Archive for Quotes
Great Quote
Posted by: | CommentsFrom Charles Spurgeon, cited in my current read, Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian. Keep in mind he is talking about much more than fashion in clothes. How we think is certainly much more important.
“The great guide of the world is fashion and its god is respectability–two phantoms at which brave men laugh! How many of you look around on society to know what to do? You watch the general current and then float upon it! You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not do so! You ask, ‘Is it fashionable? If it is fashionable, it must be done.’ Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools.”
Great Quote on Work and the Christian
Posted by: | CommentsI will be sure to get my second group of observations concerning the OTL piece up soon. Until then, here is a great (and needed) quote from Dorothy Sayers. I am not sure who originally posted this quote, but I saw it at both my man Larry Lazarus’ blog and at Justin Taylor’s.
The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.
The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.
Cultivating a Holy Longing
Posted by: | CommentsIn his book, The Gospel for Real Life, Jerry Bridges writes,
Generally speaking, believers who have the least benefits of this life have the most vigorous hopes of heaven.
He’s right, right? I believe so. After all, if you have nothing here and God promises you a New Heaves and New Earth in which perfect righteousness dwells, you should have easier time focusing on the future. If all is going well for you here, your relative blessing oftentimes will obscure the perfect blessing that is soon to come.
So what do we do if life is going along quite well? If we are enjoying the benefits of this life in greater measure than many others, must we forgo them in order to long more for heaven?
Lest we think it doesn’t matter whether we long for the life to come, check out Hebrews 9:27-28,
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Did you catch that last part? ‘To save those who are eagerly waiting for him.’ That’s no joke huh? Though salvation is solely through faith in Christ, those who faith will eagerly wait.
And yet, we are so apt to feel quite at home here. Life gets going and we think little of the perfect life to come, where those who believe in Christ will live with Him and enjoy life as it ought to be and a thousand times better.
So back to our question: what do we do if our life here is pretty nice? Here’s two suggestions I have probably mentioned before.
1) Read the Bible and good books until you figure out what Heaven is really like and going to be like. Most of us aren’t as clear about the life to come as we may think we are. Do you think Heaven is singing hymns in the clouds with angels? Well then, you are way off and need to read up. Heaven by Randy Alcorn is a great place to start.
2) Cultivate a holy longing for the life to come by diligently seeking the Lord and asking Him for it. Word and prayer. It’s tough to get too much of these.
There is more that we can do, no doubt, but that is a good place to start. For no matter where we are or what is going on in our lives, we will do well to cultivate a holy longing for Christ and the life to come. Believe it or not, it will enable us to live much better here.
Weight of Glory
Posted by: | CommentsI have said for quite some time now that I need to read more C.S. Lewis. My first step is reading through his collection of sermons and essays, compiled in a book entitled, Weight of Glory. After three chapters, I am convinced that we would all do well to read more of Lewis. The following quote is a bit long, but it is well worth typing out and reading. It’s from the very beginning of Lewis’ sermon, Weight of Glory. If you can find it online, let me know
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love.
The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own god and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Another Good Quote
Posted by: | CommentsFrom Mark Twain, cited in In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw of the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
