was standing behind her and asking with infinite sadness, “Who broke the baby?” Garton’s little book, Who Broke the Baby?, has become something of a classic in prolife circles and is now out in a new edition from Bethany House Publishers (Minneapolis). It is one of the most accessible introductions to the basic arguments in the abortion controversy. You might want to pick up a copy, and maybe another for a friend who still doesn’t understand.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. June/July 1998.
Abortion, Alleged Biblical Support For
James Trott of Philadelphia writes to correct one of our contributor’s claim that Exodus 21:2225 says that the death of a fetus is a relatively minor offense compared with injury to the mother. This, he insists, is a mistranslation and in support of his position he sends along an extensive discussion of the passage in Christianity Today (March 16, 1973) by Jack W. Cottrell, professor of theology at the Cincinnati Bible Seminary Graduate School. As the encyclical Evangelium Vitae notes, the judgment regarding abortion does not rest on any one or any several Bible passages but on the entire teaching of revelation about life created in the image of God. Nonetheless, readers who come across the invocation of the Exodus passage in support of abortion might want to have recourse to the Cottrell article.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. February 1996.
Abortion, As A Convenience For The Affluent
According to an extensive survey by the Los Angeles Times, the abortion license is chiefly for the convenience of the well to do. “Contrasted with the widespread perception that abortion clients come from the low end of the socioeconomic ladder, women who told the Times poll that they had aborted a fetus tended to be better educated, working full time, earning good salaries, and generally representative of every racial and ethnic group. They also tended to be either childless or the parent of just one child, a baby boomer and living in metropolitan areas. Religion is not very important in their lives.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. April 1993.
Abortion, Callousness And
Here’s the (edited) text of an article that appeared in The LA Times. It is chilling in many places (I’ve italicized these places) and reveals the callousness of the abortion culture.
“Offering Abortion, Rebirth”
Yes, an Arkansas doctor says, he destroys life. But he believes the thousands of women who have relied on him have been ‘born again.’
By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer
November 29, 2005
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Dr. William F. Harrison…opened an obstetrics and gynecology practice, but after the Supreme Court established abortion as a constitutional right in 1973, he decided to take on an additional specialty. Now 70, Harrison estimates he’s terminated at least 20,000 pregnancies.
…Harrison warns every patient he sees that abortion may be illegal one day. He wants to stir them to activism, but most women respond mildly.
…He calls himself an “abortionist” and says, “I am destroying life.”
But he also feels he’s giving life: He calls his patients “born again.”
”When you end what the woman considers a disastrous pregnancy, she has literally been given her life back,” he says.
Before giving up obstetrics in 1991, Harrison delivered 6,000 babies. Childbirth, he says, should be joyous; a woman should never consider it a punishment or an obligation.
”We try to make sure she doesn’t ever feel guilty,” he says, “for what she feels she has to do.”
It is a few minutes before 11 a.m. when Harrison raps on the door of his operating room and walks in.
His Fayetteville Women’s Clinic occupies a once elegant home dating to the 1940s; the first floor surgery looks like it was a parlor. Thick blue curtains block the windows and paintings of butterflies and flowers hang on the walls. The radio is tuned to an easy listening station.
An 18 year old with braces on her teeth is on the operating table, her head on a plaid pillow, her feet up in stirrups, her arms strapped down at her sides. A pink blanket is draped over her stomach. She’s 13 weeks pregnant, at the very end of the first trimester. She hasn’t told her parents.
A nurse has already given her a local anesthetic, Valium and a drug to dilate her cervix; Harrison prepares to inject Versed, a sedative, in her intravenous line. The drug will wipe out her memory of everything that happens during the 20 minutes she’s in the operating room. It’s so effective that patients who return for a followup exam often don’t recognize Harrison.
The doctor is wearing a black turtleneck, brown slacks and tennis shoes. He snaps his gum as he checks the monitors displaying the patient’s pulse rate and oxygen count.
”This is not going to be nearly as hard as you anticipate,” he tells her.
She smiles wanly. Keeping up a constant patter — he asks about her brothers, her future birth control plans, whether she’s good at tongue twisters — Harrison pulls on sterile gloves.
”How’re you doing up there?” he asks.
”Doing OK.”
”Good girl.”
Harrison glances at an ultrasound screen frozen with an image of the fetus taken moments before. Against the fuzzy black and white screen, he sees the curve of a head, the bend of an elbow, the ball of a fist.
”You may feel some cramping while we suction everything out,” Harrison tells the patient.
A moment later, he says: “You’re going to hear a sucking sound.”
The abortion takes two minutes. The patient lies still and quiet, her eyes closed, a few tears rolling down her cheeks. The friend who has accompanied her stands at her side, mutely stroking her arm.
When he’s done, Harrison performs another ultrasound. The screen this time is blank but for the contours of the uterus. “We’ve gotten everything out of there,” he says.
As the nurse drops the instruments in the sink with a clatter, the teenager looks around, woozy.
”It was a lot easier than I thought it would be,” she says. “I thought it would be horrible, but it wasn’t. The procedure, that is.”
She is not yet sure, she says, how she is doing emotionally. She feels guilty, sad and relieved, all in a jumble.
”There’s things wrong with abortion,” she says. “But I want to have a good life. And provide a good life for my child.” To keep this baby now, she says, when she’s single, broke and about to start college, “would be unfair.”
…Kim, a single mother of three, says she couldn’t bear to give away a child and have to wonder every day if he were loved. Ending the pregnancy seemed easier, she says — as long as she doesn’t let herself think about “what could have been.”
…For the few women who arrive ambivalent or beset by guilt, Harrison’s nurse has posted statistics on the exam room mirror: One out of every four pregnant women in the U.S. chooses abortion. A third of all women in this country will have at least one abortion by the time they’re 45.
”You think there’s room in hell for all those women?” the nurse will ask.
If the woman remains troubled, the nurse tells her to go home and think it over.
”If they truly feel they’re killing a baby, we’re not going to do an abortion for them,” says the nurse, who asked not to be identified for fear protesters would target her.
The 17year old in for a consultation this morning assures the nurse that she does not consider the embryo inside her a baby.
”Not until it’s developed,” she says. “That would be about three months?”
”It’s completely formed about nine weeks,” the nurse tells her. “Yours is more like a chicken yolk.”
The girl, who is five weeks pregnant, looks relieved. “Then no,” she says, “it’s not a baby.” Her mother sits in the corner wiping her tears.
Harrison draws his own moral line at the end of the second trimester, or 26 weeks since the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period. Until that point, he will abort for any reason.
”It’s not a baby to me until the mother tells me it’s a baby,” he says.
But Harrison refuses to end third trimester pregnancies, even if the fetus is severely disabled. Some premature infants born at that stage, or even a few weeks earlier, can survive. Harrison believes they may be developed enough to feel pain in utero. Just a handful of doctors around the nation will abort a fetus at this stage.
”I just don’t think it should be done,” says Harrison, who calls the practice infanticide.
…”It’s an everyday occurrence,” she says as she waits for her 2:30 p.m. abortion. “It’s not like this is a rare thing.”
Amanda hasn’t told her ex boyfriend that she’s 15 weeks pregnant with his child. She hasn’t told her parents, either, though she lives with them.
”I figured it was my responsibility,” she says.
She regrets having to pay $750 for the abortion, but Amanda says she does not doubt her decision. “It’s not like it’s illegal. It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong,” she says.
”I’ve been praying a lot and that’s been a real source of strength for me. I really believe God has a plan for us all. I have a choice, and that’s part of my plan.”
….His first patient of the day, Sarah, 23, says it never occurred to her to use birth control, though she has been sexually active for six years. When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. “I don’t think my dress would have fit with a baby in there,” she says.
The last patient of the day, a 32year old college student named Stephanie, has had four abortions in the last 12 years. She keeps forgetting to take her birth control pills. Abortion “is a bummer,” she says, “but no big stress.”
Source: Stephanie Simon, “Offering Abortion, Rebirth.” Los Angeles Times. Nov. 29, 2005. (www.latimes.com)
“Ours is a country in which you are ill advised to be a fetus. The highest court in the land has ruled that you’re a parasite, disposable at will, even when you’re almost out of the chute. You’re just an extension of your mother’s whim. She can do whatever she likes with you. Her court instituted right to ‘choose’ trumps your right to live.” So writes Norah Vincent in, of all places, the Los Angeles Times. What set her off was the 63 Supreme Court decision that a hospital may not test a pregnant woman for drugs, although drug testing of government employees and high school athletes is permitted because there are “special needs.” Apparently the health of unborn children does not count as a special need. Feminists declared the Court decision a victory for the autonomy of women, but Ms. Vincent doesn’t buy that. “We can do anything. We can have as much sex as we want—as much wanton sex as some men do—and we need not be concerned with the consequences. If the unthinkable happens, if—surprise, surprise—nature actually takes its course and we become pregnant, well, we’ll just do what we do after we binge on too many French fries. We’ll purge. After all, if you want to stay thin after eating everything in sight, then it’s the finger down the throat. If you want to stay barren but have as much protected or unprotected sex as you want, then it’s the doctor in your business—but not too much in your business. Only as much as you want him. What’s more, when we’re good and ready to have a child, we’ll still be totally in control of our bodies. We’ll smoke, we’ll booze, we’ll crack it up all night long if we take a mind to, and it’ll be nobody’s business. Because the Constitution protects us. We have a right to our privacy and our bodies, even though, when it comes to that seventh, eighth, ninth month of pregnancy, we’re pretty sure we’re not alone in them anymore. But who cares, those babies are ours, and we can do with them what we like. We can smoke three packs a day. We can drink motor oil. And if that baby comes out with a brain that doesn’t quite work right or that doesn’t work at all, if it has an imposed mortal dependency on a narcotic, if it comes out with expensive special needs, well, the government will pay for it. That’s what government is for: to safeguard my right to do what I like and pick up the tab when I’ve done it. I can do anything, consequences be damned. Let freedom ring, because, by God, I am woman, and this is America.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. October 2001.
Professor Susan Greenfield of Oxford University says, “Consciousness grows as the brain grows. As soon as something has a nervous system, however primitive, we have to tread more cautiously.” The “something” in question is an unborn baby. Her statement was in connection with a British newspaper survey that found that 80 percent of neuroscientists who responded say that babies aborted after eleven weeks of gestation should receive pain relief during the procedure. The kindness that kills.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. February 2000.
Barbara Ehrenreich is hard as nails and demands that other women be so too. “Time to take your thumbs out of your mouths, ladies, and speak up for your rights. The freedoms that we exercise but do not acknowledge are easily taken away.” What has her upset in her column in the New York Times is that polls show that “only 30 percent of women are unambivalently prochoice.”…There are, she writes, “an appalling number of women who are willing to deny others the right that they once freely exercised themselves.” It is the women who regret having an abortion and feel guilty about it who outrage Ms. Ehrenreich. She would deny them their remorse and their resentment of an unlimited abortion license that made it too easy for them to do wrong. They do not want other women to be similarly tempted. Ehrenreich will have none of it: “Honesty begins at home, so I should acknowledge that I had two abortions during my all too fertile years. You can call me a bad woman, but not a bad mother. I was a dollar a word freelancer and my husband a warehouse worker, so it was all we could do to support the existing children at a grubby lower middle class level. And when it comes to my children—the actual extrauterine ones, that is—I was, and remain, a lioness.” Do not call her a bad mother. She acknowledges all her children and is very protective of the ones she did not have killed. She perhaps feels a bit uneasy about the abortions, since she offers the excuse that the alternative would have been intolerable: sub middle class existence with a husband working in a warehouse. Ugh. She writes, “Choice can be easy, as it was in my case, or truly agonizing.” Today Ehrenreich is a bestselling author and liberal activist, is divorced from her lower middleclass husband and remarried to Yale literary critic Peter Brooks, has houses in Charlottesville and the Florida Keys and a column in the Times. No wonder the choice was easy. What are the lives of two children compared to all that? It isn’t as though the children died for nothing. As for those for whom abortion was “truly agonizing,” Ehrenreich tells them to get over it. “Assuming the fetal position,” she writes, “is not an appropriate response.” If that does not persuade those millions of women with whose unhappiness she is unhappy, Ehrenreich invokes the moral authority of JeanPaul Sartre who, she says, would accuse them of “bad faith” for wanting to discourage other women from doing what they did. Sartre, it may be remembered, was throughout his life an unrepentant apologist for Communism’s mass murderers. He taught generations of leftists the moral wisdom that you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Ehrenreich’s column, “Owning Up to Abortion,” carries the pullquote, “It’s time to get past the guilt.” It’s time to move on. Money, fame, media stardom, Ivy League connections. Those thumb sucking women are implying that it is not really terrific to be Barbara Ehrenreich, which is ludicrous. Not that they will be able to match her success, but they can at least support the abortion license that made it possible. Too bad about those two kids, but, as Sartre understood, nothing comes without paying a price. Sure it’s unfair, but, then, life is unfair. The children died in the cause of giving the public Barbara Ehrenreich and giving Barbara Ehrenreich some really neat advantages. Do these women know what it’s like to live in a grubby lowermiddleclass world with a husband who works in a warehouse? Barbara Ehrenreich should feel guilty about what she did? Get real, ladies.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. October 2004.
Abortion, Callousness And
I don’t mean to pick on Wesley Clark. On this question there is no substantive difference between him and other politicians who strive to prove their impeccable proabortion credentials. But the language is different. “I’m not going to be appointing judges who are prolife,” he told the Manchester Union Leader. One imagines an aide whispering, “Our people do not say ‘prolife,’ General.” Clark also told the paper, “Until the moment of birth, the government has no right to influence a mother’s decision on whether to have an abortion.” That would seem to go beyond Roe v. Wade, which allows that there is a government interest in unborn life, at least in its later stages, if the mother has no “health” reason for wanting an abortion, which includes psychological health, which means she has a right to an abortion if she would be distressed by not having an abortion. Again, the difference is not substantive, but the general’s language is strikingly blunt. Then, on the allegedly complex but obviously obvious question of when life begins, the general accepts the price of medical and metaphysical incoherence in order to win the Most Candid Candidate Award. He says, “Life begins with the mother’s decision.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. March 2004.
Abortion, Callousness And
“Happy children don’t grow up to build concentration camps, Dr. Henry Morgentaler told a University of Western Ontario convocation yesterday, as he argued that abortion has helped radically reduce hate and violent crime in Canada,” reports the Toronto Star. Morgentaler is Canada’s foremost champion of the unlimited abortion license. Many protested his getting an honorary degree from Western Ontario, including the board of governors, which does not have authority over the committee that made the choice. While he is all for nipping in the bud, so to speak, the potentially hateful and violent, Morgentaler says he is not an advocate of eugenics. The reduction in crime is “an unintended, if happy, consequence” of choices made by women, he says. Rosie DiManno, a Star columnist, says she is for “the absolute right to reproductive freedom,” but is uncomfortable with Morgentaler’s argument. “Abortion as social corrective that’s spared us a bunch of felonious misfits is offensive. Let’s not go there, Dr. Morgentaler,” she writes. Sorry, ma’am, you are already there.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. October 2005.
Abortion, Early Christian Quotations Against
“You shall not kill the child by obtaining an abortion. Nor, again, shall you destroy him after he is born.” (Barnabas, 7080 AD, 1.148)
“You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one who has been born.” (The Didache, 80140 AD, 1.377)
“We say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder. And we also say that we will have to give an account to God for the abortion.” (Athenagoras, 175 AD, 2.147)
“In our case, murder is once for all forbidden. Therefore, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier way to kill a human. It does not matter whether you take away a life that has been born or destroy one that is not yet born.” (Tertullian, 197 AD, 3.26)
“Indeed, the Law of Moses punishes with appropriate penalties the person who causes abortion. For there already exists the beginning stages of a human being. And even at this stage, [the fetus] is already acknowledged with having the condition of life and death, since he is already susceptible to both.” (Tertullian, 210 AD, 3.218)
“Are you to dissolve the conception by aid of drugs? I believe it is no more lawful to hurt a child in process of birth, than to hurt one who is already born.” (Tertullian, 212 AD, 4.57)
“There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels. So they commit murder before they bring forth.” (Mark Minucius Felix, 200AD, 4.192)
“The womb of his wife was hit by a blow of his heel. And, in the miscarriage that soon followed, the offspring was brought forth, the fruit of a father’s murder.” (Cyprian, 250AD, 5.326)
“The soul is not introduced into the body after birth, as some philosophers think. Rather, it is introduced immediately after conception, when the divine necessity has formed the offspring in the womb.” (Lactantius, 304313AD, 7.297)
“You shall not slay your child by causing abortion, nor kill the baby that is born.” (Apostolic Constitutions, 390 AD, 7.466)
Source: The AnteNicene Fathers (ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson;18851887; repr. 10 vols. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994).
Abortion, Early Christian Quotations Against
“To deny that the young who are cut out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were left there dead the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too audacious.”
Source: St. Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, 421 AD, LXXXVI
Abortion, Early Feminist Quotations Against
“The murder of the innocents goes on. Shame and crime after crime darken the history of our whole land. Hence it was fitting that a true woman should protest with all the energy of her souls against this woeful crime.” (Paulina Wright Davis, The Revolution, January 20, 1870)
“The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term ‘female physician’ should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.” (Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell [18211910], diary quoted in Child of Destiny: The Life Story of the First Woman Doctor, New York: Harker and Brothers, 1949, p.88)
“We have not such an amount of inherent depravity, nor such a degree of reckless daring to our composition, nor such a deficiency in the motherly instinct and other elements that go to make up the true woman, as to lead us into the commission of this most deadly crime realizing it to be so.” (Dr. Anna Densmore French, The Revolution, March 19, 1868)
“Life must be present from the very moment of conception. If there was not life there could not be conception. At what other period of a human being’s existence, either prenatal or postnatal, could the union of soul and body take place? Is it not plain that the violent or forcible deprivation of existence of this embryo, the removal of it from the citadel of life, is its premature death, and hence the act can be denominated by no more mild term that murder, and whoever performs the act, or is accessory to it, is guilty of the crime of all crimes?” (Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham, “Feticide” in Tokology: A Book for Every Woman, 2nd ed.,
Chicago: Sanitary Publishing Company, 1887, 24551)
“In a populous quarter of a certain large Western city it is asserted, on medical authority, that not a single AngloAmerican child has been born alive for the last three years. This is incredible; but, making all due allowances for exaggeration, it is plain enough that the murder of infants is a common thing among American women.” (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Infanticide and Prostitution”, in The Revolution, February 5, 1868)
“Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.” (Susan B. Anthony, “Marriage and Maternity”, The Revolution, July 8, 1869)
“Can any apology be offered for a woman who commits the crime of antenatal murder, after she has voluntarily yielded to the relation that leads to maternity?” (Anonymous, The Unwelcome Child, or, the Crime of an Undesigned and Undesired Maternity, Boston: Bela Marsh, 1858, 101104, from the Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library)
“[Abortion] is a crime in the fullest extent of the term, because it is murder, just as much as though the mother took her newborn babe and plunged a knife into its bosom, or cast it away from her, and refused to nourish it. Is there a woman not driven to the last depths of despair by wounded love and impending disgrace, who could do that to the little, soft, helpless thing, that is laid in her bosom so soon after its first cry has appealed to her heart? Yet the abortionseeker regards with satisfaction the means to kill the little creature that has nestled so confidingly beneath her heart, as if it were the safest place in all the world for it.” (Eliza Bisbee Duffey, The Relations of the Sexes, New York: Wood and Holbrook, 1876, chapter thirteen)
“Scores of persons advertise their willingness to commit this form of murder, and with unblushing effrontery announce their names and residences in the daily papers. No one seems to be shocked by the fact…” (Sarah F. Norton, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, November 19, 1870)
“We are aware that many women attempt to excuse themselves for procuring abortions, upon the ground that it is nor murder. But the fact of resort to so weak an argument only shows the more palpably that they fully realize the enormity of the crime. Is it not equally destroying the wouldbe future oak, to crush the sprout before it pushes its head above the sod, as it is to cut down the sapling, or cut down the tree? Is it not equally to destroy life, to crush it in its very germ, and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in its line of development?”
(Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, “The Slaughter of the Innocents”, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, June 20, 1874)
Source: All referenced in: Rachel MacNair, Ed. Prolife Feminism. (New York: Sulzburger & Graham Publishing, Ltd., 1995).
Abortion, Feminist Opposition To
The British journal History Today recently printed an article claiming that many of the most prominent pioneers of feminism—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and Mary Wollstonecraft, among others—not only refused to support abortion but aggressively denounced it as “the ultimate in the exploitation of women.” Such an article, in such a publication, in such a culture? Perhaps it is a straw in the wind, the UK wind at least. It is certainly an argument that the Feminists for Life have been making for a long time. The recent issue of their magazine, the American Feminist, contains a vigorous argument by Rosemary Oelrich Bottcher, who claims that abortion is nothing less than “a betrayal of feminism.” “In rejecting both violence and the concept of humans owning other humans,” she writes, “the suffragists also rejected abortion. Human worth, in their view, was not based upon size (physical size had always been one supposed reason for male superiority), ‘wantedness’ (women were wanted only in[as]much as they could be controlled by men), or dependency. . . . All feminists share the vision of a world in which violence directed against women is not only legally condemned but also regarded as both socially and morally unthinkable. As we work together toward that vision, pro–life feminists hope that our sisters who promote abortion will one day realize that unborn children are not property either and that violence against them is equally unacceptable. Let us not have to spend another 150 years establishing that the children we bear are also persons.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. May 2000.
Abortion, Infanticide And
…The following is from the parish newsletter of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington, Texas. “Dear Mom, Gosh, can you believe it’s 2023 already? I’m still writing ‘22’ on nearly everything. Seems like just yesterday I was sitting in first grade celebrating the century change. I know we haven’t really chatted since Christmas. Sorry. Anyway, I have some difficult news and I really didn’t want to call and talk face–to–face. Ted’s had a promotion and I should be up for a hefty raise this year if I keep putting in those crazy hours. You know how I work at it. Yes, we’re still struggling with the bills. Timmy’s been ‘okay’ at kindergarten although he complains about going. But then, he wasn’t happy about day care either, so what can I do? He’s been a real problem, Mom. He’s a good kid, but quite honestly, he’s an unfair burden at this time in our lives. Ted and I have talked this through and through and finally made a choice. Plenty of other families have made it and are much better off. Our pastor is supportive and says hard decisions are necessary. The family is a ‘system’ and the demands of one member shouldn’t be allowed to ruin the whole. He told us to be prayerful, consider all the factors, and do what is right to make the family work. He says that even though he probably wouldn’t do it himself, the decision is really ours. He was kind enough to refer us to a children’s clinic near here, so at least that part’s easy. I’m not an uncaring mother. I do feel sorry for the little guy. I think he overheard Ted and me talking about ‘it’ the other night. I turned around and saw him standing at the bottom step in his PJ’s with the little bear you gave him under his arm and his eyes sort of welling up. Mom, the way he looked at me just about broke my heart. But I honestly believe this is better for Timmy, too. It’s not fair to force him to live in a family that can’t give him the time and attention he deserves. And please don’t give me the kind of grief Grandma gave you over your abortions. It is the same thing, you know. We’ve told him he’s just going in for a vaccination. Anyway, they say it is painless. I guess it’s just as well you haven’t seen that much of him. Love to Dad . . . Jane.”
Source: Richard John Neuhaus. “While We’re At It.” First Things. January 1999.
Abortion, Medical Quotations Against
“I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; furthermore, I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion.”
Source: Hippocratic Oath, 1st c. BC
“I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception.”
Source: The Declaration of Geneva, September 1948, adopted by the General Assembly of the World Medical Organization.
Abortion, Modern Christian Quotations Against
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question of whether we are here concerned already with a human being is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”
Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ethics (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1986), p.175176
Abortion, Modern Christian Quotations Against
I was present for a public scene of confrontation that followed the gracious patter Dr. King lad down. The morning I interviewed President Clinton, as I have mentioned, we both attended the National Prayer Breakfast where we heard Mother Teresa speak. It was a remarkable event. The Clintons and the Gores sat at elevated head tables on either side of Mother Teresa. Rolled out in a wheelchair, the frail, eighty three yearold Nobel Peace Prize laureate needed help to stand up. A special platform had been positioned to allow her to see over the podium. Even so, hunched over, four feet six inches tall, she could barely reach the microphone. She spoke clearly and slowly with a thick accent in a voice that nonetheless managed to fill the auditorium.
Mother Teresa said that America has become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love: “giving until it hurts.” The greatest proof, she said, is abortion, the effects of which can be seen in escalating violence. “If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other?…Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want.”
Source: Philip Yancey. What’s So Amazing About Grace. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.244245.
Abortion, Modern Inconsistencies And
Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that a fetus that is viable at the time of a fatal injury is a human being. The ruling came in connection with a drunken driver who caused the death of a fetus four days before it was expected to be born. Oklahoma thus joins Massachusetts and South Carolina in rejecting the “born alive” criterion of common law. The judges said that medical advances made the “born alive” principle obsolete. Oh yes, the finding that a viable fetus is a human being does not apply in the case of a legal abortion. You figure it.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. May 1994.
“Thank God I’m alive and my baby is healthy,” said Jean Morgan of Hauppauge, Long Island, after being rescued from the trunk of her car where two thugs had locked her in six hours earlier. Mrs. Morgan was five months pregnant. That is from the story in the New York Times. On the same morning, the anchor on New York One, a local news show, concluded her version of the story with, “Both mother and baby are well.” Then a brief look of consternation and this correction, “I mean the fetus, of course.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. November 1995.
A number of states have feticide laws that make it a criminal act to kill a fetus, other than by abortion. Such laws make it clear that drunk drivers and homicidal maniacs do not have the same privileges enjoyed by abortionists. The Virginia House of Delegates, however, recently rejected a feticide bill after heavy lobbying by proabortion groups. Ms. Karen Raschke of Planned Parenthood told the legislators, “If you call a fetus a person for the purpose of the homicide statute, it makes it arguable that a fetus is a person for the purposes of abortion.” It would seem to follow.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. October 1996.
I am told it is an old French saying: “Coincidences are events in which God wishes to remain incognito.” The following, from National Right to Life News, is no coincidence: “On October 10, 1997, at 3:50 p.m., the Office of the Press Secretary at the White House released a presidential proclamation designating October 12, 1997, as ‘National Children’s Day.’ In the first paragraph of the presidential declaration, Bill Clinton states, ‘With the birth of every child, the world becomes new again. Within each new infant lies enormous potential—potential for loving, for learning, and for making life better for others. But this potential must be nurtured. Just as seeds need fertile soil, warm sunshine, and gentle rain to grow, so do our children need a caring environment, the security of knowing they are loved, and the encouragement and opportunity to make the most of their Godgiven talents. There is no more urgent task before us, as a people and as a nation, than creating such an environment for America’s children.’ On October 10, 1997, at around 4:30 p.m.—less than an hour after issuing his Children’s Day proclamation—Bill Clinton issued another proclamation: his veto of the PartialBirth Abortion Ban Act.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. April 1998.
Herewith the statement of George D. Lundberg, M.D., editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, on abortion: “Americans are constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. This editor considers abortion to be a religious issue—a decision to be reached by the pregnant woman, after consultation with the father (if possible), members of her family, perhaps a religious adviser, and the woman’s physician. I believe that one woman’s abortion is not the business of police, lawyers, courts, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Congress of the United States, various state legislatures, or anybody else except the individuals named above. This editor has not performed an abortion and believes that he could not. Abortion is killing—regardless of length or state of gestation. However, as a practical matter, this editor recognizes that abortion is considered necessary by many people on a situational basis and that many abortions will be done, often unrelated to what beliefs may have been held previously by the participants and regardless of any laws.” Perhaps, like many Americans, Dr. Lundberg would allow that abortion is the same thing as murder, but go on to observe not that it is necessary at times but that it is “considered necessary” at times and therefore murder should be allowed. As a “practical matter,” of course. (Dr. Lundberg has since been fired as editor. Not, alas, for his views on abortion.)
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. April 1999.
Here is an account of how Ken Burns glossed over the reality of early feminist opposition to abortion:
That indomitable civil libertarian, jazz maven, columnist, and champion of the unborn, Nat Hentoff, asked Ken Burns, director and coproducer of the PBS documentary Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, why the film excluded any reference to what those founding feminists said about abortion. Didn’t Mr. Burns, who earlier received just acclaim for his documentary on the Civil War, know their position? “Yes,” Mr. Burns unhesitatingly replied, but he did not want the documentary “burdened by present and past differing views on choice.” Ah yes, the burden of truth. “Susan B. Anthony on abortion: ‘The woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life. It will burden her soul in death.’ Elizabeth Cady Stanton: ‘When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit. There must be a remedy even for such crying evil as this [abortion]. But where shall it be found? At least, where begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women?” Were Anthony and Stanton still with us, opines Mr. Hentoff, “I think they would have picketed the showing of Not for Ourselves Alone.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. June/July 2000.
A pregnant twelve–year–old in Scotland wanted to keep her baby but was in dire financial straits. The Catholic Church offered to pay the bills. This was just weeks after the British government launched a program to cut the number of teenage births. The Church’s action provoked a furious backlash in some quarters. Said Sarah Colborn, head of the National Abortion Campaign, “We are talking of money being offered to a child to keep a baby, which removes choice.” (Choice that counts as choice removes the baby.) The thirty–five–year–old father of the girl vehemently denies that she has been bribed to keep the baby, whom he and his wife plan to rear.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. January 2000.
They had to call out the police at the University of Texas, Austin. Justice for All: Students for Bio–Ethical Justice had put up posters with photographs of aborted fetuses. A protest by about two hundred students and faculty, organized by International Socialist Organization, got a little rough. They called the display “offensive and grotesque.” Exactly right. What was displayed, that is.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. May 2001.
A New Jersey reader points out that the Supreme Court has recently ruled that child pornography that uses virtual imagery is constitutional and, at about the same time, the Ninth Circuit ruled against antiabortion protests. So child pornography is protected by the First Amendment but abortion protest is not. What these decisions have in common, he says, is that they are both against children and in favor of adults indulging their desires in the sexual revolution, er, regression. It does give one pause about the conventional claim that ours is a childcentered society.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. August/September 2002.
This is unusual television fare. Promoting an upcoming segment on Dateline, Jane Pauley said, “Still ahead, the latest round of bloodshed and violence at abortion clinics.” At last they are going to show what really happens at abortuaries: cutting bodies of babies in pieces, plucking out the bloody limbs one by one, puncturing the heads of infants and sucking out the brains. At last, one thought, at least one network has the nerve to tell the truth about abortion. Then Ms. Pauley completed her message: “The antiabortion movement has been creeping to the edge of bloody fanaticism for a decade.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. May 2003.
The quandaries created by the regime of Roe v. Wade. In Lufkin, Texas, sixteenyearold Erica had been trying by various measures to kill the twin babies with whom she was fourmonths pregnant. She finally asked her boyfriend Gerardo to stomp on her stomach, which he did, and the babies died. Gerardo, but not Erica, is charged with murder. The Associated Press reports, “The case has attorneys on both sides questioning the fairness of a statute that considers one person’s crime another person’s constitutional right.” According to Roe, Gerardo was helping Erica exercise her constitutional right to kill her babies. Unlike other abortionists, of course, he was practicing without a license, which is against the law in Texas.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. October 2005.
Recall the grisly case in Missouri in which Lisa Montgomery killed by strangulation a woman who was eight months pregnant. The Associated Press reported: “Authorities said Montgomery, 36, confessed to strangling Bobbie Joe Stinnett of Skidmore, Mo., on Thursday, cutting out the fetus and taking the baby back to Kansas.” What happened to the fetus? And where did Montgomery get a baby? Encapsulated in one sentence are the absurdities of thought and language that bedevil liberal talk about abortion.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. March 2005.
Abortion, Modern Secular Quotations Against
“The members of our organization have all had abortions and have come to realize, too late, that our decision was wrong. We were encouraged and pushed into a hasty decision that now we find impossible to live with. We were lied to and deliberately misinformed.”
Source: Sandra Haun, leader of “Women Exploited” before the Pennsylvania legislature in the midlate 1970’s as quoted on page 509, note 37, in Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop’s Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Vol. 5, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1991)
We have no hard data on the question, but suspect that few of our readers also read Rolling Stone. For which reason we are indebted to John Farrell of Braintree, Mass. Who does. A recent issue featured rock star Dolores O’Riordan, a lady from Limerick who wears about twenty earrings and is lead singer of the Cranberries, a group that is, says Mr. Farrell, on its way to becoming No. 1 on some chart or the other. She appears to be a person of definite views, including this from the article: “And don’t count on O’Riordan as an ally in defending abortion: ‘I’m in no position to judge other women, you know? But, I mean, “Idiot why didn’t you not get pregnant?” It’s not good for women to go through the procedure and have something living sucked out of your bodies. It belittles women even though some women say, “Oh, I don’t mind to have one.” Every time a woman has an abortion, it just crushes her self esteem, smaller and smaller and smaller.’” Rolling Stone yet. How au courant dare we be?
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. October 1995.
Pity the publicists of the pro-abortion cause whose job is to dramatize the allegedly noble and idealistic struggle to help women by securing “reproductive rights.” In 1995, they suffered a severe setback when Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, was baptized and became a pro-life activist. Less publicized, although equally problematic to them, is Sandra Cano. She was the “Jane Doe” of Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision to Roe handed down from on high the same day of infamy, January 22, 1973. “It is like blood on my hands,” says Mrs. Cano, “I don’t want to be a participant.” “Both women,” says the Washington Times, “now say their status as poor, uneducated Southern women in their early twenties who married abusive men while still in their teens made them malleable plaintiffs for lawyers anxious to bring an abortion rights case to the Supreme Court.” Abused women abused by lawyers who exploited them for their own purposes. Some idealism. Mrs. Cano says she thought the papers she signed without reading them were to help her get a divorce. Her lawyer, Margie Pitts Hames, said nothing about abortion. “I never wanted an abortion,” says Mrs. Cano. “God gives life and God is the only one who should take life. Margie knew I was stupid. I didn’t ask questions. I was mentally unstable.” In 1989 she briefly made the national news by stating that Doe v. Bolton had misrepresented her, but two drive-by shooting incidents at her home shortly thereafter persuaded her to say no more about the case. The shootings are not on Planned Parenthood’s list of incidents of “abortion related violence.”
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. June/July 1997.
Now here’s something you don’t run across every day: the Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League. Founder Matt Wallace calls himself a Secular Humanist and a “Compleat Heretic,” but nonetheless has the good sense to be opposed to “the life denying horror of abortion.” His reason? “Because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an innocent human being.” He hopes other nontheists will see the light of, well, whatever, and invites those who fit the following requirements to join the League: 1) being an avowed atheist, agnostic, or other nontheist, 2) opposing abortion and desiring its abolition, with or without exceptions, and 3) supporting nonviolence as the sole legitimate means of achieving the goals of the pro-life movement. So far, he has eight members, including himself.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. November 1999.
Once again the Pro–Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL) was prevented from participating in the big pro–life march in Washington on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. “Many members of PLAGAL were strong pro–life leaders before they identified themselves as gays and lesbians,” said Moses Remedios, newly elected president of PLAGAL, who spoke from the March for Life stage four years ago when he was president of American Collegians for Life. Some organizers of the march claim that PLAGAL is there to “push a gay agenda.” The organization undoubtedly does push that agenda, but they are at the march, in the words of PLAGAL founder Tom Sena, “to show that, contrary to stereotypes, we care about the unborn as much as any other pro–lifers.” Which leads me, once again, to urge that PLAGAL be permitted to march, and that precisely in order to challenge stereotypes of the pro–life movement.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. April 1999.
Whoever would have guessed that the incorrigible deconstructionist Stanley Fish thinks abortion is wrong? And not only does he think it wrong, he also thinks the logic of the pro–choice side is both flawed and flimsy. And all it took was a little prodding from Princeton’s Robert George for him to come out. George challenged Fish during a debate sponsored by the American Political Science Association over the pro–choice claim to have science on its side. Fish immediately conceded, “Professor George is right. And he is right to correct me,” to the astonishment of all present. “I should have known better,” Fish said later. “Pro–life arguments are now based on scientific evidence and the pro–choice arguments are not. That is a cultural, historical fact.” He recognizes the irony of the intellectual role reversal in the abortion debate: “Nowadays, it is pro–lifers who make the scientific question of when the beginning of life occurs the key one in the abortion controversy, while pro–choice-rs want to transform the question into a ‘metaphysical’ or ‘religious’ one by distinguishing between mere biological life and ‘moral life.’ . . . Until recently pro–choice-rs might have cast themselves as defenders of rational science against the forces of ignorance and superstition, but when scientific inquiry started pushing back the moment when significant life (in some sense) begins, they shifted tactics and went elsewhere in search of rhetorical weaponry.” Although Fish openly opposes so–called abortion rights, he’s still hesitant to call himself pro–life. One step at a time.
Source: Richard John Neuhaus. “While We’re At It.” First Things. February 1999.
Abortion, Taking A Stand Against
There is possibly no reason why you should ever have heard of Joseph W. Moylan of Omaha, Nebraska. But in a time of moral derangement his name should be noted. For many years he served on the Nebraska state court, and then the legislature passed a law requiring judges to authorize abortions when the parents of a minor would not give permission. Knowing what he would be required to do, Judge Moylan resigned. He refused to be complicit in what he recognized as an unspeakable evil. Just that. An apparently little thing. The local papers took notice, but it did not ignite any great furor of public attention. Maybe, however, here and there, a few people were prompted by Moylan’s witness to think again about the responsibilities and opportunities of moral agency. When, please God, this dark night is past, people will remember Joseph Moylan and take heart from the fact that not everybody went along.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. August/September 1994.
In the early eighties quite a number of churches, towns, and cities declared themselves “nuclear free zones.” Despite the wrongheaded politics involved, I generally thought that a good idea since most of the people agitating for such declarations were definitely not to be trusted with nuclear weapons. Now I see that the city council of Highland, Illinois, a town of 7,000, has declared itself an “abortion free zone.” That sounds like an unqualifiedly good idea, and I hope it catches on.
Source: RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. June/July 1997.
By the time she was crowned Miss America in September (2002), Erika Harold had taken her pro-abstinence message to some 14,000 teens as a spokesman for Project Reality. When she won, however, contest officials – uncomfortable with Harold’s social conservatism (she’s also pro-life) – tried to pressure her into adopting a less controversial campaign: against teen violence and bullying. But Harold refused to be, well, bullied. “If I don’t speak about it now as Miss America,” she explained, “I will be disappointing the thousands of young people…who need assurance that waiting until marriage for sex is the right thing to do.” There was a brief standoff, and the organizers caved.
Source: National Review. November 11, 2002, p. 15.
Accountability
“One reason that an accountability group can be so beneficial to our success is because our sin tries to separate us from God, the ones we love, and even church.”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 103
“Chuck Swindoll stated, “When I learn of someone’s spiritual defection or moral fall…I ask, ‘Was the person accountable to anyone on a regular basis?’ Without exception-without a single exception-the answer has been the same: ‘NO!'”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 104
“Admonition can range from instructing by biblical precepts and principles to warning someone through the truth of God that they are going he way of sin. The word for admonishing means to “lay upon the mind’ (noutheton) or to warn or instruct someone who has gone astray of the dangers of the folly of his sin.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 76
Adoption
“When Maria and I first walked into teh orphanage, where we were led to the boys the Russian courts had picked out for us to adopt, we almost vomited in reaction to teh stench and squalor of the place. The boys were in cribs, in the dark, lying in their own waste.
Leaving them at the end of each day was painful, but leaving them the final day, before going home to wait for the paperwork to go through, was the hardest thing either of us had ever done. Walking out of the room to prepare for the plane ride home, Maria and I could hear Maxim calling out for us and falling down in his crib, convulsing in tears. Maria shook with tears of her own. I turned aroung to walk back into their room, just for a minute.
I placed my hand on both of their heads and said, knowing they couldn’t understand a work of English, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” I don’t think I consciously intended to cite dJesu’ words to his disciples in John 14:18; it just seemed like the only thing worth saying at the time.”
-Source: Russell D. Moore, Adopted For Life, p. 25
Acts
“We call it the Acts of the Apostles, but a better name would perhaps be ‘The Acts of the word and Spirit of God through the Apostles’, because that’s how it seems to go.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 35-36
Addictions
“We’re trying to find our rest in something smaller than Jesus. And the more closely we examine those points of restlessness-the more light we shed on them-the quicker we realize, “On this particular issue, in this particular part of my life, I’m looking to something or someone smaller than Jesus to be for me what only Jesus can be”
“ What are you missing in life that prompts you to go after this particular addiction?”
“Fundamentally, somebody’s worst addiction is no different from whatever issues of restlessness you and i face. And the first question to ask is always the same: What are we really after? Inside us, what truly needs to be there that isn’t? It might be acceptance or approval, in various ways, from various people. It could be a sense of identity or direction or significance or purpose. It may well be the experience of security or of freedom and deliverance.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p.36
Adultery
= o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />
When you care enough to risk everything …
With the Secret Lover Collection, now adulterers can say it with a card
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 5:15 p.m. ET = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Aug. 17, 2005
It is a sentiment guaranteed to melt the coldest heart:
“Just when I thought I would never find my true love — you came along …”
It is a greeting card, decorated with a depiction of purple flowers. Inside:
“My soul has been searching for you since I came into this world.
“All my life I have had this emptiness inside, like a part of me was missing and I was incomplete …
“And now I can’t imagine my life without you … Even if I have to share you.”
Even if I have to share you?
This, clearly, is not a card for the wife.
Pssst: I love you. Don’t tell anyone
In fact, it is specifically for anyone but the wife. Called “My Lover,” the card is one of 24 in the Secret Lover Collection, published by a former advertising executive in Bethesda, Md., named Cathy Gallagher. If you are having an extramarital affair, Secret Lover cards can make it an affair to remember.
Gallagher hit upon the idea a couple of years ago. Like most couples, she and her husband had friends whose marriages had been affected by extramarital affairs, with all their attendant “conflict and emotional intensity,” she said in an interview.
“I’m thinking, ‘So how do these people communicate? It’s a secret love affair,’” Gallagher said. “So I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what better can you do than give someone your sentiments in a greeting card? How special is that?’”
After two years of market research revealed an unfilled need, she said, the cards debuted to enormous curiosity this year at the annual National Stationery Show in New York.
Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the Greeting Card Association, a national trade group, confirmed that the collection was, indeed, unique.
“Ms. Gallagher thought she saw a specific niche there, and she’s going after that particular niche,” Miller said. “Whether or not it proves successful I guess we’ll all have to wait and see. … It’s obviously a business decision on her end.”
How big a market?
Secret Lover claims on its Web site that its research shows that 60 percent of American men and 40 percent of women “are involved in or have been involved in an affair.”
The most recent surveys, by the National Opinion Research Center at Chicago University in 2002 and the Kinsey Institute in 1994, indicate that slightly less than a quarter of men and about 12 percent of women have strayed from their marriages. But public opinion experts caution that respondents have a strong incentive to lie, so Gallagher’s numbers could well be close to the truth.
Either way, that’s millions of ring doffing would be customers for Secret Lover.
“It was unbelievable in terms of the numbers of people,” Gallagher said.
But it remains an open question whether Secret Lover can indeed profit from sin. While Gallagher is negotiating with retailers and says prospects are bright, some retailers have said they would avoid the line for fear of alienating their customers, while others have said their customers probably wouldn’t want to buy the cards in a public store.
The company’s ecommerce site did not open until this week, so sales figures there aren’t yet available, but Gallagher said that more than a million unique visitors had stopped by the home page since May and that email sales were strong…
Celebrating adultery?
Gallagher says she doesn’t talk about the social implications: “I’m neither a crusader nor an advocate for this lifestyle. I’m a businesswoman.” As for her critics, she says, “People are entitled to their opinions.”
But specialists in family and marital relations have their doubts, noting that the divorce rate has risen above 50 percent in recent years.
“It seems to me really crude to use a greeting card to celebrate what, in the 16th century, was an offense by which you would be publicly hanged in the town square,” said John Mayoue (pronounced Mayyou), a divorce and family lawyer in Atlanta….
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8973962/
Adultery
“Fox Protests Plan For Stoning Death”
Mexican President Vicente Fox urged Nigeria President Olusegun Obasanjo to spare the life of a Muslim woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
Source: The Atlanta JournalConstitution. Friday, Sept. 6, 2002, A8.
“Grape juice became the norm among many American Protestants in the nineteenth century in connection with the modern temperance movement.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 292
Alter Call
“Overbalanced on an experience-centred Christianity, and too ready to exalt zeal above knowledge, the Methodist tendency was to treat such things as loud emotion, shouting, sobbing, leaping, falling, and swooning as though they were ‘the true criteria of heartfelt religion.'”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 183
“The initial justification for the new practice was that by bringing individuals to identify themselves publicly it was possible for them to be prayed with and to be given instruction. Nobody, at first, claimed to regard it as a means of conversion. But very soon, and inevitably, answering the call to the altar came to be confused with being converted.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 186
America
“Americans prefer religion when it says yes. They do not like religion when it says no.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 91
Antichrist
“A beast is a persecutor; an antichrist is a false teacher.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge, p. 100
Antinomianism
“As in old England, all that can properly be said is that these expressions of antinomianism arose within a Reformed or Calvinist context, and that in this context antinomianism was repudiated as an aberration.”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 163
Anointing
“Anointing was the standard public declaration of a new leader in Israel. The Hebrew verb for “anoint” is masah, and the idea was that the oil symbolized the outpouring of God’s Spirit in empowerment for the new office. This verb is the source for the Hebrew noun masiah which we know in English as “messiah”. In other words, the word “messiah” means the one who was anointed-and therefore chosen and empowered to lead.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 196
Apologetics
“I advise you to fight unbelief with belief, falsehood with the truth, and never to cut and pare down the gospel to try to make it fit in with follies and fancies of men.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 120
“The things that are sometimes thought to be hardest to defend are also the things that are most worth defending.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 8
“By far the greatest danger in apologetics is being distracted from the main message. Evangelism is not defending the virgin birth or defending the historicity of the resurrection. Apologetics is defending the faith, answering the questions others have about Christianity. It is responding to the agenda that others set. Evangelism however, is following Christ’s agenda, the news about him. Evangelism is the positive act of telling the good news about Jesus Christ and the way of salvation through him.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 78
“A proper Christian apologetic begins in spiritual concern, not in intellectual snobbery or scorn.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 124
“We need to stand against things that are contrary to the things of God. But make no mistake: We should not fight like the Devil for the things of God!”
Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Disciples, p. 85
“The psychiatrist Gerald C. May observed, “After twenty years of listening to the yearnngs of people’s hearts, I am convinced that human beings have an inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 16
“People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic.”
“Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts-not only their own but their friends’ and neighbors’. It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them. Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. xvii
“Each religion sees part of spiritual truth, but none can see the whole truth.” Sometimes this point is illustrated with the story of the blind man and the elephant. Several blind men were walking along and came upon an elephant that allowed them to touch and feed it. “This creature is long and flexible like a snake” said the first blind man, holding the elephant’s trunk. “Not at all-it is thick and round like a tree trunk”, said the second blind man, feeling the elephant’s leg. “No, it is large and flat,” said the third blind man, touching the elephant’s side. Each blind man could feel only part of the elephant-none could envision the entire elephant. In the same way, it is argued, the religions of the world each have a grasp on part of the truth about spiritual reality, but none can see the whole elephant or claim to have a comprehensive vision of the truth.
This illustration backfires on its users. The story is told from the point of view of someone who is not blind. How could you know that each blind man only sees part fo the elephant unless you claim to be able to see the whole elephant?
There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater tan any one of us can grasp, but if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others] . . . We have to ask: “What is the [absolute] vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims these different scriptures make?
How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed that none of the religions have?”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 8 & 9
“Historian C. John Sommerville claims that even strong secular critics of Christianity are really using resources from within it to denounce it. Many criticize the church for being power hungry and self-regarding, but there are many cultures in which the drive for power and respect is considered a good. Where, then, did we get this list of virtues by which we can discern the church’s sins, asks Sommerville? We actually got it from within the Christian faith.”
-Source: Timothy Kelle,r The Reason for God, p. 62
“We can’t know that nature is broken in some way unless there is some supernatural standard of normalcy apart from nature by which we can judge right and wrong.”
-Source: timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 161
Apostle
“There is more behind the literal meaning of the Greek word apostolos than just “the ones who are sent.” Behind the word apostle is an ancient Hebrew concept called the shelliock, a term indicating someone who was given authority in legal matters. For example, if someonew wanted to purchase a piece of land but was unable to be present to close the deal, he would appoint a shelliock, giving that person the authority to go in his place. The closest parallel we have to this in our time is an attorney. When my attorney represents me, he speaks with my authority. That si precisely the idea of the apostle.”
-Source-Michael Card,The Walk, p. 71
“It is better to experience repentance, joy, and justification than merely to learn about them.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., p. 16
Argument from silence
“Arguments from silence fail to recognize one simple fact; the art of writing is to a large extent the art of omission.”
“books in the ancient world were of limited size. The books of the New Testament were probably first written on papyrus scrolls. Such scrolls were not easy to handle. The writer and the reader had to use both hands, unrolling the scroll with one hand and rolling it up with the other. For this reason a scroll would not normally be much more than thirty feet in length. Bruse Metzger quotes a saying of Callimachus, who catalogued the books in the great library at Alexandria, that “a big book is a big nuisance.” The two longest books in the New Testament–Luke and Acts–would each have filled an ordinary papyrus scroll of thirty-one or thirty-two feet”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 61
Arminian
“David Benedict, who in the early years of the nineteenth century, travelled widely to collect materials for his General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, commented on this subject: ‘I was often not a little surprised at the bitterness of feeling which, in many cases, was displayed by the anti-Calvinists against the doctrine of election.’
-Source: Iain H. Murry, Revival & Revivalism, p. 180-181
Arminianism
“The Calvinist contends that the Arminian idea of election, redemption, and calling as acts of God which do not save cuts at the very heart of their biblical meaning; that to say in the Arminian sense that God elects believers, and Christ died for all men, and the Spirit quickens those who receive the Word, is really to say that in the biblical sense God elects nobody, and Christ died for nobody, and the Spirit quickens nobody.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 121
“We want o magnify the saving grace of God and the saving power of Christ. So we declare that God’s redeeming love extends to everyone, and that Christ has died to save every man, and we proclaim that the glory divine mercy is to be measured by these facts. And then, in order to avoid universalism, we have to depreciate all that we were previously extolling, and to explain that, after all, nothing that God and Christ have done can save us unless we add something to it; the decisive factor that actually saves us is our own believing. What we say comes to this-that Christ saves us with our help; and what that means, when one thinks it out, is this-that we save ourselves with Christ’s help.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 128-129
Arts
“Until the fourteenth century the sponsorship of the arts in Europe had been largely the domain of the church.”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 199
“For as long as general literacy was beyond the reach of the bulk of the population, it was accepted that the visual arts had a role to play in conveying the characters and stories of the Scriptures through images; art, it was said, was “the Bible of the unlearned.”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 203.
Asbury, Francis
“When Francis Asbury died, he was eulogized with words that could have been spoken about most leaders of the new evangelical movements: “The bible, to him, was the book of books, and his grand confession of faith. He was careful to regulate, all his religious tenets and doctrines, by the book of God, and to discard everything that was incompatible with the divine law and testimony.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism. p. 266
Ascension
“Without ascension our humanity would not have entered into communion with the Father, and Jesus would have no continuing ministry.”
Without the ministry of the ascended Lord even a resurrected Jesus slips away into meaninglessness, for there is no content to a risen Jesus without a present ministry.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resssurection of Ministry, p. 59
Assimilation
“Though the methodologies were many, we found that the most effective assimilation took place where churches were developing disciples through three key foundational elements: expectations, relationships and involvement.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 173
“Respondents to our survey indicated that assimilation was much easier if relationships already existed between a current member and a new member before the new member joined the church.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 175
Assurance
“You know that you have become a Christian (that God has answered prayer and regenerated you) by a threefold result in you life.” The first pillar of assurance is a trust in the promises of God as being promises to you. You count them true and take them personally. The second is the beginning of a change in your attitudes and actions corresponding to the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5) and the marks of salvation (1 Jn). The third is the inner witness of God’s Spirit to your spirity that you are his child (Rom 8). These three pillars are like giant candles whose light reveals our regenerated nature.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 79
“For the Reformers, assurance arose from the perception that God was both trustworthy and that his promise to save was, in an important sense, unconditional.”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
“I thought when I told God He didn’t exist. I would feel a sense of freedom. I thought my confessing that God didn’t exist would relieve me from the responsibility of being one of His creations, but that isn’t what it felt like: it felt more like I had been removed from His protection.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what. p. 40
“Nietzsche recognizes with characteristic honesty, all philosophy, however rational, is ultimately a justification for the way we want to live our lives. And modern people want to live their lives without God. So they construct a worldview in which God is either marginal (deism) or nonexistent (atheism).”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 166
“The movement is not from metaphysics to morality, from atheism to human autonomy. It is not that we reluctantly concluded that there is no God and then worked out how we should live in such a world. No, the movement is from morality to metaphysics. We want to be free from God’s rule, and so we construct a worldview in which God is absent. As Nietzsche puts it, “God is dead . . . And we have killed him.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 167
“The problem is not that we cannot know God. The problem is that we will not know God. It is a problem of the heart rather than the head.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 167
“Atonement is realized when god takes upon Himself, in the person of Jesus, the sinfulness and guilt of humankind, so that His justice might be executed and the sins of men and women forgiven. It is mandatory to underscore this idea by affirming that God is moved to this self-sacrifice by His infinite and eternal love. The basis of our salvation then is totally in God Himself and in Christ’s work on the cross.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 80
“As Martin Luther said, “This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners, for by a wonderful exchange our sins are not ours but Christ’s and Christ’s righteousness is not Christ’s but ours.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 81
“Why then did the early Christians call themselves disciples of Jesus, why did they connect themselves with His name? The answer is not difficult. They connected themselves with His name not because He was their example in their ridding themselves of sin, but because their method of ridding themselves of sin was by means of HIm. It was what Jesus did for them, and not primarily the example of His own life, which made them Christians.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 90
“The atonement cannot be focused properly where the biblical view of God’s justice as one facet of his holiness and of human willfulness as the root of our racial, communal, and personal sinfulness and guilt, is not grasped.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned he stood, p. 23
“How then did the cross actually redeem us, through Jesus’ death? By reconciling us to god, ending the alienation and estrangement that were previously there, linking God and us together in new harmony, replacing enmity between us with friendship and peace, by means of the putting away of our sins.” Rom. 5:11; Col. 1:19-22)
“So how did the cross actually reconcile us to god, and God to us? By being a propitiation, ending God’s judicial wrath against us.” (Rom. 3:24)
“And how did the cross actually propitiate God? By being an event of substitution, whereby at the Father’s will the sinless Son bore the retribution due to us guilty ones. (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13; Col. 2:14)
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 25
“How does God make us good again before him? How does he deal with our guilt and sin? The unimaginable message of the Bible is that God’s love for us is so great that he has made a way for us to be good again through the atoning life and death of his Son.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p.111
“There is nothing you and I can do to pay for our sins. Our good deeds cannot cover them. Time will not make them fade. Only the blood of the Lamb of God can cleanse us, cover us, and rescue us from judgment.”
-Source: Jashua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p, 115
“If he was to save others, He could not save Himself.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 43
“During His crucifixion, He hung in a wildersnss between heaven and earth. He was rejected by humanity and experienced a sense of being forsaken by His Father, forcing from Him the poignant cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). He experienced both teh judgment of God against sin and the sense of divine abandonment that it involved. He became both the sacrifice and teh scapegoat.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 53
“Animal sacrifices pointed to teh need for someone to appear who could and would die in the place of sinners”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 54
“Only by bearing all our infirmities and sorrows in his own body was Jesus able to heal the infirmities and sorrows of human nature.”
-Source Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 215
Aquinas, Thomas
“Practically stated, he affirms most clearly that the conduct of life among the redeemed cannot fall short of life under law, however high it must rise beyond it; and that law is never merely a human invention, but contains the will of God.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 143
Authenticity
“Authenticisn’t a look you put on in the morning, or a new and snappy way to bathe the sanctuary in “mystery” through the strategic arrangement of candles and projected images. Authenic is bearing one another’s burdens. Authentic is people coming to a funeral in their work clothes-Carhartts, hospital scrubs, etc.-on a Friday morning.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 135
” While those in authority need to be more like the Father, who lavishes favor on others by calling them to participate in his work, often putting the spotlight on them for their labors of love, those under authority need to be more like the Son, who gratefully and obediently embraces the work given him by his Father, and gives highest honor to the Father for all that is accomplished.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 67
“To speak of the authority of Scripture is not at heart to say something about what Scripture is in itself. It is rather to make a claim about what Scripture is in relation to the unquestionably sovereign God, because what Scripture is can only be properly defined in relation to God and his actions. The authority of Scripture is a statement about what God did in authoring Scripture, and about how he continues to act in relation to Scripture.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 128
“The loss of respect for authority has led to the loss of authoritative standards. The loss of authoritative standards has left each person to be his own standard-maker.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 79
“The skepticism of lawful authority produces an authority without the will to discipline.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 85
B
Backsliding
“A drunken man came up to Rowland Hill, one day, and said, “I am one of your converts, Mr. Hill.” “I daresay you are,” replied that shrewd and sensible preacher; “but you are none of the Lord’s or you would not be drunk.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 33
Baptism
“Just as there is not a Greek word for “infant baptism,” there is not a Greek word for “inactive member.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 110
“Baptism is an act of initiation, a way in. It is a dramatic act that tells a story. It speaks about dying o an old way of life, an old set of values, an old community, and a former identity. It also speaks about rising to a new way of life, a new set of values, a dynamic new community, and a revolutionary identity.”
-Source: Tim Chester an Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 112
“Baptism is a naming ceremony. We are baptized into the name of Christ (Matt. 28:18-20). We are transferred symbolically from one family connection into another, from the family of Adam into the family of Jesus Christ. We no longer have the identity we once did.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 105
“Baptism is not something we offer to God. It is, rather, something Jesus Christ offers to us. It is grounded solely in teh will of Jesus Christ, as expressed in his gracious call. Baptism is essentially a paradoxically passive action; it means being baptized, suffering Christ’s call. In baptism we become Christ’s possession. The name of Jesus Christ is spoken over baptismal candidates, they gain a share in that name, they are baptiszed into Jesus Christ. Rom 6:3,; Gal. 3:27; Matt. 28:19) They now belong to Jesus Christ. Having been rescued from the rule of this world, they now have become Christ’s own.”
-Source; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 207
Baptists
“Among the Baptists, as with other denominations, the impressiveness of the claims made for the new depended in no small part on an acceptance of the charge that the preceding eras had been largely a story of hyper-Calvinistic barrenness. So effective was the propaganda in most Baptist churches that by the twentieth century their real history was almost entirely unknown. The doctrines of grace which had built these churches, Thomas J. Nettles remarks,’like a puff of smoke in a strong wind . . . vanished in American Baptist life.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 301
“Characteristic words from Screven: ‘Our religion is a system of love and good will. It manifests not only the unspeakable love of God to a fallen world, but also tends to fill the hearts of men with holy affections towards their Creator and one another. The man whose heart is a stranger to compassion, or cannot adopt the language of “being affectionately desirous of you”, is a most unsuitable person to dispense that Gospel every sentiment of which emanates from love . . . The celestial flame of love must mingle with all our preparations, and burn on every acceptable sacrifice.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 307
“Prior to the 1830s there were a few ineffectual attempts made to change the common creed of the Baptist churches.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 309
“There is a great weight of evidence to sustain the assertion that definite Calvinistic beliefs did not inhibit evangelism among the Baptist churches before the 1830s.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 316
“It is not to be denied that hyper-Calvinism had some existence in the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century but its features can be readily recognized and they were not those of any of the Baptist leaders.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 317
“Leland often spoke with dismay of the changes that he saw in his latter years, and he especially deplored the emphasis on what could be achieved through man’s efforts. He wrote to an old friend in Kentucky in 1830:
A new order of things has taken place in the religious department, since I began to preach. Then, when I went to meeting, I expected to hear the preacher set forth the ruin and recovery of man, and labor with heavenly zeal to turn many to righteousness. His eyes, his voice, and all his prayers, and deportment, gave evidence that his soul travailed in birth for the salvation of his hearers. But now, when I go to meeting, I hear high encomiums on Sunday-schools, tract societies, Bible societies, missionary societies, anti-mason societies etc., with a strong appeal to the people to aid with their money those institutions which are to introduce the millennium; assuring the people that ‘every cent may save a soul’.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 319
“But for the opening geography of the colonies as well as for a society with opening ideology, the self-starting, lay-oriented, Bible-centered and thoroughly active work of the evangelical Baptists made them the mainland’s most dynamic religious movement between the revivals of the 1740s and the Revolution of the 1770s. They were the primary beneficiaries of the Great Awakening.”
