Recognize His Love By Standing At the Cross

"When you're tempted to doubt God's love for you, stand before the cross and look at the wounded, dying, disfigured Savior, and realize why He is there. I believe His Father would whisper to us, 'Isn't that sufficient? I haven't spared my own Son; I deformed and disfigured and crushed Him---- for you. What more could I do to persuade you that I love you.'"

- C.J. Mahaney

The Persuasion of His Love

"When we think of Christ's dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God's love goes in order to win us back to Himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than He loves His Son. We cannot measure His love by any other standard. He is saying to us, 'I love you this much.' The cross is the heart of the Gospel; it makes the Gospel good news. Christ died for us; He has stood in our place before God's judgment seat; He has borne our sins. God has done something on the cross which we could never do for ourselves. But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that He loves us."

- Sinclair Ferguson

The Triumphant Nature of Divine Love

"Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice."

- John Stott

Personal Love

"Let there never be a lengthy period of time where you aren't receiving inspiration and instruction related directly to the cross, since that's where we find a fresh, sustaining conviction of of His personal love."

- C.J. Mahaney

Justified or Condemned in God's Eyes

"Justification is an act. It's not a work, or a series of acts. It's not progressive. The weakest believer and the strongest saint are alike equally justified. Justification admits no degrees. A man is either wholly justified or wholly condemned in the sight of God."

- William Plumer

Exhaust the Depths of the Gospel

"Never be content with your current grasp of the Gospel. The Gospel is life-permeating, world-altering, universe-changing truth. It has more facets than any diamond. We will never exhaust its depths."

- C.J. Mahaney

Cultivating Joy

"The inevitable result of preaching the Gospel to yourself will be a pronounced joy, an infectious joy, a consistent joy. Like nothing else, the Gospel creates joy; it's both the source and the object of our joy."

- C.J. Mahaney

An Empty Hand Receives the Gift of Salvation

"Salvation is a free gift, but an empty hand must receive it, and not a hand which still tightly grasps the world!"

- A.W. Pink

Heavenly Intercession

"We little know what we owe to our Savior's prayers. When we reach the hilltops of heaven, and look back upon all the way whereby the Lord our God hath led us, how we shall praise Him who, before the eternal throne, undid the mischief which Satan was doing upon earth. How shall we thank Him because He never held his peace, but day and night pointed to the wounds upon His hands, and carried our names upon His breastplate!"

- C. H. Spurgeon

Essence of Sin

"This is sin; a refusal to listen to the voice and to the Word of God. So that if you are living your own life in a very respectable manner, and are not listening to God, you are still a terrible sinner. If you are living that little self-contained, self-satisfied life in which you really only think of God now and again, and remember perhaps morning and evenings that there is a God, and you say your prayers; if that is your attitude to God, if you are not waiting upon Him and listening for His Word, and seeking it everywhere, and living to practice it, then you are as much a sinner as the drunkard or adulterer; you are not listening to God. That is the essence of sin."

- D. Martin Lloyd Jones

Central Truth of Atonement

"These verses (Hebrews 2:17, 1 John 2:2, and 4:10) simply mean that Jesus bore the wrath of God against sin. It is important to insist on this fact, because it is the heart of the doctrine of the atonement. It means that there is an eternal, unchangeable requirement in the holiness and justice of God that sin be paid for. Furthermore, before the atonement ever could have an effect on our subjective consciousness, it first had an effect on God and his relation to the sinners He planned to redeem. Apart from this central truth, the death of Christ really cannot be adequately understood."

- Wayne Grudem

Complete Abandonment

"Before being nailed to the cross, Jesus already knew what it meant to be forsaken; He had become intimately acquainted with being rejected or abandoned by men. Yet whenever it happened, He could always say, 'Though forsaken by men, I am not alone, for My Father is always with Me.' But not now. He who for all eternity has never been alone is now wholly abandoned."

- C.J. Mahaney

Sin and Satisfaction of God

"Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God."

- John Piper

When is God Most Glorified?

"God is most glorified in us; when we are most satisfied in Him."

