I’m on vacation this week with the family and have chosen some older posts to re-run. Here’s a thought-provoking quote from Tim Keller:

“If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.

“For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

“Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.

“Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.

“So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.”

- Tim Keller, The Reason for God:Belief in an Age of Skepticism, pages 113-114

Herschel Hobbs:

The Bible speaks of God’s redemptive purpose. It reveals how God proposes to bring sinful man back into His fellowship and to use him in His service.

From Genesis to Revelation this message runs like a scarlet thread. Its message begins in eternity with the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, and ends with the triumphant Lamb on His throne ruling over a redeemed universe.

The Bible points forward to Christ, backward to Christ, and again forward to Christ in His glorious return and reign. And it reveals God in the person of the Holy Spirit as He empowers and directs the people of Christ in God’s mission of evangelism and missions.

The Bible has one central theme: God’s redemptive purpose.
It has one central figure: Christ.
It has one central goal: God supreme in a redeemed universe.

The Old Testament sounds the messianic hope.
The Gospels record Christ’s incarnation.
Acts relates His continuing work through the Holy Spirit.
The Epistles interpret His person and work.
Revelation proclaims His final triumph and glory.

- The Baptist Faith and Message

Stick with your work.

Do not flinch because the lion roars.
Do not stop to stone the devil’s dogs.
Do not fool away your time chasing the devil’s rabbits.

Do your work.

Let liars lie.
Let sectarians quarrel.
Let critics malign.
Let enemies accuse.
Let the devil do his worst.

But see to it nothing hinders you from fulfilling with joy the work God has given you.

He has not commanded you to be admired or esteemed.
He has never bidden you defend your character.
He has not set you at work to contradict falsehood (about yourself)
which Satan’s or God’s servants may start to peddle,
or to track down every rumor that threatens your reputation.
If you do these things, you will do nothing else.
You will be at work for yourself and not for the Lord.

Keep at your work.
Let your aim be as steady as a star.
You may be assaulted, wronged, insulted, slandered,
wounded and rejected, misunderstood, or assigned impure motives;
You may be abused by foes, forsaken by friends,
and despised and rejected of men.
But see to it with steadfast determination,
with unfaltering zeal,
that you pursue the great purpose of your life and object of your being
until at last you can say, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.”

- Anonymous

In our sickness, we need a Savior,
in our wanderings a guide,
in our blindness someone to show us the light,
in our thirst the fountain of living water
that quenches forever the thirst of those who drink from it.
We dead people need life,
we sheep need a shepherd,
we children need a teacher,
the whole world needs Jesus!

- Clement of Alexandria, 150-215 A.D., Christ the Educator 1.9.83.

You ask if anyone with such a sick history as yourself can live a normal Christian life. One would have to say, “What is the normal Christian life?”

None of us are normal, even after we are Christians-if we mean by that being perfect.

What is possible, however, is for us to live in the fullness of life in the circle of who we are, constantly pressing on the border lines to try to take further steps. This is not done in our own strength, but looking to the Lord moment by moment as well as day by day.

- Francis Schaeffer, Letters of Francis A. Schaeffer: Spiritual Reality in the Personal Christian Life

“Christ will by His death destroy the power of death, take away the sting of the first death, and prevent the second.” – John Wesley

“Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. And this was the very thing that did it, the blood and death of Christ. The cross was the devil’s own weapon; and with this weapon he was overthrown, as David cut off Goliath’s head with his own sword.” - Jonathan Edwards

“No proposition can be more plain than this, that the power of Satan was destroyed by the death of Christ.” – John Owen

“Churches are the armies of the Lamb, the grand object of whose existence is to extend the Redeemer’s kingdom.” – Andrew Fuller

“As the Risen One He has become Head over all things; and that He must reign until He shall have put all things under His feet. Our brother, who has like us been acquainted with death – He it is who rules over the ages, the ages that are past, and the ages that are passing, and the ages that are yet to come. If our hearts should fail us as we stand over against the hosts of wickedness which surround us, let us encourage ourselves and one another with the great reminder: Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David!” – B.B. Warfield

“If Christ on the cross was spoiled Satan, let us not be afraid to encounter this great enemy of our souls. In all things we must be made like Christ. We must bear our cross, and on that cross we must fight as Christ did with sin and death and hell.” – Charles Spurgeon

HT – Phillip Bethancourt

When our Lord was handed over to the will of His cruel foes, they ordered Him, in mockery of His royal dignity, to carry the instrument of His own torture. This was done to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah:

“A child is born for us, a son is given to us; sovereignty is laid on his shoulders.”

To the wicked, the sight of the Lord carrying HIs own cross was indeed an object of derision. But to the faithful a great mystery was revealed, for the cross was destined to become the scepter of His power.

Here was the majestic spectacle of a glorious conqueror mightily overthrowing the hostile forces of the devil and nobly bearing the trophy of His victory!

On the shoulders of His invincible patience He carried the sign of salvation for all the kingdoms of the earth to worship, as if on that day He would strengthen all His future disciples by the symbol of His work and say to them:

“Anyone who does not take up His cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.”

- Leo the Great, Sermon 8.4

Some who go by the name of ‘Evangelical’ view the Bible in such scrappy atomistic bits that they can find moralising lessons here and there, but cannot see how the Bible gives us the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But the Bible is not a magic book, as in: ‘A verse a day keeps the devil away’. It is a book that points us to Jesus, and this Jesus saves and transforms. This Jesus by his death and resurrection constitutes the good news that men and women may be reconciled to the living God.

Here in this book there is instruction on what God has done in Christ Jesus; here there is the message of Christ dying for sinners, of whom I am chief; here there is the promise of the Holy Spirit given in down payment of the ultimate inheritance; here there is transformation. These Scriptures make you ‘wise for salvation’.

- D. A. Carson

We have known and believed that Jesus is the everlasting Word, the veritable Son of the Father.

We have beheld Him by faith, as dwelling with the Father or ever the world was, the beloved of His Father’s soul.

We have seen Him and we have marked that His goings-forth are of old, even from everlasting.

We have seen Him weighing the clouds, measuring the channels of the great deep, planning the heavens, and meting out the sea.

We have seen Him with the line and with the plummet, making all things according to His wisdom, and the purpose of the counsel of His will, for “without Him was not anything made that was made.”

We have seen Him as God, seated upon the throne of His Father, and we have believed that the sea roareth only as He bids it, that the earth with all the creatures that are therein obeys His glorious will.

Lo, in His hands today the keys of heaven and death, and hell!

We have had no doubts whatever as to His Divinity, for we have seen and known that He is “very God of very God.” “God over all, blessed for ever Amen.”

- Charles Spurgeon

For Christ is King,
and Priest,
and God,
and Lord,
and messenger,
and man,
and captain,
and stone,
and a Son born,
and first made subject to suffering,
then returning to heaven,
and again coming with glory,
and He is preached as having the everlasting kingdom:
so I prove from all the Scriptures.

- Justin Martyr, 103-165 A. D.