-Source: Mark a. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 183
“In America after the War, Baptists in the middle and Southern regions found no state church, they were completely free to organize as they chose, and they were committed first of all to the gospel message they proclaimed. Baptists had come into the southern colonies only in the 1760s; by 1790 half of all American Baptists lived in the five most southern states. Baptists founded an average of about fifty new churches each year during the 1780s;
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 214
Baptist Beliefs
“The first major work to argue for a “redefining” of the primary distinctive of Baptists was E> Y. Mullins’s The Axioms of Religion. Mullins elevated religious experience to an authoritative role that had previously been reserved in these writings on the Bible. This is not to say that issues of religious experience did not exist as a theological component within this distinctive genre; it certainly did. Mullins rather elevated this trait to a prominent role of religious authority, thereby infusing into the distinctive theological process a new, “interpretative” distinctive.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 53
“The Reformation tradition first asserts the primacy of biblical authority. These works construct a Baptist doctrine of the church based upon biblical authority. Religious experience in its various expressions is a necessary by-product of having a New Testament church built upon biblical revelation.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 57
“The Enlightenment distinctive tradition has, over a period of time, inverted this view. Following Mullins, this tradition moved from a “biblical authority core distinctive” that shaped church life and religious experience to a “religious experience core distinctive” that shaped biblical authority and church life. The defining distinctive in this tradition became a form of individual, autonomous, religious experience.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Sourthern Baptist Identity, p. 57
“God is looking for demonstrative lovers, not believers. The Church is full of believers and that’s part of the problem. Even demons believe. So, if you only have the faith of a demon-you can get by in church.”
-source: Thor Ramsey, A comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 58
“Philosophers often distinguish between two kinds of believing, belief that and belief in. In belief that, my act of believing is directed toward a person. If I believe in my friend, Joe Smith, it means that I trust him. When I believe in God, it means that I trust God and have committed myself to him. It is very important to see that belief in presupposes belief that. If I believe in God, it is because of all the propositions about God that I believe are true.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 57
“The more we care about honoring God, the less we will care about receiving honors from men. This is important because if we care about the opinions of men in the wrong way, it keeps us from being able to believe (Jn. 5:44). The more we care about being approved as faithful workmen by God, the less we will care if others condemn or oppose us on their own puny authority (2 Tim. 2:15).”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge, p. 108
“the pulpit isn’t for the preacher. The pulpit is for the Bible, because the Bible stands in authority above us all, even above the preacher.”
-Source:: Thor Ramsey. A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 29-30
“God’s people have never created God’s Word. From the very beginning God’s Word has always created His people!”
-Source: Mark Dever. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 43
“Words are important for our relationships.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 48
“”God will not be known if He does not speak, and we cannot know Him if He has not spoken a word That we can relay on. God must reveal Himself. That’s the point of the Bible.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 49
“But in the final analysis the people of God, the church of God, can only be created around the Word of God.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p.50
“When all the facts are known, the Bible (in its autographs) properly interpreted in light of which culture and communication means had developed by the time of its composition will be shown to be completely true (and therefore not false) in all that it affirms, to the degree of precision intended by the author, in all matters relating to God and his creation.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 32
“I can never compromise the truth of God…It is not a matter of personalities, but of principles. And where tow sets of men are diametrically opposite in their opinions upon vital points, no form of words can make them one.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 211
“Since then your serene majesty and your lordships seek a simple answer. I will give it in this manner, plain and unvarnished: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they often err and contradict themselves, I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. May God help me. Amen.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 32
“I opposed Indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s word, otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends…, the Word so greatly weakened the Papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses on it, I did nothing; the Word did everything.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 46
“Augustine said, in the Old Testament, the New is concealed in the New, the Old is revealed.”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 26
“Even teh living Word used the written Word under the anointing of the Holy Spirit as an authentication of the authority and power of his preaching.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 27
“Statistically, the number one issue correlated to higher maturity scores was the discipline of daily Bible reading. Being consistent in this discipline can be challenging, but it is doable.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 296
“So what is God’s final intent for humanity? As is obvious from tracing the iconography of Eden through redemptive history, God’s original intent is his final intent. Eden was the perfect plan, and God has never had any other. His goal was that the people of God might dwell in the place of God, enjoying the presence of God. This is all our heavenly Father has ever wanted for us. And everything that lies between Eden’s gate and the New Jerusalem, the bulk of our Bibles, is in essence a huge rescue plan.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 129
“The god of the bible is nothing if He is not a God who speak to His people.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 37
“The Bible settles our disputes. The Bible tells us what is true. Our thinking about God, ourselves, and the Word should start with the Bible and never contradict the Bible. In that sense, what’s so wrong with calling the Bible our foundation?”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 81
“In other words, God says in application to us the same things that he originally said in application to those to whom the biblical books were first addressed. The details of the second application differ from the first in a way that corresponds to the difference between our situation and that of the first addressees, but the truths of principle being applied are the same.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemened He stood, p.
“If the Bible is God’s written Word, and if it is trustworthy, then, agreeing with the Baptist Faith and Message, the Bible must also be our “supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.” Furthermore, Southern Baptists must be committed to the Bible’s sufficiency to guide us in all matters of doctrine and life. This means that every theological conviction, every denominational program, every historic practice, and every treasured tradition must be scrutinized according to the standard of God’s Word.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identy, p. 260
“At the heart of historic evangelicalism is a commitment to the Bible as “the final authority on all matters of faith and conduct.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 129
“We do not have to choose between ‘believing in the Bible’ and ‘believing in Christ’. As Christians we are called on to do both. In fact one crucial means by which we demonstrate our faith in Christ is by also believing what the Bible says.”
-Source: Timothy Ward,Words of Life, p. 11
“It remains impossible to avoid the fact that our only access to Christ and his words is through the content of the Bible.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 44
“God reveals truth about himself in his Word, not for the sake of knowledge, but for the sake of relationship with us. He tells us about himself so we will put our faith in him, so we will treasure and worship him and not waste ourselves on man-made idols.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 44
“When we read it, the Bible opens us up. It reads us. It searches us in the deepest way possible. It reveals our hearts and motsivations. It convicts and comforts us.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 63
“The young woman sitting in my office was burning God’s Word as she heard it and refuse to obey. How many times have I done the same thing? I’ve read God’s Word, known what it called me to, but refuse to turn in a new direction.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 67
“Sometimes we have to work to find delight in God’s Word. Jeremiah said that when he ate God’s words, they became a joy. They don’t become a joy sitting on a shelf. We have to taste and receive them. The fact that this requires effort shouldn’t discourage us. As we grow in our knowledge of how trustworthy and powerful Scripture is, our love for it will increase.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 71
“We have defended the Bible’s authority more than experienced its power in our own lives.”
-Source:Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 21
“Above everything else, a steward is called to be faithful. Paul continues, “It is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful”
-Source, Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cover, p. 21
” The only way to get to know the mind of Christ is by reading the Bible, and the only way to display our affection for Jesus is by implementing what the Bible says.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey. A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 33
“We need to think in order to receive what God has to give us from the Bible. For most people, what Paul said to Timothy still holds true: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Tim. 2:7). for most of us, the counsel of Proverbs is still essential: “Seek [understanding] like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures. . . . for the Lord gives wisdom” (Prov. 2:4-6). These texts really mean that God gives the treasures of his wisdom through the tenacious task of our thinking.
-Source: John Piper, p. 55
Biblical Authority
“In the final analysis, the ultimate authority for preaching is the authority of the Bible as the Word of God.Without this authority, the preacher stands naked and silent before the congregation and the watching world. If the Bible is not the Word of God, the preacher is involved in an act of self-delusion or professional pretension. Standing on the authority of Scripture, the preacher declares a truth received, not a message invented. The teaching office is not an advisory role based in religious expertise but a prophetic function whereby God speaks to His people.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 72
Biblical Criticism
“theology and history are not opposites. A historian can hold strong views about the significance of certain events and still write reliable history.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 73.
Biblical Revelation
“Revelation is through the text rather than through some reconstructed event in the world behind it. However, revelation is a witness to God, who does exist behind (as well as over and above) the text, and as a result it should be possible to talk about theological principles that underlie, and do not just derive from, the text: a truth that lies behind, and finds particular expression in, the biblical revelation. In this, though, the text must remain central; it is revelation, and thus a unique witness to divine reality.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 77
“It could be argued that if the text is only a witness to divine reality, then might it not be possible to access that reality in other ways,e.g. through nature or personal encounter with God or even through other sacred texts? We need to assert the importance of the canonical text as revelation: as God’s chosen means of communication. This is not, of course, to undermine the further Revelation through Jesus Christ, the Word of God par excellence, but there too the text remains central and takes priority over other forms of revelation.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 77
Bible Study
“No student of the New Testament approaches it with a blank mind.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 115
“One of the chief marks of a healthy church is a biblical understanding of God in His character and His ways with us.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 60
“This is what the Bible teaches us about God: that He is crating: that He is holy, that He is faithful; that he is loving, and that He is sovereign.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 60
” The Old Testament gives us, not some disembodied theology about God, not simply a list of philosophical ides, but a very specific, earthy revelation of who God is and of what He is like.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 61
“A balance of biblical theology and godly inspiration will assure the Christian leader who seeks growth to be faithful to his calling. Spurgeion was all for growth and progress as long as it was the right kind of progress: “Is there to be no progress? Yes, within the lines of revealed truth; but there must be no departure from fixed principles.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 113
“A central distingishing feature of biblical theology is the desire to take seriously the theological content of the Bible as something relevant to modern life.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 39
“Biblical theology, is concerned with what the text implies within its canonical context, and it remains very closely related to the task of exegesis.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 73
“The task of biblical theology and, more specifically in this context, the task of OT theology, is to examine the biblical texts in order ot discover what they have to say about God -so that we may then look at how to apply them to our own day.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 74
“Bitterness that springs from jealousy comes from a deep place in a hardened heart. Even believers can become obsessed with jealousy. The jealous soul believes that others have been blessed more than they deserve. Jealous Christians also believe that they have been blessed less than they deserve.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 99
Blood
““Blood plays an important part in dealing with the separation from God caused by sin. This is best explained by the idea of substitutionary atonement: shedding blood signifies death, and the death of the animal, on behalf of the sinner or sinful community, opens the way for cleansing and forgiveness, and for God’s continued presence among his people.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 195
Blood of Christ
“When we come to see that it was no mere man who suffered on Calvary but the Lord of Glory, then we shall be willing to say that one drop of the precious blood of Jesus is of more value, for our own salvation and for the hope of society, than all the rivers of blood that have flowed upon the battlefields of history.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 128
“How terrible is the sin against God! Who can recall the wasted moments and years? Gone they are, never to return; gone the little allotted span of life; gone the little day in which a man must work. Who can measure a the irrevocable guilt of a wasted life: Yet even for such guilt God has provide a fountain of cleansing in the precious blood of Christ.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p 130
“Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed forever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”
-Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 32
Building
“Let your vision determine your facilities. Never allow facilities to dictate your vision.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 165
Burden
“God laid upon my back a grievous load, A heavy cross to bear along the road; I staggered on, till lo! One weary day, An angry lion leaped across my way. I prayed to God, and swift at His command The cross became a weapon in my hand.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 199
Burnning Bush
“The Lord appeared to Moses from the burning bush-a sign that Israel was in the fire but would survive unscathed.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God” p. 175
Business
“While some argue hat paying employees more and giving them a good working environment pays off in greater profits in the long run, that is not self-evident. It should be done because it is a good and right thing to do in and of itself, not only as a means to the end of higher profits.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 128
Busyness
“We are so busy in the work of the Lord we have little time for the Lord of the work.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p.. 15
“In an institutionalized church, the good has become the enemy of the best, and activity has choked out productivity. Please take note.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 20
C
Capitalism
” There are those who have argued that modern capitalism, if not capitalism itself, originated from the outworking of Calvin’s theology. Calvin’s English-speaking followers, the Puritans, played a major role in the establishment of America, and since the USA is the most prosperous and powerful single nation upon earth, Calvin, through his later disciples, has thereby played a critical role in shaping the world in which we live today.”
-Source: Christipher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 97
Calvinism
“James Arminius was John Calvin’s son-in-law and greatly appreciated Calvin. He said that, after the Scriptures, he believed Calvin’s writings to be the most profitable study for God’s people. Therefore, the acrimony that sometimes flares up between Calvinists and Arminians need not be so if the examples of Calvin and Arminius are followed by their followers.”
-Source: Dricoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 170
“I teach what Scripture says, and I explain it in terms of biblical theology, what the Bible as a whole is teaching, the framework of Scripture. That’s what I want to teach this congregation. I want this church not to be a Calvinistic church but a biblical church. Now I think there’s a lot of overlap there biblically. But we’re not indebted to John Calvin; we’re indebted to the Scriptures at the end of the day.”
-Source: Collin Hanse, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 85
“The Calvinist is the Christian who confesses before men in his theology just what he believes in his heart before God when he prays. He thinks and speaks at all times of the sovereign grace of God in the way that every Christian does when he pleads for the souls of others, or when he obeys the impulse of worship that rises unbidden within him, prompting him to deny himself all praise and to give all the glory of his salvation to his Savior.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 123
“By the term ‘Presbyterian’ Sweet was thinking not only of church polity but of the Calvinistic confession which identified the denomination as well as the Baptist and Congregationalists. In the 1780s Witherspon could affirm “The Baptist are Presbyterians, only differing in the point of infant baptism.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 178
“David Benedict, who in the early years of the nineteenth century, travelled widely to collect materials for his General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, commented on this subject: ‘I was often not a little surprised at the bitterness of feeling which, in many cases, was displayed by the anti-Calvinist against the doctrine of election.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 180-181
“We need to acknowledge that these critics would have gained no traction in raising their complaints if there were not some seeming evidence of the antinomian tendency in the Calvinist movement.”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 158
Calling
“we shouldn’t sit back and wait for people to ‘feel called’ to gospel work, any more than we should sit back and wait for people to become disciples of Christ in the first place. We should be proactive in seeking, challenging and testing suitable people to be set apart for gospel work.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p.134
Carey, William
“What Carey meant by “means” he made clear at the outset; “As our blessed Lord has required us to pray that his kingdom may come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, it becomes us not only to express our desires of that event by words, but to use every lawful method to spread the knowledge of his name.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 209
“So where does the Roman Catholic view differ from the Protestant view? In the Roman Catholic view, faith is a necessary condition for justification but not a sufficient conditison.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahanney, Preaching The Crossp. 94
“Rome believes that a person cannot e justified apart from Christ, but neither can anyone he justified apart from his or her own righeousness. which is carefully distinguished from the righteousness of Jesus”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahanney, pg. 94-95
Change
“90 percent of heart patients who are told to change their lifestyle habits or die, choose death over change.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 182
“What people celebrate as tradition is u-sually a thing that’s been changed y time. All things that resist change are changed by that resistance in ways undesired and undesirable, says Garry Wills. “The tradition must be repristinated if it is to be worth following.” What this means for leaders is that even preservation requires growth, learning and continual renovation. Billy Graham board member Bill Pollard said, “Everything-including relationships-tends to deteriorate with time unless the new, the improved, the changed is added.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 190
“Change must happen if the church is to make a profound eternal mark that will not be erased.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 191
“Man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas; but he will only act swiftly upon old ideas”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G.K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 161
“Change” is a fact of life (and often a source of suffering), but that does not have to be our final answer to reality or life. Knowing God is the greatest goal imaginable, for in knowing him there is joy and the ability ot find pleasure and satisfaction in every sphere of life.”
-Source Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 55
“Slow death begins when someone, confronting the dilemma of having to make deep organizational change or accepting the status quo, rejects the option for the deep change.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change, p. 18
“Ultimately, deep change, whether at the personal or the organizational level, is a spiritual process. Loss of alignment occurs when, for whatever reason, we begin to pursue the wrong end.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change, p. 78
“The term radical is derived from the Latiin word for “root”, In mathematics, for example, we use the radical sign to indicated the square root. To make a radical change, one must move to the root, the origin or archetype.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change, p. 199-200
“Misinformed and fearful persons will always resist what they do not understand or what does not blend with their preferences.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Sourthern Baptist Identy, p. 190
Character
“Warren Bennis contends that character is the “essence of leadership.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 76
“By themselves, character and intergrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 55
Child-bearing
“In Genesis 1:28 we read, “God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Children are a blessing, not a command. Were we commanded to have children, then those whomever marry, like Jesus, and those who are barren would be in sin for not obeying God’s command.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 23
Children
“Nearly 75 percent f fatherless American children will experience poverty before the age of eleven, compared to 20 percent of those raised by two parents. In fact, fatherlessness is the number one cause of poverty in America.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 22
“Children are God’s gifts, a heritage, and a reward; and are to be accounted blessings, and not burdens: he who sends mouths, will send meat, if we trust in him.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 132
Christ
“On its own, more advice (law, commands, exhortations)will only lead us to either self-righteousness or despire. yet the more Christ is held up before us as sufficient for our justification and sanctification, the more we begin to die to ourselves and live to God.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 123
“If Christ is not the King of the church, then before long he also will not be its Prophet or Priest.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 256
“The truth is, the witness of the New Testament is everywhere the same; the New Testament everywhere presents One who was both God and man.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 114
“The Jesus of the New Testament has at least one advantage over the Jesus of modern reconstruction-He is real. He is not a manufactured figure suitable as a point of support for ethical maxims, but a genuine Person whom a man can love. And the strange thing is that despite all the efforts to remove Him from the pages of history, there are those who love Him still.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 116
“It is perfectly true that the Christ of modern naturalistic reconstruction never could have suffered for the sins of others; but it is very different in the case of the Lord of Glory.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 128
“Christ isn’t just our friend. To call him supremely that is to damn him with faint praise. He is our friend, but he is so much more!”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 39
” This call is the sum of all commandments the young man is called to live in community with Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of the commandments.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 73
“My greatest need and yours is to look at Christ more than we look at ourselves.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 123
Christ against Culture
“ If the greatest sin is, the refusal to acknowledge one’s sinfulness, then it becomes impossible to make the line between Christ’s holiness and man’s sinfulness coincide with the line drawn between the Christian and the world. Sin is in him, not outside his soul and body. If sin is more deeply rooted and more extensive than the first answer of radical Christianity indicates, then the strategy of Christian faith in gaining victory over the world needs to include other tactics than those of withdrawal from culture and defense of new-won holiness.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 79
Christ & Culture in Paradox
“The miracle with which the dualist begins is the miracle of God’s grace, which forgives these men without any merit on their part, receives them as children of the Father, gives them repentance, hope, and assurance of salvation from the dark powers that rule in their lives, especially death, and makes them companions of the one they willed to kill.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 151
“Thus in the dualist’s view the whole edifice of culture is cracked and madly askew; the work of self-contradicting builders, erecting towers that aspire to heaven on a fault in the earth’s crust.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 155 &156
“In our time many versions of the dualistic solution are current. It is often maintained, for instance, that faith and science can be neither in conflict with each other nor in positive relation, since they represent incommensurable truths. Man is a great amphibian who lives in tow realms and must avoid using in one the ideas and methods appropriate to the other.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p.183
Christ The Tranformer of Culture
“With these convictions about creation and fall the conversionists combine a third: a view of history that holds that to God all things are possible in a history that holds that to God all things are possible in a history that is fundamentally not a course of merely human events but always a dramatic interaction between God and men. For the exclusive Christian, history is the story of a rising church or Christian culture and a dying pagan civilization; for the the cultural Cristian, it is the story of the spirit’s encounter with nature; for the synthesist, it is a period of preparation under law, reason, gospel, and church for an ultimate communion of the soul with God; for the dualist, history is the time of struggle between faith and unbelief, a period between the giving of the promise of life and its fulfillment. For the conversionist, history is the story of God’s mighty deeds and of man’s responses to them. He lives somewhat less “between the times” and somewhat more in the divine “Now” than do his brother Christians. The eschatological future has become for him an eschatologiacal present. Eternity means for him less the action of God before time and less the life with God after time, and more the presence of God in time. Eternal life is a quality of existence in the here and now.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p 194 & 195
Christian Culture
“Among the many values the kingdom of God may be included- though scarcely as the one pearl of great price. Jesus Christ and God the Father, the gospel, the church, and eternal life may find places in the cultural complex, but only as elements in the great pluralism.”
“In his single-minded direction toward God, Christ leads men away from the temporality and pluralism of culture. In its concern for the conservation of the many values of the past, culture rejects the Christ who bids men rely on grace. Yet the Son of God is himself child of a religious culture, and sends his disciples to tend his lambs and sheep, who cannot be guarded without cultural work.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 39
Christian Education
“The growth of ignorance in the Church is the logical and inevitable result of the false notion that Christianity is a life and not also a doctrine; if Christianity is not a doctrine then of course teaching is not necessary to Christianity.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 177
Christianity cannot subsist unless men know what Christianity is; and the fair and logical thing is to learn what Christianity is, not from its opponents, but from those who themselves are Christians.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 177
“Recent research into the correlates of ‘growth in mature faith’ and ‘effective Christian education’ has shown that adults in growing churches tend to indicate more growth in faith on the average than do adults in churches which are not growing.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 174
Christian Life
“Men would sooner believe that the gospel is from heaven, if they saw more such effects of it upon the hearts and lives of those who profess it. The world is better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible.”
-Source: Richard Baxter. The Reformed Pastor, 98
Christian Worldview
“What is a Christian worldview? The use of popular words is always dangerous. As words enter into common currency, they can soon cease to be helpful as they rapidly become “buzzwords”–words that evoke a certain immediate response, but which still remain nebulous and undefined. Worldview is in danger of becoming just such a word; it is certainly used a lot, but do we really have a clear idea of what we mean by it?
-Source: Douglas Wilson, Future Men, p 45-46
“ A Christian worldview is therefore a framework of assumptions about reality, all of which are in submission to Christ. A Christian worldview is not defined as a worldview held by someone who is a Christian.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, Future Men, p. 46
Christianity
“Rekuguib us soekked D-O–people do good deeds, like praying, being nice to others, or giving money to the poor, in order to try to earn their way to heaven, The problem is, they never know how many good deeds they need to do. Even worse, the Bible says they can never do enough to merit eternal life. But Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. Jesus has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He lived the prefect life and died as our substitute to pay for all of our wrongdoing. But merely knowing is not enough. We must receive Jesus as our forgiver and leader. Are you ready to take that step?”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 74
“We must learn that self-expression and being true to ourselves are not the surest guides to Christlikeness. Sincerity is a Christian virtue, as is honesty about our struggles. But my generation needs to realize that Christianity is more than chic fragility, endless self-revelation, and the coolness that comes with authenticity.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 34
“The fortunes of American religion rise and fall with the fortunes of the intact, married family.” Show me a church void of solid families headed by biblically functioning husbands and wives, and I’ll show you an unhealthy church.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 25-36
“What is a Christian?” asks J.I. Packer. “The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.” And Sinclair Ferguson writes, “You cannot open the pages of the New Testament without realizing that one of the things that makes it so ‘new’, in every way, is that here men and women call God ‘Father’. This conviction, that we can speak to the Maker of the universe in such intimate terms, lies at the heart of the Christian faith.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p.139
“Christian life consists of my living in the world and like the world, my not being permitted to be different from it-for the sake of grace!-but my going occasionally from the sphere of the world to the sphere of the church, in order to be reassured there of the forgiveness of my sins.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p 50-51
Christmas
“Not until teh second, third and foutth centuries AD do any noteworthy parallels emerge, such as the celebration of the god’s birthday on December 25. And this came about only because the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, not combined with Mithras worship until teh second or third century, proved to be a convenient day off work for Christians to worship Jesus and to be left alone to do so.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 138
Christology
“We labor with the exalted Christ, which gives us authority to proclaim the gospel of freedom. And we labor like the incarnated Christ, which gives us humility and grace to creatively demonstrate and proclaim the love of Christ to fellow sinners in our culture.
-Source: Mark Driscoll. Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 33
Church
“For me, our church was not the people we had but primarily the people we did not yet have, and I needed to go get those people. I’m still not sure if most pastors are aware that their churches are comprised of people they don’t yet know.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 61
“These then are the marks of the ideal Church-love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p. 21
“The church is extended in time as well as space, not bound to any one city, person, or age. Its foundation is God’s gracious election revealed in Jesus Christ and attested by Holly Scripture: “The church does not constitute the Word of God, but is constituted by the Word.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 89
“How we “do” church is grounded in Scripture but applied in culture. Simply stated, missional churches are biblically faithful and culturally relevant.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 8
“Their mission determined their meeting place, how they did worship, and their strategies.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 58
“Loving Christ and not loving the church is like telling a friend that you love him, but you couldn’t care less about his wife.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 58-59
” The ministry of eh church,” writes John Piper, “is primarily the work of the members in the activity of worship toward God, nurture toward each other and witness toward the world. Internal structures for church governance are not the main ministry of the church, but are the necessary equipping and mobilizing of the saints for the work of ministry” So the congregation at large must focus on mobilization for ministry rather than spend its time worrying over governance. That responsibility is entrusted to the smaller body of the elders. Piper adds, “Governance structures should be lean and efficient to this end, not aiming to include as many people as possible in office-holding, but to free and fit as many people as possible for ministry.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 59
“The whole church, then, will find it harmful when even a few are rebelling against the spiritual leadership of the church.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 93
“A local church is a group of baptized believers banded together for worship, edification, service, fellowship, and outreach; accepting spiritual leadership; willing to minister to all segments of society through the various gifts in the body; and regularly practicing the ordinances.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 127
“The real problem is-Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 145
“There would be no church, “he once said, “if we set a standard of absolute perfection, for the best of us are still far from the ideal.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 79
“Calvin locked the church doors after the service because he wanted the church ot be salt and light in the world that God made and entrusted to us.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, p. 82
“We ought to regard the Christian Church, not as a luxurious hostelry where Christian gentlemen may each one dwell at his ease in his own inn, but as a barracks in which soldiers are gathered together to be drilled and trained for war.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 219
“I believe that one reason why the Church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the Church.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 300
“The church exists inorder to change the subject from us and our deeds to God and his deeds of salvation, from our various missions to save the world to Christ’s mission that has already accomplished redemption.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 141
“Whatever we might need in society, the church doesn’t need a cultural shift; it needs a paradigm shift from our agenda to God’s”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 209
“The church as people-scattered as salt and light throughout the week-has many different callings, but the church as place (gathered publicly by God’s summons each Lord’s Day) has one calling: to deliver (and receive) Christ through preaching and sacrament. On this day, we are not Republicans or Democrats with an agenda but sinners in fellowship around a common Savior.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 210
“The church must stand against the world for the world, and this includes supposedly Christian nations.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 217
“There is a direct correlation, then, between a theology of self-salvation and the church chiefly as a center of human rather than divine activism. No Longer do we need formally trained ministers of the Word but charismatic and entrepreneurial leaders who can inspire atavistic movement.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 220
“According to Scripture, however, the church is the creation of the Word.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 220
“In the end, the church will not be judged by its Lord for the quality of its music but for the faithfulness of its preaching. The preacher will be judged for his preaching, and the congregation will be judged for its hearing-and not for the preaching it has demanded.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr.,He is Not Silent, p. 74
“What we do is always defined by the gospel, and the context is always our belonging in the church. Our identity as Christians is defined by the gospel and the community.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 16
“Churches should be emotional communities-communities in which our faith is felt as well as understood.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 30
“The church is an outpost of heaven. We are heaven on earth.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 67
“There cannot be mission apart from the local church. The local church is the agent of mission.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 88
“When we think “mission” we must think “church.” And the best way to link church and mission is through church planting.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 88
“When I speak of church, I mean a body of believers working as individuals and together as a team to achieve the Lord’s goals. God’s plan is to glorify Himself through this team. As individuals we minister wherever we work and live. We use our talents, gifts, and resources to minister in our communities in ways that can be done only as a collective force. Our winning team reaches the world with the message of the gospel and then disciples those who have been won to obedience and replication.”
-Source: Jim Putman: Church Is a Team Sport, p. 67
“Jesus builds His church on enemy-occupied territory (Matt. 16:18).”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 67
“To flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 113
“It is the great mistake of a false Protestant ethic to assume that loving Christ can be the same as loving one’s native country, or friendship or profession, that the better righteousness and justitia civilis are the same, Jesus does not talk that way. What a Christian depends on the “extraordinary.” That si why Christians cannot confor to the world, because their concern is the teplooov.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 144
“The proble in our culture . . . isn’t the abortioists. It isn’t the pornographers or drug dealers or criminals. It is the undisciplined, undiscipled, disobedient, and Biblically ignorant Church of Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 23
“The Scriptures picture the church as an essential, chosen organism in whom Christ dwells; the reality is that people view the church as an optional institutuion, unnecessary for discipleship.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 31
“Throughout its history, when a clear biblical understanding of the importance of the office of elder and its shepherding functions has been absent or impaired, God’s flock has suffered. On the other hand when leaders have sought to care for the flock, it has prospered.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 72 &73
“Is the church weak and despised by society at the moment? Well, that is sad; but on another level, who cares? We are not meant to be respectable, to have political influence, to be an organisation that those outside admire for our slickness and savvy. We are meant to be those who preach Christ to the world around us both in our words and our deeds.”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 67
Church Decline
“A bad church is like an inoculation. To inoculate someone is to give them a small dose of a disease you don’t want them to get. The body then develops antibodies so it can fight off the disease-the real thing. When people get a small dose of Christianity that doesn’t accurately represent the real thing, then they think they know what the real thing is, but they actually don’t”
-Source: Jim Putman, Church Is a Team Sport, p. 81
Church Discipline
“Over the years, I’ve just accepted that if I do not quickly open the back door when God is trying to run people our of our church, I am working against God by keeping sick people in my church so that they can infect others.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformissio
n Rev. p. 131
“There are some reasons not to practice church discipline, of course. We certainly should not practice church discipline to be vindictive.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 187
“Nor should corrective church discipline ever take place out of the mistaken notion that we have the final word from God on a person’s eternal fate.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 187
“We do not exclude someone from fellowship in the church because we know their final state will be eternal separation from God. Rather, we exclude someone out on a concern that they are living in a way that displeases God.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 188
“To introduce unconverted persons to the church, is to weaken and degrade it; and therefore an apparent gain may be a real loss.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 13
“The aim of church discipline is not to create a community of those who truly live under God’s forgiving mercy.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 270
“The whole life of the church-community is permeated by discipline. There is an order of gradual levels, the reason for which is that discipline is to be exercised in the service of mercy. The proclamation of the word with regard to both keys remains the sole basis for exercising church services. Rather, the bearer of church office is never relieved of this commission.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 271.
Church Growth
“When it comes to church size, a few things are important to remember, First, a church must determine what size they would like to become and start acting like a church of that size if they hope to achieve that goal.”
“For a church to grow, it must also accept that the church will change.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 28
“If a church is truly missional, it may become a mega church for three reasons: (1) the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ is powerful and effective, (2) a truly outward-focused missional church will experience conversion growth, and (3) a truly missional church has such a burning desire for cultural transformation that it must grow large enough to serve a whole city.’
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 30
“Without a clear definition of what a missional church community is and does, tragically, community will become the mission of the church.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 32
” We often assume that if a church is large or at least is growing, then it must be a good church. Os Guinness writes about this mistake: “One Florida pastor with a seven-thousand member mega church expressed the fallacy well: “I must be doing right or things wouldn’t be going so well.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 186
“It is tempting at times for pastors to reduce their churches to manageable statistics of attendance, baptisms, giving, and membership, where growth is tangible, recordable, demonstrable, and comparable. However, such statistics fall far short of the true growth that Paul describes in these verses, and that God desires.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 215
“Most pastors reading this believe that the church exists, at least in part, to fulfill the Great Commission, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28: 19-20). But the average person in church believes that the church exists to meet his or her needs and the needs of the family.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 29-30
“The main reason a church does not grow-are you ready for this?-is that it doesn’t want to grow.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 106
” Connecting churches teach their members to “invest and invite.” Members invest time, energy, and resources in building relationships with their unchurched friends and then invite them to consider the church and the Christ of the church.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 111
“At present I believe that too many of us are settling for easy goals. It is one thing to grow a church numerically. It is quite another to seek the transformation of heart, mind, and character.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. xiii
“Church growth is that discipline which investigates the nature, expansion, planting, multiplication, function, and health of Christian churches as they relate to the effective implementation of God’s commission to “make disciples of all peoples ” (Matt. 28:18-20). Students of church growth strive to integrate the eternal theological principles of God’s Word concerning the expansion of the church with the best insights of contemporary social and behaviorial sciences, employing as the initial framework of reference the foundational work done by Donald McGavran.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 20
“Wagner, for example, said that “church growth means all that is involved in bringing men and women who do not have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ into fellowship with him and into responsible church membership.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 21
“Church growth is that discipline which seeks to understand, through biblical, sociological, historical, and behaviorial study, why churches grow or decline. True church growth takes place when “Great Commission” disciples are added and are evidenced by responsible church membership. The discipline began with the foundational work of Donald McGavran.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 21
“The Church Growth Movement includes all the resources of people, institutions, and publications didicated to expounding the concepts and practicing the principles of church growth, beginning with the foundational work of Donald McGavran in 1955.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 21
“C. Peter Wagner cited seven foundational theological precepts for church growth.”
1. The glory of God as the chief end of humans.
2. The sovereignty of God and human responsibility
3. The exclusiveness of salvation through Christ.
4. The lordship of Christ.
5. The authority of Scripture.
6. The present and eschatological realities of sin, salvation, and eternal death.
7. The present and future reality of the kingdom of God.
“A potential danger of the enthusiasm and pragmatism of church growth is the elucidating of principles without scriptural foundation.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 87
“History, sociology, and other behaviorally sciences must be viewed as tools rather than sources of authority for church growth. The Bible is the movement’s source of authority.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 89
“McGavran took a different but fallible approach. Salvation would be “measured” by “responsible church membership.” If someone was attending a church and participating actively in the fellowship, then the probability was high that he or she would be a Christian..
Hence the Church Growth Movement arose when salvation became quantifiable, and churches became accountable for their numbers-in terms of membership, attendance, baptism, and so forth. It must be admitted that this church growth approach is subject to error.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 143
“Survey results show that 85 percent of churches which have grown off the plateau have reevaluated their programs and priorities during the past five years, as compared to 59 percent of churches which have remained on the plateau. Similarly, 40 percent of breakout churches’ have developed a long-range plan, as compared ot only 18 percent of continued plateau churches.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 266
“In a given year a church will lose up to two percent of its attendance due to death, three percent to transfer, and six percent to reversion.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 284
“Christians make decisions daily based on “what best works” without violating scriptural truths. The danger, rather, is replacing theology with pragmatism. Methods must always be subservient to the message. Again the call is for biblical balance.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 319
“You need to win people with the same methods that you expect will keep them around and help them grow.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Youn, Restless, Reformed, p. 125
“The common policy of our churches is that of great prudence. We do not, as a rule, attempt anything beyond our strength. . . . We accomplish little because we have no idea of doing much. I would to God we had more ‘pluck'”.
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 43
“Perhaps more than any single theme, we discovered that the churches successfully reaching the lost focus on the basics: biblical preaching, prayer, intentional witnessing, missions, and comprehensive biblical training in small groups (usually called Sunday School). That theme recurs throughout this book.”
-Source: Thom s. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 48
“He coined the phrase “church growth” because he saw that the process of evangelism, if it is truly effective, must result in the product of church growth. In other words, effective evangelism results in fruit-bearing disciples in the local church-church growth. Evangelism that results in “free-floating converts” with no visible commitment to a local church is ineffective evangelism. Effective evangelism is the Great Commission evangelism of Matthew 28:19, evangelism that makes disciples. And disciples are clearly committed followers of Jesus Christ, followers whose commitments are always manifest throug the ministry of a local church.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 169
“Most churches are understaffed for growth. They are staffed for maintenance and survival, but not for growth. If your church is to sustain growth momentum, staffing must become a very high priority.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 17
“Declining churches order their priorities in this manner: facilities, programs, and staff. On the other hand, growing churches order their priorities in this manner: staff, programs, facilities. Adequate facilities are crucial to a growing church, but in the majority of situations, it is wiser to place the priority on staff over facilities.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 36
“Evaluation always precedes growth and improvement.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 186
“According to the Barna Research Group,there are about 360,000 churches in America. Current numbers tell us that only 15 percent of these churches are growing, and only 2 to 5 percent of the churches are experiencing new conversion growth.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Church Is a Team Sport, p.71
“50 percent of all evangelical churches in America did not have a single convert last year.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Church Is a Team Sport, p. 71
“It’s interesting how little the New Testament talks about church growth, and how often it talks about ‘gospel growth’ or the increase of the ‘word’. The focus is on the progress of the Spirit-backed word of God as it makes its way in the world, according to God’s plan.
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 37
“I have found that the main question both liberals and conservatives often start with is not, Is this man a Christian? but rather, Can this man grow the church? This lead question is revealing and alerts us to one reason why there are so many men who are planting and leading churches, yet who do not have a saving relationsip with Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 23
Church Leadership
“The church is instructed to look for its leaders in the first institution, the family.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 40
Church Membership
“Worse than being worthless, it is dangerous. Uninvolved members confuse both real members and non-Christians about what it means to be a Christian. We “active” members do the voluntarily “inactive” members no service when we allow them to remain members of the church. Membership is the church’s corporate endorsement of a person’s salvation. yet how can a congregation honestly testify that someone invisible to it is faithfully running the race:
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 163
“We should not allow people to keep their church membership for sentimental reasons. Considered biblically, such membership is no membership at all”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 163
“People tend to be much more committed if the church publicly expects them to be committed up front – and a membership class provides a place to communicate these expectations.”
-Source: Chuck Lawless, Membership Matters, p. 32
“Membership expectations stated up front indicate the significance of church membership and weed out potential members who choose not to meet the expectation. Ministry involvement gives members purpose and responsibility in the church. Convictional preaching offers a message worth hearing – and a reason for staying involved. Relationships create “people connections” that strengthen a members commitment to the local body of believers”
-Source: Chuck Lawless, Membership Matters, p. 48-49
“The best time to reclaim disaffected members is within six to eight weeks. During this time the potential dropouts are in fact waiting for the church to pay attention to them so that they can talk about whatever is bothering them. After this initial two-month period it is much more difficult to re-involve such members.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 126
Church Planting
“The sending church commonly sees more immediate growth. The church plant takes time to find its identity and build links in its community.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 87
“Often the main limitation to church planting is a failure of imagination.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 95
“Church planting cannot involve an uncritical replication of existing models. Church planting should be at the forefront of new ecclesiological thinking.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 95
“The implication of the Great Commission become apparent when we see how the first disciples worked out that Commission in the book of Acts. What we discover is that it meant church planting. As the disciples went in response to the command to be witnesses to Jesus, they planted churches in Antioch (11:26), Derbe, Lystra, Iconium (14:1-26), Philippi (16:11-40), Thessalonica (17:1-9), Corinth (18:1-11), and Ephesus (19:1-10).”
Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 112
“We must be willing to lose peole from our own congregation if that is better for the growth of the gospel. We must be happy to send members off to other places so that the gospel may grow there as well. And be warned: this will happen if you take gospel growth and training seriously.
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 83
“We see people not as cogs in our wheel, or as resources for our projects, but as individuals each at their own stage of gospel growth.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 83
Church Purpose
“What do you think? Are people basically bad or good? That will determine much of what you think a church needs to do. If you think people are basically good, than a church is simply a place where we seek encouragement or perhaps the enhancement of our self-esteem. We need simply to take the good that’s in us and build on it. However, if you think something is much more radically wrong with us humans, if you think that we are spiritually dead, guilty before God and separated from Him, then there is something different that churches must do. In that case, churches need to present the Gospel clearly. Churches need to tell people how to find forgiveness for their sins and how to find new life. We will “do church” differently, depending on how we understand God and ourselves. To be biblical, we must know that God is a holy God and that we, by nature, are dead in our sins and transgressions and justly stand under His condemnation.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 66
Clothing
“The women in the church should not look exactly like the ungodly, seductive women in the world. women in the church are to be different. They should stand out not because of their revealing clothing but because of their distinctly modest heart and dress.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 125
Cooperation
“According to Paul, gospel partnership is the normal Christian life. It means standing together united in the gospel, determined to live as citizens of heaven in the midst of our corrupt generation, longing and striving to see the gospel be defended and proclaimed, and bravely copping the conflict, struggle and persecution that inevitably follow.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 66
Community
” Community is an effect of mission but not an effective mission.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 33
“The problems of individualism, isolation, and consumerism can stand in the way of connecting people in genuine biblical community. But these obstacles will be overcome through a system of small groups that engage in the functions of biblical community.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 159
“A Christian who claims to have a strong faith yet neglects gathering with other believers on a regular basis for worship, fellowship, and service is deceived. You cannot separate spiritual formation from living faithfully within the Christian community, a local body of believers that demonstrates all the essential biblical characteristics of a true church.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 257
Communication
“It is one Big Idea at a time that brings clarity to the confusion that comes from too many little ideas.”
-Source: Dave Ferguson, The Big Idea., p. 20
“Communication is a process, not an event.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 142
“Leaders must communicate to lead effectively. It doesn’t matter if you have a vision and know where God is leading you. If you can’t communicate it to your followers, you will fail to accomplish your goals.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 25
Confrontation
“When someone makes the initial decision to avoid confronting a difficult situation, a negative process is triggered.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change, p. 21
Congregationalism
“Acts 14:23, where appointed means either “to elect by show of hands” or “to appoint”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 48
“Then it seemed good was a political term in the Greek world for “voting” or “passing a measure in the assembly”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 57
Consumerism
Consumerism was the triumphant winner of the ideological wars of the 20th century, beating out both religion and politics as the path millions of Americans follow to find purpose, meaning, order and transcendent exaltation in their lives. Liberty in this market democracy has, for many, come to mean freedom to buy as much as you can of whatever you wish, endlessly reinventing and telegraphing your sense of self with each new purchase.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 94
Contextualization
“Many people today think Contemporary is good and Traditional is bad. We don’t agree. We think that contextual is best-worship that glorifies God and fits the context.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 81
“Contextualization, rightfully understood in a manner faithful to historic Christianity, begins with the truth that God has revealed Himself in space and time and that revelation is accessible to believers today through Holy Scripture.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 43
Conversion
“”Scripture is clear in teaching that we are not all journeying toward God-some having found Him, others still seeking. Instead, Scripture presents us as needing to have our hearts replaced, our minds transformed, our spirits given life.”
-Source: Mark Dever. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 113
“A student at his famous pastor’s college once asked how he could focus more clearly on bringing believers into the faith. “Do you expect converts every time you reach?” Spurgeon asked. The student quickly retorted. “Of course not.” And the reply came back: “This is why you have none.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 168
“True conversion is not made easier if conviction of sin can somehow be bypassed, and they regarded a recognition of the fact that sinners cannot convert from enmity to holiness at their own decision as intaegral to conviction. Porter observed; ‘I have seen sinners in those assemblies agitated with awful anxiety, and crushed down with conviction of their guilt, under the pressure of two truths; one that heaven is now offered to their acceptance as a free gift, and that they have no excuse for remaining impenitent a single moment; the other, that their hearts are so deeply wicked tha their only hope is in the sovereign mercy of God.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 213
“True conversion involves a radical break with the principle of sin and self-interest which controls the natural man. To be born of the Spirit is to become ‘spiritual’ to posses a new nature which loves Holiness and conformity to God. So whether it be one professed of moral transformation. Where any other test is elevated and regarded as of primary importance, the inevitable result will ultimately be that the whole idea of revival becomes discredited. To claim as the work of the Holy Spirit anything that does not show itself first by purity of life is to undermine the real meaning of Christianity.
“Conversion is important, necessary, and indispensable to our being part of God’s redeemed family. The point about conversion, though, is that it is the way into Christian faith; it is not the entirety of Christian faith”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 22
“Today we insist that we must have Christ as Lord as well as Savior, which is an extraordinary admission of failure on our part. The apostles did not distinguish between having Christ as Savior and having him as Lord, For them, to receive Christ as Savior was to receive him as Lord at the same time. He could be had as Savior on no other terms.”
-Source: Turning To God, p. 23
“Just as there is no discipleship without conversion, so there also can be no conversion without discipleship. the two belong together..”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 23
“The New Testament writers view conversion dynamically–as something one does–and they interpret it theologically with words such as faith, repentance, grace, forgiveness, and regeneration.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 28
“What we are is theologically explained. What we do is a matter of our behavior. A testimony should include both a description of our actions (turning from our former life) and an explanation of why we did so (Christ and his death for us).”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 28
“The difference in conversion stories lies not in what God has done for us in Christ but in our process of turning to hm.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 29
“Conversion is not an isolated event but is related to the entire life of faith that follows from it. It is the moment of birth into a new life. It is like a doorway into a room. A person is born to live, not to linger on teh edge of the womb in a time limbo. A person opens a door not for the pleasure of standing forever on the threshold but to enter the room. The evangelical world has strangely perverted this truth. Evangelicals often make the test of spiritual life one’s willingness to testify about the moment of birth. Describing one’s sensations in passing through the doorway is considered proof that one is in the room! This shifts the focus from where it ought to be–the evidence of the Spirit’s renewing work n producing a God-centered life, a God-fearing heart, and God-honoring character and witness–and places it on a person’s autobiographical account of the conversion crisis. The only real proof of our conversion is an obedient and fruitful life.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God , p. 42
“If we are to avoid producing false conversions, we must make much of the law, sin, and repentance in our communication, and not press people for gestures of decisions until we have done all we can to make sin hateful in their eyes and have reason to judge that they have received this part of the message.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 88
“Conversion itself was not a dominant concept for Luther; for him, the focus was more objective than subjective, more on what Christ has done in justifying us than on how we experience this in regeneration, more on the faith by which we should take hold of Christ than on how we should decide fro him, more upon God than upon ourselves.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 99
Conviction
“The Holy Spirit of God is confrontational, and his conviction is powerful. He will not empower nonconfrontational preaching that waters down the gospel, compromised the Word and takes sin lightly.
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 60
Cooperation
“At princeton Witherspoon’s students used to hear him say that when the church was to prosper it was noticeable that her leaders ‘flourish in clusters’ each helping one anouther.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 57
Counseling
“Some people think that the good that comes through therapy is the result of just showing up for the sessions, when in fact the good comes from working hard to make positive changes outside the counseling office.”
-Source: Parrott, Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda..,p. 28
“The problem with this therapy culture, according to Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, is the way it has made therapy into a way of life. People are encouraged to define themselves as victims who have suffered at the hands of parents, employers, or through pregnancy and any number of other things. A belief system has emerged, the credo of which is that people cannot cope “on their own.” Furedi argues that a therapy culture is bad for individuals and a significant threat to public health. As long as people are encouraged to seek professional counseling to help them with everything from dealing with an unpleasant incident to raising their children, argues Furedi, individuals become disinclined to depend upon each other in the normal routine of relationships. Relationships are increasingly “professionalized.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 128
“What many people call “psychological problems” are simple issues of idolatry. Perfectionism, workaholism, chronic indecisiveness, the need to control the lives of others-all of these stem from making good things into idols that then drive us into the ground as we try to appease them. Idols dominate our lives.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. xxiii
Courage
“May you also possess the grand moral characteristic of courage! By this, I do not mean impertience, impudence, or self-conceit; but real courage to do and say calmly the right thing, and to go straight on at all hazards, though there should be none to give you a good word. I am astonished at the number of Christians, who are afraid to speak the truth to their brethren. I thank God that I can say this-there is no member of my church, no officer of the church, and no man in the world, to whom I am afraid to say before his face that I would say behind his back. Under God, I owe my position in my own church to the absence of all policy, and the habit of always saying what I mean.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 107
“I mean Courage. If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Courage in the ministry is, I think, one of those qualities which cannot be healthily acquired if it is sought for directly. It must come as health comes in the body, as the result of the seeking for other things. It must be from a sincere respect for men’s highter nature that you must grow bold to resist their whims.
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lecture on preaching, p.59
Covenant
“It is interesting to note that, though the deity throughout Genesis 2:4-24 is “the Lord God,” the serpent only calls him “God”, and he and the woman use only that title in their conversation (3:1b-5). Now, as many have observed, the name God designates the deity in his role of Cosmic Crator and Ruler (its use in 1:1-2:3), while “the Lord” (“Yahweh”) is particularly his name as he enters into convenantal relationship with human beings. By dropping the covenant diverting the woman’s attention from the relationship the Lord has established. The woman’s use of it shows that she is trapped, and we begin to have a clue as how she could be led into disobedience by forgetting the covenant.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 122
“At the heart of the relationship between God and his people is the term based (translated ‘love’ in Exod. 34:6-7). This cannot be adequately conveyed in English. it includes kindness and mercy, but also involves loyalty, duty and obligation. In the OT, besed occures predominantly i the context of relationships, especially convenient relationships, and expresses ‘faithfulness and loyal conduct . . . it is an inward commitment and disposition of goodwill together with its outward expression in dutiful and compassionate action.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 108
Covetousness
“The evil in our desires often lies not in what we want, but in the fact that we want it too much.”
-Source: C. J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 30
“Many years ago a major American company had trouble keeping employees working in their assembly plant in Panama. The laborers lived in a generally agrarian, barter economy, but the company paid them in cash. Since the average employee had more cash after a week’s work than he had ever seen, he would periodically quit working, satisfied with what he had made. What was the solution? Company executives gave all their employees a Sears catalog. No one quit then, because they all wanted the previously undreamed-of things they saw in that book.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, p. 96
Creation
“What did the author of Genesis 1 feel was necessary to set up the theological and historical lens for his audience as he launched his readers into redemption’s story? I must tell you that I do not think he was concerned about the chronological and geological details of the creation event, nor do I think he was occupied with explaining the end of the dinosaur age or the “old” and “young” earth theory. Rather, I think his most central concern was probably educating Yahweh’s wayward people as to who this God was and what this God expected of them.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 94-95
“Basically, Genesis 1 was ritten to answer the questions: “Who is God and what is his relationship to us? Or, as the title of our chapter indicates, “What was God’s original intent?”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 95
“Both word and Spirit were involved in creation. The world was made by God’s word (Hebrews 1:1-3), but the Spirit was also present, brooding over the waters (Genesis 1:2).
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 30
“God did not create us to get the cosmic, infinite joy of mutual love and glorification, but to share it.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 228
Creativity
“A creative God calls creative leaders to engage in the creative enterprise of propagating His kingdom’s work.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 137
Criticism
“There is a difference between criticism and correction. Correction encourages; criticism discourages.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 125
“A critic who never loses the scent is not really following it.”
-Source: David r. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 18
Cross
“A. W. Tozer, comments, “All unannounced and mostly undetected there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles. It is like the old cross, but different: the likenessess are superficial; the differences are fundamental. . . . This new evangelism employs the same language as the old, but its content is not eh same and its emphasis is not as before.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 41
“Both the Old and New Testaments clearly declare that our understanding of the cross is the result of God’s revelation to us and not human speculation borrowed from paganism.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 11
“The great Reformer Martin Luther distinguished between the Christianity Lite theology of glory and the theology of the cross. The theology of glory celebrates what human beings can do based on their personal vision, self-discipline, and hard work. The theology of the cross celebrates what Jesus alone can accomplish for us, through us, with us, and in spite of us. The theology of glory seeks to know God directly in his power, wisdom, success, and glory. The theology of GTE cross seeks t know God through the seeming weakness, folly, failure, and shame of the crucified Jesus. The theology of glory seeks to use God to avoid suffering, hardship, pain, shame, loss, and failure. The theology of the cross seeks to see suffering, hardship, pain, shame, loss, and failure as opportunities to grow in an understanding, appreciation, and emulation of the crucified Jesus. The theology of glory seeks to use God to obtain health and wealth. The theology of the cross seeks Jesus, even if that should mean experiencing pain and poverty like Jesus.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 202
“Do you love the Cross because it makes much of you?” he asked. “Or do you love it because it enables you to enjoy an eternity of making much of God?”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 48
“Jesus above all desired for the Father to be glorified. He was not thinking of me above the Father.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 97
“The truth is that God’s grace alone, grounded in Christ’s objective work on the cross, accomplishes his redemptive purposes in us.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 20
Cross of Christ
“Shall we be satisfied with preachers who merely “do not deny” the Cross of Christ? God grant that such satisfaction may be broken down! The people are perishing under the ministrations of those who “do not deny” the Cross of Christ. Surely something more than that is needed. God send us ministers who, instead of merely avoiding denial of the Cross shall be on fire with the Cross, whose whole life shall be one burning sacrifice of gratitude to the blessed Saviour who loved them and gave Himself for them!”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 176
Crucifixion
“There’s no getting around the fact that the center of Christ’s ministry was His death on the Cross, and that at the heart of that death was God’s certainty that He was effectively dealing with the claims both of His love and of His justice.”
-Source: Mark Dever. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 89
“He is a thief who comes to take from you and give you something of external value”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 84
“Matthew devoted 33 percent of his Gospel to Jesus’ final week; Mark, 37 percent; Luke, 25 percent; and John, 42 percent.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 238
“Contrary to what those who wanted to destroy Jesus thought they were doing, they were themselves caught up in the purposes of God to bring salvation to sinners through His Son (Acts 2:23).”
“Before their blinded eyes, Jesus was fulfilling His messianic ministry.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 40
Culture
“Remember the Bible critiques culture, not the other way around.”
“Be humble about the way your particular culture may have blended with the message of the gospel, causing you to hold worldviews that Jesus would have never required.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 45
“Christianity seems to threaten culture at this point not because it prophesies that of all human achievements not one stone will be left on another but because Christ enables men to regard this disaster with a certain equanimity, directs their hopes toward another world, and so seems to deprive them of motivation to engage in the ceaseless labor of conserving a massive but insecure social heritage.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 6
“Christianity, whether defined as church, creed, ethics, or movement of thought, itself moves between the poles of Christ and culture. The relation of these two authorities constitutes its problem. When Christianity deals with the question of reason and revelation, what is ultimately in question is the relation of the revelation in Christ to the reason which prevails in culture.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & culture, p. 11
“Culture is the “artificial, secondary environment” which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 32
“Culture, secondly, is human achievement. We distinguish it from nature by noting the evidences of human purposiveness and effort.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 33
“Finally, attention must be directed to the pluralism that is characterisic of all culture. The values a culture seeks to realize in any time or place are many in number. No society can even try to realize all its manifold possibilities; each is highly complex, made up of many institutions with many goals and interveaving interests.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 38
“Tertullian’s rejection of the claims of culture is correspondingly sharp. The conflict of the believer is not with nature but with culture, for it is in culture that sin chiefly resides.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 52
“Both Paul and Luther have been characterized as cultural conservatives. Much can be said for the ultimate effect of their work in promoting cultural reform; yet it seems to be true that they were deeply concerned to bring change into only one of the great cultural institutions and sets of habits of their times- the religious. For the rest they seemed to be content to let state and economic life-with slavery in the one case and social stratification in the other-continue relatively unchanged. They desired and required improvement in the conduct of princes, citizens, consumers, tradesmen, slaves, masters, etc.; but these were to be improvements within an essentially unchanged context of social habit. Even the family, in their view, retained its dominantly patriarchal character, despite their counsels to husbands, wives, parents, and children to love each other in Christ.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, 187 & 188
Culture Christianity
“Nothing is as evanescent in history as the pansophic theories that flourish among the illuminati of all times under the bright sunlight of the latest scientific discoveries; and nothing can be more easily dismissed by later periods as mere speculation. But we may well believe that the Gnostics were no more inclined to fantasy than are those folk in our day who find in psychiatry the key to the understanding of Christ, or in nuclear fission the answer to the problems of eschatology,. They sought to disentangle the gospel from its involvement with barbaric and outmoded Jewish notions about God and history; to raise Christianity from the level of belief to that of intelligent knowledge, and so to increase its attractiveness and its power. Emancipated as they were from the crude forms of polytheism and idolatry, and cognizant of profound spiritual depths of being, they set forth a doctrine according to which Jesus Christ was a cosmic savior of souls, imprisoned and confounded in the fallen, material world, the revealer of the true, redeeming wisdom, the restorer of right knowledge about the abyss of being and about the ascent as well as the descent of man. This is the most obvious element in the effort of the Gnostics to accommodate Christianity to the culture of their day: their “scientific” and “philosophic” interpretation of the person and work of Christ. What is less obvious is that this attempt entailed his naturalization in the whole civilization. Christianity so interpreted became a religious and philosophic system, regarded doubtless as the best and the only true one, yet one among many.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, pgs 86-87
“Back of all these Christologies and doctrines of salvation is a common notion that is part of the generally accepted and unquestioned climate of opinion. It is the idea that the human situation is fundamentally characterized by man’s conflict with nature. Man the moral being, the intellectual spirit, confronts impersonal natural forces, mostly outside himself but partly within him. When the issue in life is so conceived, it is almost inevitable that Jesus Christ should be approached and understood as a great leader of the spiritual, cultural cause, of man’s struggle to subdue nature, and of his aspirations to transcend it. That man’s fundamental situation is not one of conflict with nature but with God, and that Jesus Christ stands at the center of that conflict as victim and mediator-this though, characteristic of the church as a whole, culture-theology never seems to entertain. In its view, those Christians who so understand the human dilemma and its solution are obscurantists in man’s cultural life and perverters of the gospel of the kingdom.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 101
“The movement that identifies obedience to Jesus Christ with the practices of prohibition, and with the maintenance of early American social organization, is a type of cultural Christianity; though the culture it seeks to conserve differs from that which its rivals honor.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 102
“Not only churchmen, but also non-Christian to whom Jesus has been so presented as the Christ of culture, raise objections to the interpretation. The Christian Gnostics are assailed by pagan writers as well as by the orthodox. Christian liberalism is rejected by a John Dewey as well as by a Barth. Marxists dislike Christian socialism as much as orthodox Calvinists and Lutherans do. It is not our task to analyze these objections that are made from the side of culture. It is relevant, however, to point out that cultural Christianity is not, evidently, more effective in gaining disciples for Christ than Christian radicalism is.”
“If the evangelists of the Christ of culture do not go far enough to meet the demands of men whose loyalty is primarily to the values of civilization, they go too far in the judgement of their fellow believers of other schools.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 108
“Ultimately these fanciful descriptions are destroyed by the force of the Biblical story. With or without the official actions of bishops and councils, the New Testament witness maintains itself against them. In the second century the formation of the New Testament canon, in the nineteenth and twentieth the continuous work of Biblical scholars, make it evident that Jesus Christ is not like this. He is greater and stranger than these portraits indicate. These apocryphal gospels and lives contain elements foreign to him; the Biblical Christ says and does things that are not found in them. Sooner or later it becomes apparent that the supernatural being was a man of flesh and blood; the mystic a teacher of morals; the moral teacher one who cast out demons by the power of God; the incarnate spirit of love a prophet of wrath; the martyr of a good cause the Risen Lord. It is clear that his commandments are more radical than the Ritschlian reconciliation of his law with the duties of one’s calling allows; and that his conception of his mission can never be forced into the patter of an emancipator from merely human oppressions.”.
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, pgs 108 & 109
“The relation of Jesus Christ to the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth is ultimately no speculative question for the man concerned with the conservation of culture, but his fundamental problem. It arises for him not only in his eschatological visions when he sees a “slow sure doom fall pitiless and dark on the world his ideals have fashioned,” but also in all his construction when he discovers that his science and his architecture cannot stand unless they are ordered in a given order of nature. The spiritualism and idealism of cultural Christianity meets its challenge in naturalism.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, pgs 114 & 115
D
Darwinism
“Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals.”