- John Piper

Bear the Cross

"Some are all too ready to wear the cross, but not to bear the cross. We often prefer a health-and-wealth gospel to one of suffering and service. We join churches because they meet our needs, not because they give us the most opportunity to serve and sacrifice for the gospel. Yet still, the cross beckons us to come and stand in its shadow. Whether we do so or not is the ultimate test of our discipleship."

- Ben Witherington III

The Greatest Work of the Spirit

"Getting the glory of Christ before your eyes and keeping it there --- is the greatest work of the Spirit that I can imagine."

- C. John Miller

God's Invincible Love

"We are God's elect. Before the foundation of the world, God chose us in Christ. You can hear how precious this is to Paul with his words from Romans 8:33: 'Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?' The answer is that absolutely nobody can make a charge stick against God's elect. Paul wants us to feel the wonder of being elect as being invincibly loved. If you resist the truth of election, you resist being loved in the fullness and the sweetness of God's love."

- John Piper

Do Not Constantly Neglect the Holy Spirit's Prodding

"And to expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the Holy Spirit into silence."

- A.W. Tozer

What is Sin?

"Sin will cost you more than you want to pay, keep you longer than you want to stay, and drive you further than you ever wanted to go."

- Anonymous

Do You Recognize His Love for You?

"Listen to this verse again for the very first time: For God so loved the world... that He is silent to His Son's agonizing appeal. This is what bearing our sin means to Him--- utter distress of soul as He confronts total abandonment and absolute wrath from His Father on the cross, a distress and an abandonment and a rejection we cannot begin to grasp. In this, our Savior's darkest hour... do you recognize His love for you?

- C.J. Mahaney

I Am Accepted Because of the Blood of the Lamb

"The great redemptive act that freed them from their sins (Rev. 1:5) and established their right to reign as priest and kings (Rev. 5:9) is also what gives them authority over Satan and enables them to overcome Satan and all of his accusations (Rev. 12:11). Satan accuses Christians day and night. It is not just that he will work on our conscience to make us feel as dirty, guilty, defeated, destroyed, weak, and ugly as he possibly can; it is something worse: his entire ploy in the past is to accuse us before God day and night, bringing charges against us that we know we can never answer before the majesty of God's holiness. What can we say in response? Will our defense be, 'Oh, I'm not that bad!'? You will never beat Satan that way. Never. What you must say is, 'Satan, I'm even worse than you think, but God loves me anyway. He has accepted me because of the blood of the Lamb.'"

- D.A. Carson

Constant Battle With the Flesh

"The old man, old nature, old self does not die easy, it dies hard."

- Anonymous

Sin

"One reason why sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake."

- Billy Sunday

Satisfaction of Heaven Without Christ

"The critical question for our generation--- and for every generation--- is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?"

- John Piper

Obedience in the Limelight of Prayer

"Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late--- and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience."

- A.W. Tozer

Resolution #70

"Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak, RESOLVED."

- Jonathan Edwards

Resolution #69

"Resolved, always to do that, which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it."

- Jonathan Edwards

This is the second to last of Jonathan Edwards' seventy resolutions. Next time, we will finish with the last one and I will continue posting quotes once a day pertaining to strengthening and encouraging the brethren. Thanks for continuing steadfastly in reading one resolution a day from Jonathan Edwards. I hope and pray that you were greatly encouraged by the faithfulness and godliness of this young man. :)

Resolution #68

"Resolved, to confess frankly to myself all that which I find in myself, either infirmity or sin; and, if it be what concerns religion, also to confess the whole case to God, and implore needed help."

- Jonathan Edwards

Resolution #67

"Resolved, after afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what am I the better for them, and what I might have got by them."

- Jonathan Edwards

Resolution #66

"Resolved, that I will endeavor always to keep a benign aspect, and air of acting and speaking in all places, and in all companies, except it should so happen that duty requires otherwise."

- Jonathan Edwards

Resolution #65

"Resolved, very much to exercise myself in this, all my life long, viz. with the greatest openness, of which I am capable of, to declare my ways to God, and lay open my soul to him: all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and everything, and every circumstance; according to Dr. Manton's 27th sermon on Psalm 119."

- Jonathan Edwards