The Gospel Coalition

“Where are the young men and women of this generation who will hold their lives cheap and be faithful even unto death?  Where are those who will lose their lives for Christ’s sake, flinging them away for love of him?  Where are those who will live dangerously and be reckless in his service?  Where are his lovers, those who love him and the souls of men more than their own reputations or comfort or very life?

Where are the men who say ‘no’ to self, who take up Christ’s cross to bear it after him, who are willing to be nailed to it in college or office, home or mission field, who are willing, if need be, to bleed, to suffer and to die on it?

Where are the adventurers, the explorers, the buccaneers for God, who count one human soul of far greater value than the rise or fall of an empire?  Where are the men who are willing to pay the price of vision?

Where are the men of prayer?

Where are God’s men in this day of God’s power?”

Howard Guinness, Sacrifice (Chicago, 1947), pages 59-60.

“God’s goodness is a spreading, imparting goodness. . . . God is more willing to bestow good than we are to ask it.  He is so willing to bestow it that he becomes a suitor to us, ‘Seek my face.’  He seeks us, to seek him.  It is strange that heaven should seek earth, and yet so it is.”

Richard Sibbes, Works (Edinburgh, 1983), VI:113.

“The gospel spirit is a catholic spirit, a noble and unconfined benevolence, like unto that of our Creator, not confined to any particular part of mankind exclusive of others. . . . To make the wickedness of men the cause of contention and strife in us is to make one sin the cause of another.  We cannot please the devil better than by hating men’s persons under pretense of duty.”

Jonathan Edwards, quoted in George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), page 97.

I give my sheep eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.  John 10:28

“Some will tell us that a man may receive spiritual life, and yet may die eternally.  That is to say, a man may be forgiven, and yet be punished afterwards.  He may be justified from all sin, and yet after that his transgression can be laid on his shoulders again.  A man may be born of God, and yet die.  A man may be loved of God, and yet God may hate him tomorrow. . . . As for me, I so deeply believe in the immutable love of Jesus that I suppose that if one believer were to be in hell, Christ himself would not long stay in heaven but would cry, ‘To the rescue!’”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Two Effects of the Gospel,” 27 May 1855.

“It is one thing to love the Lord and His service, and quite something else to have an inexpressible longing for revival that cannot be denied.  It is one thing to wish for revival, and yet it is something in addition to be willing for revival at any cost to come in any way through any means that God may choose.”

V. Raymond Edman, quoted by my dad in a sermon at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, Pasadena, California, 1 February 1976.

“For this implicit faith and total resignation of ourselves to the adorable Providence of God, willing nothing but what he wills, and because he wills it, is a state of mind whose excellency I cannot represent to you; it . . . makes our weakness as serviceable to us as our strength . . . . Let me, therefore, entreat you to put on this temper; to lay hold of it with all your might; to make everything you hear or see or find in yourself, the world, religion, or Providence, so many fresh occasions of committing yourself to God by a faith without any bounds, a resignation without any reserve.”

William Law, Works (London, 1762), IX:249-250.

HT:  John Lovell

“Now this is what I want to ask you.  Do let us be honest with one another and never profess to believe more than is actually true to our experience.  Let us always, with the help of the Holy Spirit, testify to our belief, in full, but never a word more. . . . Our chapels and churches are crowded with people nearly all of whom take the Lord’s Supper without a moment’s hesitation, and yet, without judging harshly or unjustly, do you imagine for a moment that all those people believe that Christ died for them?  Well then, you ask, why are they church members, why do they pretend to believe?  The answer is, that they are afraid to be honest with themselves.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his first sermon at his church in Wales, 6 February 1927, quoted in Iain H. Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh, 1982), page 136.  Italics original.

Revival begins with honesty – honesty before God and one another.

“You cannot sin and not suffer from it.  It just can’t be done.  I spent a great deal of my life trying to sin and to do away with my conscience at the same time.  One of the things I like best about being a Christian is the way that I suffer when I sin – it is the chastisement which guarantees me that I am one of God’s people.  I like it.  It feels good.  It feels like correction.  It feels as if I am being straightened out. . . .  When I was only half-believing God, he actually did come into me and make me miserable every time I sinned.  That is how I learned that he really is believable.”

Ted Wise, preaching at Peninsula Bible Church, 11 June 1972.