Source: Philip Yancey, G.K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 166
Davies’,Samuel
“But Davies’ concern for the unreached did not permit him to be content even with these large parish boundaries. He was ready to travel to all parts of Virginia and sometimes beyond. There were occasions when he journeyed 500 miles in two month, during which time he might preach forty sermons.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 10
“Thus believing that ‘to die is gain’, Damuel Davies departed on 4 February 1761, at the age of thirty-seven. The only words to have been recorded of those present at his death were those of his mother: ‘There is the son of my prayers and my hopes – my only son, my only earthly supporter; but there is the will of God and I am satisfied.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p.18
Decision Making
Lyle Schaller. “He told a story about an old umpire he had met. He asked the umpire how he felt after making the wrong call. The umpire stated that he never made a wrong call. Puzzled, Schaller asked if he truly believed that he had never called a safe man out, an out man safe, a ball a strike, or a strike a ball. The umpire said that he had never made a bad call. Schaller asked him how that could be, and the umpire simply said, “it ain’t nothing until I call it.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 82
Death
“medieval people feared a quick and sudden death because it would not give them time to be ministered to by the church. Armies even debated whether an ambush was immoral because it didn’t give their opponents time to prepare for death. Medieval people wanted a lingering death because this would give them time to reconcile with their enemies. In other words, they wanted to attend one more family reunion. They didn’t fear death. They feared God.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 223
” The only thing that makes death scary, beside the black hood and sickle, is facing the Judgment Seat of Christ. This viewpoint makes the pastor really important. Hauerwas says, “Nobody believes that an incompetent pastor can threaten their salvation, but we do believe that an incompetent doctor can threaten our lives.” There are plenty of malpractice suits, but no malpreaching suits. Probably because by the time you find out how horribly wrong your pastor is, it’s too late. all you can do is stand and point at him during the Last Judgment, screaming, “That’s the idiot who said the Bible was changing with the times! And he’s wearing a wig!”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 224
“Comedian Wild Bill Bauer, a road comic who was helpful to me early in my career, always said that we should put the word “fun” back in funeral. And then he said we should jumble it, because if you jumble the word funeral, it spells “real fun.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 227
Delegation
“Good leaders are problem givers more than problem solvers. They believe that problems should be passed down the line to people as close to the action as possible. Decisions arrived at by the decision makers who are close to the action will always, over time, be better than those dictated from the top down, no matter how brilliant the leader may be.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 184
Democracy
“This is the first principle of democracy; that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 62
Dependence
“We are dependent upon God for the simplest elements of life: air, water, sun. What we have is not the result of our labor, but of the gracious care of God. When we are tempted to think that what we own is the result of our personal efforts, it takes only a little drought or a small accident to show us once again how utterly dependent we are for everything.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 88
Depravity
“Our minds are not “neutral”, they will not naturally respond and follow the truth of the gospel though they may still operate on certain principles of rationality such as the law of contradiction. They suppress moral implications of the truth (Rom 1:18) They are at enmity with God (Rom 8:7).”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 97
Depression
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer asks, “may it not be that God Himself sends us these hours of reproof and dryness that we may be brought again to expect everything from His Word?”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 202
Destiny
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
-William Jennings Bryan
Devotion
“Like the Israelites, Christians learn that manna which was fresh and nutritious yesterday becomes moldy today. Each and every day must be marked by a fresh confrontation with the Lord.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 33
“Take care of the home farm; look well to your own flocks and herds. Unless your walk be close with God, unless you dwell in that clear light which surrounds the throne of God, and which is only known to those who are in fellowship with the Eternal, you will go forth from your chamber, and hasten to your work, but nothing will come of it. The vessel, it is true, is but an earthen one; yet it has its place in the divine arrangement, fut it will not be filled with the divine treasure unless it is a clean vessell, and unless in other respects it is a vessel fit for the Master’s use.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 177-178
Direction
” In many new cars that have navigation systems and built-in compasses, if you are not careful you can turn them off. One young lady with a new car was driving in the rain and turned on what she thought were the windshield wipers. However, the wipers did not come on but across the dashboard came the message, “Drive car in 360 degrees.” She had no idea what that meant. When she arrived home she went straight to the car manual to find what the message could possible be. She learned that while trying to turn on the wipers she had turned off the internal compass. The car in a sense lost its internal compass by driving the car in a full circle and pointing it north. This resets the system.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 158
“To help others unwrap Jesus-what a superb definition of discipleship!”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p. 7
“
Discipleship
“The average Christian is educated to at least three years beyond their level of obedience.”
-Source: Dave Ferguson, The Big Idea, p. 48
“Sometimes we try to separate the tasks of evangelism and discipleship, even though they go hand-in-hand. But true disciples are going to be witnesses.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 67
“New Christians are likely to leave the church within the first six months if they don’t develop at least seven significant relationships in the congregation during that time.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 122
“There are many things that people want to learn (end times, spiritual warfare, ad infinitum), but there are some things they need to learn-basic doctrines and habits of the Christian life.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 127
“Church members need to develop in at least eight ways. These are adapted from The Master Plan for Making Disciples by Win and Charles Arn (Baker Books, 1998):
· Worship regularly
· Guide friends and family to follow Christ
· Identify with church goals
· Tithe regularly
· Identify seven new friends in the church
· Identify their own spiritual gifts
· Participate in at least one role or task in the church
· Participate in a small group
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 130
“Teach and challenge new believers early to be faithful in every area of their lives, including finances. (sometimes they learn obedience before anyone tells them anything different!)”
-Source: Chuck Lawless, Membership Matters, p. 84
“Our discipleship strategies should include a consistent emphasis on getting our people into God’s Word and God’s Word into them.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 70
“Churches will become equipping centers. The preaching ministry of the church will be an essential part of the training strategy, but not the only part. A variety of classes will be aimed at equipping people to serve and guiding them into involvement. It is not enough to preach at people, seeking to make them feel guilty for being mere pew sitters. We need to raise the bar of expectation, provide opportunities for our members to discover how God has wired them, and then move them to some appropriate form of involvement.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 73-74
“By now you’ve probably realized that you have a distinct choice to make: just let life happen, which is tantamount to serving God your leftovers, or actively run toward Christ.”
-Source: Francis Chan, Crazy Love, p. 113
“Before they are preachers, leaders, or church planters, the disciples are to be lovers! This is the test of whether or not they have known Jesus.”
-Souce: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 56
“Thus the goal of Christian ministry is quite simple, and in a sense measurable: are we making and nurturing genuine disciples of Christ? The church always tends towards institutionalism and secularization. The focus shifts to preserving traditional programs and structures, and the goal of discipleship is lost. The mandate of disciple-making provides the touchstone for whether our church is engaging in Christ’s mission. Are we making genuine disciples of Jesus Christ? Our goal is not to make church members or members of our institution, but genuine disciples of Jesus.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 14
“Structures don’t grow ministry any more than trellises grow vines, and that most churches need to make a conscious shift-away from erecting and maintaining structures, and towards growing people who are disciple-making disciples of Christ.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 17
“People-growth happens only through the power of God’s Spirit as he applies his word to people’s hearts.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 39
“In relational training, the hearts of both trainer and trainee are exposed. As we train ministers of Christ’s word, we don’t measure progress simply by the performance of tasks, but by the integrity of the heart. Does the trainee genuinely love God and his neighbour? Does he truly submit to Christ’s word? Unguarded, spontaneous words and actions expose the heart of the trainee-the good, the bad and the ugly. In the cut and thrust of life and ministry the relationship is deepened, and the trainer gains insights into the character of the trainee.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 76
“Training Christians to be vine-workers does not simply mean the impartation of certain skills and abilities (as we’ve already discussed at length above). Christian discipleship is about sound doctrine and a godly life, and so to train or equip someone to minister to others means training and equipping them with godliness and right thinking, not just with a set of skills-because that is how they will need to minister to others.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 86
“Discipleship is so much more than just sharing the news about Jesus; it is also about teaching people to obey the commands Jesus gave us. Unfortunately, many churches have not taken this charge seriously, and the are experiencing significant problems. This whole issue of discipleship is critical if we want to save the church from the Sunday-morning show and make it a place where real relationship and real change takes place.
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 21
“A worship service (show) can supplement the discipleship process, but it cannot create disciples alone. Discipleship demands intentionality and relationship-by which each person is invested in specifically. This cannot happen in the worship service.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 23
“We point our people to the definition of a disciple found in the familiar passage of Matthew 4:19. In this verse, Jesus gives an invitation to His future disciples, who were fishing at the time. He says to them, “Come, follow me . . . and I will make you fishers of men” We believe that this invitation describes the definition of a disciple and that to follow Jesus will mean, a life change at the head, heart, and hands level of our beings. Let’s take a closer look.
-Source: Jim Putman, p.26-27
“It’s the job and privilege of every Christian to be a disciple of Jesus, and it’s the responsibility of every church to make disciples. I also believe that the Word tells us that it is the job of every pastor to develop a system that will equip and enable all of the people in the church to be in the relational process for discipleship. The simpler, more deliberate, and more intentional that process, the less time wrong.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 35
“Great coaches do not leave the process to chance-they are intentional.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 36
“I want to emphasize that assessment is not a way of designating one believer as more valuable than another. It’s very important that disciple-makers and disciples understand the difference between value and usefulness. While a mature Christian is more useful to the purpose of the Lord and the church than a spirtual infant or child, he or she is not more valuable.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship,p. 42
“When the structure of a church supports a relational environment for discipleship (spiritual growth), that church is more likely to be full of people who demonstrate this kind of love Christ talked about,”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 51
“Once wwe understand who spiritual children are and what they need, we must ask what these disciples need to know (head), be (hearts), and do (hands) to become mature believers.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 114
“When I turned eighteen, I didn’t go out to find a new parent to parent me. Why? Because may parents had done their job. I was ready for adulthood. Similarly, when a disciple matures into a spirtual parent, the discipling process is complete. Mature disciples know wha they need and they seek it out. When Jesus sent out His twelve disciples, He did not say, “Now go dind another disciple-maker to follow.” He sent them together, usually in groups of two, working together n accountable relationships. They were mature, not perfect. It’s the same for us.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 148
“Organizational leaders have an understanding of God’s goals for the church and we are able to create a structure that produces the values God intended the church to have. They lead the church to the right goal (making disciples), in the right way (a discipleship process), for the right reason (the glory of God.)
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 168
“The leadership of the church must view its job as that of making disciples who can make disciples.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 179
“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which has to be asked for, the door at which one has to knock. It is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costy to God, because it costs God the life of God’s Son-“you were bought with a price.” -and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God. Above all, it is grace because the life of God’s Son was not too costly for God toe give in order to make us live. God did, indeed five him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 45
“Christian life consists of my living in the world and like the world, my not being permitted to be different from it-for the sake of grace!-but my going occasionally from the sphere of the world to the sphere of the church, in order to be reassured there of the forgiveness of my sins.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 50
“The question whether I ought to compare myself with the disciple or with the paralytic poses a dangerous and false alternative. I need not compare myself with either of them. Instead, all I have to do is listen and do Christ’s word and will as I receive them in both of these biblical accounts. Scripture does not present us with a collection of Christian types to be imitated according to our own choice. Rather, in every passage it proclaims to us the one Jesus Christ. It is him alone whom I ought to hear. He is one and the same everywhere.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 204
“Studies have shown that only one of six adults who attend Christian worship services is involved in a group or relational process designed to help them grow spiritually.”
-Souce: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 26
“The first cause of the low estate of discipleship is that pastors have been diverted from their primary calling to “equp the saints for the work of ministry.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 40
” The second cause of the low estate of discipleship is that we have tried to make disciples through programs.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 42
“Most programs are built around an ind ividual or a few core peoople who do the hard work of preparation.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 44
“A close examination of biblical discipleship does not allow for two classes of followers: the ordinary and extraordinary.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 49
“Leaders have been unwilling to call people to discipleship,”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 49
“Biblically, discipleship is never seen as ame-and-Jesus solo relationship, for the church is a discipleship community.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 51
“If stage one is “come and see” and stage two is “follow me,” then stage three is “come and be with me.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transformng Discipleship, p. 63
“Dishipleship is fundamentally a relational process. Preaching can be a solitary one.”
-source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 67
“In a discipling relationship, life circumstance becomes the settin for the exegetical work of God’s Word,”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 89
“She said a small group of six to ten people tends to emphasize fellowship or tintimacy, while truth and accountability are secondary. In classroom teaching or preaching within pulic worship, truth content is primary, with intimacy and accountability taking a cack seat. What makes the disciling context transformative, she said, is that it brings all of these lemnts together in a balanced way.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 172
Discipline
“In reading the lives of gereat men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves…self-discipline with all of them came first. Harry S. Truman”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 81
“A poor work ethic is ultimately a spiritual issue.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 151
“Spiritual children are often not so willing to be disciplined by others. They want to be affirmed rather than confronted, even when the confronting is done in love.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 45
Docetism
“Docetism (from the Greek word dokeo for ‘seem’) believed that although Jesus was fully God, he only seemed to be human.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliabilty of the Gospels, p. 114
Doctrine
“Doctrinal preaching is both content centered (reaching to instruct the mind) and intent centered (preaching to move the heart.)”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 1
b. “Ministers who dare to preach doctrinally must always remember that they not only participate in rightly dividing or “cutting straight” the Word of truth before their congregations but that they are also divided by that same Word.
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 1
“Doctrine frames and monitors the church’s proclamation of the gospel. It also serves as a reservoir from which preaching draws its resources. Doctrinal preaching not only serves a corrective surgery on a congregation; it also offers an element of disease prevention.
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 3
“Doctrine “is the statement of the truth of the Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every new generation.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 49
“The real object of doctrine is not the doctrine itself: rather, the doctrine points beyond itself to the person of Christ.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 53
“The ultimate goal of all doctrine is not to be informed about Bible facts but to be transformed by being in relationship with the person of Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 73
“Christian faith should be both living and confessional! One can no more eat choice beef from a boneless cow and one can no more work safely in a skyscraper that has no structural steel than one can practice and communicate the Christian religion without basic Christian affirmations or doctrine.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 189
“The monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 147
“Cooperation and unity that do not lead to purity of life and purity of doctrine are just as faulty and incomplete as an orthodoxy which does not lead ot a concern for, and reaching out towards, those who are lost.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 50
“In our day we have downplayed the role of doctrine at times, perhaps because we have been influenced by our relativistic culture, which insists that one person’s truth is as good as another’s. Yet we diminish our emphasis on doctrinal truth to our own harm. We are like the captain who is unconcerned about the leak in his ship. While it may not seem like a big deal at the time, eventually it will sink the ship>’
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 26
“Teach gospel doctrines clearly, affectionately, simply, and plainly, and especially those truths which have a present and practical bearing upon man’s condition and God’s grace. Some enthusiasts would seem to have imbibed the notion that, as soon as a minister addressed the unconverted, he should deliberately contradict his usual doctrinal discourses, because it is supposed that there will be no conversions if he preaches the whole counsel of God.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 18-19
“It is just as easy to lose Christ by distraction as it is by denial. We keep expecting the ball to be fumbled by the liberals, when conservative churches are often as likely to be interested in someone or something other than Christ crucified this week.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 143-144
“The creed leads to deeds; doctrine fuels doxology, generating love and service to the saints as well to our unbelieving neighbors.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 154
“The liberal preacher says to the conservative party in the Church: “Let us unite in the same congregation, since of course doctrinal differences are trifles.” But it is the very essence of “conservatism” in the Church to regard doctrinal differences as no trifles but as the matters of supreme moment. A man cannot possibly be an “evangelical” or a “conservatism” (or, as he himself would say, simply a Christian) and regard the Cross of Christ as a trifle.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 161
“J.C. Ryle echoes Spurgeon’s sentiments: “Doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless; it does positive harm. Something of the ‘image of Christ’ must be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgion on Leadersip, p. 82
“We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”
-Source: Kevin Deyound and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 128
“Digging down and building on the rock isn’t a picture of being nominally religious or knowing Jesus from a distance. Being a Christian means being a person who labors to establish his beliefs, his dreams, his choices, his very view of the world on the truth of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished-a Christian who cares about thruth, who caes about sound doctrine.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 19
“Doctrine can never take the place of Jesus himself, but we can’t know him and relate to him in the right way without doctrine.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 31
“The world was to be redeemed,” Machen writes, “through the proclamation of an event.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 31
“These two elements are always combined in the Christian message,” Machen continues. ” The narration of the facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. ‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried’-that is history. ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me’-that is doctrine.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 31
“”Doctrine isn’t dry and boring. It isn’t just for arguing. It’s for knowing God and living life to the fullest.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 34
“Doctrine means this,-truth considered with refernce to its beign taugt.:
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching., p. 45
Doctrine of God
“God isn’t bigger, better version of me. “It is not just that we exist and God has always existed,” writes Wayne Grudem, “it is also that God necessarily exists in an infinitely better, stronger, moe excellent way. The difference between God’s being and ours is more that the difference between the sun and a candle, more that the difference between the ocean and a raindrop, more that the difference between the arctic ice cap and a snowflake, more than the difference the universe and the room we are sitting in: God’s being is qualitatively different.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 42-42
“”Since it is God, we are speaking of, you do not understand it, If you could understand it, it would not be God.” said Saint augustine, We who barely comprehend ourselves are approaching a God we cannot possibly comprehend.”
_Source: Philip Young, Prayer, p. 48-49
“In one hand, I hold the truth of God’s vastness,and in the other hand I hold the truth of God’s desire for intimancy. ”
“The vast difference between God and us allows this very capacity. God operates by different rules of time and space. And God’s infinite greatness, which we would expect to diminish us actually makes possible the very closeness that we disire.”
“A God unbound by our rules of time has the ability to invest in every person n earth
_Source: Philipp 49: Prayer, p. 49
Doctrine of Holy Spirit
“Making teh decision to give careful thought and attention to the Holy Spirit isn’t a decision to become a charismatic. It’s a decision to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and a student of God’s Word.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p.179
“J. I. Packer says that for many charismatics their experience is better than their theology.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 183
“It’s not enough that we simply know truth. God wants us to feel it, to believe it, and to apprehend it in teh deepest, most personal way. He wants us to be able to say, “The cross is for me. The empty tomb is for me. Forgiveness and adoption and redemption are mine because I am united with Jesus Christ! Jesus loves me! Jesus is with me.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 191
“Sound doctrine is so important. But we can never settle for merely knowing doctrine. God has given us his Holy Spirit, and he invites us to ask to be continually filled with his Spirit afresh so that doctrine becomes the living story of God’s great love for us. So that it mels our hearts.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 191
Doctrine of Scripture
“The doctrine of Scripture is uniquely imiportant among Christian doctrines because it touches every other Christian belief. What we know about God and salvation we know because God reveals it to us in the Bible. In other words, we only have a doctrine of God and a doctrine of the atonement if we believe that Scripture can be understood and that it’s true (without error).”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 56
“Hebrews 1:1-2 says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” God’s communication to manking-first through the prophets and then through Jesus-is what the Bible records. It tells us who God is and how he has acted in human history. Then it explains the menaing of his actions.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 56-57
“The doctrine of Scripture teaches us about the authority of God’s Word. Scripture must be the final rule of faith and practice for our lives. Not our feeling or emotions. Not signs or prophetic words or hunches.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 65
“Scripture is always meant to work in our lives.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 66
Doctrinal Preaching
“Doctrinal preaching is trifocal in nature. Apologetically, it affirms what is orthodox, or correct, teaching; it contends for “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3 NIV). Apologetics argues for what the church has believed on the basis of God’s Word. Polemically, doctrinal preaching stands against false teaching; it sets the church in order when heresies have infected her life. Catechetically, doctrinal preaching nourishes the congregation and thus edifies the body of Christ; the sheep are fed.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 4
“Doctrinal preaching must move from merely learning biblical regulations, or the indication that we cannot live holy, as god requires. It must move toward gospel revelation, for Christ enables us to do what we cannot do-to live holy! Ultimately it must move to forging a relationship with Christ.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 17-18
“Doctrinal preaching, then, is Christian preaching grounded in the biblical witness to Jesus Christ; it starts with text, doctrine, or cultural question, but tends to focus on one or more Christian doctrines regardless of its starting point.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 23
‘Doctrinal preaching is the escorting of the hearers into the presence of God for the purpose of transformation.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 25
“It is God’s Word from the past, addressing our world in the present so that we may live forever with Him in the future.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 49
“So the foremost role of the church is always to teach and preach the Word and the work of evangelism and the in gathering of souls is never to be considered as in tension with the maintenance of true doctrine.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revialism, 359
E
Easter
“Even knowing what happened on the following day, if we remain stuck in the mood of Holy Saturday we have separated ourselves from the resurrection joy and hope of the Easter Lord.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 33
Ecclesiastes
“It is important to read Ecclesiates against the background of traditional wisdom teaching. The writer’s concern is not simply to set out a pessimistic view of life; he wants to expose the limitations of human wisdom and understanding. Writing from the perspective of Solomon, the wisest man in history, he acknowledges that even his great wisdom cannot make sense f the world.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 223
Education
“The object of education, it is now assumed, is the production of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But the greatest happiness for the greatest number, it is assumed further, can be defined only by the will of the majority. Idiosyncrasies in education, therefore, it is said, must be avoided, and the choice of schools must be taken away from the individual parent and placed in the hands of the state. The state then exercised its authority thought the instruments that are ready to hand, and at once, therefore, the child is placed under the control of psychological experts, themselves without the slightest acquaintance with the higher realms of human life, who proceed to prevent any such acquaintance being gained by those who come under their care.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 11
“A public-school system, in itself, is indeed of enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which as yet been devised.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 13-14
Effort
“When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”
– Charles Swab
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
Edwards, Jonathan
“It remains an oddity that the greatest intellectual in the whole history of evangelicalism was also its first great intellectual, Jonathan Edwards.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 256
Election
“Since apart from grace the human possesses neither sound reason nor a good will, “the only infallible preparation for grace…is the eternal election and predestination of God:
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 77
“The meaning of election, which is a term the apostles used to describe God’s initiating grace, is best understood as God’s sovereign initiative in bringing persons to faith in Christ, resulting in a special covenant relationship with Him.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 62
“The Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, “the most widely received among the Reformed Confessions, ” was largely the work of Bullinger. Here, the emphasis is that election is God’s gracious purpose toward the undeserving, that it involves being chosen not directly but in Christ, and that the Christian is elected with a view to service. There is no application of the idea of predestination to teh eventual destiny of the unbelieving.”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 64
Elders
“The practice of including elders in Baptist life did not begin in America. Plural elder-ship was common in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
-source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 25
a. “In a plurality, each elder brings a different set of gifts and abilities so that the whole body profits by this sharing together in ministry.”
b. “A plurality in the bishopric is a great importance for mutual counsel and aid, that the government and edification of the flock, may be promoted in the best manner.”
c. The elders’ office is spiritual, while that assigned to the deacons is temporal. “Whatever of temporal care the interests of the church require, that care falls upon the deacons, as the servants of the church.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 29
“The unusual thing, then, about elders in the early church is that they were not unusual. Every example shows them in plurality as they served individual churches in the early years of Christianity.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 34
“No passage suggests that any church, no matter how small, had only one elder. The consistent New Testament pattern is a plurality of elders “in a plurality of elders “in every church” (Acts 14:23) and “in every city” (Titus 1-5).”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 37
“Here is precisely the wisdom of the New testament patter of plural elder ship, No one man possesses all the gifts necessary for leading a congregation.”
-Source: Phi A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 38
“Spiritual qualifications should never be sacrificed to technical expertise. ”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 50
” The focus here is not a person’s relationship to the Lord, but how others see him”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 50
“In both the 1 Timothy and Titus texts Paul is calling upon elders to simply act like genuine Christians.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 55
“It would be wise for any church pursuing a transition to elder leadership to spend time emphasizing he character more than even the function of elders. Functions will vary from church to church but the character of a holy, humble servant life should always mark those set apart as elders.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 56
a. “The pastor is first among equals in authority-first by virtue of the church’s call and his training and gifts, but equal in that he is not a “Lone Ranger” figure in church leadership.”
b. “Churches that have a pastor as an authority above others (thus, in function, a monarchical episcopate) have a disproportionately high number of moral failures at the top level of leadership.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 61
“In fact, one-man leadership is characteristic of cults, not the church”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in congregational Life, p. 67
Emergent Church
“The emergent church is the latest version of liberalism. The only difference is that the old liberalism accommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates postmodernity.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 16
“Emergent leaders want ot move away fom seeing Scripture as a battleground. They don’t want to use the traditional terms-authority, infalliblility, inerracy, revelation, objective, absolute, literal-terms they believe are unbiblical. They would rather use phrases like “deep love of” and “respect for”. And they bemoan the fact that evangelicals, as they see it, employ the Bible as an answer book, scouring it like a phone book or encyclopedia or legal Constitution for rules, regulations, and timeless truths.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 70
“this neoorthodox view of Scripture is, wittingly or unwittingly, the view of many in the emerging church.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 79
“The problem lies not in emerging Christians seeking the truth, but in their refusal to find and call our falsehood.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 119
“Art, community, creativity, the environment, and a living wage are all nice things to be “for,” just like family values patriotism, school vouchers, faith-based initiatives, and a strong military, but isn’t the church of Jesus Christ supposed to be mainly about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the death and resurrection of Jesus, His atonement for our sins, the promise of eternal life, and the threat of coming judgment?
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 128
“The biggest irony about the emergent church may be just this: For all their chastisement of all things modern, they are in most ways thoroughly modern. Many of the leading books display a familiar combination of social gospel liberalism, a neoorthodox view of Scripture, and a post-Enlightenment disdain for hell, the wrath of God, propositional revelation, propitiation, and anything more than a vague moralistic, warmhearted, a doctrinal Christianity.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 160
“As emergent leaders stalk the boogieman of modernism in conservative evangelicalism, it needs to be pointed out that he lurks within their own house too, not as a creature hidden under the bed here or in a corner there, but as their own shadow, standing next to them, in the dark perhaps, but always there. There is nothing new under the sun, just the same shadows in different places across the centuries.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 166
“What is absent from the emergent understanding of the kingdom is the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God: (John 3:3). What’s missing is a call to conversion.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 188
“The emergent church, like Protestant liberalism before it, is quite certain God’s politics yet equally uncertain about God’s theology I’m just the opposite. I don’t claim to have the divine word on minimum wage increases, activist judges, or global warming, Don’t get me wrong-I have opinions on these subjects and hope these opinions are well informed and perhaps even right. But I am much more certain about God’s view on the atonement than I am bout His view on CEO salaries.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 190
Emerging Church
“For many of us who were reared on the “Christian America” hype of the religious right, “emerging” church movements may seem like a major shift, but is it just a change in parties? The sociology is also different: Starbucks and acoustic guitars in dark rooms with candles rather than Wal-Mart and praise bands in brightly lit theathers. yet in either case, moralism continues to push Christ crucified to the margins. We are totally distracted on the right, left, and in the middle!”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 116-117
Emotionalism
“There was another side of the revival in Kentucky, a side to which so much attention has often been given that the whole work has tended to be discredited in terms of excess and emotionalism. But if the excesses in Kentucky have been exaggerated by some writers, their existence cannot be questioned, and they had major consequences for subsequent evangelical history.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p.163
“Commenting on the dangers of camp meetings, Richard Furman, the Baptist leader of Charleston, wrote in 1802, ‘Men of an enthusiastic disposition have a favourable opportunity at them for diffusing their spirit and they do not fail to use it.’ With further experience, Furman would state that more forcefully.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 174-175
“Men such as M’Nemar, whom we have noted celebrating the end of all ‘distinctions’, were moving with the current of the times in claiming the same absolute freedom in the church as the Revolution had supposedly secured for the nation. Where previously men were well prepared for the ministry of the Word, it was now claimed that every American had the right to be a preacher.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 175
“Overbalanced on an experience-centered Christianity, and too ready to exalt zeal above knowledge, the Methodist tendency was to treat such things as loud emotion, shouting, sobbing, leaping, falling, and swooning as though they were the true criteria of heartfelt religion.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 183
Emotions
“Every Christian and every church needs logos (the Word), pathos (passion), and ethos (application and obedience). Of the three only the Word is perfect, Experiences can be deceptive and feelings fade. Only the Bible is trustworthy.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 140
Empowering
“Douglas, MacArthur”, MacArthur, who as a brigadier general in World War I, was given the task of taking a well-fortified and well-armed enemy position. To motivate one of his major, MacArthur showed him a medal of bravery MacArthur had won earlier in the war. The general told that major that he would receive one just like it once he completed this mission. As he turned to walk away, MacArthur suddenly did an about-face, walked back to the major and said, “Son, I know you are going to get there. So you go ahead and take mine now.” At that point, MacArthur pulled the medal out and handed it to him.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 144
Enlightenment
“The dream conceived by Western man in the eighteenth century, whose dawn he thought he had glimpsed in 1789, and which until August 2, 1914, had become stronger with the advent of the Enlightenment and scientific discoveries-that dream finally vanished for me before those trainloads of small children.”
-Elie Wiesel, Night, p. xviii
Eternal Security
“Great care must be taken that this faith is exercised upon Christ for a complete salvation, and not for a part of it. Numbers of persons think that the Lord Jesus is available for the pardon of past sin, but they cannot trust Him for their preservation in the future. They trust for years past, but not for years to come; whereas no such sub-division of salvation is ever spoken of in Scripture as the work of Christ. Either He bore all our sins, or none; and He either saves us once for all, or not at all. His death can never be repeated, and it must have made expiation for the future sin of believers, or they are lost, since no further atonement can be supposed, and future sin is certain to be committed. Blessed be His name, “by Him all that believe are justified from all things.” Salvation by grace is eternal salvation.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 29
Ethics
“Not eschatology but sonship to God is the key to Jesus’ ethics.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 22
“Our Solutions and decisions are relative, because they are related to the fragmentary and frail measure of our faith. We have not found and shall not find- until Christ comes again- a Christian in history whose faith so ruled his life that every thought was brought into subjection to it and every moment and place was for him in the kingdom of God.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 235
“Our ultimate question in this existential situation of dependent freedom is not whether we will choose in accordance with reason or by faith, but whether we will choose with reasoning faithlessness or reasoning faith.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 251
Evolution
“As soon as science gives an explanation for how the universe began, it’s stepped out of science and into theology.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 58
Evolutionism
“Evolutionism is not teh scientific theory of Evolution, but the philosophical theory that human thought is continually progressin so that the ideas of today are necessarily an improvement on the ideas of yesterday.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 3
Evangelical leadership
“When Jimmy Draper was planning the first national “young leaders” meeting, he asked me for suggested speakers. I told him what we needed most was a nationally known pastor who had credibility with young pastors, and who was also still clearly connected with the denomination. His voice went up in excitement as he asked, “Exactly, who?” With sadness, I replied, “That’s my point.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 199
Evangelical Theology
“It is important from a perspective in the early twenty-first century to recognize the substantial degree of theological agreement among all but a few of the first evangelicals. Almost all, that is, believed in original sin (humans were by nature were lost in a rebellion against God that was both generally inherited and personally affirmed). They believed as well in justification by faith (humans were redeemed by an act of faith when they relied on what God accomplished for needy sinners in the person and work of Jesus Christ). They believed in the substitutionary atonement (Christ on the cross paid the penalty for sinners). And they affirmed sanctification in and through the power of the Holy spirit (the same divine grace that brought initial salvation in Christ sustained, encouraged and enabled believers to grow in grace.”
-Sourcek: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 269
Evangelicalism
“A history of evangelicalism is an effort to trace out an ever-expanding, ever-diversifying family tree with roots in the eighteenth-century revivals.”
-Source: Mark A.Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 19
“David Bebbington, who has identified four key ingredients of evangelicalism:”
- · conversion, or “the belief that lives need to be changed
- · the Bible, or the “belief that all spiritual truth is to be found in its pages”:
- · activism, or the dedication of all believers, including laypeople, to lives of service for God, especially as manifested in evangelism( spreading the good news) and mission (taking the gospel to other societies);and
- · crucicentrism, or the conviction that Christ’s death was the crucial matter in providing atonement for sin (i.e., providing reconciliation between a holy God and sinful humans)
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 19
“The four main principles.identified by David Bebbington do not exist in the same proportions or exert the same effects in all times and places. Sometimes the experience of conversion takes precedence, at others the concentration of Scripture as ultimate religious authority and at still others the importance of missionary or social action. The evangelical traditions consistently maintain the major evangelical traits, but they have done so with a tremendously diverse array of emphases, relationships and special concerns. Similarly, the flexibility of evangelicalism means that evangelical groups appear in different shapes depending on where they are found.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 20
“Evangelicalism always involved more than the revival of religion, but from the beginning, both revivals and the longing for revival were always central.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 76
“By the mid-1740s, evangelical preaching had also emerged as a distinct form of Christian proclamation.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 132
“In 1730, while many evangelical elements were present in the churches of Britain and the colonies, there was no discernible evangelical movement. Twenty years later, by contrast although considerable intellectual and organizational confusion existed among evangelical groups, a diverse, variegated and sometimes competitive, but also distinctly discernible, evangelical movement had come into existence.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 136
“Evangelicalism did indeed come to be marked by the kind of preaching featured in the awakenings. It was a preaching aimed directly at popular affections, expecting life-changing results, emphasizing the message of divine grace as the God-given remedy for sin and often 9though not always) dispensing with elaborate ratiocination.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 137
“The appeal of evangelical faith “strongly suggests existing religious institutions were failing in important respects to meet the spiritual needs of colonial populations, who in significant numbers turned to an alternative and, for them, more emotionally satisfying form of religious belief that emphasized the importance of conversion the centrality of the primacy of religious beliefs in daily life.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 148
“Awakeners were not cynical manipulators artificially artificially crafting a new message for the sake of merely personal gain. They were rather adapters who themselves had found “true religion” hidden within the older establishmentarian Protestantism, but who then displayed an almost intuitive ability to analyze the desires of others for whom the inherited ecclesiastical structures were proving irrelevant or inadequate. That intuition sustained their efforts at communication the religious authenticity they themselves had experienced in a spiritual landscape straved for vital personal piety.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p.
“Despite frequently heard appeals to forsake the world for Christ, however, evangelicals regularly went back into their worlds with Christ, and increasingly so as the movement spread into more churches, more regions and more social circumstances during the second half of the century.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 235
“Today, evangelicalism is acutely vulnerable to this impulse, its weakness signaled by the underlying distaste for doctrinal understanding, for the place of the local church, and for seeing biblical ethical norms as absolute. It may well be that this cultural spirituality will pose and even greater threat to biblical faith than the secularism and Marxism that we thought about so hard during this consulation in Hong Kong two decades ago.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 17
Evangelism
“Love for god is the only sufficient motive for evangelism. Self-love will give way to self-centeredness; love for the lost will fail with those whom we cannot love, and when difficulties seem insurmountable. Only a deep love for God will keep us following his way, declaring his gospel, when human resources fail. Only our love for God-and more important his love for us-will keep us from the dangers which beset us. When the desire for popularity with me or for success in human terms, tempts us to water down the gospel, to make it palatable, then only if we love God will we stand fast by his truth and his ways.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 138
“Most churches love their traditions more than they love the lost”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 61
“The Church is the only organization organized primarily for the benefit of its non-members.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 64
” People frequently come to faith in Christ after they’ve been around Christians for some time. Research shows they’re more likely to consider the claims of Christ when they are in community with His followers.’
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 146
“We help them make the journey toward Christ when we invite them into our fellowship.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 146
“God-centeredness is the basis for the grace that saves people. Without grace-full God-centeredness evangelism will evolve into nice people being nice to other people in hopes that they will be nice to God, a compromised gospel with a mild God who exists to benefit me. This results i nice “Christians” who are unconverted, not knowing the hoy of forgiving and empowering grace, and unready to meet God on that final day.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 13
“The amazing unity i the diversity of Christ’s body can convince unbelievers that Jesus Christ was sent by God. A dynamic Group of vibrant Christians forms the base for ongoing evangelism, yet if individuals in the group are not verbalizing the gospel, the net result will still be weak evangelism”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 21
“In the early church teh average Christian is found gossiping the gospel (Acts 8:1, 4).”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p.21
“Martyn Lloyd-Jones”
1. The supreme object of the work of evangelism is to glorify God, not to save souls.”
2. The only power that can do this work is the Holy Spirit, not our own strength.
3. The one and only medium through which the Spirit works is the Scriptures; therefore, we “reason out of the Scriptures” like Paul did.
4. These preceding principles give us the true motivation for evangelism-a zeal for God and a love for others.
5. There is a constant danger of heresy through a false zeal and employment of unscriptural methods.
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 30
“A scriptural emphasis on divine sovereignty and human responsibility should be at the heart of a right view of the human will and recovery of fervent evangelism today. In witnessing we trust in the inherent power of f”the word and the Spirit.” We speak truth to and pray for sinners, and by this God-ordained means, the God-ordained end is accomplished. God has ordained both the means and the end.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 109
“We seem to have bought into the idea that religion is a private affair and we shouldn’t intrude on the beliefs of others. God talk in the public arena has been effectively “gagged.” We may have our personal beliefs that Jesus is the only way, but we cringe at the thought of exposing them. We need to displace our fear of others with a “fear” of Someone else. Our kowtowing to the approval of others must be replaced by a strong desire for the approval of the awesome One and a confidence that I am loved.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 148
“Too long have we followed an individualistic model rather than an apprenticeship model in evangelism. We can get together with a Christian friend, pray together and study the content of the gospel. Then with some good literature we can go out together for one or two hours, door to door or to a place where people congregate. I think I know all the the objections coming to your mind-I’ve used every one. But I know none of them hold water. The only thing we can lose is our pride-and that might be a good thing for all of us!”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 199
“If you want to be able to present the Gospel and the truth in the only right and true way, you must be constant students of the Word of God; you must read it without ceasing. . . . You must read what I call Biblical theology, the explanation of the great doctrines of the New Testament, so that you may come to understand them more and more clearly. . . . The work of this ministry does not consist merely in giving our own personal experience or talking about our own lives, or the lives of others-but in presenting the truth of God in as simple and clear a manner as possible. . . . We must make time to equip ourselves for the task, realizing the serious and terrible responsibility of the work.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 207
“Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; indeed, it should be the main pursuit of every true believer.”
-Source: C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 11
“To win a soul, it is necessary, not only to instruct our hearer, and make him know the truth, but to impress his so that he may feel it.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 21
“A simmer has a heart as well as a head; a sinner has emotions as well as thoughts; and we must appeal to both. A sinner will never be converted until his emotions are stirred. Unless he feels sorrow for his sin, and unless he has some measure of joy in the reception of the Word, you cannot have much hope of him. The Truth must soak into the soul, and dye it with its own colour. The Word must be like a strong wind sweeping through the whole heart, and swaying the whole man, even as a field of ripening corn waves in the summer breeze. Religion without emotion is religion without life.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 22
“You and I must continue to drive at men’s hearts till they are broken; and then we must keep on preaching Christ crucified till their hearts are bound up; and when this is accomplished, we must continue to proclaim the gospel till their whole nature is brought into subjection to the gospel of Christ.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 24
“Here is another who has spent all his time in interpreting the prophecies, so that everything he read of in the newspapers he could see in Daniel or Revelation. He is wise, so some say, but I had rather spend my time in winning souls. I would sooner bring one sinner to Jesus Christ than unpick all the mysteries of the divine Word, for salvation is the thing we are to live for. I would to God that I understood all mysteries, yet chief of all wold I proclaim the mystery of soul-saving by faith n the blood of the Lamb. It is comparatively a small matter for a minister to have been a staunch upholder of orthodoxy all his days, and to have spent himself in keeping up the hedges of his church; soul-winning is the main concern.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 238-239
“If you would be soul-winners, then, dear brethren and sisters, see that you live the gospel. I have no greater joy than this, that my children walk in the truth.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 264
“Christianity is based, then, upon an account of something that happened, and the Christian worker is primarily a witness.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 53
“Lewis Drummond defines evangelism as “a concerted effort to confront the unbeliever with the truth about and claims of Jesus Christ and to challenge him with the view of leading him into repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and, thus, into the fellowship of the church.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of church Growth, p. 24
“To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures, and that as the reigning Lord he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all who repent and believe.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 77
“Evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so he reconciled to God.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 77-78
“I would rather be the mean so of saving a soul from death than be the greatest orator on earth. I would rather bring the poorest woman in the world to the feet of Jesus than I would be made Archbishop of Canterbury. I would sooner pluck one single brand from the burning than explain all mysteries. To win a soul from going down into the pit, is a more glorious achievement than to be crowned in the arena of theological controversy as Dr. Sufficientissimus.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 66
“The larger the church, the more likely it was to consider relationship evangelism a significant factor in its evangelistic effectiveness.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 18
“People often resist receiving church members who knock on their doors, yet the attitude of the lost should not hinder the obedience of the church to the Great Commission. An associate pastor of a medium-sized southwestern church responded, “People have been resistant to the gospel for two thousand years. It’s not a new phenomenon. But the responses of the lost should not determine the obedience or lack of obedience of the saved.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 20
“We don’t pray for opportunities to share the gospel, so how surprised should we be when they don’t come? If you’re not evangelizing because you think you lack opportunities, pray and be amazed as God answers your prayers.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 24
“Plan to make time to build relationships or to put ourselves in positions here we know we’ll be able to talk with non-Christians.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 24
“God uses not so much gifts for evangelism (though there is a biblical gift of evangelism) but the faithfulness of thousands and millions of Christians who would never say evangelism is their gift.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 25
“There is a certain balance that we want to strive for in our evangelism, a balance of honesty and urgency and joy. Too often we have only one, or at best, two, of these aspects rather than all three. The balance is important. These three together most appropriately represent the gospel.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 55
“We need to be both engaging and clear when we present the gospel.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 63
“In biblical evangelism, we don’t impose anything. In fact we really can’t. According to the Bible, evangelism is simply telling the good news.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 70
“Donald McGavran, the well-known missionary from the middle of the last century, said, “Evangelism is not proclaiming the desirability of a liquor-less world and persuading people to vote for prohibition. Evangelism is not proclaiming the desirability of sharing the wealth and persuading people to take political action to achieve it.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 75-76
“We don’t fail in our evangelism if we faithfully tell the gospel to someone who is not converted; we fail only if we don’t faithfully tell the gospel at all.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 82
“The call to evangelism is a call to turn our lives outward from focusing on ourselves and our needs to focusing on God and on others made in his image who are still at enmity with him, alienated from him and in need of salvation from sin and guilt.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 101
“By making evangelism a community project it also takes seriously the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in distributing a variety of gifts among his people.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 62
“Most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing originally things with gospel intentionality.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 63
“Whether it is projects, cafes, events, or centers, we often assume we need to organize something. For many Christians, especially in smaller churches, this makes evangelism and social involvement seem beyond them. They do not have the resources of time or money required. But there are plenty of opportunities we can join, attend, visit, participate. Often this approach is more effective. We meet people on their territory rather than making them come onto our territory. What this requires is gospel intentionality.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 64
“But for me to glory in the denomination of any particular church, as my highest character; to lay more stress upon the name of a Presbyterian or a churchman than on the sacred name of christian; to make a punctilious agreement with my sentiments in the little peculiarities of a party the test of all religion; to make it the object of my zeal to gain proselytes ot some other than the Christian mane; to connve at the faults of those of my own party and to be blind to the good qualities of others, or invidiously to represent or diminish them; these are the things which deserve universal condemnation form God and man; these proceed from a spirit of bigotry and faction, directly opposite to the generous catholic spirit of Christianity, and subversive of it. This spirit hinders the progress of serious practical religion, by turning attention of men from the great concerns of eternity, and the essentials of Christianity, to vain jangling and contest about circumstantials and trifles. Thus the Christian is swallowed up in the partisan, and fundamentals lost in extra-essentials.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 29
“Beecher and Nettleton agreed with him that there had been some tendency in New England to distort the biblical balance. They also agreed that evangelism could not exist without an insistence on the duties of immediate faith and repentance. The older Calvinism insisted both on the bondage of the unregenerate man and on his immediate responsibility to obey the gospel, holding both truths to be scriptural and not believing that men are called to harmonize them.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 260
“We do not care about the culture for the culture’s sake. Our concern for the culture is simply because that is where the sinners are, with whom we will share the gospel, to whom we will preach the gospel, and with whom we live as neighbors.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 76
“So become a healthy evangelist by first asking, “Who do we want to be as people who share their faith?” Amd we musk ask. “Who would Jesus have us be-period?”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 17
“God designed Christianity to spread across the earth like the common cold: through contact.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 89
“Most non-Christians don’t read the Bible, so they judge Christianity by teh lives of the Christians they see.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transfsorming Discipleship, P. 38
”I believe that people yearn for a new relationship with God.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 113
“We cannot claim that Christian faith has been communicated until it has been understood, and most secular people are no longer in a position to understand Christian truth if they hear on a minimal, packaged version of the gospel and are asked for immediate assent.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 143
Evil
” The root error of those who charge God with complicity in evil is their facile belief that God and humans are subject to the same standards of judgment.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 210
“As long as we think we can save ourselves by our own will power, we will only make the evil in us stronger than ever.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 5
“The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is” as John Piper reminds us.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 133
“Another distinction that we should initially make is between natural and moral evil. The former includes anything that brings suffering, unpleasantness, or difficulty into the lives of cratures. Earthquakes, floods, diseases, injuries, and death are examples of natural evil. Moral evil is the sin of rational cratures (angels and men). According to Scripture, moral evil came first.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 142
“We can think of other positive uses of evil. In Scripture, God uses evil to test his servants (Job; 1 Pet. 1:7, James 1:3); to discipline them (Heb. 12:7-11); to preserve their lives (Gen. 50:20); to teach them patience and perseverance (James 1:3-4); to redirect their attention to what is most important (Psalm 37); to enable them to comfort others (2 Cor. 1:3-7); to enable them to bear powerful witness to the truth (Acts 7); to give them greater joy when suffering is replaced by glory (1 Pet. 4:13); to judge the wicked, both in history (Deut. 28:15-68) and in the life to come (Matt. 25:41-46); to bring reward to persecuted believers (Matt. 5:10-12); and to display the work of God (John 9:3; cf. Ex. 9:16; Rom. 9:17)”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 153
Excellence
“One of the first marks of growing churches that is instantly perceived is a commitment ot excellence, an attitude that strives for quality and rejects mediocrity.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 228
“Let God be good,” cried Erasmus the moralist. “Let God be God,” replied Luther the theologian.
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 77
“Since people do not elect God, but God chooses and singles them out, believers cannot claim any of the credit for their own salvation.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 77
“Businesses have the same problem; they cannot teach people to deviate from their rules, policies, and procedures. Excellence, however, never lies within the boxes drawn in the past. To be excellent, the leaders have to step outside the safety net of the company’s regulations, just as the therapist had to step outside the safety of the traditionally defined role.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change, p. 11
“Excellence is a form of deviance. If you perform beyond the norms, you disrupt all the existing control systems. Those systems will then alter and begin to work to routinize your efforts. That is, the systems will adjust and try to make you normal. The way to achieve and maintain excellence is to deviate from the norm. You become excellent because you are doing things normal people do not want to do. You become excellent by choosing a path that is risky and painful, a path that is not appealing to others. The question is, why would anyone ever want of do something painful?”
-Source: Robert E. Quinne, Deep Change, p. 176
Exclusivism
“Lilla’s wise self0-knowledge reveals his doubts about Christianity to be a learned, alternate faith.
It is no more narrowt ao claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions (namely that all are equal) is right. We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in differnet was.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, pgs. 13,14
“Only 46 percent of the Southern Baptist sample “disa greed strongly,” meaning that fewer than half of the Southern Baptists surveyed firmly believe in the exclusivity of the gospel, that Jesus is the only way to salvation.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 38
Execution
“In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it.”
“The heart of execution lies in the three core processes: the people process, the strategy process, and the operations process.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 22
“An organization can execute the leader’s heart and soul are immersed in the company.”
“The leader has to be engaged personally and deeply in the business. Execution requires a comprehensive understanding of the business, its people, and its environment.”
“The leader must be in charge of getting things done by running the three core processes-piother leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operation.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 22
Exile
“The exile was a turning point. It was God’s judgment on sin, but the prophets saw it too as the means by which God would bring about a new beginning for his people. What seemed to be a national catastrophe was, in fact, a theological requirement. The nation had to die before it could be reborn; renewal could come only when all pretensions and false hopes had been swept away. The theme of the prophetic books is the death and rebirth of Israel: death, in the form of defeat and exile; rebirth in the return from exile.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 266
Exodus
“But why did Israel create at Sinai a calf idol instead of an image of some other animal? The likely reason is that a calf or bull was among the most important of the Egyptian animal images that represented Egypt’s gods (e.g., it was held to represent the god Ptah), and the Israelites had worshipped Egypt’s gods before coming out of Egypt, presumably including Ptah.”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 84
Expectations
“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Tony Dungy, coach of the Indianapolis Colts football team once said, “I like expectation. But if all you do is talk, you can lose sight of where you’re going.”
-Source: Chuck Lawless, Membership Matters, p. 93
Experience
“Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.”
-Aldous Huxley
“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience often comes from bad judgment.”
– Rita Brown
“Christian experience is rightly used when it confirms the documentary evidence. But it can never possibly provide a substitute for the documentary evidence.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 72
Expiation
“A simple pencil can be used to illustrate this. The eraser is the blood of Christ cleansing us from all sin (1 Jn 1.7). The lead is the righteous life of Christ by which he fulfilled all the commands of God required of us. Not only are all our sins erased, but a mark of righteousness is written, next to our names (Roman 8:3-4). He is sin-bearer and purity-bestower.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 72
Expository Preaching
Expository preaching is the Spirit-empowered proclamation of biblical truth derived from the illuminating guidance of the Holy Spirit by means of a verse-by-verse exposition of the Spirit-inspired text, with a view to applying the text by means of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, first to the preacher’s own heart, and then to the hearts of those who hear, culminating in an authentic and powerful witness to the living Word, Jesus Christ, and obedient, Spirit-filled living. ”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 21
Spirit-led preaching seeks to overcome the false dichotomy between the Word and the Spirit and instead unites them as the powerful catalyst for Spirit-demonstrated preaching.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p.21
The prime reason for wedding the Holy Spirit to a ministry of exposition is that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the biblical text will minister through that same text when it is rightly divided and passionately proclaimed to our contemporary audience. The doctrine of inspiration demands exposition because God the Holy Spirit inscripturated his truth in words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. Therefore, a Spirit-led approach to preaching is naturally linked with the expository understanding of preaching because exposition at its core is testifying to what has been deposited already by the Holy Spirit in the Bible.
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 22
“One key facet of preaching in evangelistic churches is that the sermon is guided by the Bible rather than the nebulous insights of a preacher or other authority. Scripture is the source of authority and power for the messages. The Word of God, they told us, is powerful. Therefore any message should be anchored to the Bible.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effcective Evangelistic Churches, p. 51
“The only form of authentic Christian preaching is expository preaching.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 49
“Expository preaching is that mode of Christian preaching that takes as its central purpose the presentation and application of the text of the Bible. All other issues and concerns are subordinated to the central task of presenting the biblical text. As the Word of God, the text of Scripture has the right to establish both the substance and the structure of the sermon. Genuine exposition takes place when the preacher sets forth the meaning and message of the biblical text and makes clear how the Word of God establishes the identity and world-view of the church as the people of God.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 65
“Expository preaching begins with the text and works from the text to apply its truth to the lives of the believers.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 66
“The expositor is not an explorer who returns to tell tales of the journey but a guide who leads the people into the text, teaching the arts of Bible study and interpretation even as he demonstrates the same.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr. He is Not Silent, p. 66
“Expository preaching demands a very different set of questions. Will I obey the Word of God? How must my thinking be realigned by Scripture? How must I change my behavior to be fully obedient to the Word? These questions reveal submission to the authority of God and reverence for the Bible as His Word.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr. He is Not Silent, p. 73
“By expository preaching I don’t mean one particular style or method of preaching, but a self-conscious, principled commitment to preaching in such a way that the Scripture itself is supplying the main them, principle headings, and central application in our proclamatioon.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 39
“Expositional preaching also teaches people the principles of interpretation applicable to their personal Scripture study. As a Bible preacher, you are a living demonstration of hermeneutics. When you preach effectively, you take people through the process in thhtext that yields the true interpretationl You are traing your people in a method of careful examination of the text, so that they can be like the Bereans who tested everthing a true understanding of the Word.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 157
“Expositional preaching also teaches people the principles of interpretation applicable to their personal Scripture study. As a Bible preacher, you are a living demonstration of hermeneutics. When you preach effectively, you take peopl through the process in the text that yields the true interpretation. You are training your people in a method of careful examination of the text, so that they can be like the Bereans who tested everything by a true understanding Word.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 157
“At lest make your own use of the Bible reverent and true. Never draw out of a text a meanig which you know is not there.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 163
F
Failure
“It’s easier to mover from failure to success than from excuses to success.”
-Source: John Maxwell, Talent is Never Enough, p. 60
Faith
“Luther insisted that we appropriate God’s grace and hence are declared righteous, by faith alone. Faith is her understood as fiduciary, personal trust, reliance, a grasping or taking hold of Christ.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 70
“The journey from head to heart is one of the longest and most difficult we know.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr./. Doctrine That Dances, p. 50-51
“Faith includes a full commitment of the whole person to the Lord Jesus, a commitment that involves knowledge, trust, and obedience. Faith is not merely an intellectual assent or an emotional response, but a complete inward spiritual change confirmed to us by the Holy Spirit. Faith is altogether brought about by God, and it is altogether the human response bringing about complete submission and surrender to god and full liberation from the snare of sin.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 85
“faith includes a full commitment of the whole person to the Lord Jesus, a commitment that involves knowledge, trust, and obedience. Faith is not merely an intellectual assent or an emotional response but a complete, inward spiritual change confirmed to us by the Holy Spirit. Though faith is more than doctrinal assent, it must include adherence to doctrine.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 206
“Oh, brethren, be great believers! Little faith will bring your souls to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to your souls.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p 187
“Do something bold for God’s sake.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 87
“Faith is the exact opposite of works; faith does not give, it receives. So when Paul says that we do something by faith, that is just another way of saying that of ourselves we do nothing; when it is said that faith works through love that means that through faith the necessary basis of all Christian work has been obtained in the removal of guilt and the birth of the new man, and that the Spirit of God has been received-the Spirit who works with and through the Christian man for holy living.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 14
“Faith in God is sanctified common sense.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 71
“Having faith often means doeing what others see as crazy. something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.”
-Source: Francis Chan, Crazy Love, p. 114-115
“Boldness is not a lack of fear. It is faith in something bigger than our fears so that we appear fearless.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 82
Faithfulness
“One of the most telling signs of a people’s faithfulness to God is the way they treat disadvantaged people (Deut. 14:29; 26:12).”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 166
False Religion
“Earnest Becker wrote that in a society that has lost the reality of God, many people will look to romantic love to give them the fulfillment they once found in religious experience. Nietzsche, however, believed it would be money that would replace God. But there is another candidate to fill this spiritual vacuum. We can also look to politics. We can look upon our political leaders as “messiahs,” our political policies as saving doctrine, and turn our political activism into a kind of religion.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 98
False Teachings
“Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that pastors are supposed to refute false teachers and expose false teaching. It may help to remember that false teaching hurts people. A doctor who did not correct a false idea about how to fight sickness would not be a good doctor because even good patients would be hurt.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 71
Fasting
“Perhaps it is best to avoid the term “command” since in the strictest sense Jesus did not command fasting. But it is obvious that he proceeded on the principle that the children of the kingdom of God would fast. For the person longing for a more intimate walk with God, these statements of Jesus are drawing words.”
Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 54
“First, let it [fasting] be done unto the Lord with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father which is in heaven.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 55
Fatherhood
“The Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison was asked why she had become a great writer, what books she had read, what method she had used to structure her practice. She laughed and said, “Oh, no, that is not why I am a great writer. I am a great writer because when I was a little girl and walked into a room where my father was sitting, his eyes would light up. That is why I am a great writer. That is why. There isn’t any other reason.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 128
” last year I pulled a friend out of his closet. He was drunk and his wife was pacing the house in tears, unable to find him. His marriage was falling apart because of his inability to stop drinking. This man is a kind and brilliant human being, touched with many gifts from God, but addicted to alcohol, and being taken down in the fight. He was suicidal, we thought, and the kids had been seen away. We sat together on his back deck and talked for hours, deep into the night. I didn’t think he was going to make it. I worried about him as I boarded my flight back to Portland and he checked himself into rehab. Two months later he picked me up from the same airport, having gone several weeks without a drink. As he told me the story of the beginnings of his painful recovery process, he said a single incident was giving him the strength to continue. His father had flown in to attend a recovery meeting with him, and in the meeting my friend had to confess all his issues and weaknesses. When he finished, his father stood up to address the group of addicts. He looked to his son and said, “I have never loved my son as much as I do at this moment. I love him. I want all of you to know I love him.” My friend said at that moment, for the first time in his life, he was able to believe God loved him, too. He believed if God, his father, and his wife all loved him, he could fight the addiction, and he believed he might make it.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what. p. 130-131
“I heard a story once about a CEO who spoke at his retirement dinner to a group of young executives. He said, “I know you want my job and I’ll tell you how to get it.”
He recalled walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding and realizing that he did not know the name of her best friend, or the last book she read or even her favorite color. That is the price he had paid for his job. Talk about a tragedy. In today’s world there are tragedies happening all the time…”
-Source: Reader’s Digest
“God fathers us by being lavish, generous, even extravagant in his care, love, provision, and protection for his children. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Lavish, generous, extravagant care for his children-this also marks the true heart and action of God, our Father. In light of this, every dad should ask himself, “Do my children know how much I love them? Do they sense deep in their souls, both from words I have spoken to them and also from the time and attention I give them, that I love them? Do they know that, along with my insistence on their respect and obedience, my heart also longs deeply for them to have the very best that I can give them as their dad?”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 61
“even if we choose to send our daughters hundreds of miles away for college, the type of men to whom they are exposed will likely influence their choice of a husband. They will likely seek out the things they learned to appreciate (or tolerate) in men and will shy away from the things they learned to avoid. In light of this fact, we must make every effort to surround ourselves with shining examples of godly manhood.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 186
“As fathers we have been charged by God to be priest, prophet, provider, and protector in the lives of our daughters.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 140
“Because we have ceased teaching that God is our Father, with the attributes of a divine father, we have lost an understanding of imitative masculinity. Because of this, our boys veer into one of two ditches. Either they embrace humility without boldness, which in boys is effeminate, or they embrace boldness without humility, which is destructive.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, Future Men, p. 49
Fathers
“Fathers in particular bear special responsibility for the spiritual growth of their children. As heads of their houses, they could abuse their authority in ways that would provoke their children to anger,. But instead, they are to create an atmosphere where they lead their children in the discipline of obedience to Christ and in learning the teaching and wisdom of Christ.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 142
“Two main sinful tendencies. One sinful response of a person in the position of headship is to abuse that position by being heavy-handed, mean-spirited, harsh, and demanding in unloving and selfish ways.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, p. 142
“A second sinful response to our position of headship, though, is far more insidious yet far less obvious. We may respond to God’s call to exert leadership in our homes by abdicating our responsibility.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, p. 142
“Men must realize that their position as heads of homes in no way indicates their supposed superiority over their wives, in particular, or over women, in general”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, p. 143
“Numbers 30 may be applied as follows: Just as Christ protects the purity of his bride, the husband is called to protect his wife (and his daughters) by helping them avoid hasty decisions (vows).”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p.63
Fear
“I’m paranoid. On my stationary bike, I have a rear view mirror.”
-Richard Lewis
“The Word of God declares, “The fear of man bringeth a snare.” Such fear will snare your tongue, so that when those flashes of spiritual light come to you in the pulpit, and there are applications that you know will sting and wound some choice member ot eh church, if your eye is to men, you will be unable to give utterance to that which you know you ought to. But when you are free from your people’s smiles or frowns, you are at liberty to be an instrument of blessing to them. I submit that if there is to be increased power in the pulpit, there must be a return to the purity of motivation comprised in the fear of God.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 148
Feelings
“Our feelings were not meant to determine our actions. God calls us to obedience, not waiting for a feeling.”
-Source: Tell the Truth,
Fellowship
“In larger churches it becomes easier for people to fall through the cracks. We have trouble keeping up with most of the less-than-regular members, much less holding them accountable for witnessing and evangelism.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 35
“The fellowship that the Philippians shared with Paul was not a cup of tea after church, or a pleasant evening of Bible study. The Phillippians and Paul were shares together in God’s grace through Jesus Christ.(1:7)
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 62
Felt-needs
“As C.S. Lewis reminds us, it’s not that our desires are too strong but they are too weak. While God wants to give us everlasting life, we settle for trivial satisfaction of superficial needs that are to a large extent created within us by the culture of marketing.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 34
“There is much in the Bible that portrays Christ as the response to human needs: ‘Come to me all who are weary, and I will give you drink.’ These are certainly needs-to use the modern jargon, they are ‘felt needs’-and Christ is certainly presenting himself as the answer to them. But that is the crucial point; Christ himself is identifying the need and offering himself as the solution.”
-Source: Carl r. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 27
Feminism
“Both liberationists Marxism and feminist Marxism extend their power in American society through the political correctness movement that now holds captive many American institutions of higher learning.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 50
“In the politically correct world of the radical feminist, the attitudes of pride and self-assertiveness define what feminists think is good, at least for feminists. While pride and self-assertiveness are basic sins for men.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 50
Fine Timing
“Updike seems to be saying that regardless of the beliefs of our mind about the random meaninglessness of life, before the face of beauty we know better.”
St. Augustine in his Confessions reasoned that these unfulfillable desires are clues to teh reality of God. How so? Indeed (as it was just objected) just because we feel the desire for a steak dinner doesn’t mean we will get it. However, while hunger doesn’t prove that the particular meal desired will be procured, doesn’t the appetite for food in us mean that food exists? Isn’t it true that innate desires correspond to real objects that can satisfy them, such as sexual desire (corresponding to sex), physical appetite (corresponding to food), tiredness (corresponding to sleep), and relational desires (corresponding to friendship)?”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 139
Finney, Charles
“Aside from feeble health, one consideration only has prevented me from making the attempt. Some of his particular friends are urging him on to the very things which I wish him to drop. I fear that their flattering representations will overrule all that I can say.”
-Source: Iain H Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p.239-240
“By asserting that man’s only problem was his will, Finney had put himself among the Pelagians who denied the reality of man’s ruined nature.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revial & Revivalism, p. 249
“For Finney an appeal for a public action had become an essential part of evangelism. He believed that all that was needed for conversion was a resolution signified by standing, always acts when a sinner acts, the public resolution could be treated as ‘identical with the miraculous inward change of sudden conversion”.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 250
“Gale ‘held to the old school doctrine of original sin, or that the human constitution was morally depraved’ and Finney’s studies under him ‘were little less than controversy’ because: ‘These doctrines I could not receive. I could not receive his views on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, or any of the kindred doctrines. But of these views he was quite tenacious; and he seemed sometimes not a little impatient because I did not receive them without question.'”.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 255-256
“The solution to the Unitarian charge, and the belief essential to evangelism, according to Taylor and Finney, was to assert that sin and guilt can only be attributed to men’s voluntary choices. All that needs to be changed in the unconverted man is his will, not his nature.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 260-261
“the plan devised at a New Haven and adopted by Finney was ‘to make regeneration so easy that men may not be discouraged from attempting to do it.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revelation, p. 261
“In the late eighteenth the so-called ‘governmental’ theory of the atonement (first advanced by Grotius in the previous century) was adopted by such men as Samuel Hopkins and Jonathan Edwards, Jr. They were followed by others, including Nathan Beman who published Four Sermons on the Doctrine of the Atonement in 1825. These sermons were later expanded into a book. According to this view, Christ’s death was not a payment of debt on behalf of those whose sins he bore; it was rather an action to satisfy public justice, making it safe and possible for God to forgive those who repent and believe. So the act that secures forgiveness is man’s not Christ’s. ‘ The atonement of itself does not secure the salvation of any’, wrote Finney. ‘When a sinner repents that state of feeling makes it proper for God to forgive him.’
-Source: Ian H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 262
“The same promise of results was made by Finney with respect to the conversion of individuals. ‘The prayer of faith’ he claimed, ‘is always answered by the specified blessing prayed for’ Thus on the practical consequences of ‘the prayer of faith’ he asserted: ‘We see that pous parents can render the salvation of their children certain. Only let them pray in faith and be and be agreed as touching the things they shall ask for, and God has promised them the desire of their hearts.’
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 282-283
“Joseph Ives foot, a Presbyterian minister, wrote in 1838: ‘During ten years, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be converted on all hands; but now it is admitted, that his[Finney’s] real converts are comparatively few. It is declared even by himself, that “the great body of them are a disgrace to religion”.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 288-289
Flattery
“What is flattery? It’s the use of language to make someone feel good about himself with a view to getting what you want. Relativism is the perfect atmosphere for turning language into a pretext for greed by flattering people with what they want to hear. There is an objective reality called the Word of God. We do not peddle that Word. We speak before the face of God.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 111
Focus
“Focus does not come naturally to us, yet it is essential for anyone who wants to make the most of his talent.”
– John Maxwell, Talent Is Never Enough, p. 67
“Wherever you are, be all there.”
– Jim Elliott
Foreknowledge
“Foreknowledge here does not mean merely knowing ahead of time what is going to happen. O course God has foreknowledge in that sense. But more than that, to foreknow is to choose one for some certain purpose, to know in the sense of favoring this particular one upon whom you choose to bestow some privileged service or calling.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son , & Holy Spirit, p. 78
“Replying to the Arminian/Wesleyan definition of foreknowledge, theologian Paul Jewett says, “The answer is simply that these texts do not say, ‘Whom God foreknew would believe, he predestinated,’ not that we as Christians are ‘elect according to the foreknowledge which God has of our faith”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 85-86
Forgiveness
“Real sins are really forgiven by a God who is intimately involved in our everyday lives. In a therapeutic worldview, there is no sin and guilt to be forgiven by God but only burdens and feelings of guilt for failing to live up to the expectations of oneself or other human beings. In other words, for Christianity there is objective guilt and justification; in moralistic therapy there is only subjective guilt and a cathartic release simply by telling someone else about it.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 43
“Jesus alone qualifies, in his person and work, as the only one capable of actually bringing about forgiveness of sin for anyone and everyone in all of the world.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 143
Form Criticism
“Forms of speech are designed for people, people are not designed to be tied down by forms of speech,
Freedom
“In many ares of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 47
Friendship
“Rev. Kent Hughes remarked on the unfortunate nature of many friendships in our society: “Friendships today have fallen on hard times. Few men have good friends, much less deep friendships. Individualism, autonomy, privatization, and isolation are culturally cachet, but deep, devoted, vulnerable friendship is not. This s a great tragedy for self, family and the church, because it is in relationships that we develop into what God wants us to do.”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 107-108
Fundamentalism
“I grew up believing a Christian didn’t have to love God or anybody else; he just had to believe some things and be willing to take a stand for the things he believed.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 52
“The god of fundamentalism may have been too graceless, but the God of contemporary American religion is too trivial to be worth our time.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 110
Funny
“I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.”
– Ronald Reagan
G
General Revelation
We have seen that through universal general revelation God has disclosed to people His existence, perfections, and moral demands. But we have also seen that sinful man consistently repudiates this elemental knowledge of God and perverts it into unspeakable idolatry. Thus, in practice, general revelation serves only to condemn man, not to save him. However, the God of grace and mercy did not abandon the sinner in his state of self-willed rebellion. God has broken into man’s sin-darkened existence with a special supernatural revelation that holds out the offer of spiritual healing. By this fresh revelatory initiative, God offers Himself to man not only as a power to be encountered but as a Person to be known in a fellowship of trust and commitment.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 119
Genesis
“Though Genesis 2-3 does not explicitly say that Adam’s ruling and subduing task was to guard the Garden from the satanic snake, the implication is there. Thus Adam did not guard the Garden but allowed a foul snake to enter, which brought sin, chaos and disorder into the sanctuary and into Adam and Eve’s lives. He allowed the serpent to rule over him rather than ruling over it and casting it out of the Garden.”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 132
“He comes to resemble the serpent’s character in some ways. The serpent was a liar (Gen 3:4) and a deceiver (Gen. 3:1, 13) and Adam does not answer God forthrightly when he asks Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen 2:11)”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 133
” Adam’s shift from trusting God to trusting the serpent meant that he no longer reflected God’s image but must have begun to mirror the serpent’s image.”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 133
Gifts
“The last Suncay night of his life, John Knox reported that he was tempted by Satan to trust in himself and rejiceor boastin himself, but, Knox said to his servant, “I repulsed him with this sentence. ‘What do you have that you did not receive?
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahanney, Preaching The Cross.”p. 25
Giving
“You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give.”
-Winston Churchill
“Remember the story where Jesus fed thousands of people with one boy’s small lunch? In that story, according to Matthew, Jesus gave the loaves to His disciples and then the disciples passed them out to the crowd. Imagine if the disciples had simply held onto the food Jesus gave them, continually thanking Him for providing lunch for them. That would’ve been stupid when there was enough food to feed the thousands who were gathered and hungry.
But that is exactly what we do when we fail to give freely and joyfully. We are loaded down with too many good things, more than we could ever need, while others are desperate for a small loaf. The good things we cling to are more than money; we hoard our resources, our gifts, our time, our families, our friends. As we begin to practice regular giving, we see how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abundance God has given us and merely repeat the words thank you.”
-Source: Frances Chan, Crazy Love, p. 120
Glory of God
For the pious mind realizes that the punishment of the impious and wicked and the reward of life eternal for the righteous equally pertain to God’s glory.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 191
“Even if there were no hell” the truly pious person would shudder at the thought of offending the glory of God.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 191
“Contemporary men and women find it almost impossible to conceive that they were made to glorify and to enjoy God. It would pehaps be more accurate to say that the very idea of living for the glory of God appears to be many people’s idea of hell.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 50
Gluttony
“62% of Americans are overweight and 72% of preachers are overweight.”
-Greg T. Mathis, God is Able! But am I willing?,p. 70
“According to the U.S. Surgeon General, “If a child is overweight there is a 70% chance he will be overweight as an adult. The percentage increases to 80% if one or more parents are overweight.”
-Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 85
Goals
“First, goals must be relevant.
Second, goals must be measurable.
Third, the goal should be significant.
Fourth, the goal must also be manageable.
finally, goals must be related to both the pastor and the people in a local church.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 266
God The Father
“The Father plans all that occurs, and this plan involves all things being summed up in his very Son. And then the Father works all things according to the counsel of his own will, ensuring that all he has designed will occur.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 53
God
“The formulas seem much better than god because the formulas offer control; and God, well, He is like a person, and people, as we all know, are complicated.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 12
“There are, after all, a lot of people who don’t believe in God because they can’t reconcile their idea of Him with the idea presented on television.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 25
“The most selfless thing God could do, that is, the most selfless thing a perfect Being who is perfectly loving could do, would be to create other beings to enjoy Himself,”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 108
“He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 24
“Brothers, if you don not believe in anybody else, believe in God without stint. Believe up to the hilt. Bury yourselves, both as to your weakness and strength, in simple trust in God.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 38
Godly Living
“The main design for each man and woman is not “to be a super soul-winner night and day.” As the Westminster Catechism says, it is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This means that we, as whole people, are to enjoy God, starting now, and keep his honor in focus in all that we do. Clearly the way we live is primary aspect of our witness. yet our life is to be coupled with telling God’s truth. People need to be told who makes our lives different. Our lives, then, will illuminate the truth we express to non-believers.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 24-25
Goodness
“Unless God’s standards govern our concept of goodness, there c an be no talk of good or evil at all. If there is no personal Absolute, values must be based on impersonal things and forces, like matter, motion, time, and chance. But values cannot be based on any of these. They arise only in a context of personal relationships, and absolute standards presuppose an absolute person. Thus, the Christian can turn the tables on the unbeliever who raise the problem of evil: the non-Christian has a “problem of good.” Without God, there is neither good nor evil.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 155
Goodness of God
“”God is good and did not create suffering or evil. He created a good world for the good of his creatures. Humans too were created good and blessed beyond measure, being made in god’s image, with an unhindered relationship with God and with freedom. As a result, casting blame for suffering on the good and generous God is unbiblical and unfounded.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 121
Gospel
“The emerging church proclaims a gospel of freedom. According to the gospel of freedom, we were made to live in community with God and with each other without the pains of sin and death, But because of our sin, we have wrecked God’s good creation and brought death and havoc into all of life. And though we are self-destructive, God in his loving-kindness has chosen to save us from ourselves. Our God, Jesus, came to live without sin as our example, who liberates us from Satan, sin, and death.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of A Reformission Rev. p. 25
“Abram was supposed to be blessing himself as well. And so are we. See, we’ve painted the Christian life too small. We’ve made it all about the individual – about my feelings, or the number of Bible passages I’ve read or prayer times I’ve had in a given week. We’ve made faith something Internal instead of a blessing we offer externally. We’ve created a religion that’s individualized, privatized and personal instead of public, communal and loving of others. We need to recapture the mission as a part of our gospel.”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p. 161
“In the most distorted version of the gospel message, our irreligious friends are invited to accept what Jesus has already done for them: paying for their sins by dying on the cross. If they accept, they’re “saved” by the shedding of Jesus’ blood. Dallas Willard puts it more bluntly, calling these converts “vampire Christians who only want a little blood for their sins but nothing more to do with Jesus until heaven.”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p. 195-196
“A gospel that highlights community in a culture that longs for intimacy and friendship will feel more relevant to today’s culture.”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p. 198
“At the heart of genuine Gospel proclamation must be a firm theological understanding of what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is the proclamation of this good news in words, as well as the manifestation of this good news in deeds, with the purpose of reconciling men and women to God.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 70
“How dangerous a half-truth can be when presented as the whole truth! For instance, the truth that God is love is a wonderful part of the gospel. However, if the whole presentation of the gospel is built primarily on this truth, distortion develops. Sinners can relax with the thought of God’s love for them and find an excuse to delay repentance. This biblical truth is inverted (nice, tolerant, non judgmental) is substituted, and sinners find great comfort in this personification and deification of love. The live deity is programmed to only treat us kindly. We have a “mush” god. A biblical truth thus tributes to the pervasive idea (even among Christians) that God is obligated to save me. Created humanity is put on a par with the Creator and his autonomy, and salvation by grace is devilishly undercut.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 39
“One good question to evaluate any gospel presentation of God is, “Was the nature of God defined clearly and its implications impressed on the mind and heart lovingly and firmly?”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 39
“The central reference of the old gospel was God. Its purpose was “always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace.” But the center of reference for the new gospel is not God, but man. The purpose of this new gospel is the help people feel better, not teach them to worship God. The subject of the new gospel is not God’s sovereign ways with man, but eh help God offers men. Packer points out that the advocates of the new gospel appeal to men as if they had all the ability to receive Christ at any time; [they]speak of His redeeming work as if He had done no more by dying than make it possible for us to save ourselves by believing; [they] speak of God’s love as if it were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust; and [they] depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignty active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quiet impotence” at the door of our hearts” for us to let them in.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? 132-133
“Theologian Roger Nicole is troubled by how close the new gospel comes to resembling the ancient heresy of Pelagianism by speaking “as if man had a right to come into the presence of God and enter into account with him, as if God had some obligation to deal with all people in the same way. The one thing God owes us is judgment. We ought to marvel at the fact that instead of confining us all to judgment and damnation, God in his mercy has been pleased to make plans to save a great multitude.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 134
“Losing the gospel doesn’t happen all a once; it’s much more like a four generation process too:
The gospel is accepted→
The gospel is assumed→
The gospel is confused→
The gospel is lost
“the generation that assumes the gospel is the generation that is most responsible for the loss of the gospel.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 40
“One of the best reasons never to assume the gospel is that many pretend to possess faith.”
“The clearest indication of an assumed gospel is that you don’t hear it anymore.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 41
“When the gospel is no longer the measuring stick for fellowship or Christian leadership, we assume ourselves into confusion.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 42
“Our lives need to be lined wp with, in accord with, the gospel. As we’ve seen before, the gospel is not only about salvation. The gospel is how we live every day.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 56
“Those who view Christ primarily as a moral example neglect to see him as the one who would save them from their sin. It is worth noting that Jesus traced his suffering throughout the Bible for the disciples on the road to Emmaus. It seems that Jesus was trying to help them (and us) understand that he is first and foremost a Savior. He was not trying to get them to suffer like he did; he was trying to get them to understand that they couldn’t suffer like he did and that their fundamental inability to atone for their sin was why Jesus had to suffer.”
“Jesus is first a Savior, and then he is our example.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 134-135
“The divine glory is really and objectively there in the gospel. Otherwise, Paul would not speak of the god of this world blinding the minds of unbelievers. If something is not really there, you don’t need to be blind to miss it. But if it is really there, you must be blind to miss it. Therefore, “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” is really there. It is a self-authenticating divine glory. Edwards calls it an “ineffable, distinguishing, evidential excellency in the gospel.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 75
“How can such a darkened, sinful heart produce a way of thinking that gives rise to saving faith? The answer is that God’s illumination and regeneration produce a profound change in the way the heart perceives reality.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 77
“Through my pain, I was being convinced all over again that the power of the gospel is just as necessary and relevant after you become a Christian as it is before.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 23
“The gospel is good news for losers, not winners.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, p. 50
“The gospel alone empowers and emboldens us to press on and strain forward with no anxiety over gaining other people’s sanction or good opinion-even God’s! All the care and love and value we most crave-full and final approval-we already have in Jesus.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 92
“C.S. Lewis observed that what most distinguishes the gospel from legalism is that legalism says God will love us if we are good, while the gospel tells us God will make us good because he loves us.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 97
“We never leave the gospel, ever-even as we move into deeper theological waters. As Tim Keller says the gospel isn’t simply the ABC’s of Christianity, but the A to Z of Christianity. All theology is an exposition of the gospel, a further articulation of the gospel in all its facets, meticulously unfolding all its liberating implications and empowering benefits.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 130
“So, Christ’s death is not the center of the gospel any more than his life is the center of the gospel. One without the other fails to bring about redemption. It’s much more theologically accurate to say that Christ himself is the center of the gospel. He lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death we should have died.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 144b
“The gospel, in other words, doesn’t just rescue us from the past and for the future; it also rescues us in the present-from our greed, from our selfishness, from our pride, and more.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 167
“The gospel promises acceptance with God and righteousness, not happiness, to repentant sinners. The concern of the New Testament is moral; today the concern is psychological. The desire for happiness is not in itself wrong, but if we are biblically disciplined, it will be a secondary concern.”
-Source: David f. Wells, Turning To God,
Gospels
“Although it is easy to identify theological interests at work in the Gospels, it requires a whole set of additional presuppositions to conclude that the Evangelists produced only imaginative interpretations of Jesus with loose or even nonexistent historical ties.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 80
“The challenge before us as Christian witnesses is whether we will offer Jesus Christ as the key to fulfilling our narcissistic preoccupation or as the Redeemer who liberates us from its guilt and power.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 33
“The story is enangelion, good news, because it is about grace. yet it is also news because it is not common knowledge, not what nine out of ten average Americans already know. Gospel doesn’t come naturally. It comes as Jesus.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 47
“The gospel is more than a personal experience, it is an historical event.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 103
“If it were merely information or a program for self-improvement, it would be called something else, like good advice or a good idea or good enlightenment. But it’s Good News because it is an announcement of something that someone else has already achieved for us.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 105
“Our love toward God and neighbor is the essence of the law: God’s love toward us in Jesus Christ is the essence of the gospel.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 136
“We have to be hearers of the gospel before we are doers of the law. Otherwise, when the initial emotion and zeal were off, we will be tumbleweeds blown in every direction-away form God’s garden of grace.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 157
“But “evangelical” means “that which is of the gospel,” and the gospel is an announcement that we have to deliver, not an agenda that we have to negotiate with our fellow citizens.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 207
“Christ died”-that is history: “Christ died for our sins”-that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Shristianity and Liberalism, p. 27
“The doctrine of God and the doctrine of man are the two great presuppositions of the gospel.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 54
“Religious truths are not the gospel, except in proportion as, like John the Baptist, they point to the Lamb of God.”
-Source: Charles P. McIlvaine, Preaching Christ, p. 10
“I guess as a gospel minister I tend to focus on, well, the gospel-the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I am dogmatic, yet humble (I hope), about orthodoxy, while I am open-minded, yet opinionated, about politics. That is to say, the difference between emerging churches and what I am aiming for in my church is the difference between unity based on social issues and unity based on theological issues.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung or Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 191
“A gospel without propitiation at its heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached. The implications of this must not be evaded.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 32
“We have all heard the gospel presented as God’s triumphant answer to human problems-problems of our relation with ourselves and our fellow humans and our environment. Well, there is no doubt that the gospel does bring us solutions to these problems, but it does so by first solving a deeper problem-the deepest of all human problems, the problem of man’s relation with his Maker.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 41
“But the Christian gospel is not a matter of mere self-help or even of a great example or a relationship to be cultivated. There is a real past to be dealt with. Real sins have been committed. Real guilt has been incurred. And so what is to be done? What will our holy God do? Even if he, in his love, wants a people for his own, how will he have them without sacrificing his own holiness?”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 37
“Once people have heard the truth about their sin and God’s holiness, God’s love in Christ, and Christ’s death and resurrection for our justification, the message calls out for response. And what is that response? Is it to walk down an aisle? Is it to fill our a card or to lift up a hand? Is it to make an appointment to see the preacher or to decide to be baptized and join the church? While any of those things may be involved, none is absolutely necessary. The response to this good news is, as Paul preached, to repent and believe.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 41
“The good news is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in his image to know him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from him. In his great love, God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law himself and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn and trust in him. He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice and that God’s wrath against us had been exhausted. He now calls us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness. If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are born again into a new life, an eternal life with God.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 43
“Too often, advocates of relevant evangelism verge over into being advocates of irrelevant nonevangelism. A gospel that in no way offends the sinner has not been understood.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 64
“The gospel is not mere information about Christ: he himself is the good news!”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 205
“Throughout the world, the gospel is spreading, propagating, budding, flowering, bearing fruit. People hear it and by God’s mercy respond and are saved. But it doesn’t stop there. Once the gospel is planted in someones’s life and takes root, it keeps growing in them. Their lives bear fruit. The grow in love and godliness and knowledge and spiritual wisdom, so that they walk in a manner worthy of their calling, fully pleasing to the Father, bearing fruit in every work (Col 1:9-10,2:6-7)
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 36-37
“The New Testament envisages that all Christian disciples will be prayerful speakers of God’s word, in a multitude of different ways and contexts.”
“It’s not as if we come to know Christ through the gospel word but then use a fundamentally different message to encourage each other as Christians.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 53
‘The Bible says that without the proclamation of the gospel, without everyday Christians bearing witness to Jesus, people can’t hear the good news; they can’t believe in and can’t call upon God (Romans 10:14).”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 141
“Most Americans believe that their major problem is something that has happed to them, and that their solution is to be found within. In other words, they believe that they have an alien problem that is to be resolved with inner solution. “What the gospel says, however, is that we have an inner problem that demands an alien solution- a righteousness that is not our own.
“It is surprising to hear scholars claim that in fact there is very little corroborating evidence outside the Gospels for the life of Christ.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 241
“Of the fifty-eight Palestinian Jewish names in the Gospels and Acts, fifty-four are attested (though not necessarily referring to the dame individual) in at least one other ancient Jewish source or inscription, with most of them appearing multiple times.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliablility of the Gospels, p. 396
“The proper procedure for evaluating the historicity of any portion of the Gospels is thus to assume from the outset that its testimony is reliable and then to consider the force of various objections that might cause a person to change his or her mind.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 310
“We should be more ready to recognize that this movement is broader than our little corner of it and bigger than the circle we feel most comfortable in. We need fewer angular, sharp-elbowed Calvinists who glory in what distinguishes their stance from that of others and a lot more supporters of the Reformed faith who rejoice in what they hold in common with others. When versions of Calvinism contend with one another over which is most authentic, we have sunk to a much lower level than that of the sixteenth century when the Swiss reformers and their international allies aimed at the broadest possible collaboration and widest possible mutual recognition. Calvin, after all, insisted he would if necessary “cross ten seas” if he could promote agreement in the central doctrines of the faith with fellow believers.”
The gospel must be primary.”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 289
“Lewis meant that ancient fiction was nothing like modern fiction. Moder fiction is realistic,. It contains details and dialogue and reads like an eyewitness account. This genre of fiction, however, only developed within the last three hundred years. In ancient times, romances, epics, or legends were high and remote-details were spare and only included if they promoted character development or drove the plot.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God. pg 110
“
Gossip
“By spreading gossip, the Christian, even without malicious intent, can cause irreparable damage. The malicious, spiteful heart seeks it. The gossip causes it, spreads it, and stokes the flame further simply because they seem to be without hateful intentions.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 53
“A truly infected gossip is not even aware that hi is gossiping. In fact, he will be offended when you point out his sin to him. He has been doing it for so long and so often that he knows no other way. It has taken root in his character.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 53
“Gossip always discusses the victim in their absence. They are unable to defend themselves, or even to offer an explanation. However, this does betray another symptom of persons who have a loose tongue: They are cowards. Most gossips would never dream of taking their concerns to the person about whom they are speaking.”
1. Gossip is never isolated. First Moses’ wisdom was questioned, and then his leadership was attacked. Even if gossip begins in innocence, it becomes
malicious.
2. Gossip divides. One can hear Miriam’s rationale that she could lead just as easily as Moses. How did she implant that belief in the hearts of the Israelites? By
gossip.
3. gossip builds up the perpetrator by tearing down the victim. Miriam questioned Moses’ leadership and implicitly placed herself on equal ground with him.
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 55
” One of the most effective4 means of combating slander is to view it as God sees it-a dangerous threat to hearts and lives, equal to murder.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 60
“If you do not confront the gossip with his sin in a loving but firm manner, God holds you responsible.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 61
Government
“The state was ordained by God as a concession to human sin. It was not the agent of God’s redemptive purpose for humankind.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 101
Gnosticism
“Here is the irony: that the Gnostic gospels are today being trumpeted as the radical alternatives to the oppressive and conservative canonical gospels, but the historical reality was just the opposite. The Gnostics were quite content to capitulate to their surrounding culture, in which mystery-religions, self-discovery, Platonic spirituality of various sorts, and coded revelations of hidden truths were the stock in trade. In other words, with the kind of religion that everyone already knew.”
-Source: N. T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus p. 101
“Judaism believes that the God of Israel is the good, wise and sovereign creator of all that is, while Gnosticism believes that the God of Israel is the incompetent and malicious demiurge who made this wicked world. If Gnosticism is true, Judaism is not, and vice versa.”
-Source: N.T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus p. 111
“Like ancient Gnosticism, contemporary American approaches to spirituality-however different conservative and liberal versions may appear on the surface-typically underscore the inner spirit as the locus of a personal relationship.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 178
“Philip Lee’s contrast between Gnosticism and Calvinism can be just as accurately documented from a wide variety of Christians through the ages: “Whereas classical Calvinism had held that the Christian’s assurance of salvation was guaranteed only through Christ and his Church, with his means of grace, now assurance could be found only in the personal experience of having been born again. This was a radical shift, for Calvin had considered any attempt to put ‘conversion in the power of man himself’ to be gross popery.” In fact, for the Reformers, adds Lee, the new birth was the opposite of “rebirth into a new and more acceptable self”; it was the death of the old self and its rebirth in Christ.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 178
Grace
“In our sin we simply cannot take credit for coming to Christ, since we were hostile to God (Rom. 8:6-8), we were blind and unable to see the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4), and we were dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph.2:1). No wonder Paul exclaims, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing: it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Our regeneration and conversion, moving us to repent of sin and trust in Christ, is the work of the Spirit. The Spirit must awaken our hearts to see the beauty of Christ, fall before him, and put our hope and trust in him. God gets all the glory in our conversion. And how is Jesus glorified in this? The Spirit awakens our dead hearts and opens our blind eyes to see Jesus”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p 121
“Far from violating our wills or personalities, God’s grace appeals to our deepest yearnings and therefore, when we are exposed to grace, intrinsically we are drawn toward God.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 84
“For the Christian church (even in its recently popular seeker services) to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary and finally uniteresting.
It is only in the context of disobedience that mercy has relevance and meaning. Mercy is of such a character that disobedience is its complement or presupposition, and only as exercised to the disobedient does it exist and operate.
What could have caused such indifference, even among churchgoers? It is a failure to understand and ‘feel in one’s heart’for great truths that the doctrine of grace presupposes: 1) the sinfulness of sin; 2) God’s judgment; 3) man’s spiritual inability; and 4) God’s sovereign freedom.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 129
“The grace of God is unearned and unearnable, but if we ever expect to grow in grace, we must pay the price of a consciously chosen course of action which involves both individual and group life.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 8
“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the play and the opera, and grace before the concert and the pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing: and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p 205
“God never promised to give you tomorrow’s grace for today. He only promised today’s grace for today, and that’s all you need.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 225
“The Israelites were not asked to obey Yahweh’s stipulations in order to obtain his grace, they were asked to obey Yahweh’s stipulations because he had already acted on their behalf. “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, therefore you shall . . .” Sinai teaches the same truth as the gospel: God’s actions on our behalf precede our actions on his behalf. We do not obey in order to win his grace; we obey because we have received his grace.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 85
“Osteen’s message is also a good example of the inability of Boomers to mourn in the face of God’s judgment or dance under the liberating news of God’s saving mercy. In other words, all gravity is lost-both the gravity of our problem and of God’s amazing grace. According to this message, we are not helpless sinners-the ungodly-who need a one-side divine resue. (Americans, but especially we Boomers, don’t take bad news well.) Rather, we are good people who just need a little instruction and motivation.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 71
“The good news is far greater than “just try harder next time.” In fact, that is not good news at all because I know that God does not grade on a curve and he has not asked me to try harder. He demands perfect righteousness, not good intentions. The harder I try to cover up my nakedness in God’s presence, the more I hate God, fleeing in self-deceit from his terrifying presence. Left to myself, I will always accuse God and excuse myself-even using religion to hide my ineradicabguilt.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 121
“Grace is God the Father in over doing good for ill-swerving sinners through God the Son by God the Spirit.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 110
“We usually read the Bible as a series of disconnected stories, each with a “moral” for how we should live our lives. It is not. Rather, it comprises a single story, telling us how the human race got into its present condition, and how God through Jesus Christ has come and will come to put things right. In other words, the Bible doesn’t give us a god at the top of a moral ladder saying, “If you try hard to summon up your strength and live right, you can make it up!” Instead, the Bible repeatedly shows us weak people who don’t deserve God’s grace, don’t seek it, and don’t deserve God’s grace, don’t seek it, and don’t appreciate it even after they have received it.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 37
“Cheap Grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doles out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without cost.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 43
“Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 44
“The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 51b
“Paul isn’t saying that our performance leads to our rescue; he’s saying that genuine rescue leads to our performance. Our improvement comes from God’s approval; God’s approval doesn’t come from our improvement.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 152
“The Bible never starts with what we need to do; it always begins with what God has already done.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p. 154
Graciousness
“Christians who are being sanctified don’t have time to be sanctimonious. They’re aware of how far they have to go. They’re aware of their weakness and God’s ongoing grace toward them. This is what enables them to be gracious toward others.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 166
Great Awakening (First)
“The Awakening was heralded by a new kind of preaching, which was authoritative, fervent, and heart-searching, and one of its most conspicuous results was multiplication of the number of preachers in the same mould.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 5
“The duration of the first Great Awakening extended through three to five years at most; the duration of the second was not less than a quarter of a century and, in the opion of most, several years longer.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 118
Great Awakening (Second)
“Too often, modern writers have regarded the Second Great Awakening as though it were simply a movement of religious excitement. The first-hand accounts cannot be reconciled with that idea.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 141
“Where there existed leadership and well-taught congregations in the Second Great Awakening, unity and catholicity were generally maintained. Where these were absent the opposite could well result.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 177
Great Commandment
“What does it mean to love God “with all your mind”? I take it to mean that we direct our thinking in a certain way; namely, our thinking should be wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things. “
– John Piper, Think,p. 83
“We may summarize like this: heart highlights the center of our volitional and emotional life without excluding thought (Luke 1:51), Soul highlight our human life as a whole (“man became a living creature,” Gen. 2:7), though sometimes distinguished from the body (Matt. 10:28). Mind highlights our thinking capacity. And when the term strength is added, as in Mark 12:30, it highlights the capacity to make vigorous efforts both bodily and mentally (Mark 5:4; Luke 21:36). So taken together the point is that we are to treasure God with all that we are.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 85
“When Luke records the Great Commandment, the preposition he uses with “heart” is different from the other three. “You shall love the Lord your God with [ex] all your heart and with [en] all your soul and with [en] all your strength and with [en] all your mind” (Luke 10:27). It doesn’t come through in English, but the preposition connected to d”heart” (ex) suggests that the heart is the source of our love for God, while the preposition (en) used with soul, strength, and mind suggests that they are instruments of that love.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 86
Great Commission
“Sometimes our translations may give the impression that ‘go’ is the emphasis of the command, but the main verb of the sentence is ‘make disciples’, with three subordinate participles hanging off it, going (or ‘as you go’) baptizing and teaching, ”
“Baptizing’ and ‘teaching’ are the means by which the disciples are to be made.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne,The Trellis and the Vine, p. 12
” The commission is not fundamentally about mission out there somewhere else in another country. It’s a commission that makes disciple-making the normal agenda and priority of every church and every Christian disciple.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p-. 13
Growth
“The reason the bonsai stays as small as it does is because the pot dictates the size of the tree. Certain bonsai trees may grow much larger in the wild. But because the pot confines the roots determine the growth, the tree remains a dwarf as long as it is in the pot.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 161-162
Guilt
“changing your if-onlys, erasing them from, doesn’t insure that you life would be grand.”
-Les Parrott, Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda…, 50.
“Exchanging the biblical categories of sin and grace for such therapeutic categories as dysfunction and recovery represents “pastoral cruelty.” If we feel guilty, maybe it is because we really are guilty. To change the subject or downplay the seriousness of this condition actually keeps people from the liberating news the gospel brings. Like any recreational drug, Christianity Lite can make people feel better for the moment, but it does not reconcile sinners of God.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 35-36
“There is legitimate guilt that is removed through repentance and restitution, and then there is irremediable guilt. When people say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important to them than God’s. Idols function like gods in our lives, and so if we make career or parental approval our god and we fail it, then the idol curses us in our hearts for the rest of our lives. We can’t shake the sense of failure.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 149
“When you say to someone who feels guilty, “You are guilty; you really are guilty,” then you also can say, “But there is a way in which yur guilt can be dealt with.”
“The message of the gospel is this: God can forgive you, and He is willing to do so.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 57
H
Hate
“In Semitic Language and thought, ‘hate’ had a broader range of meanings than it does in English, including the sense of ‘leaving aside’, ‘renunciation’ or ‘abandonment”. Moreove, as G.B. Caird explains, ‘the Semitic way of saying “I prefer this to that” is “I like this and hate that” 9cf. gn. 29:30-31; Deut. 21:15-17) Thus for the followers of Jesus to hate their families meant giving the family second place in their affections.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 161
Heaven
“Up there was matter, which was perfect, unchanging, a special kind of celestial matter that is, by the way, the orgin of our word “quintessential.” There were four essences down here, the imagined four elements of earth, water, fire, and air, and then there was that fifth element, that fifth essence out of which the heaven stuff was made. And that’s why the word “quintessential”-“fifth essence”-comes about”
-Source:Carl Sagen: The Varietie4s of Scientific Experience, p. 36
“Pastoral ministry is simply not worth it unless you factor in heaven. Unless heaven is real, let’s forget the church and go play video games.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 96-97
Hermeneutics
“Though the Spirit’s work in our hearts is subjective and unique to each individual believer, that subjective aspect must always be governed by the grammatical-historical method of biblical interpretation that is anchored in authorial intent.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 39
“Rollins allows for competing interpretations, but not all interpretations, but not all interpretations are equally good. When we need a good reading out of the text, we should do so with a prejudice of love, by reading with the poor, weak, and marginalized in mind, Rollins argues. This sounds nice, but is it really workable as an interpretative key? Rollins’s hermeneutical grid is a moving target. For instance, do we read the text with the poor in rural Alabama in mind or the poor in Sudan, the weak in power or the weak in moral resolve, the marginalized in Rollins’s Ireland or marginalized fundamentalists in a secular university?”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 125
Heresy
“Indeed, in a fine study entitled The Pattern of Christian Truth, H. E. W. Turner has shown that in the early centuries heresy and orthodoxy were related as parasite and host. Heresy (the parasite) could exist only as it existed off orthodoxy (the host) by denying, diluting, distorting, and adding to that orthodoxy. But this was possible only if orthodoxy was a discernible, defined position–in short, a bounded set. And it was”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 83
History
“The main story from haven’s vantage point is how the Son is building his church, and his rulership of the nations simply functions to fulfill that greater and grander goal.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 70
“If God is known through what he has done, he must have done something. As a result, history matters.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 69
“Though emphases vary, the two main themes that emerge are salvation and judgment. Theseare different sides of the same divine purpose: namely the vindication of Yahweh and of his righteousness and holiness. His power, authority an glory will be revealed wither through those who submit to his righteous rule (Isa. 46:10-13; Jer. 29:11-14) or in the divine judgment of those who do not (Mic.4:12-13; Jer. 49:20; 50:45).
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 314
“History is the story of God giving away power.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 101
History of Christianity
“For Christian experience depends absolutely upon an event.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 71
“It must certainly be admitted, then, that Christianity does depend upon something that happened; our religion must be abandoned altogether unless at a definite point in history Jesus died as a propitiation for the sins of men. Christianity is certainly dependent upin history.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 121
Holiness
“God warned His people not to take His name in vain. By this He does not mean just avoiding profanity. More than that, He is saying “Don’t take My name upon yourself, don’t claim to be My follower if you’re not going to live like one of Mine.” That, no less than profanity, would be taking God’s name in vain.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p 245
“Happiness is the promise of heaven and that holiness is the priority here in this world.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 213
“The Puritans understood what it means to be holy and to be a saint because they understood sin.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 107
“It is through the “little sins” that Satan gains an entrance into our lives. Probably, therefore, it will be prudent to watch all sectors of the front and lose no time about introducing the unity of command.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 67
“J. Alec Motyer defines holiness as “God ‘s total and unique moral majesty.” What a wonderful expression! god’s moral majesty is complete and without rival. E. J. Young similarly suggests that holiness is the entirety of the divine perfection that separates God from His creation. That which is almost beyond our definition is what makes God, God. Holiness includes all God’s attributes. His holiness is what defines Him.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent p. 30
“When the Bible call God holy,” writes Sproul, “it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far abobe and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 43
Holiness of God
“The truth is, the God of modern preaching, though He may perhaps be very good, is rather uninteresting. Nothing is so insipid as indiscriminate good humor. Is that really love that costs so little? If God will necessarily forgive, no matter what we do, why trouble ourselves about Him at all? Such a God may deliver us from the fear of hell. But His heaven, if He has any, is full of sin.”
-Source: J. Gresham machen, Chistianity and Liberalism, p. 133
Holy Spirit
” The role of the Spirit is to mediate the presence of Jesus.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 107
“Revelation, inspiration, and illumination all come form the Spirit.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 111
“Spirit-led preaching approaches the Spirit holistically because the Spirit penetrates every aspect of our lives. Therefore, Spirit-filled living is God’s prerequisite for Spirit-led preaching.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 68
“The Spirit of God molds and makes the preacher long before the preacher molds and makes a sermon.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 68
“If we are not Spirit led and Spirit filled in our homes and in our communities, we should not anticipate being Spirit led and Spirit filled in the pulpit.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching,p. 68
“Why, then, does the power of the Spirit seem to accompany our preaching so seldom? I Strongly suspect that the main reason is our pride. IN order to be filled with the Spirit, we have first to acknowledge our own with the Spirit, we have first to acknowledge our own emptiness. In order to be exalted and used by God, we have first to humble ourselves under his mighty hand.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 149
“The man who knows Christ and is called to be a prophet may yet find the Holy Ghost “desert” him because he is preaching out of turn or without specific commission. He may be preaching in the wrong place, or from the wrong motive, or the wrong message. He may be powerless for no other reason than that he is not in God’s appointment. He may have left his God-given post for personal or domestic reasons, to please his wife or educate his children or to escape persecutors. Though none of these are trivial reasons, if they do not please God, he certainly cannot bless disobedience and has promised, “if ye forsake hm, he will forsake you.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 150
“The Holy Spirit gives new life to people who were dead in their sins.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 164
“Instead of taking in too much wine that ends up influencing you to speak and act in ways that are wrong and sinful, let the Spirit be such a strong influence in your life that you end up speaking and acting in ways that are holy and honoring to Christ.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 165
Colossians 3:16 “The Spirit will have a greater influence and will provide more direction in our lives as God’s Word “dwells” more and more within us. Our reading of his Word, our time spent memorizing and meditating on Scripture, is one of the main tools that the Spirit uses to help us think, feel, speak, and act in ways that are more an more pleasing to Christ.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 167
“Spurgeon warned, “You might as well expect to raise the dead by whispering in their ears, as hope to save souls by preaching to them, if it were not for the agency of the Holy Spirit.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 45
“Our concern to be word entered does not conflict with a conflict with a concern to be Spirit-centered. Churches must be Spirit-centered.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 29
Homiletics
“We need to know how to put a sermon together, but before we tackle the how-tos, let’s first learn the w”why-do” by establishing the theological foundation and spiritual dynamic of preaching.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 12
“The “I don’t need to study; I just need the Spirit” attitude is misleading because it implies that the Spirit’s illumination circumvents or bypasses the classic disciplines of languages, hermeneutics, and biblical studies. Instead of working against these disciplines, the Spirit works in conjunction with these disciplines to give us not only a clear understanding of God’s Word but also a passionate understanding of the significance of God’s Word.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 47
Homogenous Unit Principle
“Resources of time, personnel, and money should be focused where there is greatest receptivity to the gospel.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 250
“Men like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic, or class barriers.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 254
“McGavran thus urged the implementation of the homogeneous unit principle for pragmatic reasons: people are more likely to become Christians if they are not required to leave their own group.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 256
“Wagner now says homogeneity is “descriptive, not normative . . . phenomenological, not theological”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 262
Homosexuality
“In fact, the punishment itself is that the idol worshipers’ unnatural relationships with others resemble their unnatural relationship with God. So far because they “suppressed the truth” of God, they have also suppressed knowledge and reflection of the attributes of his divine nature (Rom 1:18-20), so that they fail to acknowledge and likely even to reflect God’s nature and attributes, but instead they mirror the corruptible nature of the creation (VV. 21-25).”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 204
Hope
“We have already noted that hope in the OT is viewed in physical terms. Because of the emphasis on the unity of the whole person, resurrection too must include the ressurection of the body. Where the OT points to the hope of resurrection it envisages the reversal of physical death and the renewal of life as it was before. This is not simply resuscitation; nor is it the hope of a life to come that is qualitatively different from life in this world. The view of death and resurrection as a gateway to something new and better is consistent with the OT faith, and finds echoes in later Judaism, but is based ultimately on the resurrection of Jesus.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 309
Humility
“Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 55
“We do not need to go through life faintly hoping that someday humility may fall upon our heads. Of all the classical Spiritual Disciplines, service is the most conductive to the growth of humility.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 130
“Nobody is too good for the meanest service. One who worries about the loss of time that such petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of his own career too solemnly.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 135
“Humility is one of the chief qualifications for usefulness; many have passed away from the roll of useful men because they have been lifted up with pride, and so have fallen into the snare of the devil.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 52
“Humility, the step down, makes possible God’s lifting us up. By trying to be strong, I may even block God’s power.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p 36
“Humility does not mean I grovel before God, like the Asian court officials who used to wriggle along the ground like worms in the presence of their emperor. It means, rather, that in the presence of God I gain a glimpse of my true state in the universe, which exposes my smallnes at the same time it reveals God’s greatness.
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, – p.37
I
Identity
“I’m writing to help you shake this feeling of uselessness that has overtaken you. Several times you have said that you don’t see how Christ can possible use you-that you’re nobody special. The church must bear part of the responsibility for making you feel as you do. I have in mind the success-story mentality of the church. Our church periodicals tell the story of John J. Moneybags who uses his influential position to witness for Christ. At the church youth banquet we have a testimony from all-American football star Ox Kickoffski, who commands the respect of his teammates when he witnesses for Christ. We’ve led you to think that if you don’t have the leverage of stardom or a big position in the business world, you might as well keep your mouth shut. . . . Nobody cares what Christ has done for you.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 104
Idolatry
“The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 159
“The expressions describing Israel as having ears but not hearing and possessing eyes but not seeing (Is 6:9-10) and like a burning tree (Is 6:13a) are best understood as metaphors of idolatry tat are applied to the disobedient nation in order to emphasize that they would be punished for their idol worship by being judged in the same manner as their idols (i.e., by being destroyed)”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 63
“God accepts that humans have indeed breached the Crator-creature distinction. Not that humans have now become gods but that they have chosen to act as though they were-defining and deciding for themselves what they will regard as good and evil. Therein lies the root of all other forms of idolatry: we deify our own capacities, and thereby make gods of ourselves and our choices and all their implications. God then shrinks in horror from the prospect of human immortality and eternal life in such a fallen state and prevents access to the “tree of life.” God has a better way to bring humanity, redeemed and cleansed, to eternal life.
“At the root, then, all idolatry is human rejection of the Godness of God and the finality of God’s moral authority. The fruit of that basics rebellion is to be seen in many other ways in which idolatry blurs the distinction between God and creation, to the detriment of both”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 135
“The true horror” of idolatry is that idolaters should be exhorted to become as lifeless as the images they worship, though he thinks that the idol worshipers themselves would abhor such an exhortation and in their own minds “abominate the idea of resembling them [the idols]” (Decalogue 72-75).”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 142
“Israel in Jesus’ time was, indeed, guilty of idol worship-a different form of idol worship than in preceding generations. Israel of Jesus’ day was idolatrous because it had worshiped tradition in place of God and his living Word, and this is why Jesus applies the idol text of Isaiah 6:9-10 in Matthew 13 to the Jews of his generation.”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 166
“In Jesus’ time this idolatrous “tradition of men” manifested itself not by worshiping stone or wooden idols but human-made tradition.”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 169
“Preference for human glory instead of God’s glory is an idolatrous concept that we have seen repeatedly already in the Old Testament. Recall that Isaiah beheld God’s holy glory and then became conformed to his glorious holiness, which was symbolized by the angel’s purity ritual of burning his lips and mouth (Is 6:1-7). On the other hand, the majority of Israel chose not to reflect God’s holy glory but instead loved the inglorious nature and likeness of their idols, and they reflected their idols.”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 181
“The essential nature of the idolatry is explained to be “exchang[ing] the glory of the incorruptible God for an image” (Rom 1:23), “exchang[ing] the truth of God for a lie” and “worship{ing} and serving the creature rather than the Creator” (v. 25) The fitting punishment for malfunction in worshiping God is a malfunction in other relationships.”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 203
“Those who are idol worshipers in chapter 13 are repeatedly referred to as “the ones dwelling upon the earth{hoi katoikountes epi tes ges}’ (vv 8, 14 x 2; almost identically v. 12)”
“This expression is reserved for such people because they cannot look beyond this earth for their security, which means that they trust in some part of the creation instead of the Creator for their ultimate welfare.”
“Trusting in government instead of God is idolatry socialism?”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 255
“Isaiah 64:8 also refers to Israel as “the clay” and God as “our potter {former}” again in contrast to the idols.”
“Interestingly, in each of the potter-clay passages Israel is referred to as the “work of {God’s} hands. Not coincidentally and striking the phrase “the work of their {his or men’s} hands” throughout Isaiah refers exclusively to the idols manufactured by humans that are worshiped by Israel or the nations (Is 2:8, 17:8; 37:19)”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 276
“That’s the grand distinction made in the Old Testament over and over again between the true God and the false idols. The pagan peoples see their gods and speak to their gods, but the one true and living God is never seen, and yet He speaks to His people.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 56
“A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. xviii
“The Bible uses three basic metaphors to describe how people relate to the idols of their hearts. The love idols, trust idols, and obey idols.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. xxi
“We know a good thing has become a counterfeit god when its demands on you exceed proper boundaries.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 23
“How can I recognize what my heart clings to, again there is a clear and simple answer: everything which keeps you from loving God above all things, everything which gets between you and your obedience to Jesus is the treasure to which your heart clings.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 163
“Do not worry! earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety. The heart which clings to goods receives with them the chocking burden of worry.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 165
“The root of our problem is that we have ceased to love God supremely; God’s law reflects his holiness and purity, and lack of respect for his laws is an expression of lack of reverence for him. We have not only loved God too little, we have gone on loving this world order inordinately (see Ex 20:3; Mt 22:37; 1 Jn 2:15-17)”
-Source: Kenneth J. Stewart, Ten Myths About Calvinism, p. 167
“What we put in the place of God captures our imagination and heart, and then we become servants of our object of worship. The word worship actually comes from the Old English phrase “worth shape,” which implies that the object of our worship will necessarily shape us (our worth) in a comprehensive way. Our object of worship will always be the primary influencer of our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, and, of course, our lives. This is why we cannot be both servants of God and also of idols.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 157
“Martin Lloyd-Jones defines and idol as “anything in my life that occupies the place that should be occupied by God alone. An idol is anything that holds such a controlling position in my life that it moves and rouses and attracts me so easily that I give my time, my attention, my energy and my money to it effortlessly,”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 159
“Sin happens because we treasure our idols more than we love our God. When we don’t actively love God, we actively love something else. When God is not the center of our lives, something else is.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 159
“Alister McGrath points out that when the idea of God is gone, a society will “transcendentalize” something else, some other concept, in order to appear morally and spiritually superior. The Marxists made the State into such an absolute, while the Nazis did it to race and blood.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 57
“According to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 168-169
“Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially “deify.” We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think of ourselves as highly irreligious.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 169
“One has only the choice between God and idolatry,” Weil wrote. “If one denies God . . . one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 173
“Edwards concludes that only if God is our summum bonum, our ultimate good and life center, will we find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races, and classes, but to the whole world in general.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 175
“We habitually look to something or someone smaller than Jesus for the tings we crave and need.”
“An idol is anything or anyone that you conclude in your heart, you must have in order for your life to be meaningful, valuable, secure, exciting, or free.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus*Nothing*Everything, p.40
Illumination
“By receiving it [the text] with the full consent of our conscience, as truth comes down from heaven, submitting ourselves to it in right obedience, loving it with true affection by having it imprinted in our hearts, we may follow it entirely and conform ourselves to it.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 49
“The Spirit’s illumination is the light that starts a fire in the preacher’s study that blazes into a burning passion in the pulpit.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 51
If the Spirit’s illumination is the hermeneutical foundation for Spirit-led preaching, then the theological foundation is built upon the complementary relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 54
Image of God
“Although we may not arrive at a precise understanding of the expression ‘made in the image of God’, several important things may be implied by it, which can be said to separate human beings from other living creatures.
Human beings share spiritual characteristics with God
While unlikely to denote physical resemblance, the expression may indicate that human beings, as distinct from the rest of creation, share certain spiritual qualities with God. These will include things like personality, intelligence and free will. However, because there is little objective basis for deciding which characteristics and qualities are intended, and list will be subjective and will reflect the theological agenda of its compiler.
Human beings are made for relationship with God
The expression may indicate a special relationship between humankind and God. Westermann suggests, ‘The meaning si that mankind is created so that something can happen between God and man. Mankind is created to stand before God.’ Human beings are made by God and for God and may find their full meaning only in relationship with him.
Human beings are given authority to rule on behalf of God.
This aspect of being made in the image of God is the one most clearly related to the biblical text. Genesis 1:26 expresses two parallel ideas: Let us make man in our image and, let them rule . . . over all the creatures that move along the ground (see also Gen. 2:19-20, Ps. 8:3-8). Being made in God’s image is closely linked with having authority to rule. This idea is reflected elsewhere in the ANE, where the expressions ‘the image of god’ might be applied to kings, as the earthly representatives of the deity. God has created human beings with the authority and responsibility to rule over his world on his behalf.
Human beings are made to reflect the glory of God.
Linked with this special calling, the psalmist describes humankind as a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned . . . with glory and honour (Ps. 8:5). God made human beings as the pinnacle of his creative work and has given them a unique place within the natural order. This contrasts sharply with myths such as the Atrahasis Epic and Enuma Elish, where people are created as little more than the slaves of the gods. In the OT humankind is made in the image of God, to relect the glory of God within his world, and human beings are thus conferred with a wholly different dignity and status.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 140-141
Imputed Righteousness
“When Paul instructed Philemon to charge Onesimus’s reception as a brother to his account, he was offering an image of the doctrine of imputed righteousness.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 71
Incarnation
“At the Council of Chalecdon in AD 451, the church fathers laid out a declaration designed to correct the false teachings and clearly delineate and protect the biblical teaching about Jesus’s nature. The Chalecedonian Creed stated that Jesus has two natures in one person. He is both “perfect in God-head and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man” with a real human soul and body. So whatever is true of God’s nature is true of Jesus’s nature. And whatever is true of human nature is also true of Jesus’s nature. Jesus is in every way like us in our humanity, except without sin, even as he is of the same essence as God the Father. These two natures are “to be acknowledged. . . inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisbly, inseparably.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 79
“The requirement of full humanity not only made it possible for Jesus to offer himself for our sins, but it also assures us of being cared for by a priest who understands our plight.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 84
“In the Christian view, however, the ultimate evidence for the existence of God is Jesus Christ himself. If there is a God, we characters in his play have to hope that he put some information about himself in the play. But Christians believe he did more than give us information. He wrote himself into the play as the main character in history, when Jesus was born in a manager and rose from the dead. He is the one who with whom we have to do.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 128
Inclusive
“What is happening in this model is a separation of the Spirit and his work from Christ. Inclusivists like this notion of the Spirit being, as it were, a sort of independent agent, sent from the Father and not connected to the Son. By this, the Spirit can do his saving work even though neither the Son nor his gospel is known. As this theory continues, if these people put trust in the God made know to them by the Spirit (in creation and, for some, in other religions).=, even though they do not know Christ or believe the gospel, they may be saved-“saved pagans,” one might say saved, that is, as the Spirit works in them, apart form knowledge of Christ or the gospel.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 114
Inclusivism
“Inclusivists believe that salvation is impossible apart from Jesus and that he is the only Savior. But this does not mean that people have to know about Jesus or actually believe in him to receive that salvation.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 24
“Favin D’Costa, a Roman Catholic inclusivist, states that his view “affirms the salvific presence of God in non-Christian religions while still maintaining that Christ is the definitive and authoritative revelation of God.” Pluralist John Hick’s description of inclusivism presents it as the belief that “God’s forgiveness and acceptance of humanity have been made possible by Christ’s death, but . . . the benefits of this sacrifice are not confined to those who respond to it with and explicit act of faith.” Accordint to Alan Race, inclusivism “accepts the spiritual power and depth manifes in [other religions], so that they can properly be called a licus of divine presence. On the other hand, it rejects them as not being suffiecient for salvation apart from Christ, for Christ alone is saviour”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 103-104
“The unevangelized are saved or lost on the basis of their commitment, or lack thereof, to teh God who saves through the work of Jesus. [Inclusivists] believe that appropriation of salvific grace is mediated through general revelation and God’s providential workings in human history. Briefly, inclusivists affirm the particularity and finality of salvation only in Christ but deny that knowledge of his work is necessary for salvation–[The work of Jesus in ontologically necessary for salvation (no one would be saved without it) but not epistemologically necessary (one need not be aware of the work in order to benefit from it).
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 104
“A key assumption of inclusivism is the belief that general revelation is sufficient to bring people to salvation. Inclusivists have to say this.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 118
“Clark Pinnock states that “the knowledge of God is not limited to places where biblical revelation has penetrated.” According to John Sanders, inclusivists “believe that appropriation of salvific grace is mediated through general revelation and God’s rovidential workings in human history.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 118
“Wise Christians know better than to confuse the truth with the way we would sometimes like things to be. Whatever the appeal to the heart, we must evaluate inclusivism with our minds. How inclusivism squares with Scripture is more important than how it makes us feel.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 163
“J.I. Packer believes inclusivists ae more influenced by the “American idea of fairness” than by anything they have learned from Scripture.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 164
“Good and sincere people allow their feeling to get the better of them. Once they convince themselves emotionally that a certain belief must be true, they conclude that it is true and must therefore be in the Bible.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 164
“If we are wise, we shall not spend much time mulling over this notion [ of the specific fate of specific unevangelized people]. Our job, after all, is to spread the gospel, not to guess what might happen to those to whom it never comes. Dealing with them is God’s business.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior? p. 164
If all creeds are equally true, then since they are contradictory to one another, they are all equally false, or at least equally uncertain.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 19
Individualism
“The word individualism was not coined until Alexis De Tocqueville used it in the 1830s to describe what he witnessed during his famous trip to America. Ways of acting that relied less on given expectations and more on personal action were well established before there was a word to describe the henomenon.”
-Source: Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism
“The belief in a God of pure love–who accepts everyone and judges no one–is a powerful act of faith. Not only is there no evidence for it in the natural order, but there is almost no historical, religious textual support for it outside of Christianity. The more one looks at it, the less justified it apperars/”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 86
Inerrancy
” As one scholar has noted, the stern injunction of the Bible itself in Deuteronomy 4:2 that ‘you must neither add anything to the word which I command you, nor take away from it,’ likely would have served to restrain most scribes from engaging in ‘creative editing.'”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 37
Infallibility
“Even defenders of Scripture’s infallibility freely admit that the Evangelists usually record only Jesus’ ipsissima vox (actual voice) rather than his ipsissima verba (actual words).”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 157
Influence
“The most unreserved men are not the most influential. A reserved man who cares for truth, and cares that his brethren should know the truth, who therefore is always holding back the mere envelope of accident and circumstance in which the envelope of accident and circumstance in which the truth has embodied itself to him, and yet sending forth the truth with all the clearness and force which it has gathered for hm from that embodiment, he is the best preacher, as everywhere he is the most influential man. Try to live such a life, so full of events and relationships that the two great things, the power of Christ and the value of your brethren’s souls, shall be tangible and certain to you; not subjects of speculation and belief, but realities which you have seen and known; then sink the shell of personal experience, lest it should hamper the truth that you must utter, and let the truth go out as the shot goes, carring the force of the gun with, but leaving the gun behind.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 120
Initiative
“To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.”
-Source: Benjamin Franklin
Inspiration
“Inspiration is a completed process that guaranteed the truthfulness of the Bible by the Spirit’s superintending of the revelation we have recorded in Scripture, whereas illumination is a continuing work of the Spirit that guides us into all truth (John 16:13). This means that the Spirit’s illumination is the guide to his inspiration, and we desperately need his guidance into truth because we are sinful, fallen, and fallible human beings.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 41
“What Scripture says, God says'”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life” p. 81
“Warfield’s study of ancient Greek language and literature demonstrate convincingly that theopneustos refers to the Bible’s origin, and not, as some contemporaries of his claimed, to the ‘inspiring’ its authors to write such words.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life” p. 81
“The evangelical doctrine of inspiration has usually been explained as claiming the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture. ‘Plenary’ simply means ‘full’, and states that every parto of Scripture has its origins in God. It is founded on the explicit biblical statement that ‘all Scripture is God-breathed’.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 84
“To speak of verbal inspiration is to say that Scripture’s divine origin extends not just to its general message, but also to its individual words, and even to its letters, since often if a single letter is changed, the word is changed.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 85
“Verbal inspiration claims that the Bible says exactly what God wants to say because the Holy Spirit was responsible for every word written in Scripture. He is the divine Author behind the human authors.”
– Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 86
“Warfield defines, concursive operation thus: ‘no human activity-not even the control of the will – is superseded, but the Holy Spirit works in, with and through them all in such a manner as to communicate to the product qualities distinctly superhuman.’He applies the notion in detail to the production of Scripture thus: inspiration broadly defined, he says, refers to God’s long-term preparation of the writer and his material. ‘[God] prepared a Paul to write, and the Paul he brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters [as God intended Paul to write]’. The Bible is thus entirely human and entirely divine, and God’s action in producing it extends beyond the actual moment of writing, to cover the entirely of his providential work in the writers.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 86
Integrity
“God will not go to work with instruments which would compromise His own character.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 44
“As Bud Paxson writes, “Integrity speaks of persons who have integrated their inner and outer selves. They are on the inside what they appear to be on the outside.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 84
Isaiah
“The biblical-theological principle expressed by Isaiah 6 is that we resemble what we revere, either for ruin or restoration. Isaiah wanted to revere the Lord and reflected his holiness, resulting in restoration, whereas Israel revered its idols and reflected their spiritual blindness and deafness, resulting in rain.”
-Source: G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 64
Israel
“God did not canonize Israel’s culture. Rather, he simply used that culture as a vehicle through which to communicate the eternal truth of his character and his will for humanity.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 23
J
Jealousy
“Jealousy and bitterness are twin diseases. One rarely sees one without anticipating the other.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 96
Jesus
Jesus is God’s final and fullest word on the matter. That is, he is not simply fulfillment; he is also further and final revelation.
-Source: Goldsworthy, Graeme, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, p. 79.
“If Jesus was merely a man like the rest of men,” Machen wrote, “then an ideal is all that we have in Him. Far more is needed by a sinful world. It is small comfort to be told that there was goodness in the world, when what we need is goodness triumphant over sin.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 87
“In Scripture the story of Jesus is not the story of goodness cropping up in the world. It is the story of goodness conquering sin. It is the story of wickedness and death being pushed back, thrown down, and defeated by the supernatural man from heaven but was born on earth.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 87
“Jesus reveals God. That is to say, revelation is not data bout God seen from the outside, as it were, but sharing in the Son’s knowledge of the Father, so that in Christ we know God from the inside, from within the Father-Son relationship.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 49
Job
“Job’s friends base their arguments on orthodox theology and traditional understanding, but they do not have the full picture. The prologue shows us what neither Ob nor his comforters see, and reveals the limitations of their arguments. Job is upright, and that, not his sin, leads to his suffering, as God allows Satan to put his piety to the test. Job’s faithfulness in the face of suffering has an influence in the heavenly realm: it proves the truth of God’s words and gives the lie to Satan’s accusation. Because of the prologue, we know Job is looking for answers his friends cannot supply. In the end only a direct encounter with God can bring meaning to what has so far seemed meaningless.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 257
“In the light of the greater revelation we have received through Christ, we know that our final vindication lies beyond this world. God blesses us now, but the best is yet to come. We have a better hope, and in the light of the glory to be revealed, we persevere. We cannot infer from Job’s experience that all who suffer innocently will receive material recompense within their lifetime. But the theological principle applies to us as it did to him: we believe that, ultimately, like Job, we will be vindicated and will receive our reward”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 258
“Imagine you are Job’s pastor–or, for that matter, simply one of his friends. At this point, your task would be to persuade this man who believes he is in total darkness that he is not. You would try to take hold of these threads of light in his understanding and pull them loose in order to hold them before his eyes.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone. p. 91
John 14
“Di you notice Jesus’ vocabulary? “In my father’s house there are many dwelling places.” For generations we in the West have imposed our cultural lens upon this passage such that we have whole songs dedicated to the “mansion up over the hillside” that is awaiting us in heaven. But what Jesus is saying to his disciples and to us is so far superior to the objectives of a consumer culture that it takes my breath away-our ultimate destination as the newly adopted children of the Father is the family compound! And Jesus, the firstborn of his Father’s household, is going back to heaven to get your four-room pillared house ready. Why? “So that where I am, there you may be also.” The goal of redemption is not a marbled mansion, but reincorporation into the bet ab of our heavently Father.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 39
John Knox
“Knox died in 1572. Contemporary chroniclers point out that a car park, as the British say-a parking garage-has been built over his grave near the church of St. Giles. Pilgrims wishing to pay homage to Scotland’s Reformer may do so at space number 66.
-Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 97
Joy
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
-Source: Billy Sunday SERMON, NEW YORK 1914
“In the spiritual life only one thing will produce genuine joy, and that is obedience.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 192
“Joy is the end result of the Spiritual Disciplines’ functioning in our lives. God brings about the transformation of our lives through the Disciplines, and we will not know genuine joy until there is a transforming work within us.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 193
“When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems. The decision to set the mind on the higher things of life is an act of the will. That is why celebration is a Discipline.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 195
Judgment
“Retributive suffering is that kind of suffering that comes as a result of sin because sin must call down the judgment of God.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 68
“When we know and follow Christ, we look at people differently. We don’t judge them; instead we care for them and reach out to them in love.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 32
Justification
“To be justified is to trust only in the person and work of Jesus and no one and nothing else as the object of your faith, righteousness, and justification.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears,Death by Love, p. 115
“We are not accounted righteous in God’s sight either by regeneration or by sanctification. The fact that we have been born again does not justify us. It gives us a new heart, but in itself it does not provide the forgiveness of sins. No, the gospel that saves us is entirely outside of us. It is Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified for our sins, raised for our justification, who saves us.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 74
“Our justification is not accompleshed by a profession of faith. The evangelical world has never fully grasped that nobody is justified by a simple profession of faith. Professions of faith are good things, and those who believe are supossed to profess what they believe, but it’s the :possession” of faith-not its “profession”-that translates a person from the kingdom of darkness into the the kingdom of light.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross,
K
Kindness
“It is strange how in the interests of an utterly false kindness to men, Christians are sometimes willing to relinquish their loyalty to the crucified Lord.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 175
King Saul
“There is one little clue that Saul is going to have trouble. Hear the words of God regarding Saul: “And the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to their voice and appoint them a king” (1 Sam 8:22). But of David we read: “I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons” (I Sam 16:1). The point is subtle but substantial-Saul is the choice of the people; David is the choice of God.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 197
Kingdom of God
“I read a quote recently in which the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, musing on the negotiation of clout, gave an appropriate summation of the power of Christ’s love and kindness, saying, “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 have 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 men would die for Him.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 138
“Jesus’ government wouldn’t be built on Roman citizenship or Jewish heritage. It wouldn’t even depend on the land it occupied. Rather, the kingdom of God would be the place where what happened was what God wanted to happen – regardless of land, culture, heritage or nationality. When people trust Jesus’ way of life and live it out, that’s where the kingdom of God exists. It’s where Jesus really becomes king, not over land but over the hearts of people – and everything is made right.”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p. 130
“The person who does not seek the kingdom first does not seek it at all. Worthy as all other concerns may be, the moment they become the focus of our efforts they become idolatry. To center on them will inevitably draw us into declaring that our particular activity is Christian simplicity. And, in fact, when the kingdom of God is genuinely placed first, ecological concerns, the poor, the equitable distribution of wealth, and may other things will be given their proper attention.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 87
“Jesus also expected this eschatological reversal, and it is a hallmark of his preaching. It can clearly be seen in such parables as the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), in the beatitudes of Matthew 5, and even more in the blessings and woes of Luke 6:20-26. So, when John the Baptist by way of his disciples asks Jesus whether he is the expected one (Matt. 11:3), John is in effect asking, “So where is the reversal?” Jesus answers the question in verse 5: The deaf hear, the blind see, the dead are brought back to life, and the poor receive good news. A counterpart to this is that those who hear do not hear, those who see do not see (13:13), and the rich receive bad news (Luke 6:24). In other words, the reversal is happening.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 83
“Jesus goes on to explain what theologians have come to call the “already . . .not yet” principle of New Testament theology. The idea is that with Jesus’ entry into our world, the kingdom is already here. The new covenant has begun. God has invaded our exile, and every man, woman and child of Adam’s race has been extended the invitation to come home. Deat is defeated. Heaven is ours. Satan knows it is just a matter of time. The plan is not complete until the New Jerusalem arrives.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 219
“Like Abraham, we are sojourners in the land of promise. One day all the earth will be ours, but right now we are citizens of another kingdom, awaiting the time of the consummation.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 221
“The kingdom of God is something we are receiving, not something we are receiving, not something we are building (Heb. 12:28). The Lord of the church did not say, “Build my church”; he said that on the “rock” of the confession that Jesus is the Christ, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18)”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 233
“Without the key, the meaning and intent of Jesus’ stories elude us. Miss the key and you miss the message.”
“What, then, is the secret? It is Jesus Christ Himself. The parables teach us how He establishes His kingdom in a totally unexpected way.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 14
L
Laity
” Lay empowerment not only helped to spread the Reformation, but also, I would argue, prevented it from being wiped out.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 48
Language
“Human knowledge and thoughts are expressed in words, and what we must note now is that all attempts to speak of the mystery of the unique and transcendent God involve many kinds of stretching of ordinary language. We say, for instance, that God is both plural and singular, being three in one; that he directs and determines the free acts of men; that he is wise, good, and sovereign, when he allows Christians to starve or die of cancer; that the divine Son has always upheld the universe, even when he was a human baby; and so forth.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He
“Whatever else may be true of human language, it is quite reasonable to suppose that it has the ability ot speak truly of God, both because it was given to us by a God who speaks truly of God, both because it was given to us by a God who speaks within himself as eternally three speaking persons, and also because our possession of language, as made in God’s imange, is analogous to God’s communicative capacity.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 34
Law
“The law was given to the Jews to show them they couldn’t follow the law, to reveal to them the depravity of their nature, to show them the cancer that lived inside them so they would pay attention to the Doctor.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 182
“I don’t suppose we will have any kind of morality in heaven, any thought about the right and wrong, once we are replenished and healed in His light and His goodness. No, morality exists only because we are fallen, not unlike medicine exists because people get sick”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 183
“The law tells us what God expects of us; the gospel tells us what God has done for us.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 125
“No one will be offended if we tell them that they are good people who could be a litter better. The offense comes when we tell them that they-and we-are ungodly people cannot iimpress God or escape his tribunal. Until our preaching of the law has exposed our hearts and God’s holiness at that profound level, our hearers will flee to Christ alone for safety even if they come to us for advice.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 130
“Early in my marriage, it was very important to me to buy my wife’s Christmas and birthday presents that I wanted her to have. It bothered me when she spoiled the surprise by telling me what she really wanted. “Why can’t I be spontaneous?” I asked her, “so that its really my gift?” it took me a while to realize that I was actually being selfish. Similarly, God’s law tells ws what God approves-what his heart delights in. He does not ask us to be spontaneous, creative, or self-willed but to do the things that he regards as righteous, holy, true, and good.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 147
“The Law was not given as a means by which people could attempt to earn their salvation. The basis of Israel’s election is God’s grace. Redemption from Egypt depended on the people’s response to God’s offer of salvation, and had nothing to do with the Law (though their response did involve obedience). The Law came later as a basis not for becoming God’s people but for living as God’s people.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 173
“The obligations of God’s law are always grounded in declarations of God’s gospel.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus. Nothing. Everything, p. 157
Law of Love
“Jesus nowhere commands love for its own sake, and nowhere exhibits that complete dominance of the kindly over the aggressive sentiments and emotions which seems indicated by the idea that in him and for him love “must completely fill the soul,” or that his ethics is characterized by “the ideal of love.” The virtue of love in Jesus’ character and demand is the virtue of the love of God and of the neighbor of god, not the virtue of the love of love.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, pgs 15 & 16
“For Jesus there is no other finally love-worthy being, no other ultimate object of devotion, than God; He is the Father; there is none good save God; He alone is to be thanked; His kingdom alone is to be sought. Hence the love of God in Jesus’ character and teaching is not only compatible with anger but can be a motive to it, as when he sees the Father’s house made into a den of thieves or the Father’s children outraged.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 16
“Through God is love, love is not God for him; though God is one, oneness is not his God.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 17
Lay ministry
“The idea of lay ministry, separate from church office, had appeared in the eighteenth century but it received far less support because a good understanding and knowledge of the truth was then commonly regarded as paramount in those who stood in public to teach and preach. They were expected to show sound evidence that they were prepared of God for such labour.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 361
Laziness
“A preacher cannot claim the Spirit as an excuse for laziness and a failure to do the exegetical work in a test. A preacher who ignores the work of the text is ignoring the author of the text, the Holy Spirit.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 93
“But this is not the only kind of sin that is lampooned in the Old Testament. The slugard is a favorite target. “As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed” (Prov. 26:14). Just like the door to the kitchen in a busy restaurant turns, back and forth, back and forth, so the sluggard works industriously back and forth between the sheets. We have to get this into our minds-the Bible makes fun of sluggards sinning.
Then we have the ancient Hebrew equivalent of “aliens kidnapped me, what year is it? The lazy man’s excuses are a wonderful font o creativity. “The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets” (Prov. 22:13). Why aren’t you out looking for a job? “Well, I was afraid that radiation from the traffic lights might give me cancer.” A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again” (Prov. 19:24). That man is so lazy-how lazy is he? He is as lazy as a dog I had that needed to lean his head against the wall to bark.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge, p. 48-49
Leadership
“Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”
-W. Somerset Maugham
“He who stops being better stops being good.”
-Oliver Cromwell
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done and those who don’t want to make mistakes.”
– John Maxwell, Talent is Never Enough, 26
“The final thing leaders will need is courage…the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable…The most common expression of he courage to tell the truth is to say, “It ain’t workin”.
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 37
“I think there is something, more important than believing; Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 47
“The congregation needs to see that we genuinely live out our evangelistic mission, values, and strategy. If we want to build contagious churches, we as leaders must first become contagious Christians.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 119
“The work of revitalization cannot begin without one man to whom God has given a vision, but it also cannot continue unless there are other godly leaders constantly being raised up to carry out the ministry and carry on the vision. Leadership works, whether it is good or bad, so God will work through good leadership to bring your church from embers to a flame”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 140
“Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the way you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 180
“Tom Landry, the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, defined coaching as making men do what they don’t want, so they can become what they want to be. An apt description of the pastoral task is to call people to do what they don’t want so they can become what they want to be. Ultimately, it is our task to help churches see what they need to do not what they want to do. That’s leadership.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 184
“While today we have no shortage of books, principles, and seminars on leadership, we do have a shortage of godly leaders.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 81
a. “Leaders cannot find joy or grief unless they take their responsibilities seriously. Joy comes when the leader senses that Christ is being formed in the church (Gal. 4:19), while grief results in seeing either rebellion against the Word or apathy toward spiritual disciplines.”
b. “When all is said and done, though a spiritual leader may not be a great preacher or teacher, may fall short in administrative skills, may falter in his abilities to counsel, and may lack stamina for his duties, he must not dishonor the noble office entrusted to him b the church through failing in his conduct. and his ministry is negated. But honor the Lord in his conduct and, even with weaknesses, he will prove to be faithful.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 87
“clearly, leadership carries a higher burden, and the sins of an elder cause an even greater injury to the church. The public rebuke is necessary, for the elder sins against the entire congregation.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in congregational Life, p. 153
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Leadership is a word on everyone’s lips. The young attack it and the old grow wistful for it. Parents have lost it and police seek it. Experts claim it and artist spurn it, while scholars want it. Philosophers reconcile it (as authority) with liberty and theologians demonstrate its compatibility with conscience. If bureaucrats pretend they have it, politicians wish they did. Everyone agrees that there is less of it than there used to be.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 202
“Leadership is a public role and thus a person’s public reputation is important.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 204
“Most of us seek quantum leaps in our performance levels by following a strategy of incremental investment. This strategy simply does not work. The land of excellence is safely guarded from unworthy intruders. At the gates stand two fearsome sentries-risk and learning. The keys to entrance are faith and courage.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn, Deep Change, p. 165
-Why, then, would anyone be willing to accept the pain that accompanies acts of transformational leadership? I suspect that such people have discovered that the pain of leadership is exceeded only by the pain of lost potential. They understand that excellence is punished, but they have developed a value system that provides no acceptable alternatives. They are internally driven leaders who are committed to continuing deep change and the pursuit of excellence.”
-Source: Robert E. Quinn: Deep Change, p. 177
“The famous rubber baron, Harvey S. Firestone, aptly stated, “It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 27
“People buy into you before they buy into your leadership.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 30
“John Hawkins of Leadership Edge expands on that idea: “In its essence, leadership is not a position, it’s a lifestyle.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 75
“Truly, a leader is at his best when he is adding value to the lives of other people.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 159
“Leadership without the discipline of execution is incomplete and ineffective. without the ability ot execute, all other attributes of leadership become hollow.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 34
“Clear, simple goals don’t mean much if nobody takes them seriously. The failure to follow through is widespread in business, and a major cause of poor execution.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 71
“The culture of a company is the behavior of its leaders. Leaders behavior they exhibit and tolerate. You change the culture of a company by changing the behavior of its leaders. You measure the change in culture by measuring the change in the personal behavior of its leaders and the performance of the business.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan Execution, p. 105
“Leadership deals with direction-with making sure that the ladder is leaning against the right wall. Management deals with speed. To double one’s speed in the wrong direction, however, is the very definition of foolishness. Leadership deals with vision-with keeping the mission in sight-and with effectiveness and results. Management deals with establishing structure and systems to get those results. It focuses on efficiency, cost-benefit analyses, logistics, methods, procedures, and polices.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 81
“Peter Drucker states. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The lst is to say thank you.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 113-114
“He wasn’t a bad leader because he made poor decisions; he was a bad leader because he made no decisions”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 106
“It is important that leaders see themselves and are seen by others as part of the church. Professionalism is always the enemy of authentic gospel leadership.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 123
“Character, not charisma, is central to biblical criteria.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 195
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transformng Discipleship, p. 21
“The good is always the enemy of the best.”
-Source: Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 41
”
Leadership Development
“Whoever yo recruit, one hard truth must be faced: recruiting people for ministry, training them as apprentices, and sending them off to Bible college will result in a steady departure of your best and most gifted church members. This is a challenge to your gospel heart. What are you more interested in : The growth of your particular congregation, or the growth of the kingdom of God? Are you committed to church growth or to gospel growth? Do you want more numbers in teh pew now, or more labourers for the harvest over the next 50 years?”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 149
“The training mentality is an engine of growth and dynamism. It multiplies ministry because it multiplies ministry.”
Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 150
Legalism
“Legalistic preaching fills in the blanks for the people and does not build disciples. Spirit-led preaching trusts the Spirit to make the connection and builds mature. Spirit-filled, fruit-producing disciples.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 123
“So we see once again that Osteen has not abandoned the legalism of previous generations. If anything, he intensifies it. But his followers do not recognize the tightening noose or the mounting burden because he makes it sound so easy. It is not easy, however, to be told that our health, wealth, and happiness-as well as our victory over sin and death-depend on the extent of our determination and effort. A weak view of sin fails to bring us to the end of our rope: instead, it encourages us to try just a little bit harder to save ourselves. It’s easy. Really.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 88
“If the good news is an invitation to a Jesus way of life and not information about who accomplished something on my behalf, I’m sunk. This is law and no gospel.”
“In other words, there are two “laws” we can choose to live by apart from Christ: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” and the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re trying to “save” yourself, which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects”
“The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus.Nothing. Everything, p. 51
“Legalism feeds our natural pride”
“Grace is primarily seen by evangelicals,” writes Michael Horton, “as divine assistance for the process of moral transformation rather than as a one-sided divine rescue.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus.Nothing.Everythng, p. 99
“As a stronghold of subtle idolatry, legalism in any form must be anti-gospel because it enslaves in its presumption that life is all about us and our abilities.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus.Nothing. Everything p. 105
Liberalism
“In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been know as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism”.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 2
“But in showing that the liberal attempt at rescuing Christianity is false we are not showing that there is no way of rescuing Christianity at all; on the contrary, it may appear incidentally, even in the present little book, that it is not the Christianity at all; on the contrary, it may appear incidentally, even in the present little book, that it is not the Christianity of the New Testament which is in conflict with science, but the supposed Christianity of the modern liberal Church, and that the real city of God, and that city alone, has differences which are capable of warding off the assaults of modern unbelief.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 7
“Liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 47
-Liberalism regards Jesus as the fairest flower of humanity: Christianity regards Him as a supernatural Person.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 96
“The separation of naturalistic liberalism from the evangelical churches would no doubt greatly diminish the size of the churches. But Gideon’s three hundred were more powerful than the thirty-two thousand with which the march against the Midianites began.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 170
“The plain fact is that liberalism, whether it be true or false, is no mere “heresy”-no mere divergence at isolated points from Christian teaching. On the contrary it proceeds from a totally different root, and it constitutes, in essentials, a unitary system of its own.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 172
“If the good news in an invitation to a Jesus way of life and not information about somebody who accomplished something on my behalf, I’m sunk. This is law and no gospel.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 114
“In its teleological form, liberal Christian ethics defines the end of the Christian as the kingdom of God on earth, which again is defined in terms of the dominant cultural ideal as a kingdom of ends, that is, an association of intrinsically valuable individuals, or as the reign of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” In its deontological form, liberalism chooses the imperative of love as the essential commandment in the gospel but interprets it perfectionistically; slurring over the end-terms of the gospel imperative-God and neighbor- it tends to regard the virtue of love as the required thing. In its value theory, this ethics tends to adopt the value judgment of modern society, according to which the individual is the supreme value.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. xlviii
“Inadequately defined by the use of such terms as “liberal” and “liberalism,” it is more aptly named Culture-Protestantism; but appearances of the type have not been confined to the modern world nor to the churches of the Reformation.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 84
Libertarianism
“Libertarianism is sometimes called incompatibilism, because it is not compatible with God’s absolute sovereignty. It emphasized that our choices are not determined in advance by God; he may be the first cause of the universe in general, but in the sphere of human decisions, we are the first causes of our actions. According to the libertarian view, our character and our immediate desires may influence our decisions, but we always have the freedom to choose contrary to our character and desires, however strong. This position assumes that there is a part of human nature that we might call the will, which is independent of every other aspect of our being, and which can, therefore, make a decision contrary to every motivation. Libertarians maintain that only if we have this kind of radical freedom can we be held responsible for our actions.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 148
Liberation Theology
“ These developments include what is called liberation theology, whose advocates reduce Christianity to a movement to eradicate poverty and oppression. What is problematic is the tendency of liberation theologians to care only about the poor and oppressed people who interest them and to seek to address
the issues of poverty from an unabashed and unrepentant Marxist perspecive.”
-Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 49
Life
“‘Life is difficult.’ That’s not most people’s problem. Their response to life’s difficulties is.”
– Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck
Listening
“Our age is a dialogue of the deaf,” Bill often said. “You must develop a lifestyle of listening.”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p.48
Lord’s Supper
“When we administer the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we ‘show the Lord’s death’. Let us take care that when we show the same in words, we do not come short of the teaching of the sacrament concerning it. The Protestant Episcopal Church interprets that teaching with studied precision, in her communion office, in reference to errors prevalent when that office was framed. She calls the sacrifice ‘a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins through faith in the blood of Christ. We must initiate that precision in reference to errors now propagated. Besides the perfectness and sufficiency of the sacrifice, in opposition to those who would add to it, we must insist strongly and pointedly on its strictly propitiatory and vicarious nature, in opposition to those who would deny it.”
-Source: Charles P. McIlvaine, Preaching Christ, p. 31
Love
“Language less strict might suggest love less pure, True love, love in its highest form, must cost the participants everything. Both parties would have to be willing to give up everything in order to have each other.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 224
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possible be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give you heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 217
“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 101
“There is no love without wrath, I answer people who say, “What kind of loving God is filled with such wrath as to send people to hell to suffer eternally?” by pointing out that a wrathless God cannot be a loving God. In Hope Has Its Reasons, Becky Pippert writes, “Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it. . . . Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.” Pippert then quotes E. H. Gifford: “Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 48
“Love for God is the great effect of the gospel. The love produced by the good news concerning Christ is so effective that our heart is captured and secured.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p.
“Reject sentimentality’s cheap imitation of love. Embrace a love that takes people seriously, the kind of love earthy enough to get into a grave for us. Speak into lives with truth and grace.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 99
“The love of God is nonpossessive Eros: the love of man pure Agape; the love of God is passion; the love of man compassion.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 18
“Christ is the key to the whole kingdom of love.”
“The writer of 1 John insists on obedience to the commandment of Jesus Christ no less than on confidence in the love of God.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 46
M
Mark
“Mark is writing to Christians who would not likely have come to faith in the first place had they not heard the story of the resurrection. So he can assume knowledge of it and deliberately cut it short to call attention with riveting abruptness to the womens’ initial fear and failure, knowing full well, and knowing that his audience knew well, the story of how they later overcame their fear and spread the word.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 140
Marks of the Church
“The body of Christ takes on visible form not only in the preaching of the word but also in baptism and the Lord’s supper, both of which emanate from the true humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 228
“The body of Christ becomes visible in the church-community that gathers around word and sacrament.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 229
“Of special importance among the offices of the church-community in every age is the untainted administration of word and sacrament. Here the following must be considered. Proclamation will always vary and differ according to the commission and gifts of the preachers. However, whether it be the proclamation of Paul, or of Peter, or of Apollos, or of Christ, the one indivisible Christ must be recognized in them all (I Cor. 1:11). All are to work hand in hand (1 Cor. 3:6).
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 231
“The community of saints is not the ‘ideal’ church-community of the sinless and the perfect. It is not the church-community of the sinless and the perfect. It is not the church-community of those without blemish, which no longer provides room for the sinner to repent. Rather it is the church-community that shows itself worthy of the gospel of the forgiveness of sins by truly proclaiming God’s forgiveness, which has nothing to do with forgiving oneself.”
“For it is the will of our Lord hmself not to give what is holy, the gospel, to dogs, but to preach it only under the safequard of the call for repentance. A church-community which does not call sin sin will likewise be unable to find faith when it wants to grant forgiveness of sin.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 269
Marriage
“All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.”
-Red Skelton
“You know “that look” women get when they want sex? Me neither.”
-Steve Martin
“The difference between being in a relationship and being in prison is that in prisons they let you play softball on the weekends.”
-Bobby Kelton
“I am not the boss of my house. I don’t know when I lost it. I don’t know if I ever had it. But I have seen the boss’s job and I do not want it.”
-Bill Cosby
“That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle that the Vatican has overlooked.”
-Bill Cosby
“Distinction in role does not indicate distinction in value.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. p. 139
“Matrimony came from Paradise, and leads to it. I never was half so happy, before I was a married man, as I am now. When you are married, your bliss begins. Let the husband love his wife as he loves himself, and a little better, for she is his better half. He should feel, “If there’s only one good wife in the whole world, I’ve got her.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 151
With gay marriage advocates on the march in numerous states, many are sounding the alarm. “This could mean the end of marriage” is the resounding cry. Well, here’s a news flash; even without gay marriage we could be seeing the proverbial end of the institution as we know it.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 31-35
“I believe marriage is a ministry. Unfortunately, it is one to which few acknowledge a call these days. It seems that some believe that marriage is somehow beneath other callings. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is perhaps no higher calling.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 36
“Marriage is the God-appointed and legitimate union of man and woman in the hope of having children or at least for the purpose of avoiding fornication and sin and living to the glory of god. The ultimate purpose is to obey God, to find aid and counsel against sin; to call upon God; to seek, love, and educate children for the glory of God; to live with one’s wife in the fear of God and to bear the cross.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 39
“Be fruitful and multiply” was the first command that god uttered to man (genesis 1:3, 28).”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 39
“If you want to teach the world the love of God, become a husband who loves his wife as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25). If you want to teach the world how the church submits to the Lord, become a wife who submits to her husband (Ephesians 5:22-24). If you want to show the world a picture of Christ’s sanctifying work, cleanse your wife with “the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:26). This is our unspoken testimony.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 41-42
“It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry, who are able with judgment to give their consent; yet it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord, and therefore such as profess the true Religion, should not marry with Infidels, or Idolaters; neither should such as are godly by unequally yaked, by marrying with such as are wicked, in their life, or maintain damnable heresies.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 68
“Everything a young man must be in order to be worthy of a young Christian woman flows from the saving work of God. thus, faith in Christ is the linchpin in the entire argument.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 70
“Therefore, no matter how convincing or emotionally charged the objection, marriage to an unbeliever must not be considered as an option.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p.70
“This is a due conjugal esteem for wives. Husbands are to respect their wives, not vilify or despise them, which is liable to exasperate them. Husbands are not to talk about their wives’ weaknesses to other people or to themselves concentrate too closely on them but rather to hide them from others and from their own sight by love. The should not see those flaws more than love requires.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 121
“God said it was not good for the man to be alone. So God made Eve to be with the man as a lover, helper, and friend. Since they were the only two people who existed, they served as one another’s standard of beauty.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 151
“In creation we see a wise pattern: an individual’s standard of beauty should be his or her spouse.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 151
“If you get married as Jacob did, putting the weight of all your deepest hopes and longings on the person you are marrying, you are going to crush him or her with your expectation. It will distort your life and your spouse’s life in a hundred ways. No person, not even the best one, can give your soul all it needs. You are going to think you have gone to bed with Rachel, and you will get up and it will always be Leah.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 38-39
Martyrdom
“There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 100
Martyrs
“Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake on October 16, 1555. While the flames licked their bodies, Latimer famously said to his colleague, “Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light a candle by God’s grace, in England, as I trust never shall be put out.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, The Reformation, p. 90-91
Materialism
“Oil tycoon J. Paul Getty once said, “the best things in life . . . are things.” This is the mantra of materialism”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 93
“So much of what I am calling “Christless Christianity” is not profound enough to constitute heresy.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 21
“In my view, we are living out our creed, but that creed is closer to the Amercian Dream that it is to the Christian faith. The claim I am laying out in this book is that the most dominant form of Christianity today reflects “a zeal for God” that is nevertheless without knowledge.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Chrisitianity, P. 21
“Marxists are theoretical atheists whereas secular Westerners are practical atheists.For them, materialism is not a system of thought that has inclined them to exclude God from consideration but a whole web of relationships in life whose interests are centrally affluent and whose cognitive horizons make the pursuit of “the good life”normative.
Secularism, which leads to materialism, is the assumption that the processes of life are separated from any divine or moral order standing behind them. God may indeed exist–and few Westerners doubt that he does–but his existence is not meaningful to any part of life. To say that he exists is to say nothing concrete about whether there are enduring values, an ultimate distinction between right and wrong, what life is about, what its meaning is, and why one wants to live it. Affirming God means little, denying him means little; understanding life on its own terms is everything.
If we do not, or cannot, anchor meaning in God because he is too distant, indistinct, and disconnected from our lives, then we have no alternative but to find meaning in ourselves. What is right and wrong, true and false, important and trivial, is derived from our experience. Experience becomes a teacher who both serves up what values there are and corrects us in terms of those values. So pluralism has become an inescapable part of modern reality. Who is to say that one value is preferable to another? If experience is the criterion, the quarry out of which we dig meaning, then whatever seems to “fit” for each individual should be accepted, at least for the moment.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, pg. 139-140
Maturity
“Spiritually mature believers place people in their lives to hold them accountable.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 44
“A spiritual child says such things as “I love my small group-don’t add anyone to it.” and “I am not being fed at my church, so I am going to go to one that meets my needs better.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 45-B
Media
“ In contrast to the men and women of the scriptures many Christians sense only weakly the way God intervenes in the world and in each individual life; most Christians find it difficult to develop a daily awareness of God as Sovereign Lord, who holds the initiative in his dealing with us every day. This difficulty of not being aware of the Lord is partly due to our immersion in the media view of the world, where there is absent awareness of God and his ability to work his will in every circumstance of life.”
-Source: G.K, Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 298
“Many Christians watch television, and many watch it when they want to sit back and relax and not have to use their minds much. This can certainly be a form of relaxation, but it can also become an uncritical openness to the media’s worldview. Subtly, unconsciously, we absorb this worldview by a kind of mental osmosis. And what is the typical TV worldview? It is a worldview with little to no awareness of, or sensitivity to, God’s working in everyday life, in the details of our life.”
“This absence of God in mainstream media should alert us to the fact that when we uncritically leave ourselves open to the perspective of the media’s worldview, then, slowly but surely, it leads us to cease thinking of the things of the Lord in the details of our everyday life.”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 299
Meditation
“Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 17
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when asked why he meditated, replied, “Because I am a Christian.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 19
“Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 20
“No, detachment is not enough; we must go on to attachment. The detachment from the confusion all around us is in order to have a richer attachment to God. Christian meditation leads us to the inner wholeness necessary to give ourselves to God freely.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 21
“The English word meditate derives from a Latin word which means “to rehearse.” Virgil speaks of a shepherd boy “meditating” on his flute.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 166
Men
“We need an awakening. We need to experience what Jonathan Edwards called “a genuine work of the Holy Spirit.” We do not need men to merely feel guilty about falling short of the biblical standard: we need to see a supernatural wave of genuine gospel revival. Our culture has been on the losing end of a spiritual battle for far too long. As a result, most men are numb to the constant pummeling to which we are constantly subjected. It is going to take more than just good intentions to turn the tide. We need a genuine movement of God.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 10
“Perhaps one major catalyst for young men’s love for recreational sports is that it replicates the kind of challenge and competitiveness sorely lacking from their own personal, professional, and spiritual lives. One author called team sports a “civilized substitute for war,” which would explain why so many men only seem to come alive emotionally on the inside and feel connected socially on the outside to their fellow “weekend warriors.” It has become mainstream to be an adult boy.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 11
Mentoring
“We need to teach and model spiritual transformation and help those we disciple connect to other believers who can also serve as models.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 119
Mercy
“It is always surprising counterintuitive, and even offensive for human beings to hear that salvation does not depend on human decision or effort but on God who shows mercy (Rom.9:16).”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 122
“If we would save our hearers from the wrath to come, we must realize that they are our brothers. We must have sympathy with them, and anxiety about them; in a word, passion and compassion. May God grant these to us!”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, 154
“Mercy’ translates the Hebrew word hesed, which, as we have seen, refers to right conduct within a relationship. God’s people have been brought together into a covenant relationship with God, and so have an obligation to one another and to society as a whole.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 246
“The problem of mercy is this: how can a hoy, just, and righteous God show mercy and kindness to sinners who deserve the judgment that he, as god, is obligated to execute?”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 128
Methodism
“By 1800 the earlier pattern of spectacular expansion resumed. Fifty years later more than one in three Americans who belonged to a church were Methodist.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 217
Ministers
“Perhaps, for the sake of convenience and clarity, we should call these people ‘recognized gospel workers’-not recognized because they are more spiritual or closer to God or have special powers, but recognized and chosen by other elders and leaders to fulfil a particular role of stewardship, like the captain of a team or the board of directors of a company.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 132
Ministry
“For us to turn aside from our life-work, and to seek distinction elsewhere, is absolute folly; a blight will be upon us, we shall not succeed in anything but the pursuit of God’s glory.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 69
“Did Spurgion believe in running from trouble? Absolutely not. “Do no be afraid of hard work for Christ; a terrible reckoning awaits those who have an easy time in the ministry, but a great reward is in reserve for those who endure all things for the elect’s sake.” He believed strongly in a lifetime commitment to vocational ministry based on one’s sure and certain calling and a sacred determination to see through the end.”
Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 69
“Spurgeion said that it is most “important to the minister that his piety be vigorous. He is not to be content with being equal to the rank and file of Christians, he must be a mature and advanced believer; for the ministry of Christ has been truly called ‘the choicest of his choice, the elect of his election, a church picked out of the church.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 69
“Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that in many churches, maintaining and improving the trellis constantly takes over from tending the vine.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 10
If the real work of God is people work-the prayerful speaking of his word by one person to another-then the jobs are never all taken. The opportunities for Christians to minister personally to others are limitless.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 27
“The growth of the gospel happens in the lives of people, not in the structures of my church.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p.. 82
“The point of using this sort of tool is not to turn Christian ministry into a set of lists but to help us focus on people-because ministry is about people, not programs. If we never think about people individually and work out where they are up to, and how and in what area they need to grow, how can we minister in anything other than a haphazard, scattergun way? It’s like a doctor thinking to himself, “Seeing each of my patients individually and diagnosing their illnesses is just too difficult and time consuming. Instead, I’m going to get all my patients to assemble together each week, and I’ll give them all the same medicine. I’ll vary the medicine a bit from week to week, and it will at least do everybody some good. And it’s much more efficient and manageable that way.”
“Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p.88
“But if we pour all our time into caring for those who need help, the stable Christians will stagnate and never be trained to minister to others, the non-Christians will stay unevangelized, and a rule of thumb will quickly emerge within the congregation: If you want the pastor’s time and attention, get yourself a problem.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 111
“Two themes emerge as we consider the ministry of Paul’s co-workers. Firstly, although they are sometimes the ‘ministers of Paul’-that is, agents acting on Paul’s behalf between himself and the churches-they are also the ministers of Christ. They are doing the work and budding of the Lord, not just of Paul. Secondly, the ministry they undertake is not just any service or help, but a service that is related to the spread of the word and the building of the church.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 114
“The aim of Christian ministry is not to build attendance on Sunday, bolster the membership role, get more people into small groups, or expand the budget (as important and valuable as all of these things are!). The fundamental goal is toe make disciples who make other disciples, to the glory of God. We want to see people converted from being dead in their transgressions to being alive in Christ; and ,once converted, to be followed up and established, to be trained in knowledge, godliness and skills so that they will in turn make disciples of others.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne., The Trellis and the Vine, p. 152
“Richard Baxter said that “All churches either rise or fall as the ministry doth rise or fall, not in riches and worldly grandeur, but in knowledge, zeal and ability for their work.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 17
”God kills our ministries when they get into the center of things. Our ministries are not redemptive; only the ministry of Jesus is redemptive.”
“God raises up our ministries on their proper ground in the ministry of the resurrected and ascended Jesus, and we minister henceforth in the joy and hope of his life.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 11
“The resurrection of Jesus demands the resurrection of ministry from the mood of Holy Saturday for the reason that Easter Sunday and Ascension Thursday mean the resurrection and continuance of Jesus’ ministry. Maybe that statement needs to be put more sharply: apart from Jesus’ continuing ministry the church has no ministry whatsoever.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 19
“Without a clear, central theological understanding of the present ministry of Jesus and our participation in it, all the rest is just “shopkeeping.” Without doubt, ecclesiastical “shopkeeping” is a good, indeed, a necessary skill to learn; for the lack of it our ministries will suffer from various functional incompetencies, and that is clergy malpractice. There is a deeper malpractice to avoid: failing to be a participant by the Spirit in Jesus’ continuing ministry,”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 45
“The vicarious humanity of Christ Jesus has been replaced by the vicarious humanity of the minister! In this case we will likely find ourselves defending our ministry as “incarnational.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 46
“Sometimes we can get our sights so fixed on Jesus and on what he does for us that we forget that we too have hard work ahead, spiritual work and theological work.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 57
“In all that we do the central, defining task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 79
Miracles
“The New Testament without the miracles would be far easier to believe. But the trouble is, it would not be worth believing.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 103
“Without the miracles we should have a teacher: with the miracles we have a Savior.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 104
“Norman Geisler, a leading American Christian apologist, puts it this way: ‘belief in miracles does not destroy the integrity of scientific methodology, only its sovereignty. It says in effect that science does not have sovereign claim to explain all events as naturea, but only those that are regular, repeatable, and / or predictable.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 106
“The Gospels also place the miracles in the centre and not at the periphery of his ministry, and they describe his wonderful deeds as signs of the kingdom of God that was arriving.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 126
“I believe in miracles, but I also believe they are miracles, meaning rare exceptions to the normal laws that govern the planet”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 87
“Many today who deny the existence of angels, demons, and a miracle-working God base their unbelief, not on verifiable evidence of their nonexistence (which is unobtainable), but on the fact that people around them, or people who taught them at school or university, share that unbelief. One mark of a scientist is to be open-minded.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 44
Mission
“I needed to first wrestle with Jesus like Jacob wrestled with Jesus and then discover what Jesus’ mission was for Seattle and repent of everything I thought and did that was not congruent with his mission for our city.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 44
“Wagner affirms that the meaning of mission, in the context of the kingdom of God, is a holistic ministry. “Since this is what God sends us to do, this is what mission is all about.” Mission thus “aims for the good of the whole person.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 150
“I repeat that fulfilling the cultural mandate is not optional for Christians. It is God’s command and a part of Christian mission. But it is true that, when a choice must be made on the basis of availability of resources or of value judgments, the biblical indication is that the evangelistic mandate must take priority. Nothing is or can be as important as saving souls from eternal damnation.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of church Growth, p. 157
Missions
“It is amazing and absurd to me,” said a Tennessee pastor, “that some pastors refuse to lead their churches to greater mission giving and support because it will take away from their ocal ministries. They act like they serve a God of limited resources. God always blesses those churches that give resources out of faith and trust!”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 129
“Christians are like manure: spread them out and they help everything grow better, but keep them in one big pile and they stink horribly.”
-Source: Francis Chan, Crazy Love, p. 168
“A proper consideration of mission in the OT cannot limit discussion to its root meaning of ‘sending’ or ‘being sent’. Mission for god’s people particularly in the OT, is participation in God’s mission, which, as we have seen, has as its goal the revelation of his holiness and glory throughout the whole created order.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 319-320
“Vioth Ramachandra, the IFES Secretary for Dialogue and Social Engagement in Asia, says, “Missionary outreach, both to Jews and to pagans, was not an activity tagged on later to a faith that was basically ‘about’ something else; rather it flowed from the very logic of the death and resurrection of Jesus.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 101
“The service of God and mankind is not a local thing in my view; wherever it appears to me I may perform it to the greatest advantage, there I hope I should choose to fix my residence, whether in Hanover, Princeton, or even Lapland or Japan.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 16
“As Ebenzer Porter affirmed:
The God of this universe is not dependent on instruments . . . He could fill the world with Bibles by a word,-or give every inhabitant of the globe a knowledge of the gospel by inspiration. But he chooses that human agency should be employed in printing and reading and explaining the Scriptures. God is able to sanctify the four hundred millions of Asia, in one instant, without the agency of missionaries; but we do not expect him to do this without means, any more than we expect him to rain down food from the clouds, or turn stones into bread.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 126
“”1792: Among several hundred African Canadians transported from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone is the Baptist preacher David George who immediately founds the first Baptist churches on the African continent. This same year the English Baptist William Carey publishes a dramatic appeal for missionary outreach and midwives a new Baptist Missionary Society that in the next year dispatches Carey with John Thomas and their families to the Indian subcontinent as its first missionaries.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 193
“The Christian without a missionary heart is an anomaly.”
-Source: Colin Marshall, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 52
“There are more Presbyterians in Ghana than in the United States and Scotland combined. Korea has gone from 1 percent to 40 percent Christian in a hundred years.
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 6
“At the current rate of growth, within thirty years Christians will constitute 30 percent of the Chinese population of 1.5 billion.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 41
Missional
“Not all who use this term “missional” are missional. Some think of “missional” only as support of missions elsewhere in the world while neglecting their own neighborhoods. But missional churches seek to engage their immediate cultures as well as the ethne of the world. Giving to missions or going on short-term mission trips-as improtant as these ae-do not fulfill our missional calling, nor does focusing exclusively on the church and its community while ignoring the rest of the world. Though the church’s immediate context is vitally important, the churches that are missional also focus on opportunities beyond their doorsteps to make Christ know. They involve the members in the ministry and mission of church and gospel. As stated in the most recent Leadership Journal, “Missional churches activate laity to carry out God’s mission in their various spheres of life.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 182
“Without intentionality, churches become less contextual, less indigenous, and less evangelistically effective over time.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Sourthern Baptist Identity, p. 185
“While missiology concerns itself with study about missions and its methodologies, missional thinking focuses on doing missions in every geographical location.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 186
“Missional” means building upon what we have been and is not a rejection of what we have been doing. To avoid confusion, let’s be clear: when a “missional” leader states that we must “engage and transform the culture for the cause of the gospel,” that is not a rejection of the “soul-winner” who states that we must “win the lost to Jesus.” They may be communication the same objective. The objective is the glory of God through a kingdom focus that results in the salvation of the lost. We must realize that our move toward a missional denomination is one that embraces the best of our identity, celebrates the missional work of the past, and catapults us toward a cultural engagement upon the North American continent that will see the salvation of Christ extend to the people groups of our communities.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 187
“The North American Mission Board (NAMB) has officially adopted this language to define a missional church: “A missional church is a biblically faithfully and culturally appropriate reproducing community of disciples sent on mission by God to advance his kingdom among all peoples.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 191
Missional Leaders
“Missional leaders and churches are ones that are thinking and acting like missionaries.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 56
“We need to adapt our church to the changing culture in which God has placed us.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Church, p. 56
Missionalogy
“But mission very easily becomes one activity among others in church llife. It sits on the agenda alongside a list of other items, vying for attention. Or it is left to the enthusiasts to get on with it at the edge of church life. For some churches mission seems a distant dream as they struggle to keep the institution of church afloat. Putting on a weekly service is challenge enough.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 86
“We need “missionary theology” rather than a “theology of mission.” Mission can no longer be looked at as one branch of theology. All theology must be missionary in its orientation.”
-Source: Tim Cheser and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, P. 86
Modesty
“Any biblical discussion of modesty begins by addressing the heart, not the hemline.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 119
“How does a woman discern the sometimes fine line between proper dress and dressing to be the center of attention? The answer starts in the intent of the heart. A woman should examine her motives and goals for the way she dresses. Is her intent to show the grace and beauty of womanhood? . . .Is it to reveal a humble heart devoted to worshiping God? Or is it to call attention to herself, and flaunt her . beauty? Or worse, to attempt to allure men sexually? A woman who focuses on worshiping God will consider carefully how she is dressed, because her heart will dictate her wardrobe and appearance.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 121
“There’s an inseparable line between your heart and your clothes. Your clothes say something about your attitude?”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 121
Momentum
“Talent-plus people don’t wait for everything to be perfect to move forward. They don’t wait for all the problems or obstacles to disappear. They don’t wait until their fear subsides. They take initiative. They know a secret that good leaders understand: momentum is their friend.”
– John Maxwell, Talent is Never Enough, p.47
Monasticism
“Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 47
Montheism
“A second problem is that where the movement to a form of monotheism occurs in other contexts, it is not gradual: it comes by revolution not evolution. While it is true that Israel’s faith is based on direct encounter with God, and its development might not follow patterns seen elsewhere, the evolutionary model sees the movement driven by human factors rather than divine revelation, and the lack of evidence of such development from ploytheism to monotheism elsewhere is a serious weakness in the evolutionary argument.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 95
Moral, Therapertic Deism
“There is the tendency to make God a supporting character in our own life movie rather than to be rewritten as new characters in god’s drama of redemption. Assimilating the disruptive, surprising, and disorienting power of the gospel to the felt needs, moral crises, and socio-political headlines of our passing age, we end up saying very little that the world could not hear from Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, or Oprah.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 18
“My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for “relevant” quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than know, worshiped, and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved form God’s judgment by God himself; and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can pug into for the power we need to be all that we can be.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 19
Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism
“Moralistic, therapeutic deism”
- God created the world.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 41
“When our churches assume the gospel, reduce it to slogans, or confuse it with moralism and hype, it is not surprising that the type of spirituality we fall back on is moralistic, therapeutic deism. In a therapeutic worldview, the self is always sovereign. Accommodating this false religion is not love-either of God or neighbor-but sloth, depriving human beings of genuine liberation and depriving God of the glory that is his due. The self must be dethroned. That’s the only way out.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 247
Morality
“There are a great many other motives for morality, but in my mind they are less than noble. Morality for love’s sake, for the sake of God and the sake of others, seems more beautiful to me than morality for morality’s sake, morality to build a better nation here on earth, morality to protect our schools, morality as an identity for one of the parties in the culture war, one of the identities in the lifeboat.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 185
“The moral message I have heard is often a message of bitterness and anger because our morality, our culture, is being taken over by people who disregard our ethical standards. None of it was connected, relationally, to God at all.
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 185
“The Rev. Jesse Jackson, noted religious and political leader, challenged that belief. Jackson was found to have fathered a child out of wedlock. When it became public knowledge two years later, Jackson was asked whether his moral influence had been compromised. Jackson responded that he did not think that his moral leadership had been affected.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 83
“All human beings have moral feelings. We call it a conscience.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 152
Moralism
“Like the liberals of yesteryear, a growing number of evangelical leaders are fond of setting Jesus’s teaching on the kingdom-especially the Sermon on the Mount-over against the more doctrinal emphasis found especially in Paul’s epistles. Many celebrate this emphasis on Christ-as-example rather than Christ-as-Redeemer as the harbinger of a new kind of Christian, but is it really an old kind of moralist?”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christliss Christianity, p. 25
“When the focus becomes “What would Jesus do?” instead of “What has Jesus done?” the labels no longer matter.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 26
“Preachers these days are expected to major in “Christian moral renovation.” They are expected to provide a practical to-do- list, rather than announce, “It is finished.” They are expected to do something other than, more than, placarding before their congregation’s eyes Christ’s finished work, preaching a full absolution solely on the basis of the complete righteousness of Another. The irony is, of course, that when preachers cave in to this pressure, moral renovation does not happen. To focus on how I’m doing, more than on what Christ has done, is Christian narcissism (an oxymoron if I ever heard one)-the poison of self-absorption which undermines the power of the gospel in our lives.”
-source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 117
Motivation
The Atlanta Constitution tells the remarkable story of Deborah Kemp. When a thug attempted to steal her car after she left it to pay for gas, Debora Kemp fought back. The 34-year old woman was dragged for several blocks as she clung to the door and steering wheel of the moving car. Kemp eventually pulled the man from her car and beat him with an auto anti theft device until he apologized and begged her to stop. Kemp suffered torn pants and bloody knees. The suspect suffered one broken leg, one fractured leg, and head injuries.
Kemp’s motivation was love. No, not love for her car but for her six-month-old daughter who was in the backseat.
Source: That Reminds Me Of A Story…Inquest Ministries
“Motivations are nearly always mixed. If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 237
Music
“The main purpose of singing in church is not to express our inner experience, piety, and zeal but to serve each other by making “the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 229
Mystery
“The Christian faith is mysterious. But when we talk about Christianity, we don’t start with mystery.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 37
N
Nationalism
“Once we leave the fight over our country’s future and enter the spiritual battle for the hearts and souls of the lost, the church will flourish, and the kingdom of God will grow. God is not in the business of brokering for power over a nation; He is in the business of loving the unloved and pulling sheep out of crags and bushes.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 194
Natural Theology
“ I think people in our culture know unavoidably that there is a God, but they are repressing what they know.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p.151
New Covenant
“The Ratification of the New Covenant. Realizing that our New Testament story is chapter two of their story, consider Matthew 26:27-28. The scene is Jerusalem, the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry and his last night of freedom. It is the Passover, and this first-century rabbi and his band of twelve disciples have gathered to celebrate the ritual meal. This was a hallowed night for the Jews. From youngest to old es, greatest to least, every Jew everywhere was required to gather and commemorate the miracles of the exodus. Most specifically, they were commanded to remember that great and terrible night when the blood of a spotless lamb marked who would live and who would die, when the tenth plague “passed over” the houses of the Israelites but struck down the firstborn of Egypt. It was during this “Last Supper” that Jesus instituted the Communion meal: “And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, be gave it to them saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
Do you hear the echo of Exodus 24? Moses said, “this is the blood of the covenant:, Jesus said, “this is My blood of the covenant.” This echo is not coincidental, nor was it missed by its first-century audience. Rather, on that Passover night Jesus announced to his disciples that something greater than the exodus was about to transpire. By means of oath and sacrifice, another rabble of slaves was about to be transformed into God’s covenant-people (cf. 1 Pet 2:10). As Moses sprinkled the blood of bulls upon the people of Israel in order to ratify the Sinai covenant, so Jesus distributed his own blood that night to ratify a new covenant. And this time the oaths were not sealed by “the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer,” but by the blood of God the Son(cf. Heb9:13-15). Moreover, the slaves who were freed from their bondage by his new covenant were not delivered merely from Egypt, but from death itself. Thus we see that the safe and structured communion meal that you and I participate in according to our liturgies and traditions is actually a most abbreviated representation of the ratification of the new covenant. And in this new covenant the Lord of the cosmos has served as both suzerain and sacrifice.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 89
New Measures
“But while their establishment of camp meetings and of altar calls arose from the best of motives, it was the result of an erroneous theology and it led to a system with consequences that they failed to see. If camp meetings and altar calls could produce the same number of ‘converts’ as revivals, what was the difference between them.’ Could a revival ritual replace real revival? Arminianism shielded the Methodists from appreciating the force of such questions. They believed that God had set his own seal on their work, and to question such success appeared to them akin to blasphemy, So in due course, ‘The seemingly miraculous new revival technique was disseminated throughout the length and breadth of the southern states.’ Revivalism had been born.”
-Source; Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 190
“It was a question of being for or against, not emotion, but rather the adoption of means, in addition to preaching and prayer, to promote emotion. There was no disagreement over whether or not hearers under the power of the truth ought to feel and be disturbed and moved, but should methods not mentioned in Scripture be employed to induce a response in those hearing the gospel.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 243
New Testament Studies
“The best model for New Testament scholarship is, in my opinion, the boomerang.”
The center is both the starting point and the destination for all the journeys that radiate from it.”
“For the student of the New Testament the New Testament is the center.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, P. 7
New Testament
“The twentieth century has seen many attempts to reconstruct the New Testament according to a proper scientific plan. The trouble is that the New Testament grew organically, like the old town centers before they were redeveloped. If the early Christians were to come back today, they would not recognize the bulldozed, reconstructed to New Testament some scholars have created.”
_Source: David R. Hall,The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 36
“In my opinion the belief of people in the first century in angels, demons, and miracles has more claim to be called “scientific” than the unbelief of people in the twentieth century in angels, demons, and miracles. Their belief was based on evidence. For example, in the case of the man called Legion described in the gospels, the evidence consisted of the behavior of the man before he met Jesus and the change in his behavior after he met Jesus. The belief that Jesus had cast out demons was the most reasonable available explanation of this evidence.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 43
“Trying to distinguish Jewish and Greek elements in a first-century document is like trying to taste the separate ingredients when eating a cake.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 72
O
Obedience
Arabian horses go through rigorous training in the deserts of the Middle East. The trainers require absolute obedience from the horses, and test them to see if they are completely trained. The final test is almost beyond the endurance of any living thing. The trainers force the horses to do without water for many days. Then he turns them loose and of course they start running toward the water, but just as they get to the edge, ready to plunge in and drink, the trainer blows his whistle. The horses who have been completely trained and who have learned perfect obedience, stop. They turn around and come pacing back to the trainer. They stand there quivering, wanting water, but they wait in perfect obedience. When the trainer is sure that he has their obedience he gives them a signal to go back to drink.
Now this may be severe but when you are on the trackless desert of Arabia and your life is entrusted to a horse, you had better have a trained obedient horse. We must accept God’s training and obey Him.
-Source Unknown
It is said that on his retreat from Greece after his great military expedition there, King Xerxes boarded a Phoenician ship along with a number of his Persian troops. But a fearful storm came up, and the captain told Xerxes there was no hope unless the ship’s load was substantially lightened. The king turned to his fellow Persians on deck and said, “It is on you that my safety depends. Now let some of you show your regard for your king.” A number of the men bowed to Xerxes and threw themselves overboard!
Lightened of its load, the ship made it safely to harbor. Xerxes immediately ordered that a golden crown be given to the pilot for preserving the king’s life — then ordered the man beheaded for causing the loss of so many Persian lives!
– Source: Today In The Word, July 11, 1993
“I felt as if Heaven, and earth, and hell, might all gaze upon me, for I was not ashamed, there and then, to own myself a follower of the Lamb. My timidity was washed away: … I have never felt anything of the kind since. Baptism also loosed my tongue….I lost a thousand fears in that Reiver Lark, and found that “in keeping His commandments there is great reward.:
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 26
“As followers of Christ, our greatest delight will always be found in our obedience to his Word.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 75
”
“To disobey the words God speaks is simply to disobey God himself, and to refuse to submit to the commands of God utters is simply to break one’s relationship with him. Thus (we may say) God has invested himself in his words, or we could say that God has so identified himself with his words that whatever someone does to God’s words (whether it is to obey or to disobey) they do directly to God himself.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 27
“His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). Jesus’ commandment has nothing to do with forced spiritual cures. Jesus demands nothing from us without giving us the strength to comply. Jesus’ commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 39
“The call goes out, and without any further ado the obedient deed of the one called follows. The disciple’s answer is not a spoken confession of faith in Jesus. Instead, it is the obedient deed.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 57
“If you reject God’s commanding word, you will not receive God’s gracious word. How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 66
“The only thing which exists besides action is inaction. There is no such thing as intending to act and not doing it. Those who treat the word of Jesus any other way except by acting on it assert that Jesus is wrong: they say no to the Sermon on the Mount; they do not do his word.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 182
Oppression
“Oppression is not just any condition of servitude. It is denying people their dignity as God’s image bearers.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 174
Opinion
“Thomas Jefferson, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 107
“Search as we may, we don’t find in the Bible any example or concept of an inner call to ministry. There are some who are called directly and dramatically by God (like Moses and Elijah), but it is not a matter of discerning an inner feeling.
“Almost universally in the New Testament, the recognizing or ‘setting apart’ of gospel workers is done by other elders, leaders and pastors.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 133
Original Sin
“How does the preacher talk about the concept of depravity or Adamic sin in the twenty-first century? Using the language of addiction, a newborn is addicted to crack because the baby was conceived and delivered during the nine-month period in which the birth mother consistently took crack cocaine. The baby did nothing to become an addict; the baby just inherited an addiction from the mother. Adam was a sin addict, and the human race inherited a sin addiction from him. The second Adam, Christ, came to take the sin predicament by becoming what we were-sin! The theological word depravity is exchanged for the more relevant, comprehensible term addiction without sacrificing the original theological intention. A word must mean what it means, not what we want it to mean.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 86-87
Orthodoxy
“Not all discourse that employs Christian vocabulary is proper Christian discourse any more than a sentence using nothing but English terms, such as “He don’t do no wrong to nobody.” qualifies as a proper English sentence.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 12
“E.D. Hirsch points out, “Certainty is not the same thing as validity, and knowledge of ambiguity is not necessarily ambiguous knowledge.” In other words, just because you are sure about something doesn’t make you right, and just because you know you could be wrong doesn’t mean you are.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 83
“Nobody objects to a non doctrinal Christianity because there is nothing to object to.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 107-108
“The word orthodoxy literally means “right oinion.” In the context of Christian faith, orthodoxy is shorthand for getting your opinion or thoughts about God right.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 14
“A return to orthodoxy has to be more than a return to a way of life or to cherished traditionsl Of course teh Christian faith leads to living in specific ways. And it does join us to a specific community. And it does involve tradition. All this is good. It’s important. But it has to be more than tradition. It has to be about a person-the historical and living person of Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 15
“Some people think of orthodoxy as something lifeless and restrictive-a paint-by-numbers guide that stifles creativity. But Paul saw it as a treasure. It wasn’t a canvas for self-expression. It was a “good deposit,” something so precious it needed to be guarded and protected.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 220-221
“You and I need to be willing to contend for truth. But there’s a fine line between contending for truth and being contentious.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 222
“The message of Christian orthodoxy isn’t that I’m right and someone else is wrong. It’s that I am wrong and God is filled with grace. I am wrong, and yet God has made a way for me to be forgiven and accepted and loved for eternity. I am wrong, and yet God gave his Son, Jesus, to die in place and receive my punishment. I am wrong, but through faith in Jesus, I can be made right before a holy God.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 231
Orthopraxy
“It is worth stressing that Paul wants them to imitate not only his doctrine but also his way of life, Paul never abstracts ethics from doctrine, because a right understanding of the gospel always leads to a changed life.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 73-74
P
Pain
“How do you think Noah feels when the rains come again?” She held out her hand, catching some droplets. “Probably scared out of his mind, right? But God has created the rainbow as a sign of his promise never to destroy the earth with water again. Do you see the redemption here? It’s precisely in the rains that God gives his sign – a mix of glorious light and dreaded water. Noah doesn’t have to fear the rain again. In the Genesis story, It’s a brief glimmer of hope before things go bad again.” Caleb held out his hands to feel the rain as well. He understood the power of this story: God did it with Jesus, taking his greatest pain for the greatest healing on the planet. Whatever fear he might feel, he could walk in faith knowing that rainbows only appear in the rain.”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p 97
Paganism
“A remarkable change has come about within the last seventy-five years. The change is nothing less than the substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant view of life. Seventy-five years ago, Western civilization despite inconsistencies, was still predominantly Christian; to-day it is predominantly pagan.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 65
“Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. Very different is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 65
“In pagan religions, knowing a god’s name gave access to his or her power and could be used i a magical way to manipulate the deity. God forbids his name to be abused in that way. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD, your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name (Exod. 20:7).
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 82
“Paganism is the belief that there is no essential distinction between Creator and creation.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 227
“Paganism does not see the crucial distinction between God the Creator and the rest of his creation, including humanity.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 227
Parables
“Jesus’ use of the hearing formula is not novel but in line with the Old Testament prophetic pattern. In the majority of Synoptic uses, the phrase “the one having ears, let him hear” and close variations (cf Mt 13:9-17, 43, and the almost identical form in Mk 4-9, 23: Lk 8:8) is a direct development of Isaiah 6: 9-10 and has the dual function of signifying that revelation in parables is intended to enlighten the genuine remnant but blind those who, though they confess outwardly to be part of the covenant community, are really unbelievers and idolatrous (Mt 7:15-23;l cr. Mt 13:9-16 and the use in conjunction with a parable in Lk 14:35; see also Mt 11:15 in connection with Isaianic prophecy).”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 246
Past
“we can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson
Pastor
“Intentionality means that various people will have very specific responsibility for different aspects of the disciple-making strategy. Ultimately it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure that intentions get executed.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape of Faith To Come, p. 305
“We are the stewards of sound words and the guardians of doctrinal treasure that has been entrusted to us at the very core of our calling as pastors. The pastor who is no theologian is no pastor.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 114
“It is an easy thing to make a noise in the world,’ said Davies, ‘to flourish and harangue, to dazzle the crowd and set them all agape; but deeply to imbibe the Spirit of Christianity, to maintain a secret walk with God, to be holy, as he is holy – this is the labour, this is the work.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 45
Pastoring
“This should be no surprise after an examination of a cathartic event in Peter’s life recorded in the twenty-first chapter of John’s gospel. Commentators generaly agree that this event “is meant to show us Peter as completly restored to his position of leadership. After his threefold denial of the Lord, he returned to fishing in Galiee. It was on the shores of the Sea of Galilee that the risen Savior appeared to the disciples for the third time since his resurrection. Jesus adked Peter, “Do you love me?” not once, but three times, corresponding to his three denials. While commentators dispute the significance of the change in Greek words for “love” in the exchange (agapao and phileo), of great interest in our understanding of the importance of shepherding is the three-fold charge Jesus issued in response to Peter’s affirmation of affection and loyalty.”
“After each reaffirmation of Peter’s loyalty, Jesus responded with a command for him to heed. Have you ever thought about this? While there were any number of aspects of the work of leadership that Jesus could have stressed, each time he used terminology that brought Peter’s attention to the imperative of caring for the flock. In the first and third instances, Jesus used the verb to “feed” (Greek boskein). In the second instance, he used the verb to “shepherd” (Greek poimainein). Trench observes that “boskein . . .is simply ‘to feed’,but poimainein involves much more;the whole office of the shepherd, the guiding, guarding, folding of the flocks, as well as finding nourishment for it.” Morris adds, “Most people see the variation as no more than stylistic.” In all three imperatives the risen Christ calls Peter to teh work of caring for the flock. The response of Jesus to Peter’s affirmations of love and affection could have included three different charges. For example, he could have said “preach the Gospel,” “make disciples,” or “love one another” or any other combination of imperatives. Instead, when he was in the process of restoring Peter, he responded in each case with imagery related to shepherding the flock: “Tend My lambs,” “Shepherd My sheep,” and “Tend My sheep” (John 21:15-17).
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 35
Pastors
“To be a successful pastor one must have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. . . . We must either get tough or we will be destroyed.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 169
“It is God’s prerogative, and his alone, to judge ministers, because everything is done according to his purposes.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p.
“Jeremiah is a picture of what it is like to be called into pastoral ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive, Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 30
Pastoral Leadership
“The most important gift a pastor can give is not to present at everything, but to be there for the right things.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 215
“Pastors and their best leaders needed to focus their time on two groups: leaders and the lost.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 216
” for Peterson the ministry is triangular in its configuration. The three most discussed lines of the pastoral ministry are preaching, teaching, and administration. These ministries get the most attention. The three angles that are less visible and less discussed are prayer, reading Scripture, and spiritual direction. these three angles of private ministry buttress, support, and enable the three lines of public ministry to become more effective.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 130-131
Pastoral Ministry
“Where the pastor is a trainer, there will be a focus on people ministering to people, rather than on structures, programs and events. Evangelism will take place as disciples reach out to the people around them; in their homes, their extended families, their streets, their workplaces, their schools, and so on.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 100
“In Baxter’s view, if the ministry was going to be reformed to focus on the conversion of souls, pastors had to devote extensive time to “the duty of personal catechizing and instructing the flock.:
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 105
Parenting
“Parenting depends more on who we are than on the techniques we master.”
-Source: Daniel Doriani, Putting the Truth to Work, 229.
“Christian parents whose children have departed from the teachings they were exposed to in their home need to cease punishing themselves and emulate the father of the prodigal son who kept the calf fatten in expectation of the return of his son.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 22
Passion
“Passion is more important than a plan.”
– John Maxwell
Pastor
“Nearly twenty years ago, C Peter Wagner boldly proclaimed a central church growth principle: “In America, the primary catalytic factor for growth in a local church is the pastor. In every growing, dynamic church I have studied, I have found a key person whom God is using to make it happen.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 185
“Though such non-leadership factors as demographics, the history of the church, and the age of the church will affect growth potential, pastoral leadership may prove decisive in moving a church from non-growth to growth.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 186
“To know himself is often the pastor’s first step in capturing God’s vision.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 187
“A leader who is willing to make the change to the biblical model must be prepared to withstand the waves of criticism and resistance that will often follow.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 199
Pastoral Care
“Pastoral care is therefore first and foremost the ability to address the gospel word to the problems of people’s lives.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 135
Pastoral Ministry
“But this, as I began to say, decrees for us in general what the preparation for the ministry is. It must be nothing less than the making of a man. It cannot be the mere training to certain tricks. It cannot be even the furnishing with abundant knowledge. It must be nothing less than the kneading and tempering of a man’s whole nature till it becomes of such a consistency and quality as to be capable of transmission. This is the largeness of the preacher’s culture. It is not for me, standing here or anywhere, to depreciate the work which our theological schools do. It certainly is not my place to undervalue the usefulness of lectures on preaching, or books on clerical manners. But noe of these things make the preacher. You are surprised, when you read the biographies of the most successful ministers, to see how small a part of their culture came fromm their professional schools. It is a real part but it is a small part. Everthing that ipens their lives towards God and towards man makes part of their education. The professional schoolsfurnish them. The whole world is the school that makes them.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 9
“You must ge the impulse, the delight, and the growing sacredness of your life out of your familiar work. You are lost as a preacher if its familiarity deadens and encrusts, instead of vitalizing and opening your powers. And it will all depend upon whether you do your work for your Master and His people or for yourself. The last kind of labor slowly kills, the first gives life more and more.
The real preparation of the preacher’s personality for its transmisssive work comes by teh opening of his life on both sides, towards the truth of God and towards the needs of man. To apprehend in all their intensity the wants and woes of men, to see the problems and dangers of this life, then ot know all through us that nothing but Christ and His Redemption can thoroughly satisfy these wants, that is what makes a man a preacher.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 26
“The disire to meet the needs of the people to whom we preach may easily become servility. Many a man has lost his manliness and won people’s contempt in a truly earnest desire to win their hearts for his great message.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 30
“It is that the preacher’s work is the most largely human of all occupations. It brings a man into more multiplied relations with his fellow-man than any other work. It is not the doing of certain specified duties. You will be sadly mistaken if you think it is, and try to set down in your contract with your parish just what yoou are to do, and where your duties are to stop.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 40
“And so the first business of the preacher is to conquer the tyranny of his moods, and to be always ready for his work.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 65
The two parts of a preacher’s work are always in rivalry. When you find that you can never sit down to study and write without the faces of the people, who you know need your care, looking at you from the paper; and yet you never can go out among your people without hearing your forsaken study reproaching you, and calling you home, you may easily come to believe that it would be good indeed if you could be one or other of two things, and not both; either a preacher or a pastor, but not the two together. But I assure you you are wrong. The two things are not two, but one.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p.76
“Be faithful, and do your best always for every congregation, and on every occasion.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 101
“However difficult it may be to do it, it is clearly recognized that men ought to preach so that the wisest and the simplest alike can understand and get the blessing.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lextures on preaching, p. 208
“Trust the people to whom you preach more than most ministers do. begin your ministry by being sure that if you give your pople your best thought, it will be none too good for them.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 208
“Whether the minister feels the congregation or not the congregation feels the minister. Often teh horse knows the rider better than the rider knows the horse.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching. 211
“The man who is always trying to attract attention and be brilliant counts the mere sober effort after absolute truth and justice dull. It is more tempting to be cleaver and unjust than to be serious and just. Every preacher has constantly to make his choice which he will be. It does not belong to men, like angels, to be “ever bright and fair” together. And the anxious desire for glitter is one of the signs of teh dislodgment of the clerical position in our time.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks< Lectures on preaching. p. 249
Pastors
“If Christianity is about public truth delivered through an external Word, then ministry and evangelism require educated leaders who can expound and apply that truth for the benefit of those under their care. By contrast, if Christianity is reduced to personal experience, then its leadership will consist of the most successful entrepreneurs and managers of extraordinary staged events.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 51
Pastor’s Family
“The minister stands in a unique position to the community. In no other man’s private affairs, his health, his comfort, his other, his freedom from financial care, are so many people so directly interested. It is not strange that that interest in him and care for him, which ought simply to put him where, without personal fear or personal indebtedness, he may bravely and independently be himself ans speak out his own soul, should often be corrupted into a poison of his manhood, and a temptation to his self-indulgence.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 67
Pathos
“Let no man despise the little bullet, for very often that is the one that kills the sin, and kills the sinner, too. So, brethren, it is not the bigness of the words you utter; it is the force with which you deliver them that decides what is to come of the utterance.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 75
Paul
“Paul discovered that an absolute and unconditional claim had been staked upon his life and destiny.”
“for Paul, faith does not consist in an aspiring after God, but faith is knowledge of the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ by way of a real relationship that takes one into the very life of God himself.”
“His experience of being encountered by the living Lord brought Paul into communion with him.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 52
Peace
“Ramses II”, who reigned for 67 years during the 19th dynasty of the 12th century BC, was known as “Ramses the Great”. His glories surpassed all other Pharaohs, and Egypt has reached an overwhelming state of prosperity during his reign. He is known in history as the builder of so many magnificent temples allover Egypt, and not only as a great warrior but also as a peacemaker. He was the first king in history to sign a peace treaty with his enemies – the Hittites – ending long years of wars and hostility. The treaty can still be considered a conclusive model, even when applying today’s standards.
-Source: http://www.arabworldbooks.com/ramses.htm
“The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us.”
“The peace of God, then, primarily and fundamentally, is a new relationship of forgiveness and acceptance-and the source from which it flows is propitiation.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 49
Pelagianism
“Pelagianism leads to Christless Christianity because we do not need a Savior but a good example. Gnosticism’s route to Christless Christianity is by turning the story of a good Crator, a fall into sin, and redemption through the incarnation, bloody death, and bodily resurrection of the Son into a myth of an evil creator, a fall into matter, and redemption by inner enlightenment. While the gospel calls us to look outside ourselves for salvation. Pelagianism and gnosticism combine to keep us looking to ourselves and within ourselves. Together, they have created the perfect storm: the American religion.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 165
People
“If growing the vine is about growing people, we need to help each person grow, starting from where they are at this very moment. There needs to be inefficient, individual people ministry, as well as the more efficient ministries that take place in larger groups.”
-Source: Colin Marshall, and Terry Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 89
Penal Substitution
“As I grow old I want to tell everyone who will listen: “I am so thankful for the penal substitutionary death of Christ. No hope without it.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 21
“Penal substitution, therefore, will not be focused properly till it is recognized that God’s redemptive love must not be conceived-misconceived, rather-as somehow trumping and displacing God’s retributive justice, as if the Creator-Judge simply decided to let bygones be bygones.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p.
“First, Jesus died in our place, taking our sin upon himself, and paying the penalty we deserved to pay for our sin. This is the cross as penal substitution.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 130
Persecution
“The age of the Reformation produced more martyrs than all of the persecutions in the early church.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 19
“It is by Christians’ being publicly disgraced, having to suffer and being put to death for the sake of Christ, that Christ himself attains visible form within his community. However, from baptism all the way to martyrdom, it is the same suffering and the same death. It is the new creation of the image of God through the crucified one.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 286
Perseverance
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
-Source: Thomas Edison
“A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.”
-Source: Richard Nixon
“Alexander Maclaren, “No matter how gifted be he will be a failure if he has not learned the secret of dogged persistence in often unwelcome toil.”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 130
Personal Devotion
“We ought to increase our capital stock. Are all the young brethren doing that? Are you increasing in gift and capacity? My brethren, do not neglect yourselves. I observe that some brethren grow, and others stand still, dwarfed and stunted. . . . The most needful and profitable labour is that which we spend upon our own mental and spiritual improvement.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 23
“One cannot lead in the Word unless he is plumbing the depths on a regular basis.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 111
Pharisaism
“Churches that are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, angry, moralistic people are extremely unattractive. Their public pronouncements are often highly judgmental, while internally such churches experience many bitter conflicts, splits, and divisions.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 185
Philosophy
“It is estimated that 10 to 25 percent of all the teachers and professors of philosophy in the country are orthodox Christians, up from less than 1 percent just thirty years ago.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. X
Plenary Verbal Inspiration
“As a matter of fact, the doctrine of plenary inspiration does not deny the individuality of the Biblical writers; it does not ignore their use of ordinary means for acquiring information; it does not involve any lack of interest in the historical situations which gave rise to the Biblical books. What it does deny is the presence of error in the Bible. It supposes that the Holy Spirit so informed the minds of the Biblical writers that they were kept from falling into the errors that mar all other books. The Bible might contain an account of a genuine revelation of God, and yet not contain a true account. But according to the doctrine of inspiration, the account is as a matter of fact a true account; the Bible is an “infallible rule of faith and practice.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 74
Pluralism
“Paul Griffiths and Delmas Lewis suggest that pluralists seem “to believe that you can only be nice to people if you agree with them. This seems clearly false. It is both logically and practically possible for us, as Christians, to respect and revere worthy representatives of other traditions while still believing-on rational grounds-that some aspects of their world-view are simply mistaken.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 93
“We have failed to connect the discipline of homiletics with the doctrine of pneumatolgy, and as a result we find ourselves “surprised by the Spirit” when he does move. Spirit-Led Preaching seeks to establish a positive theology of the Spirit’s role in preaching by building upon the theological fusion of Word and Spirit.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 3
Polity
So the members of a church congregation are democratic, perhaps, only in the sense that they work together as a congregation to try to understand God’s Word.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 226
“Short-term solutions of new programs and new ideas do not solve long-term problems with character and stability. Only by returning to the biblical model for church structure and life can the church confidently press on in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to biblical Christianity.”
-Source: Phil A. Newton, Elders in congregational Life, p. 99
Pop Culture
“ Pop culture is a disposable culture for those who agree to consume it. But because cultures are meant to be handed down to subsequent generations, because cultures are meant to be preserved, a consumable culture is really an anti-culture.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, Future Men, p. 162
“The central sin of pop culture is therefor a sin of omission. It displaces true culture, it does not itself adequately perform the functions of a culture, and sinners in a fallen world need to have the functions of a culture performed. Pop culture is a culture which does not enculturate, a culture which does not discipline. It is therefore an oxymoronic culture. In a biblical culture, a man expects his great-grandchildren to read what he has read, sing what he has sung, listen to what he has listened to. In an evanescent culture, like the one that surrounds us, a man expects to have all his “cultural” experiences buried with him.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, Future Men, p. 163
Postmodernism
“That’s really what postmodernism is: hyper-hyper-individualism.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey. A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 175
“Postmodernism began as a self-conscious reaction against the modernism of the Enlightenment, and especially against its unbounded confidence in reason, science, and progress. The postmodern mind rightly rejects this naive optimism; But it then goes further and questions the very validity of objective truth; suggesting that all so-called “truth” is purely subjective, being culturally conditioned; and therefore we all have our own truth, which has as much right to be respected as anybody else’s”
-Source-David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 18
“In the postmodern world of spiritual journey, authenticity and sincerity have become the currency of authority, and dysfunction, inconsistency, and idiosyncrasy are worn as badges of honor.”
“The first problem with the emergent view of journey is that it undermines the knowablility of God.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 35
“While the confidence of modernism’s belief in the attainment of objectivity has been rightly chastened in numerous respects, postmodernism in many subdisciplines of historiography has hardly triumphed and can be seen to be already on the wane. Attempts to deny any ability to recover the past and say true things about it simply do not correspond to the way in which historians actually operate. The most ideologically committed historians in fact most need to be able to say certain objectively true things about history in order to commend their ideologies persuasively.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 93
“Postmodern thinkers understand that the self is formed and strengthened through the exclusion of the Other–those who do not have the values or traits on which I base my own significance. We define ourselves by pointing to those whom we are not.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 187-188
Poverty
“Mrs. Jones, a mother who has lived in poverty all her life, described the experience of poverty like this: “In part it is about having no money, but there is more to poverty than that. It is about being isolated, unsupported, uneducated and unwanted. Poor people want to be included and not just judged and ‘rescued’ at times of crisis.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 79
“What I have discovered in my travels to more than forty countries with World Vision is that almost all poverty is fundamentally the result of a lack of options. It is not that the poor are lazier, less intelligent, or unwilling to make efforts to change their condition. Rather, it is that they are trapped by circumstances beyond their power to change.”
-Source: Richard Stearns, The Hole in our Gospel, p. 118
“I want you to imagine what would have happened in your lives if there had been no connection whatsoever between how hard you worked and the results you got, because that is exactly the situation faced by the more than one billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. The connection between how hard they work and the result they will get has been broken.”
-Source: Richard Streams, The Hole in our Gospel, p. 119
“Think about your own life. How successful would you or your family have been if you had lived in a place where there was no clean water and one-quarter of all children died before their fifth birthday? Imagine growing up constantly weak and malnourished, to the point where both your body and your mind became stunted. What if there had been had been no health care system, and therefore an absceded tooth or an ear infection was a death sentence?”
-Source: Richard Streams, The Hole in our Gospel, p. 120
“Today’s 1,125 billionaires hold more wealth than the wealth of half of the world’s adult population.
The wealthiest 7 people on earth control more wealth than the combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 most heavily indebted (poor) nations.
The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for just 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of the world ‘s income.
The top 20 percent of the world’s population consumes 86 percent of the world’s good.”
-Source: Richard Stearns, The Hole in our Gospel, p. 122
“It is not our fault that people are poor, but it is our responsibility to do something about it.”
-Source: Richard Stearns, The Hole in our Gospel, p. 123
Prayer
“Prayer is learned behavior, Nobody is born an expert at it. No one ever masters prayer.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 69 (used July 6, 2008)
“Prayer, then, follows a paradigm that reflects the taxis of the Trinity. The Father has absolute and uncontested supremacy, including authority over the Son, and the Spirit, so we pray to the Father. Yet we cannot come to the Father on our own; we have no right of access as finite creatures and as sinners. So we come only on the basis of Christ, the one who alone is Mediator between God and men. We come in the name of Jesus. We come by his authority, and because of his grace. As we pray, “In Jesus’ name, Amen,” at the end of our prayers, these are anything but throw-away words! This makes the difference between a prayer that reaches the Father and empty, vain words. So we come to the Father, in the name of Jesus but we are able to come only in the power of the Spirit. We need the Spirit within us, conforming us more and more to the likeness of Christ, to help us pray those things that are in keeping with the will of Christ.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 153
“When someone once asked Spurgeon the secret of his success, he replied, “My people pray for me.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 49
“Prayer-secret, fervent, believing prayer-lies at the root of all personal godliness,” writes William Carey.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 33
“God does nothing but in answer to prayer.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 34
“God will not use dead tools for working living miracles.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 48
“There is much more influence in prayer privately offered with one than in prayer publicly uttered i the class,-not more influence with God, of course, but more influence with the child.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 161
“Prayer and means must go together. Means without prayer-presumption! Prayer without means-hypocrisy!”
-Source: C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 161
“Make this your resolve, every one of you, that if men perish they shall not perish for want of your prayers, nor for want of your earnest and loving instructions.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 285
“Prayer is indispensable to understanding God’s vision for churches.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 178
“Spurgeon was said never to have prayed more than five minutes at a time, but he never went more than five minutes without praying.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 70
“the average Christian in the United States spends ten minutes per day with God; meanwhile, the average American spends over four hours a day watching television.”
-Source: Francis Chan, Crazy Love, p. 145
“Prayer is linked with the earliest expressions of religious faith (Gen. 4:26). As communication with God, it was, for the people of Israel, rooted in the covenant, and is offered on assumption that God hears and answers prayer (e.g. Pss 17:6;65:2;86:7;102:17; Prov. 15:29; Jer. 33:3) though there is too the concern and frustration of prayers that appear to go unheeded (e.g. Pss 22:2; 35:22-23; Lam. 3:8, 44). Prayer might be offered as an act of private devotion, or publicly as part of corporate worship. However, because it is the expression of an intimate and personal relationship with God, prayer is affected by those things that undermine the relationship: so, for example, unconfessed sin prevents prayers from being heard (e.g. Ps. 66:18-20; Prov. 15:29; 28:9; Lam. 3:41-44: Isa. 1:15: 59:2; cf. Jer. 7:16; 11:14), and prayers, as with all other aspects of worship, may be reduced to meaningless ritual (Isa. 1:15).
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 204
“Through prayer, the worshipper becomes a participant, with God. But the idea hat God is persuaded by our prayers to do what he might otherwise not do raises questions about his sovereignty. Prayer is not a means of imposing our will on God, though some might have seen it that way. On the other hand, if it makes no difference, then why do it? This is a tension we cannot easily resolve. God is sovereign; his purposes stand for ever. But in his grace and mercy, he also responds to the prayers of his people.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 206
“Prayer that throws believers in heartfelt need on God, with true concern for the salvation of sinners, will not go unanswered, Prayer of this kind precedes blessing, not because of any necessary cause and effect, but because such prayer secures an acknowledgement of the true Author of the blessing. And where such a spirit of prayer exists it is a sign that God is already intervening to advance his cause.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 129
“‘Does god always hear prayer and answer it?’ Asbury asked himself in his journal on one occasion. The other leaders in the Second Great Awakening would have agreed with the answer he recorded: ‘If it is in the Spirit’s groaning, and in purity of intention, and in faith, doubtless he does.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 130
“Evangelicals had always believed that divine blessing was related to the prayer and the preaching of the gospel. It was not to be passively awaited.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 247
“When a doctoral student at Princeton asked, “What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?” Albert Einstein replied, “Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 11
“Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn’t act the way we want God to, and why I don’t act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 17
“Prayer raises my sight beyound the petty – or, as in Job’s case, dire- circumstances of daily life to afford a glimpse of that lofty perspective. In God’s presence I feel small because I am small.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 22
“When I shift direction, I realize that God already cares about my concerns- my uncle’s cancer, world peace, a broken family, a rebellious teenager-more than I do.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 23
“Prayer, and only prayer, restores my vision to one that more resembles God.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 24
“Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 25
“Whether it takes the form of words or not, does not mean anything to God, only to ourselves,” he adds, “Only he who is helpless can truly pray.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 33
“Prayer allows a place for me to bring my doubts and complaints – in sum, my ignorance – and subject them to the blinding light of a reality I cannot comprehend but can haltingly learn to trust.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 40
“We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” wrote C.S. Lewis”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 42
“Why pray?” in one sentence, it would be, “Because Jesus did.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 50
“Prayer is a subversive act performed in a world that constantly calls faith into question.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 51
“Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.”
“A friend of mine, an attractive young woman of mixed race, goes each day to visit teh most violent prison in South Africa. Her efforts there have shown remarkable results in calming the violence, twice prompting the BBC to produce a documentary on her. In trying to explain those results, Joanna said to me, “Well, of course, Philip, God was already present in the prison. I just had to make him visible.” I have come to see prayer along the same lines. God is already present in my life and all around me; prayer offers the chance to attend and respond to that presence.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 53
“The quieter the mind,” said Meister Eckhart, “the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is.” An elk does not have to work at having a quiet mind; it feels content standing in a field all day with its fellow elk, chewing grass. A lover does not have to work at attending to the beloved. I prayed for, and in fleeting moments received, that kind of absorbed attention to God.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 54
‘I hope your stay is a blessed one,” said the monk who showed the visitor to his cell. “If you need anything, let us know and we’ll teach you how to live without it.” We learn to pray b praying, and two concentrated hours a day taught me much.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 54
“Though my needs may drive me to prayer,there I come face-to-face with my greatest need: an encounter with God’s own self.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 55
“The main purpose of prayer is not to make life easier, nor to gain magical powers, but to know God.” “Conversation, not silence, builds relationships.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 56
“The way Jesus talked, prayer made everything else possible. Jesus seemed fully at ease with the Father and at unease with the world.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 57
“For spiritual nourishment Jesus relied on the very thing we rely on: prayer.”
“He already cares for the things we pray about….He has simply been waiting for us to care about them with hm. When we prya, we stand by God and look with him toward those people and problems.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 58
“To discount prayer, to conclude that it does not matter, means to view Jesus as deluded.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 80
“Where was it that Jesus sweat great drops of blood? Not in Pilate’s Hall, nor on his way to Golgotha. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane. There he “offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7). Had I been there and witnessed that struggle, I would have worried about the future. “If he is so broken up when all he is doing is prying,” I might have said, “what will he do when he faces a real crisis? Why can’t he approach this ordeal with calm confidence of his three sleeping friends?” Yet, when the test came, Jesus walked to the cross with courage, and his three friends fell apart and fell away.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 86-87
“God invites argument and struggle, and often yields, especially when the point of contention is God’s mercy. “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance,” writes Archbishop Trench; “it is laying hold of his highest willingness.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 95
“Prayer is cooperation with God, a consent that opens the way for grace to work.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 103
“The Christian is not to ask whether this or that event happened because of a prayer. He is rather to believe that all events without exception are answers to prayer in the sense that whether they are grantings or refusals the prayers of all concerned and their needs have all been taken into account. All prayers are heard, though not all prayers are granted.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 104
“When I pray, coincidences happen,” said Archbishop William Temple; “when I don’t, they don’t.” Rather than dissecting such incidents, I try to use them as building blocks of faith, to see them as “God-incidents” instead of coincidences.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 106
“Be slow to pray,” cautions Eugen Peterson. “Praying puts us at risk of getting involved with God’s conditions. . . .Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests. And when we realize what is going on, it is often too late to go back.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 109
“Karl Barth wrote, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 118
“The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for,” as Sir Thomas More expressed it.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 125
“The Bible depicts God as being deeply affected by people, both positively and negatively. God “delights in those who fear him, who9 put their hope in his unfailing love.” Yet, as the prophets tell, at times God also feels wearied by disobedience and eventually God’s patience reaches an end point: “For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 133
“In reply, Lewis said that you could use the same argument against any human activity, not just prayer. “Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, they’ll come clean without your washing them. . . .Why ask for the salt? Why put on your boots? Why do anything?” God could have arranged things so that our bodies nourished themselves miraculously without food, knowledge entered our brains without studying, umbrellas magically appeared to protect us from rainstorms. God chose a different style of governing the world, a partnership which relies on human agency and choice. God granted the favored human spedies the “dignity of causality,” to borrow a phrase from Pascal. The skeptic, then, is objecting not meerly to prayer but to the basic rules of creation.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 136
“Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 143
“A person prays, said Augustine, “that he himself may be constructed, not that God may be instructed.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 154
“I think prayer is analogous to sex. (People’s ears always perk up when I say that.) Most people would complain about their sex lives; a few do really well. Sex and prayer are intimate and over-glamorized relationships. We all are led to believe that we should be in the stratosphere in sex and in prayer. It sets up a false expectation. And breaks down intimacy. Like sex, prayer centers in relationship more than in technique, and the differences between the tow parties in prayer are far more profound than the differences between two lovers.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 159
“Mother Teresa answers, “By praying. . . .If you want to pray better, you must pray more.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 161
“Just what does God expect of me in my prayer life? The answer I come up with is he wants a love relationship. He doesn’t want a hired servant; he wants a bride.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 163
“Until the thirteenth century, most people both prayed and read aloud, even in private (Augustine marveled at the ability of Bishop Ambrose to hold a book in silence with his eyes running over the page: Was he trying to save his voice?) When the skill of reading silently became widespread it also led to a surge in individual, private prayer; until then believers viewed both prayer and reading as group activities, guided by professionals.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 192
Preachers
“Preaching is not so much about you preparing a sermon to preach; preaching is about God preparing you-his vessel-to preach.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 15
“Preachers must decide early in their preaching ministries that they have to be continually filled with the Spirit of God before they can powerfully preach the Word of God. Anointed lives give birth to anointed preaching.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 28
“We need to be who God called us to be before we do what God calls us to do. Preachers who desire to see God’s hand on their preaching must first desire to see God’s hand shape their character.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 81
“I am persuaded that one reason why our working-men so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways. If they saw us, in the pulpit and out of it, acting like real men, and speaking naturally, like honest men, thy would come around us. . . .We must have humanity along with our divinity if we would win the masses. Everybody can see through affectations, and people are not likely to be taken in by them.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 123-124
“resent indulgences which are not given to men of other professions. Learn to enjoy and be sober; learn to suffer and be strong. Never appeal for sympathy. Let it find you out if it will. Count your manliness the soul of your ministry and resist all attacks upon it however sweetly they may come.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 68
“My passion, as a preacher and a pastor and a Christian, is to show others how the gospel of grace really speaks with practicial hope into everything that fallen people will face in this broken world. My goal is to make real for others, at their point of deepest need, the truth of what Jesus did.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 166
Preaching
“A preacher must oft be upon the same things, because the matters of necessity are few.”
-Source: Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, 114.
“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, and to have the two as close together as possible.”
-George Burns
“Preaching is like driving a clutch, and the only way to figure it out is to keep grinding the gears and stalling until you figure it out.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 133
“Yes, I hear the sermon; but who is speaking? The minister? No indeed! You do not hear the minister. True, the voice is his; but my God is speaking the Word which he preaches or speaks. Therefore I should honor the Word of God that I may become a good pupil of the Word.”
– Source: Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 47, p. 229.
“Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better, but they cannot preach a better gospel.”
– C.H. Spurgeon
” the one-sidedness of preaching is not only excusable but is actually important. If in our preaching we stand in the place of God, giving His Word by His Spirit to His people, then surely it is appropriate that it be one-side.
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p. 33
“Expositional preaching is not simply producing a verbal commentary on some passage of Scripture. Rather, expositional preaching is that preaching which takes for the point of a sermon the point of a particular passage of Scripture.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p. 40
“Preachers are not commanded simply to go and preach. They are commanded specifically to go and preach the Word. That’s what preachers are commanded to preach.
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p. 41
“A healthy church is a church that hears the Word of God and continues to hear the Word of God. and such a church is composed of individual Christians who hear the Word of God and continue to hear the Word of God, always being refashioned and reshaped by it, constantly being washed in the Word and sanctified by God’s truth.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 51
“The effective teacher is like a person who takes a strong rope, ties one end around the big ideas of Scripture, ties the other end around the major themes of life, and then through the power of the Spirit struggles to pull the two together.”
-Source: Dave Ferguson, The Big Idea, p. 22
“Luther did not invent preaching, but he did elevate it to a new status in Christian worship. He thought it significant that even the common folk spoke of going to church to hear Mass, not to see it. The sermon was the best and most necessary part of the Mass. Luther invested it with an almost sacramental quality and made it the central focus of the liturgy. “To hear mass means nothing else but to hear God’s Word and thereby serve God.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 91
“The three marks of a good preachers are these: He stands up, speaks up, and knows when to shut up!”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 92
” There are many who, either because of defective utterance or insufficient mental ability or because they are not sufficiently in touch with ordinary people, keep their knowledge shut up within themselves. Such people ought, as the saying goes, to sing to themselves and the muses-and go and do something else…What is required is not merely a voluble tongue, for we see many whose easy fluency contains nothing that can edify. Paul is rather commending wisdom in knowing how to apply God’s Word to the profit of His people.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 243
“A pastor needs two voices.” said Calvin, “one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 243
” Turning a church around requires good preaching.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 91
“Preaching that avoids head engagement will lead to blindness, and preaching that ignores heart engagement-the emotive realm of the believer’s existence-does so at the cost of boredom and dullness, which prevents the result of an engaged hearing for a transformed life.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 2
“Ministers who are called by God must preach doctrine even when it is unpopular.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 6
b. “Christians are experiencing spiritual immaturity and spiritual death. One of the reasons for this is that worshippers are being served sermonic snacks instead of the doctrinal meat of the Word of God. If doctrine is presented with joy and accuracy, the hearers will not only stand it, they will crave more of it.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 6
“Doctrine is the possession of the church and must be preached. Preaching extracts its communicative strength from the reservoirs of doctrine and draws its riches from the wells of its truths, The doctrine behind and below the sermon gives it stability.
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 15
“Preach doctrine, preach all the doctrine you know, and learn forever more and more; but preach it always, not that men may believe it, but that men may be saved by believing it.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p.17
“Doctrine is the protector of preaching. Without it preaching would fall into heresy.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 18
“E.K. Bailey, late pastor of Concord Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and founder of the International Expository Preaching Conference, defines expository preaching as “a message that focuses on a portion of scripture so as to clearly establish the precise meaning of the text, and to poignantly motivate the hearers to actions or attitudes dictated by that text in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 19
“Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through him to his hearers.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 20
“John R. W. Stott asserts that expository preaching is “the opening up of the inspired text with such faithfulness and sensitivity that God’s voice is heard and His people obey Him.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 22
“Doctrinal preaching does not answer all the questions and can not solve all the problems, but it points the listeners to God, who is sovereign yet suffers with us in our stricken situations.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 24
“Preaching can be enhanced not by imitation but by association and assimilation of other preaching traditions and homiletical art forms.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 40
“When the preacher sits down, the people should be getting up!”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 44
“People who listen to our preaching have at lest three basic questions: what, which focuses on information: so what, which deals with contemporization: and now what, which relates to motivation.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 46
“Dwight L. Moody’s humans were ruined by the fall, redeemed by the blood, and regenerated by the Spirit”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 71
” There is a double trajectory in preaching. One trajectory is from God to us. This is the prophetic trajectory. The other trajectory is from us to us. This is the priestly trajectory. The ministry of the priest is preferred to that of a prophet because the prophet afflicts the comfortable and the priest comforts the afflicted. The priest asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there: The priest gives spiritual medicine and spiritual massages. Jesus the priest invites, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28). Instead of the priest offering a balm, the prophet indicts the people and delivers a bomb to those who are at ease in Zion. Preachers need to know when and how to use the bomb and the balm, depending upon whether people who are afflicted need to be comforted or whether people who are comfortable need to be afflicted. Preaching must have a double trajectory where the test speaks both a priestly and prophetic word.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 77
“The task of the exegetical escort is to equip the new believer without becoming an enabler for the new believer.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 95
When we preach to people, we are to preach in such a way that we make ourselves unnecessary. We need to equip them so that they can survive and thrive during a crisis even when we are not accessible to them.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 99
“John Wesley was once asked why so many people came to hear him preach. His response was, “When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 104
“When you teach in the church, do not stir up applause; stir up lamentations in the people. Let the tears of your listeners be your praise. The discourses of a preacher must be full of sacred Scripture. Don’t be a declaimer, but a true teacher of the mysteries of your God.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 113
” When the preacher preaches, the basic component is the Word of God. There may be variations in the delivery: lecture, whoop, or tune. The proclamation is still the Word of God. The improvisation does not affect the declaration or proclamation of the Word of God. When there is no substance, the improvisation is meaningless and purposeless.”
_Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p 148-149
“Parishioners and proclaimers belong together. Preachers preach so that the church might preach the pastor’s message throughout the week in the barber shop, beauty shop, and beyond.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 158
“The Spirit moved Peter to travel to Caesarea to preach this message by which Cornelius and the other Gentiles would be saved. Yes, the Spirit wants to bring about salvation among he peoples of the world, as shown by the conversion of this first group of Gentiles, but he does it by empowering and sending Spirit-anointed preachers of the gospel, proclaiming what must be heard and known about Christ in order to be saved.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 119
“the most determinative characteristic of preaching, as far as Southern Baptist are concerned, is the effect which it is intended to have upon those who hear it. Baptist preaching is preaching for decision, and much else is subordinated to this primary purpose.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 114
“In our attempts to renew worship in Baptist life, it is vital that we do not neglect to proclaim the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) and recover the primacy of textually grounded preaching. In our attempts to connect with our postmodern context, we cannot even hint that we are ashamed of the Gospel (Rom1:16), though we must simultaneously seek relevant and creative ways to communicate that Gospel. We must seek to touch lives while creating worship services that simultaneously exalt the Trinitarian God and edify the people of God. Anything less fails to be faithful to the New Testament teaching and at the early church’s pattern”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 123.
“While leaders have many roles and responsibilities in Baptist life, the primary role is to pass along the apostolic teaching in a faithful manner to the next generation. Effective communication of this truth of the New Testament is to be prized and prioritized.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 207
“I have endeavored to speak as a dying individual to dying individuals.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 27
“Mrs. Spurgeion wrote: I remember…the Sunday evening when he preached from the text, “His name shall endure forever.” It was a subject in which he revelled, it was his chief delight to exalt his glorious Saviour, and he seemed in that discourse to be pouring out his very soul and life in homage and adoration before his gracious King. But I really thought he would have died there, in face of all those people! At the end of the sermon he made a might effort to recover his voice, but utterance well-nigh failed, and only broken accents could the pathetic peroration be heard-“Let my name perish, but let Christ’s name last forever! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Crown Him Lord of all! and then he fell back, almost fainting, in the chair behind him.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 79
“On the occasion of Charles Spurgeion’s funeral, Dr. Stephenson commented…”I venture to suggest to you in reference to our dear friend who has gone…he rendered a great service to his age, and to the coming age also in that he upheld during so long a time the majesty of preaching. Men say that preaching is played out and that the pulpit is superfluous. The editor is to be the great minister of God in the future, and people are to get the Gospel from the newspapers…But with that coffin before us, none of us can doubt that the pulpit is the power in the world still-that still by the foolishness of preaching God is pleased to save men. I am quite sure that in the fact that from this place there rolled forth over the world a voice which it was willing to hear, and which it listened for-yea, listened for, even through the strife and din of politics, of commerce and pleasure-there has been maintained a testimony to the power of the simple preaching of the Gospel, the value of which it is impossible for us to estimate now.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 234
“All of the Reformers agreed that the marks of the true church could be boiled down to one: the preaching of the Word. Luther said time and time again, “We can spare everything, except the Word.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, p. 105
“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God . . . such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 152
“As much as preaching today needs the authority of God’s Word, it also needs the power of the Holy Spirit.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. XV
“In our boldness to return preaching to the biblical text, I believe we have unintentionally marginalized the ministry of the Holy Spirit, making the Spirit secondary to the needs of the text.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. XVI
“Preaching has lost its theological mandate. Consequently, we have replaced preachers with speakers because we are told people want dialogue without doctrine and talks without truth. Theology is out, storytellers are in, and a result we are seeing an entire generation of preachers who are more driven to be effective communicatiors than to be Spirit-empowered preachers. Methodology trumps theology, and sensitivity to the audience has replaced sensitivity ot the Spirit”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 8
“We have lost our sense of the supernatural, and as a result preaching has become the activity of man instead of the ministry of God.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 10
The preached message always finds its true source of power in the theological fusion of the Word of God and the Spirit of God joining together in Christological witness to the Son of God, coming through the proclamation of the man of God.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p.13
“We must preach the cross of Christ with such conviction, power, compulsion, and passion that when we wake up on Monday we can still feel the splinters of the old rugged cross in the palms of our hands.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 36
Failure to catch fire in the pulpit on Sunday often results from sacrificing our intimacy with God on the alter of the urgent throughout the week. Nothing is more urgent or more pressing than fanning into flame the gift God has given us (2 Tim 1:6)
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 83
“Deliver the fruit of your study in your sermon, and spare them the details of how you went about picking it off the tree.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 96
“Read yourself full, think yourself clear, pray yourself hot, and deliver yourself empty”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 99
“Preaching as trialogue means the presentation of the message becomes a three-way conversation between the preacher, the audience, and the Holy Spirit.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 114
“Powerful preaching comes through the dynamic interaction of the three entities:
(1) The preacher proclaims the Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.
(2) The Spirit gives his testimonium to the Word being preached.
(3) The audience resounds with “Amen, it’s true!” as they yield to the Spirit’s inward application of the proclaimed Word of God to their own hearts.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 114
“I urge all church leaders who desire to see the body of Christ built up and mobilized for eternal purposes to reinforce our efforts to preach and teach the full counsel of God’s Word. This task starts in the pulpit. We need men of god to step into the pulpits of our churches to edify and build up believers. We need sermons that are well prepared, biblically substantive, and delivered by sincere, humble preachers who model what they teach.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 49
“We do not go out snow-ballin on Sundays, we go fire-balling; we ought to hurl grenades into the enemy’s ranks.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 76
“Emotion, doubtless, is a very proper thing in the pulpit, and the feeling, the pathos, the power of heart, are good and grand things in the right place; but do also use your brains a little, do tell us something when you stand up to preach the everlasting gospel.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 99
“There ought to be enough of the gospel in every sermon to save a soul.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 109
For my own part, when the Lord helps me to preach, after I have delivered all my matter, and have fired off my shot so fast that my gun has grown hot, I have often rammed my soul into the gun, and fired my heart at the congregation, and this discharge has, under God, won the victory.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 165
“O preacher, if thou art about to stand up to see what thou canst do, it will be thy wisdom to sit down speedily; but if thou standest up to prove what thine almighty Lord and Master can do through thee, then infinite possibilities lie about thee!”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 175
“No matter what methods, gimmicks, or excitements one might employ, no matter how much energy is invested in making the message relevant, our witness will fall on deaf ears unless God graciously intervenes. By contrast, if we adopt Pelagian or semi-Pelagian assumptions, we will carry the burden of trying to produce conversions, relying on our own cleverness and communicative power rather than on God’s Word and Spirit.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 62
“It is the doctrine of human perfectibility that has brought tyrants to the world stage with the worshipful applause of the masses, but biblical teaching awakens us from our moralistic slumbers, identifying God as the only reliable object of our faith.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 63
“Ambassadors do not get to choose what they say. As ministers of the gospel, our gifting is to preach “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). As Paul says in Romans 10, we do not ascend to God; he descends to us in grace. He sends ambassadors who will preach the Good News that they have been appointed to preach. They do not send themselves but are sent on someone else’s errand.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 90
“We do not preach ourselves but Christ. The good news-not only for ourselves, but for a world (and church) in desperate need of good news-is that what we say preaches better than our lives, at least if what we are saying is Christ’s person and work rather than our own. The more we talk about Christ as the Bible’s unfolding mystery and less about our own transformation, the more likely we are actually to be transformed rather than either self-righteous or despairing. As much as it goes against our grain, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for justification and sanctification. The fruit of faith is real; it’s just not the same as the fruit of works-righteousness.”
Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 118
“If you don’t get rubbed the wrong way by God, then you’re not converted, and God will begin to look like you.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 129
“As he stood in our stead, we also stand in His Stead . . . .For Him we stand in the pulpit, and speak of sin, and righteousness, and judgment to come.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 113-114
“It is very possible to preach a great deal of important religious truth, and so that there shall be no admixture of important error in doctrine or precept-yea, truth having an important relation to Christ and his office – and yet not to preach Christ.”
-Source: Charles P. McIlvaine,Preaching Christ, p. 9
“The office of the ministry is so to expound the Scriptures in all their parts as bring out the things concerning that glorious One,himself.”
-Source: Charles P. McIlvaine, Preaching Christ, p. 21
“The preaching of Christ crucified goes necessarily into all that Christ did and obtained for us after, and in consequence of, his crucifixion. His resurrection, ascension and exaltation to headship over all things, and to be a Priest forever over the house of God, are great themes, vitally associated with what immediately preceded them, forming the essential connection between what was finished ‘once for all’ when Jesus; died, and what is yet to be finished ‘for all that come unto God by him’ now that he ‘ever liveth’. We must preach Christ in his ever-living intercession – Christ the High Priest above, with the incense and the blood, or we leave incomplete the view of Christ crucified.”
-Source: Charles P. McIlvaine, Preaching Christ, p. 29-30
“Whatever our advantages of human teaching, even of the truest exposition of God’s inspired Wsord, all is powerless spiritually to enlighten us in the knowledge of God and of Christ till he who speaks as never man spake shall add to it the teaching of his Spirity, so that we shall learn, not merely by the Scriptures, but from and of him.”
-Source: Charles P. McIlvaine, Preaching Christ, p. 33
“In our world of perpetual squishitude, why offer people more of what they already have-vague spirituality, uncertainty, and borderline interpretative relativism? Why not offer them something hard and old like the Law in which we delight, and dare to say and believe “Thus saith the Lord”?”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 85
“Preaching has always played a central role, if not the central role, in Christian worship.& nbsp; This is because the importance of careful discursive exposition and instruction was not inherited from the Enlightenment but from Judaism. The Jews studied and memorized the Hebrew Scriptures, not as an idle exercise in gaining information, but as worship. The rabbis were given the task of instructing the people in the ways of the faith, teaching them the laws, comforting, admonishing, and encouraging their listeners. They were preachers. In the centuries before Christ, the Jews gave their greatest devotion to cultivating the art and science of reading and preaching the Scriptures.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 157-158
“Much of the emergentdisdain for preaching is really an uneasiness about authority and control.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why We’re not emergent, p. 159
“The very act of verbal proclamation by one man to God’s people assumes that there is a word from God that can be ascertained, understood, and meaningfully communicated. This is what is being objected to in preaching, not simply the specter of modernism.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 159
“People haven’t changed in terms of the reality of the conscience, and the reality of sin, guilt, and fear. Everything that’s been ‘the issue’ since Adam is still ‘the issue.’ I don’t have a problem with asking, ‘Are we communicating well?’ But I still believe that the preached word is still God’s primary means of communicating with culture. It’s a man set on fire.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 219
“But people will go to hell over this,” he says. “You just don’t get up in front of ten thousand people on Sunday and play around with the Word of God.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 221
“True Christ-centeredness is, and ever must be, cross-centeredness.”
“Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 148
“Though signs and wonders were already plentiful that day, the growth of the church did not begin until one man preached a powerful message about the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the person of Jesus Christ. Preaching was primary at Pentecost.”
“Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 49
“This is inescapable. In a sinful world, giving offense is one of the central tasks of preaching. When the offending word is brought to bear against those who have shown themselves o be unteachable, they are written off by that offending word. When this happens, or there is a threat of it happening, the natural temptation is to blame the word instead of taking responsibility for the sin that brought the rebuking and satiric word. Employing a scriptural satiric bite is therefore not “rejoicing in iniquity: but rather testifying against hardness of heart.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge, p. 102
“Just as Paul could not judge weather he was preaching correctly based upon how people responded to his message, so we cannot finally judge the correctness of what we do by the immediate response that we see.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 79
“Preaching is characteristic of Christianity. No other religion has made the regular and frequent assembling of groups of people, to hear religious instruction and exhortation, an integral part of divine worship.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr.,He is Not Silent, p. 16
“The preacher must stand up and speak with confidence, declaring the Word of God to a congregation that is bombarded with hundreds of thousands of words each week, many of them delivered with a sound track or moving images. The audacious claim of Christian preaching is that the faithful declaration of the Word of God, spoken through the preacher’s voice, is even more powerful than anything music or image can deliver.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 17
“The Reformers were convinced that the heart of true biblical worship was the preaching of the Word of God.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 36
“This is the age of the sermonette, and sermonettes make Christianettes”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 38
“Preach the Word!” That simple imperative frames the act of preaching as an act of obedience, and that is where any theology of preaching must begin. Preaching did not emerge from the church’s experimentation with communication techniques. The church does not preach because preaching is thought to be a good idea or an effective technique. The sermon has not earned its place in Christian worship by proving its utility in comparison with other means of communication or aspects of worship. Rather, we preach because we have been commanded to preach.
Preaching is a commission-a charge. As Paul stated boldly, it is the task of the minister of the gospel to “preach the word . . . in season and out of season.” (2 Timothy 4:2). A theology of preaching begins with the humble acknowledgment that preaching is not a human invention but a gracious creation of God and a central part of His revealed will for the church.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 39
“We preach because God has spoken, ”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 40
“For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in His Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 46
“Therefore no one desiring comfort should wait until the Holy Spirit presents Christ to him personally or speaks to him directly from heaven. he gives His testimony publicly, in the sermon. There you must seek Him and wait for Him until He touches your heart through the Word that you hear with your ears, and thus He also testifies of Christ inwardly through His working.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 46
“Seek Him always. But go beyond seeking Him; expect Him. Do you expect anything to happen when you get up to preach in a pulpit? Or do you just say to yourself, “Well, I have prepared my address, I am going to give them this address; some of them will appreciate it and some will not”? Are you expecting it to be the turning point in someone’s life . . .? That is what preaching is meant to do . . . Seek this power, expect this power, yearn for this power; and when the power comes, yield to Him.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 47
“J. I. Packer once defined preaching as “The event of God bringing to an audience a Bible-based, Christ-related, life-impacting message of instruction and direction from Himself through the words of a spokesperson>”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 47
“As Spurgeon confirmed, “Life, death, hell, and worlds unknown may hang on the preaching and hearing of a sermon.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 47
“According to the Bible, exposition is preaching. And preaching is exposition.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 50
“The essence of most therapeutic preaching comes down to an affirmation of the self and its importance.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 51
“I fear that there are many evangelicals today who believe that God spoke but doubt whether He speaks. If you are not confident that God speaks as you rightly read and explain the Word of God, then you should quit.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 57
“We will be hard-ressed to define any activity as being more inherently theological than the preaching of God’s Word, for preaching is an exercise in the theological exposition of Scripture.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 111
“Martin Luther rightly affirmed, the preaching of the Word of God is the first mark of the church. Where it is found, there one finds the church. Where it is absent, there is no church, whatever others may claim.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 112
“If there is no controversy in your ministry, there is probably very little content to your preaching.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 147
“Sermons should have real teaching in them, and their doctrine should be solid, substantial, and abundant. We do not enter the pulpit to talk for talk’s sake; we have instructions to conver, important to the last degree, and we cannot aford to utter pretty nothings.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 168
“Jeremiah is appointed by God o have power over nations and kingdoms, but this power comes only from the divine words God has put in his mouth. only God has this power over nations. Jeremiah, as his deputized speaker, is given the same power only in that he speaks words given him by God – words which therefore can perform what God intends them to perform. Jeremiah will speak ordinary human words in an ordinary human language: God does not put special magic forulae or a previously unknown heavenly language into Jeremiah’s mouth. Yet still those words will also be God’s words.” Preacher, be mindful.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 35
“To claim that one’s own human speech about Christ crucified really is God speaking, and that the Holy Spirit comes in power through one’s apparently weak speech, seems to run dangerously close to blasphemy. Yet that is clearly the pattern for the extension of the gospel after Pentecost that Christ and the apostles established. Fraught with dangers and temptations though it is, it is simply given to us as our pattern for ministry. Karl Barth warns preachers that the real question about preaching that they face is not ‘How does on do it?’ but ‘How can one do it?’ The warning he implies in this statement is always apt. The New Testament precedent is simply that the preacher can preach and must preach, fearful and trembling because he is given the privilege of speaking God’s words and as no power to determine the result of his preaching, but not so fearful that he loses his resolve to know and proclaim Christ and him crucified.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 159
“Sunday is not the best time to teach deep theological truths, however. Most people have short attention spans and don’t retain knowledge through the lecture method.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Church Is a Team Sport, p. 112
“One Virginian Christian of this period (who with many others had moved from the Church of England to the Baptists) was no doubt correct in believing that too many Presbyterians ‘were sound in doctrine but deficient in experience.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 93
“‘In the course of life I have been announcing Christianity for more than fifty-five years, having more reverence for that preaching which shows how the Lord draws sinners, than I have for that which shows sinners how to drive the Lord.'”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Renivalism, p. 320
“Wayland “His knees smite one against another, as he ascends the pulpit stairs, In a voice scarcely audible, he calls upon God for his blessing upon the congregation. He commences his sermon. His own voice seems strange to him. Gradually he forgets himself, and loses his fears. As a prophet from God he delivers his message. The powers of his mind begin to react. He is transported beyond himself. He would that the whole world were present to hear the story of redeeming love. He pours out his soul in earnest entreaty. He warns the ungodly, as though he and they were already in view of the judgment-seat. Words, burning and impressive, come unbidden to his bursting heart. The time will not allow him to say half that fills his soul. He sits down, and thanks God for fulfilling his promise.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 322-323
“The modern view, wrote Wayland, was that the older ‘sort of preaching must have been distasteful and almost incomprehensible to men of the world, intelligent or irreligious. They would never come to hear sermons on experimental religion, and earnest calls to repentance. To gain these, we must of necessity modify our preaching, and deliver discourses in which both church and congregation will readily sympathize.’
“Against this view, Wayland argued that true biblical preaching would never leave unbelievers comfortable in the presence of true Christians.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 326
” But it will be said, Are we then to drive away all but the children of God? I reply, Is there any Holy Ghost? If we preach in such a manner that the disciples of Christ are separate from the world, prayerful, humble, earnest, self-denying, and labouring for the conversion of men, the Spirit of God will be in the mist of them, and souls will be converted. The thing will be noised abroad. There is never an empty house where the Spirit of God is present. You could not keep men away from church where souls were asking what they should do to be saved, and where converts were uttering the new-born praises of the King of Zion. There are two ways of seeking to fill our houses of worship. Which is to be preferred? Which looks most like fidelity to the Master?”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 327
“The preaching that occasioned these conversions represented something new because its practitioners were intending to work directly on the affections and were aiming directly at life-transforming results. This preaching was sometimes provided by itinerants (Whitefield, Howell Harris and soon many imitators), sometimes by settled ministers (Daniel Rowland, Jonathan Edwards)but in all forms it sought not simply intellectual communication but also the responsive engagement of the whole person. The power of evangelical preaching lay in its depiction of a severe divine law and a capacious divine gospel/”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 100
“Sermons are needed, yes, but they are not all that is needed. Let’s be absolutely clear the preaching of powerful, faithful, compelling biblical expositions is absolutely vital and necessary to the life and growth of our congregations. Weak and inadequate preaching weakens our churches.”
Clear, strong, powerful public preaching is the bedrock and foundation upon which all other ministry in the congregation is built. The sermon is a rallying call. It is where the whole congregation can together feed on God’s word and be challenged, comforted and edified.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 102
“Adam goes on to define preaching as the d”explanation and application of the Word to the congregation of Christ in order to produce corporate preparation for service, unity of faith, maturity, growth and upbuilding.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 103
“We should focus not only on what we are teaching, but also on what the people are learning and applying.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 107
“The answer is that ‘training’- as we have defined it-is not really a separate thing, but simply the outworking of prayerful proclamation as it connects with individual people.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 177
“Training is the exercise of pastoral ministry before the crisis.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 177
“But ultimately the eloquence or persuasiveness of the messenger doesn’t save a person. It’s teh work of God’s Spirit in a person’s heart.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 133
“Dr. Knox Chamblin, longtime New Testament professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, says: “combat your tendency to choose a canon within the canon by purposing to preach ‘the whole purpose of God’-Moses as well as Mark, Jonah as well as John, Psalms as well as Paul, Proverbs as well as Peter, Leviticus as well as Luke, Habakkuk as well as Hebrews, Ruth as well as Revelation. Think how Paul’s celebration of Pentecost, in Acts 2:16, will be enriched by joining the instructions of Leviticus 23 to the event of Acts 2.”
-Source:Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 43-44
“But we ought to be able to preach Christ naturally and exegetically from all the Old Testament. That does not mean that we force Christ in an odd way into places where he is not found in the Old Testament, but that we realize that there is always a way to Christ and to his cross from ever passage in the Old Testament.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 47
“The first thing that must be said about preaching with the culture in view is that our primary attention as preachers is not to the culture at all but to the text of Scripture. The most important part of our role as preachers is that we be scholars of Scripture.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 66
“Preaching is not conversation. Preaching is not discussion. Preaching is not casual talk about religious things. Preaching is not simply teaching. Preaching is the heralding of a message permeated by the sense of God’s greatness and majesty and holiness. The topic may be anything under the sun, but it is always brought into the blazing light of God’s greatness and majesty in his word. That was the way Whitefield preached.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p 104
“In the big picture, preaching verse-by-verse, book-by-book, brings a divine balance to ministry. It keeps the preacher from leaving things out or from getting on a hobbyhorse and riding it to death. It forces him to deal with tipics he might not naturally be drawn to if it were not for the fact that it is addressed in the next verse he is preaching. Put simply, it requires him to teach God’s truth in the way God revealed it. And that’s the best way to teach.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 155
“God planned for his Son to be crucified (Rev. 13:8; 2 Tim. 1:9) and for hell to be terrible (Matt. 25:41) so that we would have the clearest witnesses possible to what is at stake when we preach. What gives praching its seriousness is that the mantle of the preacher is soaked with the blood of Jesus and singed with the fire of hell.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 106
“Exposition of texts is essential because the gospel is a message that comes to us in words, and God has ordained that people see the glory of Christ-the “unsearchable riches of Christ”(Eph. 3:8)-in those gospel words.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 115
“Oh, brother, so not lie about the value of the gospel by teh dullness of your demeanor.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 115
“I frankly do not understand preachers who are willing to abdicate this solem privilege. Why should we proclaim the wisdom of men when we have the privilege of preaching the Word of God?”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 143
“It is simply not true that every word critical of our preaching today can be taken as a rejection of Christ or as anti-Christianity. Today there are a great number of people who come to our preaching, want to hear it, and then repeatedly have to admit sadly that we have made it too difficult for them to get to know Jesus. Do we really want to deny being in community with these people? They believe that it is not the word of Jesus itself that they wish to evade, but that too much of what comes between them and Jesus is merely human, institutional, or doctrinaire. Who among us would not instantly know all the answers which could be given to these people and with which we could easily evade responsibility for them? But would an answer not also demand that we ask whether we ourselves get in the way of Jesus’ word by depending perhaps too much on certain formulations, or on a type of sermon intended for its own time, place, and social structure? Or by preaching too “dogmatically” and not enough “for use in life”? Or by preferring to repeat certain ideas from scripture over and over and thus too heedlessly passing convictions too much and Jesus Christ himself too little? Nothing would contradict our own intention more deeply and would be more ruinous for our proclamation than if we burdened with difficult human rules those who are weary and heavy laden, whom Jesus calls unto himself. That would drive them away from him again. How that would mock the love of Jesus Christ in front of Christians and heathen! But since general questions and self-accusations do not help here, let us be led back to scripture to the word and call Jesus Christ himself. Away from the poverty and narrowness of our own convictions and questions, here is where we seek the breadth and riches which are bestowed on us in Jesus.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 37-38
“The body of the exalted Lord is likewise a visible body, taking the form of the church-community. How does this body become visible? First, in the preaching of the word.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 226
“Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men. It has in it tow essential elements, truth and personality. Neither of those can it spare and still be preaching. The truest truth, the most authoritative statement of God’s will, communicated in any other way than through the personality of brother man to men is not preached truth.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p 5
“Truth through Personality is our description of real preaching. The truth must come really through the person, not merely over his lips, not merely into his understanding and out through his pen. It must come through his character, his affections, his whole intellectual and moral being. It must come genuinely through him.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 8
“The age has no aversion to preaching as such. It may not listen to your preaching. If that prove to be the case, look for the fault first in your preaching, and not in the age.”
Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 13
“Here is the primary necessity that the Christian preacher should be a Christian first, that he should be deeply cognizant of God’s authority, and of the absoluteness of Christ’s truth.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 16
“But if the preacher ever for a moment counts them the purpose of his working, if he takes his eye off the single soul as the prize he is to win, he falls from his highest function and loses his best power. All successful preaching, I more and more believe, talks to individuals.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 22
“On one thing only we may speak with authority, and that is the will of God. Now even in the details of religious thought need we aspire to be their guides.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 86
“One difficulty of the preacher’s office is its subjection to flippant gossip, along with its exemption from sever and healthy criticism.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 87
“This does seem to me to make the truth about the preaching of doctrine very plain. The salvation of men’s souls from sin, the renewing and perfecting of their characters, is the great end of all. but that is done by Christ. To bring them, then, to Christ, that He may do it, to make Christ plain to them, that they may find Him, this is the preacher’s work.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 128
“It is our place to stand by our pulpits till men have deserted us, and not, for the sake of saving our own credit, to shut the church doors while they are still ready to come and hear.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 153
“There is nothing that could do more harm to Christianity to-day than for the multitude of preachers to turn from preaching Christ, whom they do understand, to teh discussion of scientific questions which they do not understand. ”
-Source: Phillips Brooks,Lectures on preaching, p. 231
“The fact is, a lot of preaching these days has been unwittingly, unconsciously seduced by moralism. Moralistic preaching only reinforces our inner assumption that our performance for God will impress him to the point of blessing us.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 49
“The Reformers were also very strong on the present inspiration of the Word, that the Word, when read or preached correctly, came with great power because of the intimate relationship which it enjoys with the Spirit of God..”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 76
“Thus, we preach, we speak the words of God not because this is the marketing method most likely to appeal to the unbeliever but simply because this is God’s appointed means of coming to individuals and bringing them to faith.”
“O course we must us language with which the congregation is familiar; of course we must be aware that we are talking to people in the twenty-first century and not the sixteenth; and of course we must be culturally sensitive inn what we say; but preach we must because this is God’s chosen means of spreading the news of the kingdom.”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 86
“ I must confess at this point that I belong to the old reactionary tendency which regards the man who cannot preach in an interesting and informative manner as simply not called to the preaching ministry. If a man mounts a pulpit and cannot set his people’s heart on fire for the Bible, then he had better not step into pulpit at all, for to put Christians off hearing and reading the Word of God has to be one of the most serious acts one can commit.”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, p. 96
Preaching (weak)
“Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the Church without requiring them to relinquish their pride: they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin. The preacher gets up into the pulpit, opens the Bible, and addresses the congregation somewhat as follows: “Your people are very good.” he says: “you respond to every appeal that looks toward the welfare of the community. Now we have in the Bible-especially in the life of Jesus-something so good that we believe it is good enough even for you good people.” Such is modern preaching. It is heard every Sunday in thousands of pulpits. But it is entirely futile.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 68
“If I’m going to preach the Bible, I have to preach more than I can live, though I should always be trying to live, by God’s grace, so as to be an example of Christ’s power in my life and an encouragement to others.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 32
Predestination
“We call predestination god’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any many has been created to one or other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or death.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 118
“Predestination, therefore, is primarily a doctrine of pastoral comfort: those who are truly redeemed do not need endlessly to fret about weaher they are saved or not.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 119
“For Calvin the doctrine of election as an unspeakable comfort because it eliminated all such worries and freed man from concern about himself in order that he might devote every energy to the unflagging service of the sovereign Lord. Calvinism therefore bred a race of heroes.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 119
“Christ-centered preaching doesn’t discount God’s holiness. It honors that holiness more than moralistic preaching because Christ-centered preaching asserts that we can’t be holy enough -only Christ was. It asserts that we are only practically holy when we understand and live the reality of our positional holiness in Christ. It cause us to ponder and bask in the free grace of God in Christ, which motivates us toward practical holiness.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 138
Presence of God
“My feelings of God’s presence–or God’s absence–are not the presence or the absence.”
_Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 52
Presuppositionalism
“The problem with presuppositions is not that they exist, but that all too often they are allowed to go unquestioned.”
-Source: David R. Hall, The Seven Pillories of Wisdom, p. 114
Pride
“If you let your head get too big, it’ll break your neck.”
-Elvis Presley
“You cannot make much of Jesus and much of yourself at the same time.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p.86
“The hard truth is that pride is the worst sin of all. While the culture we live in renames pride “self-esteem” and lavels it a virtue rather than a vice, pride is what got Satan kicked out of heaven and can also keep us from heaven if we fail to repent and believe the gospel.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 99
Princeton
“Men of Christian convictions from Nassau Hall soon filled important stations in society, and around 500 of the 2,500 graduates of the first eighty years fulfilled the primary intention of its founders by becoming preachers of the gospel.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 38
Principle of Receptivity
“Principle of receptivity. Receptive people are those who are most likely to hear the gospel message positively as a result of personal crisis, social dislocation, and/or the internal working of the Holy Spirit.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 30
“Receptivity should first be expected where churches are already growing.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 252
“A second likely area of receptivity is where people are encountering significant change: social change, political change, economic change, or psychological change.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 252
“The third major group of receptive people is the masses, the common working people and the poor.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 252
Prodigal Son
“Of course, we mask that hostility. But we can never fully hide it.”
“Sometimes it is clearer to others than it is to us that we are running form God. Our negative, embarrassed, or hostile reactions to Christians, to the name of Jesus, to reference to greatness, wonder, and goodness of God and His works–all are telltale signs. We are far from intellectually or personally objective about, or indifferent to god. Underneath it all, we are opposed to Him emotionally and intellectually; otherwise, why so much resentment?”
“This is the situation of the prodigal. He has warped view of his father and now carefully defends himself against the truth. He thought he could permanently sustain that defense. But nobody can sustain it forever.”
It is simply not possible to build up a consistent self-defense against the inroads and incursions of God. There is not a square yard in the universe to which an individual can go where he can say, “I can hide here from God and escape from Him.” God is already there. He has made Himself known in the whole of creation. Nowhere is a “safe house”/
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 20
The elder brother lives within the family compound and has every possible opportunity to be close to his father. But there is a distance between him and the father that–even at the end of the parable–remains unbridged.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 25
Prophet
“The principal role of the OT prophet was as a mediator: bringing direct communication from God to the people.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 211
“As the Old Testament unfolds, one form of divine speaking does emerge as prominent: God’s speech through his appointed prophets, in words they utter in ordinary human languagers
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 33-34
Propitiation
“If a query is raised on the grounds that the word “propitiation” appears in the New Testament only four times, the reply must be that the thought of propitiation appears constantly.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 42
“Propitiation is the work of God himself. In paganism, man propitiates his gods, and religion becomes a form of commercialism and, indeed, of bribery. In Christianity, however, God propitiates his wrath by his own action. He set forth Jesus Christ.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 36
“Propitiation manifests God’s righteousness. So far from calling into question the morality of God’s way of dealing with sin, says Paul, the truth of propitiation establishes it and was explicitly intended to establish it.”
-Source: J.I Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 39
“The difference is that expiation means only half of what propitiation means. Expiation is an action that has sin as its object; it denotes the covering, putting away, or rubbing our of sin so that it no longer constitutes a barrier to friendly fellowship between man and God. Propitiation, however, inn the Bible, denotes all that expiation means,and the pacifying of the wrath of God thereby, ”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 32
“Second, another beautiful part of the cross is that Christ satisfied the demands of God’s jut judgment against our sin through his death on the cross. The word often used here is propitiation, a word that refers to the Father’s being satisfied since Christ, by his death, paid the penalty for our sin fully.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts,
“How does he make peace? He gives himself in the place of sinners. How can he do this? Because he’s one of us. But how can he face the wrath of God for millions upon millions of sinners? because he is the eternal God. By his death he removes our guilt. He appeases the wrath of God the Father.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 89
“And this is why Christ had to die. The only way we can be righteous is for God to give us a righteousness we don’t possess in and of ourselves. The only way for our sins to be paid for (apart from our spending an eternity in hell) is for God himself, in Christ, to receive the punishment.”
_Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 138
Prosperity Gospel
“First, the prosperity gospel contains a grain of biblical truth, albeit a grain of truth that has been greatly distorted.”
“Second, the prosperity gospel appeals to the natural human desire to be successful, healthy, and financially secure.”
“Third, the prosperity gospel promises much and requires little, portraying Jesus as one w2ho can help believers help themselves.”
“Fourth, many advocates of the prosperity gospel have cultivated a winsome personality and a polished presentation of their message.”
“Fifth, many followers of the prosperity gospel have little knowledge of biblical doctrine.”
“Sixth, many people have experienced success and healing (or at least claimed to have done so) and attribute it to the teachings of the prosperity gospel, thus “validating” its message.”
“Seventh, many in the modern church lack a general sense of discernment because they are more influenced by the secular culture than by Scripture.”
-Source: Jones/Woodbridge, Health, Wealth & Happiness, p. 18-19
“According to historian Dale Simmons, “Kenyon is the primary source of the health and wealth gospel of the independent Charismatic movement. Kenyon’s ideas influenced the prosperity gospel movement in several ways. First, his approach to theology is the basis for one of the prosperity gospel’s most distinctive features-that is, speaking the right words to bring about a new reality. Many even credit Kenyon with coining the popular prosperity gospel phrase, “What I confess, I possess.”
-Source: Jones/Woodbridge, Health, Wealth & Happiness, p. 51
“ Kenyon places people at the center of his system. Religion’s purpose is not to honor God or to redeem humanity but to serve people and help them get what they desire.”
-source: Jones/Woodbridge, Health, Wealth & Happiness, p. 52
“Note that a common feature of prosperity teachers is their reliance upon extrabiblical revelation from God. Many leaders in this movement claim to receive special messages from God and this, in turn, gives them greater authority in the eyes of their followers.”
-Source: Jones/Woodbridge, Health, Wealth & Happiness, p. 54
“For the prosperity gospel, then, words are a force and possess the power to create.”
-Source: Jones/Woodbridge, Health, Wealth & Happiness, p. 62
Prostitution
“The vast majority of young women involved in prostitution were sexually abused as children; estimates range from two-thirds to 95 percent. Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65 to 90 percent. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon, Annual Report in 1991 stated that 85 percent of prostitutes/clients reported a history of sexual abuse in childhood; 70 percent reported incest.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 139
“The average age of entry into prostitution is thirteen years.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Savesm p. 140
Purity
“This first step toward purity is winning the battle in your mind.”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing? p. 68
Q
Quiet Time
“God is not only concerned about the length and regularity of your quiet time each; He is also concerned about how you treat others.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 156
R
Racism
“Racial pride and cultural narrowness cannot coexist with the gospel of grace.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 139
Reading
“You must learn to interact in the margins of your books,” he always said. “That way you can pull a book off the shelf years later, read your notations, and have it all back in your mind.”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p. 17
Reality
“Reality is like a fine wine,” he said to me. “It will not appeal to children”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows what.. p. 11
“But we should not expect something God has not promised, especially when He has promised the opposite. Jesus said the poor would aways be with us (John12:8) and wars and rumors of war would continue to the very end (Matt. 24:6). This doesn’t mean we are pro-poverty warmongers. But it does mean that wars won’t go away just because we follow the secret message of Jesus.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 187
Reconciliation
“Paul does not say that God reconciled the world to Himself by Jesus becoming flesh for us. We are not reconciled by Christmas. The incarnation is essential, but it is only the beginning of the story. God reconciled the world to Himself by Jesus becoming sin for us.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 51
“The work for “reconciliation” in the New Testament (Greek, katallage) has the root idea of “making a change.” It was used in the ancient world of exchanging money-you give someone money and he gives you anther currency in exchange. Here is the heart of the gospel: in Jesus Christ, God has made a unique exchange. He made Christ to be sin for us; He counts the righteousness of Christ to us.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p.52
Redemption
” A loved one is kidnapped and held as a hostage. The relative has to come up with a certain amount of money, and until they do, the loved one will be held as a hostage or be killed if the money is not received by the kidnapper. The devil kidnapped the human race and held it hostage. Psalm 85: 10 states, “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” A conference was held in heaven, and god decided that the only way the ransom note could be paid was not for God to send someone but for God to send Himself. That is what the incarnation is all about. god came from God: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). god had made a promise in Genesis 3:15, the first promise of redemption through Jesus Christ, the seed of a woman. A promissory note was resented once a year during the Day of Atonement: a lamb was slain as a sign of God’s forgiveness of the sins of the Israelites for the whole year and as a foreshadowing of the lamb of God who would come to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). On Friday the God who came in the flesh in the incarnation died on the cross as the “crucified God.” The veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom; god was tearing up the ransom note.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 87
“Our sins have injured and ruptured our relationship with God. So great and serious is the effect of our misconduct that our lives have been put at risk. If there is no expiation or propitiation, we will remain isolated from the God who made us, loves us, and who wishes to restore us back to his favor and presence. Christ’s work on the cross is God’s answer to our predicament.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God. p. 72-73
“God has ordained that the universe resist its human ruler until that ruler stops resisting God. So in redemption, God’s purpose is no less than “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or things in heaven” (Col. 1:20)
“Redemption was the means by which a lost family member was restored to a place of security within the kinship circle. This was a patriarch’s responsibility, this was the safety net of Israel’s society.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 45
“And what is the :freedom of the glory of the children of God”? The passage tells us it is “our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” In other words, the sign that our redemption is accomplished is the moment that our death-ridden bodies are resurrected into the ongoing state of eternal life. Not only will this be the trumpet blast of freedom for us, it is the trumpet blast for all creation. “Fore we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” what pains of childbirth? According to Kline, this text communicates that the adamah is as repelled by Adam’s presence within it as are we. The very dust of the earth longs for this wrong to be made right, for the soil to be free of its accursed state as the recipient of Adam’s children, for humanity to be delivered from their role as fertilizer. So like a mother bringing forth a child, the adamah is groaning in childbirth even now, longing for the day when the child is delivered, when Adam is raised up from the dirt, “our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” Romans 8 makes it clear that the goal of redemption is far broader that the simple salvation of the individual. Redemption is a cosmic plan of cosmic proportions. God’s plan is that all creation will be “saved” from the effects of sin.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 115
“The most common biblical word for forgiveness is aphiemi, which literally means “to send away.” Jesus’ death on the cross released or sent away our sins. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness [sending away] of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Eph. 1:7)
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 138
“Redemption is synonymous with being liberated, freed, or rescued from bondage and slavery to a person or thing. The word redemption and its derivative (e.g., redeemer, redeem) appear roughly 150 times in the English Bible with roughly only twenty occurrences in the New Testament. The Bible with roughly only twenty occurrences in the New Testament. The portotype for redemption is the Exodus story.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 61
“How did Christ’s sacrificial death actually save us-that is, rescue us from jeopardy and ruin? By redeeming us, which means effecting our transfer from a state of bondage without hope to a state of freedom with a future, by paying the price that the transfer required.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 24
“In the overarching narrative of Scripture the two great actions of the Father, following the glory of his creative act and the tragedy of the fall of humankind, are to redeem and to reveal. His repeated acts of redemption lead up to the climactic redemption achieved in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. As that history unfolds, God is constantly acting to reveal the meaning of his redemptive acts, and to show people the basis on which they may join the community of those being redeemed.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 51-52
“Narrative takes up more space in the Bible than any other literary genre. We might guess that this is because narrative is the form of writing best suited to answering with clarity and conviction the key questions which the offer of a promise always raises: Can I trust the person making this promise?”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 55
“Our redemption depends not only on Christ’s substitutionary death but also on his substitutionary life.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 143
“Christ’s life , in other words, is just as central to our rescue as his death. We are not saved apart from the law. Rather, we are saved in Christ, who perfectly kept the law on our behalf.”
“So, Christ’s death is not the center of the gospel any more than his life is the center of the gospel. One without the other fails to bring about redemption. It’s much more theologically accurate to say that Christ himself is the center of the gospel, He lived the life we couldn’t live and died the death we should have died.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 144
Reform
“The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pamlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pamlico itself. But if he simply loves Pamlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem.”
-Philip Yancey, G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 99
Reformation
” The invention of the Reformation was about books as well as the Book. The invention of the printing press together with Luther’s German Bible did in a sense “unchain: the Scriptures by making them available, not only to scholars and monks but also to plough boys in the fields and milkmaids at their pails.
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 79
“In the sixteenth century the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture was not a matter of dispute between Catholics and Protestants. All of the reformers, including the radicals, accepted the divine origin and infallible character of the Bible. The issue which emerged at the Reformation was authority of the church and ecclesiastical tradition (Roman Catholics) on the one hand and the power of personal experience (spiritualists) on the other.
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 315
“While we must not forfeit the hard won victories of the reformers in the interest of a facile ecumenism, we celebrate and participate in the quest for Christian unity precisely because we take seriously the Reformation concept of the church-ecclesia semper reformanda, not merely a church once and for all reformed, but rather a church always to be reformed, a church ever in need of further reformation on the basis of the Word of God.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 316
“Calvin wrote in 1543 to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V: “The Reformation of the Church is God’s work, and is as much independent of human life and thought as the resurrection of the dead, or any such work is.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 323
“The church had lost sight of the sermon, celebrating the Mass instead. The Reformers returned the sermon to the church service. In the case of the Puritans in England, they returned it with a vengeance. Congregations didn’t sing in the centuries leading up to the Reformation. In fact Jan Hus, one of the pre-Reformation reformers, was condemned as a heretic for, among other things, having his congregation sing. Luther and the other Reformers restored congregational singing to the church.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 18
“If Jane Grey would but take the Roman Mass, Mary would give Jane her life. Jane was sixteen years of age at this time, which meant that she had quite a bit of life to consider living. But the price proved too high, Jane Grey refused, adamant in her Protestant beliefs to the last. So adamant was she in her beliefs that she chastised her family’s chaplain for conveniently converting to Catholicism when Mary came to power. “Wilt thou refuse the true God, and worship the invention of man the golden calf, the whore of Babylon, the Romish religion, the abominable idol, the most wicked mass?” she wrote
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 121
“The reformers went into the squares and council chambers and asked for lay support. Instead of burying a dogma in a technical jargon, they translated it and insisted that any layman learn its tenets.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 38
“Our final authority is Scripture alone, but not a Scripture that is alone.”
-Source :Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 146-147
“The Reformers’ conviction of sola scriptura is the conviction that Scripture is the only infallible authority, the only supreme authority. for the creeds and the church’s teaching function as important subordinate authorities, under the authority of Scripture. “
–Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 147
“The Reformers recovered from Scripture the forgotten truth that the work of Christ in salvation did not end with his ascension, thereafter to be carried on by the church and human energies.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 19
“The Reformers, however, would have had no truck with such an approach: as far as they were concerned, the battle was not one between forms or emphases or traditions; it was between those who had the gospel and those who were committed to hiding it or opposing it or abolishing it altogether.”
-Source: Carl r. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 29
“The heritage of the Reformation is more than just the doctrine of justification by faith; it is also the theology of the cross.”
-Source: Carl r. Trueman, Reformation, Today, and Tomorrow, p. 45
Regeneration
“A believer is a man who is regenerate, or as Charles Hodge has written, he is a man who has experienced a “subjective change wrought in the soul by the grace of God.” In short, he is born again, to employ an overused, poorly understood phrase. A man cannot achieve salvation by his own works, his own words, or his own worth. He must be “born again” (John 3:7). this rebirth is a work of God (John 1:13). “In the work of regeneration, we play no role at all. It is instead totally a work of God.” This work of regeneration is what makes conversion possible. “The Scriptures teach that regeneration is the work of God, changing the heart of man by his sovereign will, while conversion is the act of man turning toward God with the new inclination thus given to his heart.”
-Source: Voddie Baucham, What He Must Be, p. 77
“Regeneration is the biblical teaching that salvation includes God’s work both for us at the cross of Jesus and in us by the Holy Spirit. Or to say it another way, regeneration is not a separate work of the Holy Spirit added to the saving work of Jesus; rather, it is the subjective actualization of Jesus’ work.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 165
“Regeneration is done to ill-deserving, not just undeserving, sinners. Regeneration is a gift of grace.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 169
“The new birth Jesus described is called regeneration. John Frame writes that regeneration is “a sovereign act of God, beginning a new spiritual life in us.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 130
Relationship
“It is a striking thought to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without a host of other people.”
_Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 67
” Imagine how much a man’s life would be changed if he trusted that he was loved by god? He could interact with the poor and not show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money because money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 176-177
“We are made in the image of God, and so we can live rightly and best only when we mirror in our relationships the relationships true of the eternal God himself. Yes, we are called to be like God in character, but we also are created to be like God in relationship with one another.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 22
“To know the Lord is to know Him through propositions,” he continues. “Being in a relationship-and people who like the emergent movement like to focus on the relationship aspect of Jesus-but to be in a relationship with someone, it’s imperative that you know specific things and true things about the person you’re in the relationship with.:
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 99
“A key element in the relationship between God and his people is the fate that God makes himself and his will known.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 209
“When God gives a gift, He wraps it in a person.”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p. 4
“Tannen’s explanation for such behavior is that women tend to bond in suffering. Through complaining, through gossip, they reaffirm connections with each other, connections strengthened through the ritual of lament: “We join together in facing the harsh elements.” Women don’t necessarily want the problem solved–who can fix the weather, for instance?–they mainly, want understanding and sympathy. Men, in contrast, instinctively want to respond toa complang by fixng the problem that caused it. Otherwise, why compain.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, pp. 67
Relativism
”Berger goes on, however, to point out that absolute relativism can only exist if the relativists exempt themselves from their own razor.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 10
“People don’t embrace relativism because it is philosophically satisfying. They embrace it because it is physically and emotionally gratifying. It provides the cover they need at key moments in their lives to do what they want without intrusion from absolutes.
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 102
“But what about relativism? It poses as humble by saying: “We mere mortals cannot know what the truth is-or even if there is any universal truth.” This sounds humble. But look carefully at what is happening. It’s like a servant saying. “I am not smart enough to know which person here is my master-or if I even have a master.” The result is that he doesn’t have to submit to any master and can be his own master. His vaunted weakness is a rust to cover his rebellion against his master.”
-Source: John Piper. Think, p. 112
Relevance
“Comeback churches led people to care more about their communities than their preferences. Churches will split over preferences-without either side caring about the lost”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 65
“All churches are culturally relevant; the question is whether they are relevant to a culture that currently exists in their community or to one that disappeared generations ago.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 65
“If the PCA is to be missionally effective, it must become contemporary to its culture and repent of any traditional idolatries.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 65-66
“Sadly and ironically, in its attempt to achieve cultural relevance, mainstream evangelicalism has become essentially irrelevant. As Os Guinness points out, the seductive promise of relevance is, in reality, the road to irrelevance. ”
-Source, Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaey, Preaching The Cross, p. 140
Religion
“We would rather have a formula religion than a relational religion. If I could, I probably would have formula friends because they would be safe.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 17
“C.S. Lewis once observed, “I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christiantity.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 97
“The knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 55
“Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” In other words, the true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p. 168
“The word “religion” comes from the Latin for “binding together”, to connect that which has been sundered apart.”
-Source:Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, p. 1
“It’s possible for a whole generation to go happily about the business of religion, all the while having lost a true knowledge of God.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 9
“This is the most obvious difference between a “religious” person and a Christian. A religious person is likely to address God–especially in a crisis–as “O God”, not as “O Father.” There is a simple reason for this. Unless you know God as your Father, you never cry out to Him in your ned a “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:16-16).”
-Source: Sinclair B. Fergusion, By Grace Alone, p. 9
Repentance
“By it [repentance] a sinner, out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of His mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, so grieves for, and hates his sins, as to turn form them all unto god, purposing and endeavoring to walk with Him in all the ways of His commandments.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 71
“Repentance is to leave
The sins we loved before;
And show that we in earnest grieve,
By doing so no more.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 31
“Repentance involves seeing sin for the deceitful and deadly thing that it is, so that we turn from it. Belief in Christ involves seeing Christ for the gracious and powerful Savior that he is, so that we turn to him. These two acts go together in a person’s salvation. Repentance and belief are like two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one side without having the other side also.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 175
“Since behavior is based on belief, we must repent of any lies we believe, because behind every sin is a lie. Therefore, any change in our behavior has to start with a change in the thinking of our mind. Repentance is first a change of our mind about who is in charge (God, not us), what is and is not sin, and how we are to worship God in all of life. Any attempt to change behavior without repentance in the mind is simply doomed to fail.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 147
“Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change.”
-Source: Timothy Kelley, Counterfeit Gods, p. 172
“When yo God’s cleansing grace, repentance doesn’t have to be a traumatic thing. The author Tim Keller notes that some people view admitting tthey’re wrong as an earth-shattering experience. That shouldn’t be the case for Christians. We already admitted we were wrong when we trusted in Jesus and acknowledge that we had no means by which to save ourselves. So it shouldn’t be too hard to do this day by day as we become more like Jesus.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 168
“In repentance we must do three things in relation to sin: see it, own it, and turn from it.”
-Source: Darrin Planter, Church Planter, p. 168
Rescue
“There is surprising comfort in teh realization that God is so unlike you and me. The fact that he’s not like us is the reason we can run to him for rescue.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 45
Rest
“Be still and know that I am God”. “God invites us to take a holiday [vacation], to stop being God for a while, and let him be God.” Too often we think of prayer as a serious chore, something that must be scheduled around other appointments, shoehorned in among other pressing activities. We miss the point, says Tugwell: “God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing allthose important things we have to do in our capacity as God, and leave it to him to be God.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, Prayer, p. 26
Resurrection
“What was it that within a few days transformed a band of mourners into the spiritual conquerors of the world? It was not the memory of Jesus’ life; it was not the inspiration which came from past contact with Him. But it was the message, “He is risen.” That message alone gave to the disciples a living Saviour; and it alone can give to us a living Saviour to-day.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 42
“The resurrection is proff that the debt of sin has been paid and that our salvation has been secured. Jesus is not only a Savior who died for sin; he is a King who triumphed over sin.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 128
“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 210
“ The first accounts of the empty tomb and the eyewitnesses are not found in the gospels, but in the letters of Paul, which every historian agrees were written just fifteen to twenty years after the death of Jesus.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 211-212
“The only possible explanation for why women were depicted as meeting Jesus first is if they had. N. T. Wright argues that there must have been enormous pressure on the early proclaimers of the Christian message to remove the women from the accounts.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 213
“Paul’s letters show that Christians proclaimed Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the very beginning. That meant the tomb must have been empty. No one in Jerusalem would have believed the preaching for a minute if the tomb was not empty.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 214
“There were dozens of other messianic pretenders whose lives and careers ended the same way Jesus’ did. Why would the disciples of Jesus have come to the conclusion that that his crucifixion had not been a defeat but a triumph–unless they had seen him risen from the dead?”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 217
“As Pascal put it, “I [believe] those witnesses that get their throats cut.” Virtually all the apostles and early Christian leaders died for their faith, and it is hard to believe that this kind of powerful self-sacrifice would be done to support a hoax.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 218
“If Jesus is not raised and we are not joined to his life, faith and ministry are in vain. In which case, the experience that results is not joy and hope, but weariness and despair. Faith has no ground, no basis and no source in God. And ministry is without power.”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 23
“There are ten accounts in the Gospels and I Corinthians of appearances of the resurrected Jesus during the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension.
- In Matthew 28:1-10, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (the mother of James?), who had just left the empty tomb after the conversation with the angel of the Lord. Luke 24:10 adds Joanna and other women to the company who went to the tomb.
- Jesus appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
- Jesus appeared to the disciples with Thomas (John)
- At John 20:24-29, Jesus appeared to the disciples, including Thomas.
- Jesus showed himself to the seven disciples by the Sea of Tiberias
- In Matthew 28:16-17, Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples before his ascension.
- In Mark 16:9, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene
- At Luke 24:34, we are told Jesus appeared to Simon(Peter).
- At 1 Corinthians 15:7, the risen Lord appeared to James.
- Finally, Jesus appeared to “more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time.” most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 15:6)”
-Source: Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry, p. 68-69
Responsibility
“The trouble with being punctual is that nobody is there to appreciate it!”
-Franklin Jones
Revelation
“If God is not a God of authority, He is not God at all. If God does not reveal Himself, religion is impossible. Therefore, if God reveals Himself to man, it must be in an authoritative way.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 191
“In the Old Testament, God told Israel that the Torah was to “be for a sign on your hand, and as a reminder on your forehead” in order to remind them continually of their commitment and loyalty to God (Ex 13:9; so also Ex. 13:16l Deut 6:8; 11:18)”
“As a travesty of the signs of membership in the Old Testament community of faith, the beast’s marks on the foreheads and the hands of the worshipers refers to their loyal, consistent and wholehearted commitment to him and hence identification with him.”
-Source: G. K. Beale: We Become What We Worship, p. 256
“The idolaters’ identification with their object of worship is not only that they lie under the power of the beast and will participate in his destructive destiny, but they also share in his character-they become like the beast, devoid of the Spirit and bent on being against God’s will”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 261
“This idea of the number six is enhanced by observing that the sixth seal, trumpet and bowl all picture judgment of the beast’s followers.”
“The number three in the Bible signifies completeness, as, for example, is expressed by the completeness of the Godhead in Revelation 1:4-5, which is parodied by the dragon, beast and false prophet in Revelation 13 (and in Rev 16:13). Therefore, the repetition of six three times indicates the completeness of sinful incompleteness found in the beast.”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 262
“Not to identify with the beast is “to come off victorious” from his deceptive influence. Consequently, the victory in Revelation 15:2 must not be understood as winning a game by solving a riddle through intellectual cleverness of figuring out what ruler’s or king
s name can be literally computed to be “666”.
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, 263
“It’s hard for me to believe that the apostles went off into the world telling people about the God they couldn’t’t speak of and inviting the people to journey with them as the grew in their mutual un/knowing about the God they disbelieved in.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 124
“As God made clear, even in the Ten Commandments, He has chosen to be heard and not seen.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 18
“All theology or discourse about God proceeds on the basis that has revealed himself. The initiative is his alone. Our knowledge of God is dependent upon his own self-disclosure.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 153
Revelation, Book of
“No Bible is referred to in the Bible’s apocalyptic vision of the new creation, because the dwelling of the Father and the Son with renewed humanity will be sufficiently intimate, presumably, to make Scripture unnecessary for life in relationship with God (Rev. 22:3-5).”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 72
Revival
“It is not until we experience a holy dissatisfaction with things as they are that we can plant the seeds of reform. Of course, dissatisfaction alone is not enough.”
-Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p. 21
“Christians must seek not a return to the Reformation or the First Great Awakening but a return to Jesus Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 62
“Contrasted to this are the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “Any study of church history, and particularly any study of the great periods of revival or reawakening, demonstrates above everything else just this one fact; that the Christian Church during all such periods has spoken with authority. The great characteristic of all revivals has been the authority of the preacher. There seemed to be something new, extra, and irresistible in what he declared on behalf of God.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 71
“In speaking of the meaning of revival it is also essential to note that what Davies and his brethren believed about revival was not something separate from, or additional to, their main beliefs; it was, rather, a necessary consequence. Such is man’s state in sin that he cannot be saved without the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, Regeneration, and the faith that results fomr it, are the gifts of God, Therefore, wherever conversions are multiplied, the cause is to be found not in men nor in favourable conditions, but in the abundant influences of the Spirit of God that alone make the testimony of the church effective.
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 21
“True revivals rarely remain within denomination boundaries.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 74
“As was seen in the time of Edwards, Whitefield and Davies, one mark of an outpouring of the Spirit of God is the presence of a stronger catholicity of spirit among believers. Only when churches put adherence to Christ first can the world begin to recognize the real identity of those who bear his name.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 88
“Every true revival begins in the church and a proff of the genuiness of the work is that it does not leave believers where they were before. They are filled with new wonder, joy and praise, with a new sense of the privilege of serving God, and with renewed energy that comes from being constrained by the love of Christ.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 131
“The revivals, far from merely emotional events which influenced the uneducated, made a profound impression on almost all the main centres of learning. It is a striking fact that many of the best-known preachers of the era – men who were convinced believers in the outpouring of the Spirit – were themselves often heads of colleges during at least part of their ministries.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 132
“It was in this era that the term ‘revivalist’ was first used but, significantly, it was employed not by these men but by Unitarians and other opponents of revival. The term implied that there were certain men capable of producing the emotion and excitement which, in the judgment of critics, was the essence of revival. Not believing in the work of the spirit of God, such observers saw no distinction between revivalism and revival.”
“Revivals are always spurious when they are got up by man’s device and brought down by the Spirit of God.”
“Revivalism aims to produce excitement.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 201
“The experience of all five men points to the same conclusion: revivals did not occur in conjunction with any special efforts. They were not worked up, but were witnessed in the course of the ordinary services of the churches. Far from their being planned or announced in advance, those who experienced them were all united in the conviction that God alone had determined the time. So while they used the analogy of springtime and harvest, they were careful to assert that in the work of grace there is no corresponding set period of time between sowing and reaping. The duration of the cycles of time are known on to him before whom ‘a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 208
“In 1858 all the classic marks of a true spiritual awakening were present – hunger for the Word of God, for prayer and for serious Christian literature; a sense of wonder and profound seriousness; the same work evident in many places at once; joyful praise and readiness to witness; a new energy in practical Christian service; the recovery of family worship and family religion; and an observable raising of the whole moral one of society.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 348
“If many are responding to Jesus, but few are changed, we can be sure there is something wrong with the message.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 77
Revivalism
“In some ways their theologies diverged. Wesley became an Arminian and taught Christian perfection. As a matter of fact, he had believed in the possibility of “sinless perfection” before his conversion and that experience seemed only to heighten Wesley’s conviction on this matter. Whitefield did not, and his theology instead reiterated the interests of the Reformation, with the concern to protect God’s sovereign grace in the salvation of sinners.
They were united, however, on two points that set them off from most of their Puritan forebears. First, they both called for conversion without delay. They did not teach, as many Puritans had, that ordinarily there should be a period of despairing over sins before conversion. Second, they seemed to teach that assurance was inherent in faith, not a goal to be pursued after conversion.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 103-104
Righteousness
“We must be stripped of our fig leaves in order to be clothed with Christ’s righteousness so we can stand in the judgment of a holy God.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 104
“Righeousness has to do with right behaviour within the context of a particular relationship.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 106
S
Sabbath
“Can you imagine what the gift of the sabbath meant to the Israelites standing at the foot of Mount Sinai? A few months prior they had been slaves. Slaves who had been born of slaves. Slaves whose only value was the quantity of labor they could produce before their backs gave way and their strength failed. Slaves who, outside of a holy day or two, worked every day of their lives-from the tenderest days of their childhood until their broken bodies were laid in the ground. And now this God, who has claimed them as his “treasured possession,” is announcing that one day our of every seven will be set apart for rest.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 105
Sacrifice
“Spurgeon benefited within himself. The opposition taught him to sacrifice even his reputation for Christ. “If I must lose that too.” he wrote, “then let it go; it is the dearest thing I have, but it shall go too, if, like my Master, they shall say I have a devil and am mad.”
-Source: Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, p. 73
Sacrificial System
“In the OT, sacrifices are gifts to God and are meant to please him: they are not bribes to pacify him or enlist his help, but are expressions of praise: they acknowledge his glory and power, and are offered not to overcome his reluctance but in recognition of what he has done in the past, and of the need to depend on him for the present and the future.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 188
Salvation
“Better to die in a prison, die in a ditch, than die in your sins.”
– William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1964; Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1864; first published 1662), 169 (Quoted in Mark Dever, Promises Made, 431).
“The real change that we need is this conversion from worshiping ourselves to worshiping god, from being guilty in ourselves before God to being forgiven in Christ.”
-Source: Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 103
“Augustine had said that while God does not save us by ourselves, neither does he save us apart from ourselves,. the doctrine of justification by faith presupposes the subjective appropriation of the divine gift of salvation, but it also recognizes that even that faith by which we are justified is itself also a gift.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 311
“Christ’s invitation was not an offer of heaven or mansions or money; it was, rather, Himself.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 225
“In order for us sinners to be saved, one must see God at one and the same time as the one judging our sin (the Father), the one making the payment of infinite value for our sin (the divine Son), and the one empowering and directing the incarnate-human-Son so that he lives and obeys the Father, going to the cross as the substitute for us (the Holy Spirit).
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 17
“There is no saving revelation of the Spirit that is not the saving revelation of Jesus Christ and him crucified and risen.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 119
“Recognizing that God uses human means to bring about His divine purposes helps to frame the biblical teaching for us. We must simultaneously affirm God’s divine sovereignty and the free human agency and responsibility of men and women.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 63
“The New Testament does not offer a formal discussion of the challenge to reconcile God’s sovereignty with human free agency. The New Testament, however does not leave the issue in doubt. God will certainly call a people for Himself who will be presented faultless before His throne. This underscores one of the most important truths of the Bible; God is as gracious as He is sovereign.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 64
“The marvelous gift of salvation has its origin not within ourselves, nor in our deeds, nor by any kind of self effort, because all of our own efforts are tainted by our sinfulness, our depravity.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 77
“All other paths to salvation require people to do something. But what if someone cannot perform the obligations necessary-either because of physical, psychological, mental or other handicaps, or because of moral disability? That person is excluded from salvation. Salvation through Christ is obtained not by tring to save yourself (doing)_ but by trusting what Someone else has done for you. It’s not doing, but done.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 165
“This is the ordinance of God, that they which believe in Christ should be saved without works, by faith only, freely receiving remission of their sins. . . What can be spoken more plainly, than to say, that freely without works, by faith only, we obtain remission of our sins.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 95
“I deny that, and I affirm that faith only saves; but it is meet for a Christian to do good works, in token that he follows the steps of his Master, Christ, yet may we not say that we profit to our salvation; for when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants, and faith only in Christ’s blood saves us.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p 122
“Christ is alive and present in all his power. He saves us not only from the consequences of sin but from the domination of sin.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 165
“The justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy god justifies us through faith.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 23
“Although Christ accomplished the work of salvation in the first century, his work does not benefit us until we are united to him. Calvin said it famously: “As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 131
“They must be born again from above. This might seem at first sight to put human instrumentality altogether out of the field; but on turning to the Scriptures we find nothing to justify such an inference, and much of quite an opposite tendency. There we certainly find the Lord to be all in all, but we find no hint that the use of means must therefore be dispensed with. The Lord’s supreme majesty and power are seen all the more gloriously because He works by means.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 25
“As herectical as it sounds today, it is probably worth telling Americans that you don’t need Jesus to have better families, finances, health, or even morality. Coming to the cross means repentance-not adding Jesus as a supporting character for an otherwise decent script but throwing away the script in order to be written into God’s drama. It is death and resurrection, not coaching and makeovers.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 94
“God saves sinners-and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedaling th sinner’s inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Savior.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p.118
“We are not saved by principles or strategies but by a person. Proposititional truth is important, the suspicions of postmodernism notwithstanding. But propositional truth is important because it points me to the person who is the Truth and with whom I have a relationship by grace.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total CHURCH, p. 206
“Rather than accept our finitude and dependence on God, we desperately seek ways to assure ourselves that we still have power over our own lives.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods,p. 101
“Your salvation rests not on what you have done but on what Christ has done. You, therefore, can be sure of it, no matter how weak the faith by which you hold on to Christ, no matter how strong the attacks and accusations of Satan may be.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 75
“Benjamin b. Warfield shrewdly comments, it is not even faith in Christ that saves us. It is Christ who saves us–through faith.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 75
“Do you see the freedom you have in knowing the identity of your ultimate judge-that there is only one and that he can be well disposed toward you? The marvelous truth is that the One whom knows us best is the One who loves us most. As Don Carson succinctly puts it, “What matters most in God’s universe is what God thinks of us.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 22
“The young man seeks an answer to his question. The answer is: Jesus Christ. The young man wanted to hear the word of a good master, but now he has to recognize that this Word is actually the man himself whom he is questioning.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 74
“The old self cannot kill itself. It cannot will its own death. We die in Christ alone; we die through Christ and with Christ, Christ is our death.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 208
“Jesus did not come primarily to give us truths. He came to give us Himself.”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p. 19
“The reason this understanding of the interworking of human thinking and divine illumination is so important is that the great mass of ordinary people (and I count myself in this number) cannot come to an
“The reason this understanding of the interworking of human thinking and divine illumination is so important is that the great mass of ordinary people (and I count myself in this number) cannot come to an unshakable conviction about the truth of Christianity any other way. If our only confidence rests on rational historical and philosophical argumentation, most people will not have the time or the resources or the training to carry through such extended reasoning. And even those who devote themselves to this task know only probabilities, but not spiritual certainty. But the apostle John said, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (I John 5:13). We are meant to know that the gospel is true and that we are saved, not cross our fingers.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 78
Sanctification
Genuine evangelical faith produces genuine, evangelical fruit; true faith cannot be idle-it changes, renews, purifies, sanctifies, justifies more and more; all those who through the new birth have been grafted into Christ are “fruit bearing twigs of the true vine.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 269
“There is not one exhortation in Scripture to Christians to “accept Christ as Lord.” Rather =, they are to live out the implications of their initial relationship to him.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 77
“We cannot tell what God may make of us in the new creation, since it would have been quite impossible to have foretold what He made of chaos in the old creation.”
-Source: C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 296
“God is able, and will do His part in sanctification. I must be willing to accept m responsibility, and daily say “no” to the flesh, the Devil, and the world.”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 62
“I have realized that weight loss really couldn’t be my goal and suppressing a stronghold shouldn’t be my main focus. My goal is to follow Jesus faithfully each day.”
“Mark Driscoll said. “If we truly put our eyes Jesus, the rest of you can’t stay the same”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 129
“The already and not yet reality of our salvation helps us keep things in perspective. We shouldn’t be surprised that even though we’ve been changed, we still have to struggle with weaknesses and imperfections. We still have to deal with the ugliness of life in a fallen world where people let us down and disappoint us and where sickness and death break our hearts. So we shouldn’t despair over ong oing struggles with sin. This is part of the deal. Jesus has already brought salvation. But he’s not yet taken us home.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 153
“I once heard John Piper say in a sermon that sanctification isn’t necessarily progressive. If we’re not careful, it can be regressive. If we choose to feed our sinful desires and indulge our cravings, we make them stronger. We can backtrack in holiness.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 164
“Christian growth can’t be defined by whom we don’t want to be like. It has to be defined by becoming like Jesus.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep,p. 170
“Becoming like Jesus isn’t just a matter of not doing wrong. It’s a matter of actively “doing” righteousness. It’s pursuing obedience.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 171
“God will not be frustrated in His goal of conforming us to the likeness, of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers.”
-Source: Sinclair F Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 79
“Sin has no authority over anyone who is in Christ. You are no longer under its dominion. Yo have received a new identity. You have died out to that old kingdom. You have been raise through Christ into the new kingdome where He–not sin–reigns.”
-Source: Sinclair F. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 108
“The hard work of Christian growth, therefore, is to think less of ourselves and our performance and more of Jesus and his performance for us.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 95
“Think of what Paul tells us in Philippians 2:12 “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” We’ve got work to do-but what exactly is it? Get Better? Try harder? Pray more? Get more involved in church? Read the Bible longer? What precisely is Paul exhorting us to do? He goes on to explain: “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” 9v. 13). God works his work in you, which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Our hard work, therefore, means coming to a greater understanding of his work.”
“As we better grasp the gospel of grace, we come to see that Jesus came not as an angry tyrant to strip away our freedom but as an affectionate friend and deliverer to strip away our slavery to lesser things, so that we might become truly free.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 96
“I like to remind myself and others that the only thing you contribute to your salvation and to your sanctification is the sin that makes them necessary.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 103
“I’m not saying the Christian life is effortless; the real question is Where are we focusing our efforts? Are we working hard to perform? Or are we working hard to rest in Christ’s performance for us?”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing. Everything, p. 169
“Christians growth does not happen by working hard to get something we don’t have. Rather, Christian growth happens by working hard to daily swim in the reality of what we do have.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 172
“When the goal becomes conquering our sin instead of soaking in the conquest of our Savior, instead of growing stronger and more mature, we actually begin to shrink spiritually.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everythng, p. 180
Satan
“Matthew 28:18 makes it very clear that Jesus has all authority now, which means that Satan has no authority over you as a Christian. We who are by grace citizens of Jesus’ kingdom will never again have to obey the Dragon’s orders, satisfy his desires, or live as his captives. Jesus has thoroughly freed you from all your obligations to and agreements with the Dragon by bringing you into his kingdom of light.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 47
Scepticism
“Unlike modern sceptics, the rabbis apparently never denied that Jesus made such allegations for himself; instead, they called one who makes such claims a liar. Surely if Jesus had been a simple teacher whose self-understanding was greatly distorted by Christians of subsequent generations, some recollection of this fact would have remained for those opposed to Christianity to exploit. INstead, the most common rabbinic explantion is that Christianity was founded by a sorcerer who deceived Israel.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 252
Science
“Thomas Carlyle said that wonder is the basis of worship. And Albert Einstein said, “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”
-Source Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, p. 2
“Assert that, when studying a phenomenon, the scientist must always assume there is a natural cause. That is because natural causes are the only kind its methodology can address. It is another thing to insist that science has proven there can’t be any other kind. There would be no experimental model for testing the statement: “No supernatural cause for any natural phenomenon is possible.” It is therefore a philosophical presupposition and not a scientific finding.”
“Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 89
Scripture
“We owe to the Scripture the same reverence as we owe to God, since it has its only source in Him and has nothing of human origin mixed with it.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 194
“Calvin, like Luther, affirmed that the Scripture was the womb from which the church was born, and not vice versa”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 197
“We must recognize that views of Scripture held by progressives have also influenced their doctrines of God and salvation. This shift indicates that we cannot focus on the center alone and ignore the circumference, for one influences the other.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 22
“The formal principle, often summarized in the phrase sola scriptura, affirms that only those beliefs and practices that rest firmly on scriptural foundations can be regarded as binding on Christians, Southern Baptist theology and spirituality rest on Scripture as the central legitimating source of Christian faith and theology, the clearest window through which the face of Christ may be seen. We must recognize that to allow one’s ideas and values to become controlled by anything or anyone other than the self-revelation of God in Holy Scripture is to adopt an ideology rather than a theology.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 23
“There is a need to emphasize the center and articulate a theology with a recognizable circumference that does not expect or demand doctrinal uniformity on secondary or tertiary matters.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 23
“Just as Christ’s divinity does not abrogate Christ’s human nature, so the divine authorship of Scripture does not abolish its human authorship.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 26
“People need to recognize that while humans are free to reject the authority of Scripture, they will only substitute some other authority in its place.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 12
“As believers we approach Scripture differently than we would a newspaper or a Web page. We read a newspaper or Web page for information, but we read the Word of God for transformation.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 41
“Scripture is, as the Reformers confessed, norma ormans non normata, “the norm of norms which cannot be normed.” That is what we mean when we say “sola scriptura”-that Scripture is the norm of our worship. There is nothing external to Scripture that ca “norm” or correct it.”
-Source: R. Albert Hohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 28-29
“We no longer believe that hearing and responding to the Word of God is a matter of crucial importance. That is the only plausible reason I can offer for why expositional preaching is in decline, or even absent, in so many pulpits. Before the decline in expository preaching, there was the abandonment of the conviction that the Word of God comes as a matter of life and death.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 54
“Scripture alone is breathed out by God, and thus it alone is profitable for these things. Nothing else in the world is. This is a testimony not only to the authority and perfection of Scripture but also to its sufficiency. It alone is sufficient for the teaching, reproof, correction, and training of God’s people. As Christians, we live by the Word of God just as completely as Israel did. We know who God is only through the Scriptures, and we know who we are in Christ only through the Scriptures.
Preaching is therefore always a matter of life and death, The people in our churches depend for their very lives on the ministry of the Word; therefore our preaching had better be nothing less-and nothing other-than the exposition of the Bible.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 63
“It is often observed that God’s words and actions are intimately related in the Bible. To say of God that he spoke, and to say of God that he did something, is often one and the same thing.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 20
“Words on their own, though, can of course get nothing done. The word of the Lord has power only because it is the Lord who sends it.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 23
“What we find in Scripture is an astoundingly close relationship between God himself and the words through which he speaks.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 26
“It seems that God’s actions, including his verbal actions, are a kind of extension of him.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 31
“God cannot meaningfully establish his covenant with us, he cannot make his promise to us, without using words.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 31
“Words, including human words, do not necessarily obscure a relationship with God, somehow gettin in the way. More mystically minded people sometimes suppose that words by their nature are an obstruction to the goal of a deep communion with God, but that is just not so. Instead words are a necessary medium of a relationship with God.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 31-32
“At root, the rejection of Scripture as divine special revelation is often a side effect of the greater rejection of the particularity of Christ as God’s ultimate self-revelation in the world. Here should be noted a feature that underlies many discussions about Scripture: people’s view of Scripture is often largely determined by their view of Jesus Christ. That is one practical reason why the doctrine of Scripture must be articulated in a way that makes explicit its dependence on the doctrine of Christ.”
-Source: Timothey Ward, Words of Life, p. 41
“Returning to God and Scripture, we might then say that two aspects of God’s presence, as Scripture suggests it, are that he is semantically present in Scripture, and personally present in thh person of the Spirit. Thus those, such as Barth, who fear that to identify Scripture with the Word of God is wrongly to identify a human text with God himself have not taken sufficient account of the deep complexities involved in the relationship between persons and language, supremely in the case of God, as he reveals himself in Scripture and secondarily in the case of his creatures.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 65
“Scripture is related to the Son in the same way the covenant promise is related to the person of the Father, as a means of his action in the world, and thereby also a kind of extension of himself into the world in relation to us. We should read, listen to and hear it preacher, in order to find ourselves presented again with Christ and addressed by him. As we encounter the words of Scripture, we are encountering the Son in action. presenting himself to us in his call on us to take up our cross and follow him. Given that this is so, it would actually be a curious thing if the Bible and Christ were held so separate from each other that they were not to be designated by the same phrase. If we are unwilling to think of Scripture unambiguously as ‘the Word of God’, we distance Christ from the Scripture by which he presents himself to us so that we may know him. Consequently the suspicion will be hard to shift that in knowing Christ through Scripture we may not actually be in communion with God as he really is. Scripture testifies to a real, ontological relationship between the Son and his words written in Scripture. Therefore we ought not to shy away from the terminology God himself has given us in Scripture to allow us to come to terms with that profound relationship between Christ as Word and Scripture as Word.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 72-73
“The right way forward is rather to pay more appropriate attention to the content, form and aims of Scripture as God has in fact given it to us. It was just in this way that Christ challenged the Pharisees in their dangerously short-sighted reading of their Scriptures. He did not attempt to downgrade their understanding of the full divinity of their Scriptures, but in fact at every point upheld such a high view of the Scriptures. Instead he urged them to read their Scriptures again, but this time more fully and wisely.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 74
“Crucial to the Reformers’ view of this action of the spirit is that his illuminating work took place not through the church but through Scripture. Calvin makes the point this way: ‘the Word is the instrument by which the Lord dispenses the illumination of his Spirit to believers. For they know no other Spirit than him who dwelt and spoke in the apostles.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 93
“For Calvin, the fall did not entirely erase human knowledge of God, and consequently Scripture can serve as the necessary lens for putting into focus for us knowledge of God which is already there, but which without God’s word to us in Scripture is seriously blurred by our sinful perspective.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 98
“A particularly distinguishing feature of the Reformation was its insistence on the formal sufficiency of Scripture. Calvin states it thus: ‘the highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it’.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 110
“The inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture should not lead us to think that every statement in the Bible is true in an abstract sense just abecause it is part of God’s Word. Scripture as God’s inerrant Word infalliby records the lies, falshoods, and hal-truths uttered by men and women.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone,p. 84
“The Scripture is not only a message book but also a method book.”
-source: Geg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship, p. 60
Secularism
“Secularism cannot be blamed on the secularists, many of whom were raised in the church. We are the problem. If most churchgoers cannot tell us anything specific about the God they consider meaningful or explain basic doctrines of creation in god’s image, original sin, the atonement, justification, sanctification, the means of grace, or the hope of glory, then the blame can hardly be placed at the feet of secular humanists. If, for example, privatization entails “the transfer of truth claims from the objective world to the subjectivity of the individual, then American Protestants have not only adapted to a secular culture but are part of a revivalistic heritage that helped to create it.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 243-244
“This leads to a strange conclusion. We have come to a cultural moment in which both skeptics and believers feel their existence is threatened because both secular skepticism and religious faith are on the rise insignificant, powerful ways. We have neither the Western Christendom of the past nor the secular, religionless society that was predicted for the future. We have something else entirely.
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. XV
Self-esteem
“While it can be true that an excessively low self-image can cause problems in one’s life, it is also true that a misunderstanding of what self-esteem and the self-image are can lead to severe problems. In too many cases, a good self-image is defined as a self-love, which means ‘that we are to love what we ourselves are by nature, apart from God’s grace [in Christ]. Love of this kind is next door to pride,” indeed, it is the beginning of pride. Paul Brownback has said that self-love can lead to worship of oneself: “The greatest peril of self-love is that it is worship of self. It is idolatry with self as the idol, the antithesis of the legitimate blessedness that comes from being poor in spirit. It leads to pride toward God and selfishness”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 296
” But there is a good self-love that seeks what will truly make us happy; it is loving ourselves by desiring to become what God wants us to become. More precisely, we love God, and in the process of loving him, we become what God wants us to become,”
-Source: G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, p. 298
Semi-Pelagianism
“Prevenient grace distinguishes Arminianism from semi-Pelagianism, which teaches that we can initiate our own salvation. Semi-Pelagianism still deny that we can complete our salvation-that’s left for full-blown Pelagians. Olson traces this problem in American evangelicalism back to nineteenth-century revivalist Charles Finney, who Olson says denied original sin and the need for preventive grace. Evangelicals today borrow heavily from Finney, a leading figure in the Second Great Awakening.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 41
“Semi-Pelagianism is a heresy that is extremely popular-maybe the default heresy of American Christianity and evangelicalism indeed.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 41
Sermon
“Many evangelicals have abandoned the text without recognizing that they have done so. These preachers may eventually get to the text in the course of the sermon, but the text does not set the agenda or establish the shape of the message. The sacred desk has become an advice center and the pew has become the therapist’s couch.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 20
“There is nothing which a sermon ought to be except a fit medium of truth to men. There is no model of a sermon so strange and novel, so different from every pattern upon which sermons have been shaped before, that if it became evident to you that that was the form through which the message which you had ot tell would best reach the men to whom you had to tell it, it would not by your right, nay’, by your duty to preach your truth in that new form.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 114
” In all your desire to create good sermons you should think no sermon good that does not do its work.”
” He who freely uses the types which he finds, and yet compels them always to bend toi the purposes for which he uses them, his is their true master, and not their slave.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, p. 115
“The best sermon of any time is that time’s best utterance.”
“So I think that a man’s best sermon is the best utterance of his life. It embodies and declares him. If it is really his, it tells more of him than his casual intercourse with his friends, or even the revelations of his domestic life. If it is really God’s message through him, it brings him out in a way that no other experience of his life has power to do, as the quality of the trumpet declares itself more clearly when the strong man blows a blast for battle through it than when a child whispers into it in play.
-Source:: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, 135
“Many a true and helpful word which your people need, and which you ought to say to them, will seem unworthy of the dignity of your great discourse.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on preaching, 150
“I’ve heard that the great author Flannery O’Connor was once asked to put the meaning of one of her short stories “in a nutshell.” She responded tartly that, if she could have put the meaning into a nutshell, she wouldn’t have had to write the story.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 205
Sermon on the Mount
“But even in the Sermon on the Mount there is far more than some men suppose. Men say that it contains no theology; in reality it contains theology of the most stupendous kind. In particular, it contains the loftiest possible presentation of Jesus’ own Person. That presentation appears in the strange note of authority which pervades the whole discourse; it appears in the recurrent words, “But I say unto you.” Jesus plainly puts His own words on an equality with what He certainly regarded as the divine words of Scripture; He claimed the right to legislate for the Kingdom of God. Let it not be objected that this note of authority involves merely a prophetic consciousness in Jesus, a mere right to speak in God’s name as God’s Spirit might lead. For what prophet ever spoke in this way? The prophets said, “Thus saith the Lord,” but Jesus said, “I say.” We have no mere prophet here, no mere humble exponent of the will of God; but a stupendous Person speaking i a manner which for any other person would be abominable and absurd.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 35-36
The error consists in supposing that the Golden Rule, with the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, is addressed to the whole world. As a matter of fact the whole discourse is expressly addressed to Jesus’disciples; and from them the great world outside is distinguished in the plainest possible way. The persons to whom the Golden Rule is addressed are persons in whom a great change has been wrought-a change which fits them for entrance into the Kingdom of God.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 37-38
“The Sermon on the Mount is not a moral game plan for how to live a better life. It’s supposed to decimate you, and in it Jesus makes the most unbelievable claims about Himself that you have to deal with. Either He’s God or He’s not. Jesus refuse to let you put Him in a moral teacher role.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 221
Service
“Self-righteous service requires external rewards. It needs to know that people see and appreciate the effort. It seeks a human applause-with proper religious modesty of course. True service rests contented in hiddenness. It does not fear the lights and blare attention, but it does not seek them either. Since it is living out of a new Center of reference, the divine nod of approval is completely sufficient.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 128
“Some spiritual young adults so like the idea of serving that they cannot maintain proper boundaries that will protect them and their homes.”
-Source: Jim Putman, Real-life Discipleship, p. 130
Sex
“Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.”
-Billy Crystal
” I believe that this is one of the main reasons why God has made the sexual experience in human life to be as pleasurable and wondrous as it is. Image-of-God procreation is the designed to reveal the pleasure God has in crating people in his own image, and the joy of bringing yet more of these humans into existence. We have the privilege of creating image-of-God persons. God didn’t have to do it this way. He could have done it himself. But, the Father desires to share. He chooses to give to us some of the most wondrous aspects of his work.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 58
“The Bible says, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality.” Thus, the issue is not where the line is but when the time is.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 150
Shepherding
The shepherding metaphor is not only comprehensive with respect to the nature of the care received but also with respect to the extent. This is one important distinction between the metaphor of father and that of shepherd. Children grow up and become less dependent on their earthly fathers, though the relationship continues. Sheep, on the other hand, are always completely dependent on their shepherd.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 13
“David would never think of abusing sheep in that way, but he had committed an even greater transgression by abusing God’s sheep.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 19
“One of the consequences of the failure to shepherd is that others will step in to fill the void. The strong will assert themselves and bully the weaker sheep.”
“Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them, “Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you push with side and with shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns until you have scattered them abroad.” (Ezek. 34:20-21).
“Faithful shepherds protect their flocks not only from harmful outside influences but from the self-serving among the sheep. Many congregations have experienced the intimidation of bullies within their midst when leaders fail to take responsibility to shepherd the flock. It is often teh strong-willed, outspoken, highly ipinionated folk who fill the void.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 22
“Ordinarily, the shepherd’s calling was not to die for the sheep but to live for the sheep. Jesus’ charge was unique, however, as he came to provide protection from the ultimate eschatological danger of condemnation for sim through giving his life as the substitutionary atonement for the transgressions of his flock.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 31 & 32
“Timidity” and “cowardice” are strong but accurate discription of shepherd-elders who fail in their commitment to the sheep and, ultimately, to tehhChief Shepherd.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 86
“Not only are the shepherdds to know the sheep and take responsibility for them, but the sheep are to know, that is, to respect and appreciate, those who are over them in the Lord.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 93
“A crucial measure to take in order to prevent member inactivity is to establish a system of regular, dedicated contact with members.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 124
” A fundamental responsibility of any and every shepherd is to assure that the sheep are well nourished.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 141
“Well-shepherded sheep do not stray! If members know that their leaders care for them and are committed to know, feed, lead, and protect them, they will not be likely to look for “greener pastures” elsewhere.”
-Source: Timothy Z Witmer, The Shepherd Leader, p. 181
Simplicity
“E. F. Schumacher – “any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p. 202
“It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick, Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 80
“To have our goods available to others marks the third inner attitude of simplicity. If our goods are not available to teh community when it is clearly right and good, then they are stolen goods. The reason we find such an idea so difficult is our fear of the future. We cling to our possessions rather than sharing them because we are anxious about tomorrow. But if we truly believe that God is who Jesus says he is, then we do not need to be afraid.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 89
Sin
“Part of our problem with hell is our problem with how we view our sins. We don’t see our sins against God as being that egregious.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey. A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 146
“Sin, then, according to Calvin is not simply the name for evil acts which we commit: it is rather the direction and inclination of human nature itself in its fallen condition.
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 215
“We do sins because we are sinners.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 215
“We wanted to be captains but we found ourselves chained to the oars, the oars of what we need to have or be. We’re not captains but slaves. And we’ve steered ourselves away from love and toward evil.”
-Source: James Choung, TRUE STORY A Christianity Worth Believing In, p. 107
“And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free will. It is a large matter and too much to one side of the road to be discussed adequately here; but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.”
-Source: Philip Yancey, G.K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy, p. 207
“As noted previously, most people aren’t hostile to Christianity; they’re just indifferent. Psychology and sociology have told people their guilt is not real; they just haven’t adjusted ot their environment or social situation yet. They are not responsible for many of their actions. Such “modern” people do not measure themselves by God’s absolutes but by comparison with others-what is normal in society. So their conscience is quieted, and they become unconcerned.
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 58-59
“Isaiah 57:20 says, “the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.” the sea does not need to do anything special to produce mire and dirt; that is the result of its natural motions. This is also true of us when we are under the condition of sin. The natural motions of our lives produce mire and dirt. Sin is part of the internal structure of our lives. No special effort is needed to produce it. No wonder we feel trapped.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 4
“The Old Testament does not depict its characters as holy, faultless icons; instead it paints them in all their graphic sinfulness, warts and all. In our technological society, by way of contrast, “blame” for individuals is almost nonexistent. Instead, there are processes, agents, forces, and external drives. “Sin” is given a mechanistic interpretation so that blame is steered away from the individual. In this environment, it is no wonder that even the idea of a personal God to whom we must answer tends to get lost.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 77
“Standing together east of Eden [Adam and Eve] each felt alone-betrayed by the other, alienated from God, and confused about how it had all come apart so quickly. . . The children were all born outside of Eden. . . .None of them ever saw the tree of life or had a chance to taste or reject the forbidden fruit. At the same time, none of them enjoyed marriage relationships without dome degree of rivalry or resentment, and they inevitably ate bread produced by teh sweat of their brow. born in a fallen world, they knew only the curse, never Eden. Still they knew that this was not the way life was supposed to be…Adam and Eve sinned alone, but they were not the only ones locked out of the Garden. Cut off from the tree of life, they and their descendants were all destined to die.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 124
“Suffering is not a part of God’s creation but rather a byproduct of sin.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 124
“For the proper and genuine cause of sin is not god’s hidden counsel but the evident will of man”, although in the context he also states that Adam’s fall was “not without God’s knowledge and ordination.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 158
“Original sin, as G.K. Chesterton observes, is “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 63
It is easy for a man who is enslaved by his stomach to condemn the man who is enslaved by alcohol. But in God’s sight, “Sin is sin.” God has convicted me. I have confessed it, and repented of it. Will you?”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 121
“Everybody is against two thousand year old sins. But it takes a prophet to be against the currently approved abominations.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, A Serrated Edge, p. 69
“Sin brings guilt before god, the divine judge, even where there is no objective awareness of it. Note too that the OT recognizes that all sin is ultimately against God (Ps. 51:4; see also eg. Lev. 5:19; 6:2).”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 151
“Azazel may be the name of a desert demon, though this should not be seen as a sacrifice or gift made to Azazel, but rather as sending sin back to where it came from.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 187
“Sin comes to us, first, as a penalty we cannot pay and, second, as a power we cannot overcome.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 137
“I read the transcript of a television interview that Tom Brokaw did with pastor Ted Haggard several years ago. At the time Haggard was at the height of his popularity and influence. His church and ministry were thriving, Brokaw insighfully asked why there was so little mention of sin in his church. Haggard said that since Jesus took care of our sin at the Cross, the church’s emphasis was on fulfulling the destiny God had called them to.
Sadly, just a few years later, Haggard was forced to resign when s serious pattern of sexual immorality in his life was revealed. His casual,even flippant attitude toward sin in light of these dismaying revelations underscores the danger of neglecting the ongoing fight against sin. Yes, Jesus dealth with our sin at the Cross; those who trust in him will never face the wrath of God. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the fight against remaining sin. We ignore it to our own spiritual peril.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 164
“We like to keep the problem outside ourselves; it’s someone else’s fault. It’s not something that needs to be repented of; it’s a condition that needs to be understood and possibly medicated.”
If you pretend, blame, and excuse all sin away, sanctification gets replaced by therapy. It becomes a vague, self-centered pursuit of self-improvement. And all we’re left with is the hope of new drugs, new therpy, and better circumstances so our better self can emerge.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 167
“In his book The Reason for God, Tim Keller says that all sin is attempting to find a sense of identity and meaning apart from God. “So, according to the Bible,” he writes, “the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 224
- · We do not become sinners by committing specific acts.
- · We commit specific acts of sin because we are sinner.
“In short, my problem is not the isolated actions that I see as aberrations from what I really am. I am deceiving myself if I think that way. These actions are not aberrations of what is in my heart. The show that I commit sin because I am in bondage to it.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 3
“A socioeconomic theory cannot bring world-scale or individual reconciliation when the basic problem is moral. Treating sinful behavior as a medical category and prescribing chemical therapy will not solve alienations that are not caused by chemical deficiency. The problem is not ultimately economic, biological, or chemical.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 49
“Whether people feel guilty is not really the issue. My feelings, or lack of them, neither increase nor lessen my guilt. It is first and foremost a personal standing before a holy God, not a psychological condition>”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 56
“There is a tendency to think that our sins are bigger than our sin.”
“When Christians feel that sins (acts) are bigger than sin (condition), they see evangelism as an effort of moral reform rather than explaining the steps that need to take place to rip out our wicked hearts and replace them with new hearts=that amazing work of God that Jesus called being born again.”
-source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 32
“The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 55
“Sin is a theological concept, and a reality to be defined in relation to God. We are sinners because we have rebelled against God, abandoned his truth, refused his law, defied his Christ, and placed ourselves in our Cretor’s place. We have become our own law, truth, and christ. Sin is not primarily about breaking rules, although it results in that; it is not at bottom about self-centeredness, although it always is that. It is at bottom a refusal to let God be God over life, to give him the center, the focus, the glory that are his.”
-Sourc: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 145 (a)
Sinners
“Let’s not believe that we are simply all engaged in some search for truth. The fall did not leave people neutral toward God but at enmity with him. Therefore we must not pretend that non-Christians are seekers by the simple virtue of their having been made in the image of God. The Bible teaches that people are by nature estranged from God, and we must be honest about that.”
-Source: Mark Dever, The Gospel & Personal Evangelism, p. 56-57
Small Groups
“The closer you actually live to the people in your small group, the greater the depth of community you will experience, because proximity increases the frequency of interaction.
-Source: Dave Ferguson, The Big Idea, p. 124
Social Involvement
“Conservatives often do not “do truth” well because they neglect community. Because people are not sharing their lives, truth is not applied and lived out.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 17
“If Christian community is not governed by truth as it should be, it can be whimsical or indulgent.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 17
“So in any Christian ministry, including ministry among the poor, proclaiming and teaching the word of God must be central. And that is because the greatest need of the poor, as for us all, is to be reconciled to God and so escape his wrath. What makes Christian social involvement distinctly Christian is a commitment to reconciling the poor to God through the proclamation of the gospel.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 78
Social Ministry
“When it comes to issues of salvation, it’s not an overstatement to say that good deeds (from personal piety to social action) without going through the door of the gospel are bad deeds (Romans 14:23). Good deeds without the gospel can fool us, in our pride, to think that our condition is acceptable to God.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 43-44
“We must never forget that the gospel brings more long-term social good than any governmental program ever developed.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 64
“The gospel message is the message that produces salvation. So we should never confuse meeting physical needs with sharing the gospel.”
-Source: J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 68
“We share the good news always open to doing good, and we do good lways with the hope of sharing our faith. We never divorce the two.”
-Source; J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger, p. 69
“here Jesus’ blessing is totally different from its caricature in the form of a political-social program. The Antichrist also declares the poor to be blessed, but he does it not for the sake of the cross, in which all poverty is embraced and blessed. Rather, he does it with political-social ideology precisely in order to fend off the cross. He may call this ideology Christian, but in doing so he becomes Christ’s enemy.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 103
Sodom and Gomorrah
“Idol worship is anything that is a substitute for worship of God, Interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “religion” as “something that one is devoted to”, which can be God or something else.”
“Lot’s wife was an earth dweller. When the angel told Lot to leave Sodom part of his exhortation was “do not look behind you” (Gen 19:17). When God rained down “brimstone and fire,” Lot’s wife “looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen 19:26), just as Sodom and Gomorrah had been reduced to salt (Deut 29:23; Zeph 2:9). Why did she resemble these destroyed cities? Because her “looking back” indicated that she was more attached to Sodom for her ultimate security than God, who had commanded them to go on their pilgrimage out to the city. She took more security in the city’s ungodly attitude that even her judgment was identified with the city’s judgment.”
-Source: B.K. Bealey, We Become What We Worship, p. 285
Sons
“God, make me a man with thick skin and a soft heart. Make me a man who is tough and tender. Make me tough so I can handle life. Make me tender so I can love people. God, make me a man.”
-Source: Darrin Patrick, Church Planter, p. 12
Sorrow
“There is a sweet joy that comes to us through sorrow.”
– C. H. Spurgeon
Solitude
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. . . . Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. . . Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowhip without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”
-Source: Celebration of Discipline, p. 97
Soul Care
“Over-concern for physical comfort can be an enemy of your soul? What have you found effective in undermining your concern for personal comfort-biographies, role models, accountability, or discipline? Have these toos produced visible fruit in your life and in the lives of others?”
-Source. Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 30
“Puritan Richard Baxter wrote: “It is a palpable error or some ministers . . . who study hard to preach exactly, yet study little or not at all to live exactly.”
-Source,Dever, Duncan, Mohler,Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 119
“A marked or prolonged inattention to personal holiness in a pastor is a grave matterthat must be addressed.”
-Source, Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 122
Southern Baptist
“Boyce settled in his native South in 1821 and soon became a leader among the Baptist churches. His views were decidedly old school and he shared the catholicity of the earlier Baptist to the extent of calling the Westminister Confession ‘our Confession’. In 1856 he complained that ‘the distinctive principles of Arminianism have also been engrafted upon many of our churches;, and that ‘some of our ministry have not hesitated publicly to avow them’. Among those sharing Boyce’s concern was Patrick Hues Mell who was to serve as Present of the Southern Baptist Convention for seventeen years. In his second charge at Oglethorpe, Georgia, Mell found a number of members drifting off into Arminianism’. In a preface to a work which he published in 1850, ‘to counteract the tendencies in our midst to Arminianism’, he wrote:
I have been pained to notice, for some years past, on the part of some of our ministers, in some localities in the South, a disposition to waive the doctrines of Grace in their public ministrations. While some have been entirely silent about them and have even preached, though not ostensibly, doctrines not consistent with them, others have given them only a cold and half-hearted assent, and some few have openly derided and denounced them.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 324-325
Southern Baptist Convention
“The theological consensus of 1900 had become a pragmatic consensus by the 1950s. This brought about a generation of leaders committed to programmatic expansion. The programmatic and pragmatic outlook was central for growing a successful denomination tin the post-World War II era. Orthodoxy was understood in terms of “doing the right program” rather than articulating the right belief system. What resulted was not so much a heterodox people but an “a-theological” generation.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 61
“The conservative resurgence in the SBC is not about the Evangelical Theological Society but about Vacation Bible School.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 115
“One key to the renewal of Baptist identity includes Southern Baptist embracing the reality that we are part of the universal (“catholic”) Christian tradition that includes all believers everywhere.”
-Source: Davd S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 261
“Southern Baptists must make sure that the renewal of our Baptist identity does not come at the expense of our Christian identity.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Identity, p. 262
Sovereignty
“The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is that God selects those on whom his favor will rest. God is self-determined. He has supreme independence; he is autonomous-a law unto himself. As each goes to their appointed destination in the afterlife, no one will shake their fist at God, saying “I didn’t get what I deserved. ” Except, of course, for the person in heaven!”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, P. 141
“There are to ways in which God’s ruling of this world is spoken of in the Bible. One way is through God’s providing for everything that he has made, and the other is through God’s guiding and directing everything he made so all things accomplish what God has planned. Let’s think about each of these a bit more.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 64
Sovereignty of God
” We must understand God by His revelation of Himself, not by our own hunches, not by our own wishes, not by the way we like to think of God. Too often today we speak as if evangelism were advertising and explain the Spirit’s work in terms of marketing. Some even talk of God Himself as if He were made in the image of man, rather than the other way around.”
“If we are to be a healthy church in such times, we must be especially careful to pray for leaders in the church to have a biblical grasp of and an experiential trust in the sovereignty of God, Sound doctrine, in its full, biblical glory, marks a healthy church.”
-Source: Mark Dever. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 73
“Compatibilism. It bears its name because it views freedom as compatible with absolute divine sovereignty.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 149
“Our decisions are not only tied to our character; they also are compatible with and stand under the efficacious and universal sovereignty of God. Scripture often shows that God brings about the free decisions of people, such as Joseph’s brothers (Gen. 45:5-8), Cyrus (Isa. 44:28), and Judas (Luke 22:22;cf. Acts 2:23-24; 3:18;4:27-28;13:27). So we should not be prejudiced by the unbiblical but popular notion that God never foreordains our free decisions. Indeed, Scripture portrays human decisions as compatible with divine sovereignty. Our freedom is genuine, and god is in control. We make real choices, and God predestines everything according to the counsel of his will, although Scripture never fully explains this mystery.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God,p. 149
“If we do not see souls saved today or tomorrow, we will still work on. . . . We are laboring for eternity, and we count not our work by each day’s advance, as men measure theirs; it is God’s work, and must be measured by His standard. Be ye well assured that, when time, and things created, and all that oppose themselves to the lord’s truth, shall be gone, every earned sermon preached, and every importunate prayer offered, and every form of Christian service honestly rendered, shall remain embedded in the mighty structure which God from all eternity has resolved to raise to His own honor.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 95
Speech
“Filthiness, foolish talk, and crude joking are “out of place”-they’re forbidden not because they’re on some arbitrary “banned words” list, but because they reflect the heart and attitude of those who disregard God and his Word. Living in a way that’s distinct from the world means speaking in a way that’s distinct from the world. Grace changes us from the inside out, and a changed heart will lead to a changed vocabulary.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 55
Spiritual Disciplines
“God intends the Disciplines of the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings: people who have jobs, who care for children, who was dishes and mow lawns. In fact, the Disciplines are best exercised in the midst of our relationships with our husband or wife, our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors.”
-Source: Richard J. foster, Celebration of Discipline, p,1
“The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 105
“The purpose of the Disciplines is freedom. Our aim is the freedom, not the Discipline.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 110
“The objection that Christians should take refuge in faith and scripture and forsake asceticism is without any merit. It is without mercy and has no power to help. What is a life of faith, if not an endless manifold struggle of the spiritt against the flesh? How can anyone live in faith whom prayer makes slothful, who is tired of scripture, or whose joy in God is stolen by sleeping, eating, or sexual desire?”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p.160
“A few days later I received an email from an acquaintance, Ajith Fernando, who was helping to organize the relief work in Sri Lanka. “Disciplines for Emergency Workers,” He titled it–a good title for anyone involved in God’s kingdom work. Ajith mentioned that during times of disaster we tend topush ourselves beyond what is healthy. He then gave practical advice to other relief workers. Get enough sleep. Don’t neglect your family. Ten to your emotional needs. In order to help others, you have to be strong yourself. finally, Ajith turned to spiritual disciplines.
People like Mother Teresa have shown us that anyone who wants to do crisis ministry long term must have a healthy devotional life. God has built into our systems a rhythm of life which we must not vilate: output and input; work and rest; service and worship; community activity, family activity and solitude. Yet it is so easy at a time like this to neglect some of the less active disciplines in this list. . . Every time I sit down to pry or read my Bible there seem to be so many other urgent demands that call my attention.”
-Source: Philip Yancy, Prayer, p. 129
Spiritual Gifts
“The one thing that does not change every time the word charisma is used in the New Testament is that these gifts are given for the building up of the body. Whether it is escape of Paul from a shipwreck or the gifts he writes about in 1 Corinthians 14, they are all charismata and they are always for building up the church in some way.”
-Source: Mark Dever. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p 234
“If a pastor is leading a church to growth one of the essential goals of that leadership is to make sure every member of the church discovers, develops, and is using his or her spiritual gift or gifts.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 113
Spiritual Warfare
“The difference between those afflicted with a spiritual malady and the physical equivalent is that the spiritual disease always involves a choice. Many who suffer from variant forms of cancer inherited them genetically: they did not have a choice. However, each person who is infected by a spiritual disease has the choice to be cured. It is a matter of the will, not genetics. They are not victims; they are perpetrators.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner. Why Churches Die, p. 27
“Thus, the church is always mounting a counterrevolution to the spirit of the age, and preaching is the God-ordained means whereby the saints are armed and equipped for this battle and confrontation.
The preached Word, applied to he heart by the Holy Spirit, is the essential instrumentality through God shapes His people. As the Reformers remind us, it is through preaching that Christ is present among His people.”
-Source: r. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 69
“As this fiery dart comes toward Pau–“How do you really know God loves you?”–his answer is not, “I deserve to be loved.” Neither is it, “Things are going so well in my life it is obvious that God loves me.” On the contrary, he knows that he does not deserve to be loved. And at times he writes as if everything is agains him (Rom. 8:35; 1 Cor. 4:10-13; 2 Cor. 4:8-12; 2 Cor. 11:23-28). No, Paul knows that God has given His Son for him (Gal. 2:20). And if God has given His Son for him, God will stop at nothing in order to bring him to His eternal glory.”
“Who can be against us?” No one, not even Satan. No opposition can withstand God’s love and purpose for us.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 72
“But ultimately, the most sinster thoughts that Satan insinuates into our minds are not enticements ot sin but suspicions about God Himself. He always plots to cause us to “exchange the truth of God for the lie” (rom. 1:25).
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 84
“That is exactly “Satan’s arr” He seeks to distort our view of God and our understanding of His gracious character.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 92
“The Lord is absolutely good, true, faithful, and gracious. But the enjoyment of Him is in large measure dependent on what we think He is really like.”
“This is why deceiving us about the character of God is central to Satan’s strategy against us.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 96-97
“You cannot rely on your experiences to prove the love of God. They may indeed give you evidences of it. But when you are in the dark, those very things may seem to mock you.”
“There is one place you can go. The Scottish theologian James Denney once said that the only thing in which he ever envied a roman Catholic priest was in his ability to hold out a crucifix before a congregation and say, “God loves you like that.”
“We do not need that symbol to proclaim the reality to ourselves. For , as Paul argues in Romans 8:32, god did not spare His own Son but gave Him up to the cross for us all. There is no other evidence or argument that can be brought in all the dark providences of human experience that can withstand the mighty logic of the evidence of Calvary.”
-Source: Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone, p. 99
“First, realize that you cannot get out of the wilderness on your own.. This is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-spiritual-bootstraps affair.”
Second, don’t stop reading your Bible or praying, even though it all seems as dry as dust. After all, it is always dry int eh desert. If you can only manage one word of Scripture, that’s enough. If you can only utter one word in prayer, then let it be the name Jesus, for even His name is a prayer.”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p. 64
Spirituality
“The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 1
“Spiritual stagnation in a minister results in spiritual lethargy in the local church.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeion on Leadership, p. 70
“Biblical spirituality turns out to be a spirituality of mission. We “declare the praises of [God]” by being a holy people in a hostile world, proclaiming the good news and performing good deeds (1 Peter 2:9-12).”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 146
Spurgeon
“His personal motto, which became the motto of The Pastors’ College, was et teneo et tenor – “I hold and am held”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 94
Staff
“Six of seven comeback churches experienced staff change prior to their comeback. Most comeback churches changed staff.”
-Source: Ed Stetzer & Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches, p. 177
Staffing
“If you look at any business that’s consistently successful, you’ll find that its leaders focus intensely and relentlessly on people selection. Whether you’re the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation or in charge of your first profit center, you cannot delegate the process for selecting and developing leaders. It’s a job you have to love doing.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 110
“The second staff person to be hired should be a person who balances the gifts and talents of the senior pastor.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 31
“If change is wanted, hire from without; if change is not wanted, hire from within.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 46
“As a general rule, full-time staff function best when the overall size of the staff is larger than seven persons.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 48
“When you’re in a start-up,” claims Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs, “the first 10 people will determine whether the company succeeds.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 51
“Hiring the first pastoral staff member to work with the senior pastor may well be compared with choosing your child’s first baby-sitter. It is a decision that is crucial to the health, well-being, and future of your church. Many times it is a traumatic experience. The first pastoral staff member sets the tone for future hiring. Throughout the life of the church, you are going to be compensating for the firs associate staff member’s strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, as noted earlier, the first associate staff member should provide a balance to the senior pastor’s strengths and weaknesses. However, that is a scenario much simpler to describe than to create.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 51
“Research in the field of business suggests that the cost of a bad hire-in lost time, money, and customers-can be three to five times the employee’s salary. Similar losses are likely for churches that have high turnover among their pastoral staff. That means a church stands to lose u to 200,000 dollars if it makes a bad hire on an associate pastor making 40,000 dollars a year.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 52
“The emphasis today should not be on filling positions but on assembling the skills necessary to achieve a strategic mission. A church that fails to hire staff based on its mission, values, and vision will see the danger signs: stressed staff, high turnover, and low quality ministry.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 52-53
“A church should never ask a candidate what she needs or expects, but should suggest a salary and benefits package based on solid research.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 57
“Remember: When you hire a staff member, you are often making a multiyear decision about someone you may talk to for only a few hours. So let the candidate talk first.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 61
“Push of adequate vacation time and study leave and set the example by taking yours. As a rule, all full-time staff members should have a minimum of one month vacation per year. The long hours, emotional wear and tear, and twenty-four-hour on call nature of church ministry take their toll on all full-time staff members. Senior pastors, and those with schedules requiring unusually heavy mentoring or speaking, need six weeks to two months off each year.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 112
Strategic Planning
“A good strategic planning process also requires the utmost attention to the hows of executing the strategy.”
“A contemporary strategic plan must be an action plan that business leaders can rely on to reach their business objectives.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 178
“A good strategic plan is a set of directions you want to take. It’s a road map, lightly filled in, so that it gives you plenty of room to maneuver. You get specific when you’re deciding the action part of the plan, where you link it with people and operations.”
-Source: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution, p. 185
Study
“The key to the Discipline of study is not reading many books, but experiencing what we do read.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 72
“When an expositor studies his Bible, the Holy Spirit probes the preacher’s life. As a man prepares sermons, God prepares the man. As the expositor masters a passage, he will discover that the truth of that passage in the hand of the Spirit masters him. In other words, the man cannot be separated from the message.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 80
“Pastors, then, should study to know God, not just to make sermons. For me, the greatest toy of preaching comes not in the final step of proclamation, but in the transformation of m own life the truth pervades my thinking throughout the entire process. ”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahanney, Preaching The Cross”, p. 153
“Here is the need of broad and generous culture. Learn to study for the sake of truth, learn to think for the profit and the joy of thinking. Then your sermon shall be like the leapinf of a fountain and not like the pumping of a pump.”
-Source: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, p. 160
Studying
“If you cannot embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life. So it is with reading the Bible. The greater riches are for those who will work hard to understand all that is really there.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 47
“I am pleading for a hearty engagement of the mind in the pursuit of God. I am not pleading mainly for more formal education. That may or may not be good in different cases. But the right use of the mind is always good no matter how much or how little education one has.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 128
Student Ministry
“Believing that a message wrapped in pop-culture packaging was the way to attract teens to their flocks, pastors watered down the religious content and boosted the entertainment. But in recent years churches have begun offering their young people a style of religious instruction grounded in Bible study and teachings about the doctrines of their denomination. Their conversion has been sparked by the recognition that sugar-coated Christianity, popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, has caused growing numbers of kids to turn away not just from attending youth-fellowship activities but from practicing their faith at all. That is not the conclusion of a conservative commentator but an extract from an article in Time magazine surveying Christian youth work in the United States.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH,p. 183
Submission
“Submission is an ethical theme that runs the gamut of the New Testament. It is a posture obligatory upon all Christians: men as well as women, fathers as well as children, masters as well as slaves. We are commanded to live a life of submission because Jesus lived a life of submission, not because we are in a particular place or station in life.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 117
“Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.”
-Tennessee Williams
“The promises of God never shine brighter than in the furnace of affliction.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p.65
“The fact is that Christian suffering nobly borne may serve to impress upon a skeptical or indifferent worked that the God of Christians is as good as or better than he is professed to be by those who endure hardship for his sake with aplomb and even praise. This witness, for some, may be more persuasive than formal argument alone could ever be.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 41-42
“Christian’s lives and message gain credibility in part because they are not spared the vicissitudes that batter everyone else in need of God’s redemptive promise.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 43
“Although charisma probably does indeed constitute the inner dynamic of the church, it is not its foundation. Suffering is a bracing slap in the face that drives God’s people again and again to clarity and purify the fundamental terms of acknowledgment and worship of their God. It drives us to turn our hearts to God in truer prayer.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 44
“Despite the prominence of the concept of suffering in the Old Testament, the “goodness” 9Hebrew:tob) of God is set forth as well. What we find is that it is precisely in suffering that God’s goodness and existence become most apparent, for it is there, in the dark places, that God meets his people and comforts them.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 47
Substitutionary Atonement
“Journalist Polly Toynbee: “Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls Did we ask him to?” Burke continues, reintroducing the old liberal notion of Jesus as the great moral example. “Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn’t resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as ‘sinners in need of a Davior.'” A better approach is to see Jesus as “the model of sinless living, the ultimate example to which all humanity should aspire.”
“Being a Christian- for Burke, for McLaren, for Bell, for Jones, and for many others in the emerging conversation-is less about faith inn the person and work of Jesus Christ as the only access to God the Father and the only atonement for sins before a wrathful God, and more about living the life that Jesus lived and walking in His way.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p 120
“The lack of emphasis on substitutionary atonement that marked many of his contemporaries troubled Spurgeon, for he saw no genuine gospel in any preaching that was embarrassed by the scriptural witness to what God in Christ did n behalf of the redeemed. As he stated: “I have always considered, with Luther and Calvin, that the sum and substance of the gospel lies in that word Substitution-Christ standing in the stead of man. If I understand the gospel, it is this: I deserve to be lost forever; the only reason why I should not be dammed is this, that Christ was punished in my stead, and there is no need to execute a sentence twice for sin.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 167-168
Success
“Sweat is the cologne of accomplishment.”
-Heywood Hale Brown
“Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right.”
“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.”
-Henry Ford
“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.”
-Booker T. Washington
“When folks have asked me, ‘How did Wal-Mart do it?’ I’ve usually been flip about answering them. ‘Friend, we just got after it and stayed after it.'”
– Sam Walton
Suffering
“Lord, I give myself to thee, and whatever I cannot give I invite you to take”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 84
“Freedom is not what our culture tells us it is. Freedom is not my deciding, from the urges and longings of my sinful nature, to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it, with whom I want to do it. According to the bible, that is bondage, not freedom. Rather, true freedom is living as Jesus lived, for he is the freest human being who ever lived.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 75
“So, what is freedom? Amazingly Jesus’ answer is this: Freed is submitting-submitting fully to the will of God to the words of God, and to the work that God calls us to do.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 75
“It is just as Godlike to submit gladly and joyfully to rightful authority as it is Godlike to exercise legitimate, rightful authority.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 98
“Remember, not only does submission in the church relate to the role of women in ministry; it applies to all men and women alike who sit under the authority of those qualified men who pastor and lead our churches.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 151
“Sometimes our Lord calls us to go through suffering not as a result of our own sins or to teach us some needed lesson but in order to show his own purpose and glory.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 76
“God does not exempt himself from suffering but enters into it fully in the person of his Son. And, mysteriously, the suffering of God incarnate accomplishes our salvation! As a result, it is no wonder that our worship as the people of God is consumed with Jesus’ suffering and vindication. We worship the crucified and risen One, How can we, as his beloved people, saved by his suffering, refuse to drink when he offers us the cup of suffering?”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 93
“While the Immediate cause of suffering may be evil, its presence in God’s overall plan is not something that calls God’s goodness into question; rather, it is the way that God expresses his goodness. All true redemption is via suffering-first the suffering of God’s own Son and then by application the suffering of his disciples.”
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 93
“The suffering that God’s people now endure is not pointless, nor is it endless. But the glories that come after never end. Even as Paul said in Romans 8:18. “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (NIV).
-Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God, p. 116
“There is joy not only in your comfort and success but also in your suffering and hardship, just as there was for Jesus when he suffered on the cross. Hebrews 12:1-6 is worth memorizing as an anchor for your soul when the storms of life roll in and you find yourself drowning in a sea of tears:”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 205
“Suffering is distance from God. That is why someone who is in communion with God cannot suffer. Jesus affirmed this Old Testament testimony. That is why he takes the suffering of the whole world onto himself and overcomes it. He bears the whole distance from God. Drinking the cup is what makes it pass from him. In order to overcome the suffering of the world Jesus must drink it to the dregs.”
-Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 90
“To suffer well might be the most important sermon we ever preach.”
-Source: Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus . Nothing . Everything, p. 162
“According to Jesus, while suffering may not be directly caused by personal sin, suffering on account of natural evil occurs as a reminder of the need to repent of one’s own sinful condition, as well as to provide an opportunity for God’s works to be displayed.”
-Source: Jones/Woodbridge, Health, Wealth & Happiness, p. 113
“For Luther, the question must be answered by looking to the cross: if suffering, persecution, injustice, hatred and scorn are the lot of Christ, and if it is through these very means that God, in a manner incomprehensible and unexpected, achieves his goal of saving helpless sinners then are we to expect our lot to be any better? In other words, the question is not so much, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” as, ‘Why do more bad things not happen to good people?
The point is: the cross is not simply God’s saving action on behalf of sinful humanity. Of course, it is never less than that, and that indeed stands at the very heart of its meaning. But it is also a demonstration of how God acts in general, how he achieves those purposes which he intends.”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman,Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 50-51
“Once we are saved, we can expect suffering and weakness as part and parcel of the Christ-centred life. We should, therefore, not be surprised when difficulties arise in our lives for these are an essential part of God’s alien work whereby he achieves his proper work within us.”
-Source: Carl r. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 52-53
“Suffering, and all the language and theology that goes with it, is not something which today’s double income, designer label families may want to talk about, but it is something which, in one form or another, is inevitably familiar.”
-Source: Carl R. Trueman, Reformation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, p. 62
Sunday School
“We found a significant correlation between the level of expectations placed upon Sunday School workers and the ability of the church to keep ongoing accountability among its volunteer workers.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 95
Suzerain Treaty
“The suzerain/vassal treaty was a horse of a different color. Here one party was clearly more powerful than the other and therefore had the right to demand submission on the part of his weaker ally. As a result, in this sort of treaty the partners referred to each other either as ‘father and son,’ or as “lord and servant.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 73
T
Tabernacle
“God’s purpose in instituting the tabernacle was that he might live among his people. And do you see how yahweh chooses to live as his people live? Since the Israelites dwell in tents, Yahweh will too. When Israel becomes a sedentary people, yahweh shifts his residence to a temple and becomes sedentary as well.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 180
“So the irony of the tabernacle is the agony of redemptive history. By its very form this structure communicates God’s desire for cohabitation. But the increasing restriction of persons-and the elaborate systems of sacrifice and mediation even for those approved persons-communicates the legacy of sin, separation. Yes, God lived among his people, but the common worshiper-even the average priest-would never stand in his presence. Only one man, once a year, entered the holy of holies, and he entered under threat of death (Lev 16:2). The double-edged sword of the tabernacle was the truth that God was once again with Adam, but Adam was still separated from God. Do you see how this type educated Israel as to what sin and forgiveness are all about?”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 182
Tact
“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Team
“How does a team develop a close acquaintance and become a group of friends? Most of the answer can be summarized in four words: training, travel, travail, and triumph.”
-Source: Gary L. McIntosh, Staff Your Church for Growth, p. 108
Teenagers
“The teenage years are a time when a large segment of our population will receive Christ and be discipled in a local church. Resistance to the gospel typically increases once one leaves adolescence.”
-Source: Thom S. Rainer, Effective Evangelistic Churches, p. 21
Temptation
“Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.”
-Winston Churchill
“It is no coincidence that Jesus was most tempted by Satan when he was alone. If you become isolated from God’s people, you are leaving yourself open to spiritual attack. Therefore, remain actively involved in Bible-based, lovingly honest, accountable relationships, because it is indeed not good to be alone.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 51
Testimony
“If Christianity is true, and if conversion is a part of its message, then those who have turned to Christ will have a story to tell.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p.21
Textual Criticism
“No teaching of any significance depends on a text whose exact original form cannot confidently be reconstructed, and that in any case the large number of ancient Bible manuscripts in existence allows sophisticated decisions to be made about the wording of the original, far more reliably than with any other ancient text.”
-Source: Timothy Ward, Words of Life, p. 90
The Fall
“As Adam had the advantage of size and strength, and Eve was still constrained by her desire for hearth and home, the centuries testify to the fact that Eve’s longing for her husband will too often result in her willing participation in her own oppression and abuse.”
-Source: Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden, p. 109
Theology
“Being cool having good music, understanding postmodern epistemology, and welcoming all kinds of strange people into the church is essentially worthless if at the bedrock of the church anything other than a rigorous Jesus-centered biblical theology guides the mission of the church.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 78
“It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me-it’s the parts that I do understand.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 39
“Proper theology was theology within the limits of revelation alone.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 198
“The bible is not a source book of natural science, designed to harmonize with the latest scientific findings.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 198
“The sole means of retaining as well as restoring pure doctrine is to set Christ before our eyes, just as He is with all His blessings, that His power may be truly perceived.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 216
“The task of true theology is to restore the doctrine of Christ, “just as he is with all his blessings.” the theme which dominates Calvin’s Christology is not the knowledge of Christ in His essence, but in His redemptive role as Mediator.”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 216
“If the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows.
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what. p. 46
“Theology is the backbone of the church. Without good theology the church cannot and will not mature in the faith and will be prone to be tossed back and forth by waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching (Eph 4:14). Healthy theology that matures the heart and head not only enables believers to move toward maturity but results in the praise and exaltation of God. Good theology should always lead to doxology.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 160
“Evangelism and theology for the most part go separate ways, and the result is great loss for both. When theology is not held on course by the demands of evangelistic communication, it grows abstract and speculative, wayward in method, theoretical in interest and irresponsible in stance. When evangelism is not fertilized, fed and controlled by theology, it becomes a stylized performance seeking its effect through manipulative skills rather than the power of vision and the force of truth. Both theology and evangelism are then, in one important sense, unreal, flase to their own God-given nature, for all true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 201
“Theology is better defined as that good life whereby we live to God.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, The Reformation, p. 106
“Calvin’s aim was to show how we could have “business with God”. Calvin’s theology was in itself not in a vacuum, but in a relationship with a real God who is there and cares for us.
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 103
“Calvin was surrounded by children for most of his life though: his stepchildren through Idelette, and his eight nephews and nieces, all of whom lived at their uncle’s house in Geneva. As one biographer has written, Calvin’s great theological works were composed ‘not….in an ivory towere, but against the background of teething troubles”.\
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 109
“Theology is about God’s word, the Bible, and about the Person revealed to us in Scripture: Jesus Christ.
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 120
“The primitive church was concerned not merely with what Jesus had said, but also, and primarily, with what Jesus had done. The world was t be redeemed through the proclamation of an event. And with the event went the meaning of the event; and the setting forth of the event with the meaning of the event was doctrine. These two elements are always combined in the Christian message. The narration of the facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”-that is history. “He loved me and gave Himself for me”-that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive Church.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 29
“We live in a transcendence-starved culture and a transcendence-starved evangelicalism,” said Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. “We’ve so dumbed down the gospel and dumbed down worship in a good effort to reach as many people as we can that there’s almost a backlash. It comes from this great hunger for a genuinely God-centered, transcendence-focused understanding of who God is and what God wants us to do and what God has given us in Jesus Christ.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 21
“Be well instructed in theology, and do not regard . . . those who rail at it because they are ignorant of it. Many preachers are not theologians, and hence the mistakes which they make. It cannot do any hurt to the most lively evangelist to be also a sound theologian, and it may often be the means of saving him from gross blunders.”
-Source: Larry J. Michael, Spurgeon on Leadership, p. 109
“When rightly conducted, theology is the conversation of the people of God seeking to understan the Lord whom we worship and to know how He wills to be worshiped.
Theology and worship are inextricably linked.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 24
“Ultimately, a theology of preaching is essentially doxology. The ultimate purpose of the sermon is to glorify God and to reveal a glimpse of His glory to His cration. That God would choosesuch a means to express His own glory is beyond our understanding; it is rooted in the mystery of the will and wisdom of God.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 48
“Unless the pastor functions as a theologian, theology is left in teh hands of those who, in many cases, have little or no connection or commitment to the local church.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, He is Not Silent, p. 106
“The theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 18
“Bible study and theology that do not lead to love for God and a desire to do his will-to worship, tears, laughter, excitement, or sorrow-have gone terribly wrong. True theology leads to love, mission, and doxology (1 Timothy 1:5, 7, 17).”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 31
“Because theology is always the fruit of engagement with the Bible, it is not the preserve of the academic, nor is its pursuit confined to academic institution. Theology is the task of the local church.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 155
“Theology is also the task of the church because the only theology that matters and is worthy of the name is practical theology.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p 155
“Theology must be in the service of the church and its mission. Authentic theology must be shaped by what we might call a missionary hermeneutic. Theology divorced from this context is essentially barren, self-referential, and indulgent. David Bosch says, “Just as the church ceases to be church if it is not missionary, theology cease to be theology if it loses its missionary character. . . . We are in need of a missiological agenda for theology rather than just a theological agenda for mission; for theology, rightly understood, has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the missio Dei.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 156
“Theology must not only reflect on action; it must also lead to action. The result of theology should be mission.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 158
“I’ve come to leatn that theology matters. And it matters not because we want a good grade on a test but because we know about God shapes the way we think and live. What you believe about God’s nature-what he is like, what he wants from you, and whether or not you will answer to him-affects every part of your life.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 10
“As people learned to love their lies about God, they lost their ability to recognize his voice. “to whom can I speak and give warning?” God adked. “W ho will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it/” (Jeremiah 6:10, NIV).”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 12
“The doctrine of God is called theology proper, because that’s what the word theology means: the study of God.”
-Source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 38
“Theology serves doxology.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 184
Theological Education
“The secret of Princeton’s spiritual success did not lie in its curriculum, which differed very little from the other undergraduate colleges of the English-speaking world. It was not a divinity school, still less ‘a clerical manufactory”, as its critics sometimes claimed. The four-year course, taught by the president and three tutors, was designed ‘to afford a solid basis equally for all the liberal professions.’ It aimed to make men think, study hard and acquire lifelong habits of reading.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 43
“Wayland was never primarily an educationalist. His greatest concern was for the preparation of men for the ministry.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 321
Tithing
I wonder how many of us really believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive. A woman who accepts that statement of our Lord Jesus Christ as a fact and not as ‘impractical idealism,’ will make giving a principle of her life. She will lay aside sacredly not less than one-tenth of her income or her earnings as the Lord’s money, which she would no more dare touch for personal use than she would steal. How many there are among our women, alas, who imagine that because ‘Jesus paid it all,’ the need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ!
-Lottie Moon
Tolerance
“Two kinds, Moral tolerance is total acceptance of the other person as a human being who has a right to be treated with dignity and respect, even though he or she holds beliefs quite different from mine.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 94
“A different kind of tolerance appears when I am forbidden to judge or criticize the beliefs of anyone who disagrees with me. This second, unlabeled kind of tolerance insists that it is wrong, always and everywhere, to disagree with anyone who disagrees with me. Although some may choose to treat this position as a form of tolerance, thereby endowing it with an aura of saintliness, it is in fact a type of intellectual suicide.”
-Source: Ronald H. Nash, Is Jesus the only Savior?, p. 94
“For an organization which is founded with the fundamental purpose of propagating a message to commit its resources and its name to those who are engaged in combating the message is not tolerance but simple dishonesty. Yet it is exactly this course of action that is advocated by those who would allow non-doctrinal religion to be taught in the name of doctrinal churches-churches that are plainly doctrinal both in their constitutions and in the declarations which they require of every candidate for ordination.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p 168-169
“Roman tolerance, like modern democratic tolerance, had its limits just because it was carried out as a social policy for the sake of maintaining unity. Whatever religion man followed, homage to Caesar was eventually required. But Christ and Christians threatened the unity of the culture at both points with their radical monotheism, a faith in the one God that was very different from the pagan universalism which sought to unify many deities and many cults under one earthly or heavenly monarch.”
“The Christ who will not worship Satan to gain the world’s kingdoms is followed by Christians who will worship only Christ in unity with the Lord whom he serves. And this is intolerable to all defenders of society who are content that many gods should be worshipped if only Democracy or America or Germany or the Empire receives its due, religious homage. The antagonism of modern, tolerant culture to Christ is of course often disguised because it does not call its religious practices religious, reserving that term for certain specified rites connected with officially recognized sacred institutions: and also because it regards what it calls religion as one of many interests which can be placed alongside economics, art, science, politics, and techniques. Hence the objection it voices to Christian monotheism appears in such injunctions only as that Christian faith must learn to get along with other religions. What is often meant is that not only the claims of religious groups but all consideration of the claims of Christ and God should be banished from the spheres where other gods, called values, reign. The implied charge against Christian faith is like the ancient one: it imperils society by its attack on its religious life; it deprives social institutions of their cultic, sacred character; by its refusal to condone the pious superstitions of tolerant polytheism it threatens social unity.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, pgs 8 & 9
Tradition
“Tradition is the living faith of dead men. It has been passed down as an effective means of worship and service. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living men. It is the Pharisees’ comfort zone.”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 125
Traditionalism
“Actually the “traditional” evangelical church in America is much like the seeker-sensitive model, only to an older culture-the culture of fifty or a hundred years ago. So instead of Willow Creek skits, the First Baptist Women’s Trio is regarded as the thing that will draw nonbelievers in.”
-Mark Denver, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. p. 26
Training
“If we want our strategy to be people-focused, we should concentrate on training, which increased the number and effectiveness of gospel communicators (i.e. people who can speak the good news both in personal conversations and in public settings.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 19
“Skills must never be separated from the gospel-from the truth of sound doctrine, and the godly character that accords with it. Is’s very easy to get carried away with ‘competencies think that if only we get the skills and techniques right then everything will fall into place.”
-Source: Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, p. 78
Transformation
“Growth in godliness involves a mental renewal that cannot happen without learning. And the alternative to transformation via learning is conformity to the world.”
-Source; Brad J. Waggoner, The Shap Of Faith To Come, p. 57
Trinity
“We must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. It believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. In that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, and thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, and thus destroy the unity. Our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind.)”
-C.S. Lewis
“Love and obedience, then, run together in an inseparable union in this relationship between God the Father and God the Son.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware,
” Though God is a Person, He’s beyond what person hood is to you and me.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 76
“The Trinity is one of the doctrines that elevates the Christian concept of God above your average deity, because it makes God Himself a family.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 77
“Would God have chosen to reveal himself to us as the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unless he knew that this would be important to our understanding of him and of our faith?”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 13
“The doctrine of the Trinity not only distinguishes the Christian faith from all others, it also establishes the basis for all that we hold dear as Christian believers.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 16
” The work of God (e.g., creation, redemption, consummation) can be rightly understood only as the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit unified in the purpose of the work but distinct in the participation and contribution of each member.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 17
“When Jesus commanded his disciples to baptize believers in the “name” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he used the word “name” as a singular noun, not “names” as a plural noun. This is meant to show that there is one God, since there is one and nly one nature of God as indicated by his one “name.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 41-42
Triumphal entry
“But common sense dictates that the second occurrence of the pronoun ‘them’ in the sentence that reads, ‘they led the donkey and her colt and placed upon them garments and he sat upon them’, refers back to the garments, not the donkeys (and to more thean one garment on one particular donkey0/ Perhaps the strangest difference in enumeration among the Synoptic parallels is Luke’s altered description of the chronology of the transfiguration. Instead of Mark’s ‘after six days’ (Mark 9:2), Luke reads, ‘about eight days later’ (Luke 9:28). His insertion of the word ‘about’ prevents this from creating a contradiction, but the reason for the difference is very difficult to pinpoint.”
-Source: Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, p. 194
Truth
” Truth is not based on personal preference, but upon, well, whoever decides what Truth is from the beginning of time.”
-Source:Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology p.21
“The separation of truth from meaning is a dangerous game.”
-Source: Donald Miller, Searching for God knows what, p. 57
“The thrust of the Bible is to conform our experience to revealed truth, not to start with our experience (no matter how beautiful or helpful it may have been to us) and then make a doctrine for others to emulate. The model for our witness is not to be a smooth-talking public relations agent but an ambassador with a proclamation from a King.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 41
“But part of telling the truth is reinforcing the reality and danger of hell, of which the Bible speaks clearly.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell The Truth, p. 46
“Nothing sets the heart on fire like truth. Truth is not cold and dry. On the contrary, it is warm and passionate. And whenever new vistas of God’s truth open up to us, we cannot just contemplate. We are stirred to respond, whether to penitence or to anger or to love or to worship. Think of the two disciples walking to Emmaus on the first Easter afternoon while the risen Lord spoke to them. When He vanished, they said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?”…As F.W. Faber once said, “Deep theology is the best fuel of devotion; it readily catches fire, and once kindled it burns long.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 101
“I had been given teh notion that truth is so frail and fragile, it needs to be sheltered and protected from those who would seek to shatter it with untruth.
Instead, Billwould introduce me to teh Truth that can stand on its own against the gates of hell itself. This Truth does not shackle a person to a lifetime of defending and protecting it. Instead, this Truth sets us free.
And they allow us to borrow their eyes until we can see it for ourselves.”
-Source: Michael Card, The Walk, p. 12
U
Unbelief
“you can’t diminish the Bible without diminishing Jesus.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, p. 41
“Faith encourages every virtue; unbelief murders every one. Thousands of prayers have been strangled in their infancy by unbelief. Unbelief has been guilty of infanticide; it has murdered many an infant prayer; many songs of praise that would have swelled the chorus of the skies have been stifled by an unbelieving murmur; many a noble enterprise conceived in the heart has been destroyed before it could come forth, by unbelief. Many men would have been missionaries; would have stood and preached their Master’s gospel boldly; but they were filled with unbelief. Once a giant stops believing, he then becomes a dwarf.”
-Source: Thor Ramsey, A Comedian’s Guide to Theology, P 70-71
Unchurched People
“Unchurched people tend to be the most traditional when it comes to church.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 132
Unction
“What is it? I wonder how long we might beat our brains before we could plainly put into words what is meant by preaching with unction; yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears soon detects its absence; such is the mystery of the anointing; we know, but we cannot tell others what it is.”
-Source: Greg Heisler, Spirit-Led Preaching, p. 128
Understanding
“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
-Albert Einstein
Union Prayer Meetings
“The union prayer meetings all over our country have not been appointed to create religious feeling, but rather to give expression to, and increase the religious feeling already existing.”
-Source: Iain H. Murray, Revival & Revivalism, p. 349
Unity
“Certainly we are to promote Christian unity at every opportunity. True believers belong to the same Father and are called to the same service. Believers trust the same Savior and have received the same gift of grace, thus sharing a common salvation. But ultimately true unity is based on true truth. Any other kind of unity is earthly, worldly, temporal, and thus falls short of the John 17 ideal.”
-Source: David s. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 47
V
Verbal Plenary Inspiration
“The antithesis of ‘person-revelation’ and ‘proposition-revelation’ can only result in an equally unscriptural contrast of personal faith with doctrinal belief. It is now often said that belief in Christ is something wholly different from belief in truths or propositions. But to lose intelligible revelation spells inescapable loss of any supernatural authorized doctrinal assertions concerning God.”
-Source: Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck, Why we’re not emergent, p. 75
Vocation
“The word vocation comes from the Latin voco, meaning “I call.” Your son’s vocation is therefore his calling under God.”
-Source: Douglas Wilson, Future Men, p. 29
W
Warning
“The captain of the ship looked into the dark night and saw faint lights in the distance. Immediately he told his signalman to send a message: “Alter your course 10 degrees south.” Promptly a return message was received: “Alter you course 10 degrees north.” The was angered; his command had been ignored. So he sent a second message: “Alter your course 10 degrees south – I am the captain!” Soon another message was received: “Alter your course 10 degrees north – I am seaman third class Jones.” Immediately the captain sent a third message, knowing the fear it would evoke: “Alter your course 20 degrees south – I am a battleship.” The the reply came: “Alter your course 10 degrees north – I am a lighthouse.” In the midst of our dark and foggy times, all sorts of voices are shouting orders into the night, telling us what to do, how to adjust our lives. Out of the darkness, one voice signals something quite opposite to the rest – something almost absurd. But the voice happens to be the Light the World, and we ignore it at our peril.”
-Source: Greg T. Mathis, God is able! But am I willing?, p. 63
Wesley, John
“In both the promotion of new hymnody and outreach to slaves, the Wesleys were anticipating very important aspects of later Methodist history. But in general, Wesley’s spiritual harvest in Georgia was meager. As he put it in ofter-quoted words from his journal. “I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why . . .that I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 84
“For Wesley the Calvinist insistence that God’s electing power was the basic element in the sinner’s conversion verged dangerously close to antinomianism: in emphasizing God’s actions in bringing the sinner to himself, “it wholly takes away those first motives to follow after [holiness], so frequently proposed in Scripture, the hope of future reward and punishment, the hope of heaven and fear of hell”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 122
“As Wesley understood it, warfare existed mostly for base reasons–because, for example, people could not live with differences of opinion on religious questions or because various rulers tried to extend their power over other peoples.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 260
Whitefield, George
“Whitefield’s preaching drew attention in part because of his straightforward message.”
“To Whitefield formal doctrine was mostly irrelevant, but not the lived experience of God’s grace in Christ.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 88-89
“Much of what Whitefield did was admirable by any standard, and his commitment to Christ-centered preaching was a shining beacon. But while his character and purpose possessed great integrity, there was no consistency to his broader actions, no depth to his thinking about culture. Ready, fire, aim was his style, In a word, much that would be best and much that would be worst in the later history of evangelicals in America was anticipated by Whitefield in this one stirring year.”
-Source: Mark A Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, p. 108
Winning
“Things That Do Not Require Talent…”punctuality, effort, patience, and unselfishness. All listed in a booklet called “The Winner’s Manual” adopted by Ohio State University football coach, Jim Tressel.
-John Maxwell, Talent is Never Enough, 9.
Wisdom
By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he’s too old to go anywhere.
-Billy Crystal
“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”
-Willy Wonka
“Common sense is not so common.”
-Voltaire
“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves”
-Source: Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, p. 189
“Cautious Christians always act, but they act on wisdom and prayer rather than emotion and feeling. The Christian who is always jumping to action often jumps ahead of God!”
-Source: Mac Brunson & Ergun Caner, Why Churches Die, p. 138
“Wisdom, then, is knowledge applied; it is knowledge put to use for some practical purpose.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, p. 34
“We may say then that a fundamental difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom is that God’s wisdom exalts what the cross stands for and human wisdom is offended by what the cross stands for.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p.146
“Divine wisdom begins consciously with God (“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, “ PS. 111:10), and is consciously sustained by God and has the glory of God as its conscious goal.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 149
“Therefore, God delights in revealing himself to “little children” because this highlights God’s all-sufficiency rather than man’s. The “little children” despair of self-sufficiency and look away from their helplessness and sinfulness to the grace of God in Christ. Therefore the motive of God to reveal himself to such ones is that it displays more clearly the beauty and worth of his grace.”
-Source: John Piper, Think, p. 152
Wives
God calls wives to be what he is, just as he has also called husbands to be what he also is.”
-Source: Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, p. 145
“Luther had no concept of money and was over-inclined to generosity. Katherine put the household firmly in order and was able to generate some reliable income. She became not just a superb manager, but also an expert brewer, a semi-qualified doctor (extraordinary for those times) and an authoritative farmer, running the newly acquired family farm at Zulsdorf.”
-Source: Christopher Catherwood, Five Leading Reformers, p. 52
Women
“The home, cities, economic life and government would virtually disappear. Men can’t do without women. Even if it were possible for men to beget and bear children, they still couldn’t do without women.”
-Source: Stephen J. Nichols, the Reformation, p. 115
Word of God
“We often make much of the Bible’s inerrancy, but do we strive to believe and obey the inerrant Word? Are we willing to follow the Word of God regardless of what tradition or popular trends may demand?”
-Source: Phile A. Newton, Elders in Congregational Life, p. 130
“All too often people equate being word-centered with being sermon-centered.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 114
“Being word-centered is not less than being sermon-centered. Our contention is that being word-centered is so much more than being sermon-centered.”
-Source: Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, total CHURCH, p. 114
Work
“There seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness an this intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge…Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be contained.”
– Peter Drucker, quoted in John Maxwell, Talent is Never Enough, p. I.
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
– Stephen King
Worldiness
“Believers must avoid two extremes: radical difference and radical identification.”
-Source: Brad J. Waggoner, The Shape Of Faith To Come, p. 256
“Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 22
“I believe,” he asserte, “that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 23
“Worldliness, then, is a love for this fallen world. It’s loving the values and pursuits of the world that stand opposed to God. More specifically, it is to gratify and exalt oneself to the exclusion of God.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 27
“Worldiness is departing from God. It is a man-centered way of thinking; it proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man’s fallen nature; it judges the importance of things by the present and material results; it weighs success by numbers; it covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity; it knows no truth for which it is worth suffering; it declines to be “a fool for Christ’s sake”. Worldliness is the mind-set of the unregenerate. It adopts idols and is at war with God.”
-Source: C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness, p. 28
“While the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, the assimilation of the church to the world silences the witness.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity,
World View
“People can appropriate Edwards for all sorts of things because he holds together what most people hold apart-doctrine and experience, preaching and revival,” Caleb said. “If Edwards has one thing, it’s an integrated worldview. And if there’s one thing evangelicals of the early twenty-first century-people spun out of seeker-friendly churches-are looking for, it’s an intergrated worldview.”
-Source: Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed, p. 58
“What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 15
“Some call this a “worldview” while others call it a “narrative identity.” In either case it is a set of faith-assumptions about the nature of things. It is a implicit religion. Broadly understood, faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone’s life. Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not. All who say “You ought to do this” or “You shouldn’t do that” reason out of such an implicit moral and religious position. Pragmatists say that we should leave our deeper worldviews behind and find consensus about “what works”–but our view of what works is determined by (to use a Wendell Berry title) what we think people are for. Any picture of happy human life that “works” is necessarily informed by deep-seated beliefs about the purpose of human life. Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God
“All of us have fundamental, unprovable faith-commitments that we think are superior tot hose of others. The real question, then, is which fundamentals will lead their believers to be the most loving and receptive to those with whom they differ.”
-Source: Timothy Keller, The Reason For God, p. 20
“The Christian- and any man- must answer the question about what he ought to do by asking and answering a previous question: What is my purpose, my end? His reasonable answer to that query will discount all immediate wishes and desires, while it seeks to discover the ultimate purpose of his nature, his fundamental being.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 131
“But from this particular standpoint in social history we necessarily see Christ against a background and hear his words in a context somewhat different from the background and context of our predecessors’ experience. Our historical situation with its views and duties is further complicated by the relativity of our situation in society as men and women, parents and children, governors and governed, teachers and learners, manual and intellectual workers, etc. We must make our decisions, carry on our reasoning, and gain our experience as particular men in particular times and with particular duties.”
-Source: H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, p. 237
“For an affluent, Western secularist to become a Christian, he or she must adopt Christianity’s worldview, including its normative values, the ultimate distinction between right and wrong, a God who preserves that distinction in judgment, and a moral and spiritual order that is part of the fabric of everyday life.”
-Source: David F. Wells, Turning To God, p. 31
Worship
“Our permanent residence should be within the atmosphere of worship.”
-Source: Robert Smith Jr., Doctrine That Dances, p. 78
“Worship is ascribing worth to God in His presence with our voices, our minds, and our hearts. It is the act of bringing glory to God.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 101
“If we are truly concerned with ascribing to God the supreme worth that He alone is worthy to receive, we must be cautious about allowing our worship to be shaped by our own “felt needs” rather than by Scripture and a healthy appreciation for the strength offered by our Baptist heritage.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 122
“Worship is not passive but active, We gather on the Lord’s Day not so much to receive but to offer sacrifices of praise (see Heb 13:15-16) we acknowledge what God has done for us and is doing for us. Thus, we bless Him, hymn Him, and offer our gifts to Him, as well as our praise and adoration. We learn to see worship as active participation.”
-Source: David S. Dockery, Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal, p. 125
“The whole person is engaged in worship: mind, emotions, will. The mind fixates on truth, for we are to worship in “spirit and truth” Jesus said. The truth becomes experiential, not just mental.”
-Source: Will Metzger, Tell the Truth, p. 152
“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 158
“If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The first commandment of Jesus is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). The divine priority is worship first, service second. Our lives are to be punctuated with praise, thanksgiving, and adoration. Service flows out of worship. Service as a substitute for worship is idolatry. Activity is the enemy of adoration.”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 160
“If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship. To worship is to change/”
-Source: Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, p. 173
“Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the Church to seek refreshment for the soul. And what does one find? Alas, too often, one finds only the turmoil of the world. The preacher comes forward, not out of a secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God’s Word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed far into the background by the glory of the cross, but with human opinions about the social problems of the hour or easy solutions of the vast problem of sin. Such is the sermon. And then perhaps the service is closed by one of those hymns berating out the angry passions of 1861, which are to be found in the back of hymnals. Thus the warfare of the world has entered even into the house of God, And sad indeed is the heart of the man who has come seeking peace.
Is there no refuge from strife? Is there no place of refreshing where a man can prepare for the battle of life? Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus’ name, to forget for the moment alll those things that divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the Cross? If there be such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven. And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world.”
-Source: J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p. 180
“Worship has been llinked with church growth primarily because worship services are increasingly becoming the entry point for the unchurched into churches.”
-Source: Thom Rainer, The Book of Church Growth, p. 225
“God prescribed for Israel what was to be the visible expression of their faith.”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 175
“God is defined in the act of worship far more precisely than he is defined by any theology.” In other words, if you want to know what a people really believe about God, don’t spend time reading their theologians. Watch them worship.”
-Souce: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent, p. 31
“Music is not the central act of Christian worship-nor is evangelism, nor even the ordinances. The heart of Christian worship is the authentic preaching of the Word of God.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 36
“True Christians all agree that God must be worshiped biblically. That is, God must be worshiped as he wishes, not as we wish.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 150
“A biblically informed Christian definition of worship is “glorifying God the Father through the mediator ship of God the Son by the indwelling power of God the Spirit.”
-Source: Mark Driscoll, Religion Saves, p. 245
“One of the things we learn as we expound the book of Exodus is that God’s people were saved to worship. Although I”d been a professing Christian for at least a dozen years, I didn’t realize until seminary that Moses was not trying to pull a trick on Pharaoh, when he said, “Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness” (Exod. 5:1). I thought Moses was playing a trick on Pharaoh to get him to let the children of God go. But the demand is repeated so many times in teh book of Exodus that clearly God is teaching us that he brought the Israelites out of bondage so that they might glorify and enjoy him forever-so that they might worship him. Worship is central to his purposes, not peripheral.”
-Source: Dever, Duncan, Mohler, Mahaney, Preaching The Cross, p. 57
Wrath of God
“But God’s anger is the sign that he still cares for us and is committed to shattering our apathy. “The moment anger is eliminated from God, suffering is depersonalized. . . .Anger is an instance on the personal-it is the antithesis of impersonal fate or abstract Law.” God’s anger is not despotic, unreasonable, or whimsical, but comes in response to violations of the covenant he has made with his people. Therefore, it is the sign that he has abandoned neither his promise-pan nor his people.”
Source: Morgan & Peterson, Suffering and the Goodness of God. p. 57
“You must have, more or less, a distinct sense of the dreadful wrath of God and of the terrors of the judgment to come, or you will lack energy in your work, and so lack one of the essentials of success. I do not think the preacher ever speaks well upon such topics until he feels them pressing upon him as a personal burden from the Lord.”
-Source: C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner, p. 163
“Where the gospel offers salvation from the guilt and tyranny of sin now and from the presence and effects of sin in the future, Osteen’s very American message presents the gospel as salvation from the symptoms of sin now without any clear proclamation of the far greater liberation from God’s wrath.”
-Source: Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, p. 99
“God feels angry because God hates sin (Prov. 6:16-19; Zech. 8:17). Sadly, it is commonly said among Christians that “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” This is as stupid as saying God loves rapists and hates rape, as if rape and rapists were two entirely different entities that could be separated from one another. Furthermore, it was not a divinely inspired author of Scripture but the Hindu Gandhi who coined the phrase “Love the sinner but hate the sin” in his 1929 autobiography.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 128
“In the Old Testament alone nearly twenty different words are used for God’s wrath, which is spoken of roughly six hundred times.”
-Source: Driscoll & Breshears, Death by Love, p. 128
“It is inadequate,” writes R.V.G. Tasker, “to regard this term [wrath] merely as a description of ‘the inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe’ or as another way of speaking of the results of sin. It is rather a personal quality, without which God would cease to be fully righteous and his love would degenerate into sentimentality.” The wrath of God is a personal, and as potent, as his love; and, just as the blood-shedding of the Lord Jesus was the direct manifesting of his Father’s love toward us, so it was the direct averting of his father’s wrath against us.”
-Source: J.I. Packer & Mark Dever, In my place condemned He stood, p. 34-35
“God’s wrath may be associated with his displeasure, but it is not arbitrary. It is retribution, punishment for sin, which is related to falling short of requirements of God has made known. Thus, though there will always be an element of mystery and inscrutability surrounding divine wrath, it is also predictable (e.g. Num. 25:3; Deut. 29:25-28; Kpsj/ 7:1; 9:20; 2Chr. 32:16; Ps. 78:21: Isa. 5:22-25), and may be averted by repentance and obedience (e.g. Num. 16:46; 2 Chr. 12:7, 12; 32:26; Jer. 4:4)”
-Source: Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology, p. 111
“The Bible defines God’s wrath as His settled opposition to sin. That means His wrath is not something that simply welled up within Him after He observed human sin. It is rather a consistent manifestation of His holy character, a settled determination that He must and will punish sin.”
-Source: R. Albert Mohler, Jr, He is Not Silent, p. 135
X
Y
Z
An impressive share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a colleague who has been doing a little homework on this. And he actually bought me breakfast because I found it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending the time to talk about this matter here on your blog.
Pingback: Beginning Your Own Theological Library in Six Easy Steps | Passion for Preaching