JC Ryle

A sense of our own utter unworthiness is the best worthiness that we can bring to the Lord’s Table. A deep feeling of our own entire indebtedness to Christ for all we have and hope for, is the best feeling we can bring with us. The very thought that we feel literally worthy, is a symptom of secret self-righteousness, and proves us unfit for the Lord’s Table in God’s sight. Sinners we are when we first come to the throne of grace and sinners we will be till we die; converted, changed, renewed, sanctified, but sinners still (though not like before since sin is not the pattern of a believer’s new life). In short, no person is really worthy to receive the Lord’s Supper who does not deeply feel that he is a miserable sinner.

It is natural for us to do wrong... Our hearts are like the earth on which we tread; let it alone, and it is sure to bear weeds.

We can never make too much of Christ. Our thoughts about the Church, the ministry, and the sacraments, may easily become too high and extravagant. We can never have too high thoughts about Christ, can never love Him too much, trust Him too implicitly, lay too much weight upon Him, and speak too highly in His praise. He is worthy of all the honor that we can give Him. He will be all in heaven. Let us see to it, that He is all in our hearts on earth.

Issac Watts

Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there's room;
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve then come?
'Twas the same love that spread the feast,
That sweetly forced us in,
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

Lewis Quotes

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd be either a lunatic - on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg - or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse... But don't let us come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He hadn't left that open to us. He didn't intend to.

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” - The Last Battle

"The Church exists for no other purpose but to draw men into Christ. . . If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other reason."

Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?

Jonathan Edwards

Christ is like a river. A river is constantly flowing, there are fresh supplies of water coming from the fountain-head continually so that man may live by it, and be supplied with water all his life. So Christ is an ever-flowing fountain; He is continually supplying His people and the fountain is not spent. They who live upon Christ may have fresh supplies from Him to all eternity; they may have an increase of blessedness that is new, and new still, and which never will come to an end.
Christ comes down from heaven on this fallen, miserable creature and gives life from the dead. He restores that which Satan had cut down. He heals that mortal wound that he had given. . . . He restores the image of God after it had been wholly defaced. He restores spiritual life after it had been wholly extinct. He restores to God’s favor. He restores, and much more than restores, to the former state of happiness, for he brings to a better paradise and a more excellent state of honor and an higher degree of communion with God.

He who by the act of his will does truly accept of Christ as a Savior accepts him as a Savior from sin, and not only as a Savior from the punishment of sin.

The devil is orthodox in his faith; he believes the true scheme of doctrine; he is no Deist, Socinian, Arian, Pelagian, or antinomian; the articles of his faith are all sound.

Resolved:  To study the scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently as that I may find and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.  -- Jonathan Edwards

Oswald Chambers - Perseverance

Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. Perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe that our hero is going to be conquered. Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for— love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men— will not win out in the end and will represent an unattainable goal for us. Then there is the call to spiritual perseverance. A call not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately, knowing with certainty that God will never be defeated. (My Utmost - Feb 22)

Thomas Watson

Til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet

God’s words are creating words; when He said “Let there be light, there was light”; and when He says, “Let there be faith”, it shall be so.

To be holiest in evil times, is an indication of the truth of grace. To profess religion when the times favor it, is no great matter. Almost all will court the Gospel Queen when she is hung with jewels. But to own the ways of God when they are decried and maligned, to love a persecuted truth–this evidences a vital principle of goodness. Dead fish swim down the stream–living fish swim against it. To swim against the common stream of evil, shows grace to be alive.

Oswald Chambers - Hearing God

What hinders me from hearing is that I am taken up with other things. It is not that I will not hear God, but I am not devoted in the right place. I am devoted to things, to service, to convictions, and God may say what He likes but I do not hear Him. (My Utmost - Feb 13)

Martin Niemoeller

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

Christ Crucified

Let me very briefly tell you what I believe preaching Christ and him crucified is. My friends, I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to give people a batch of philosophy every Sunday morning and evening, and neglect the truths of this Holy Book. I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to leave out the main cardinal doctrines of the Word of God, and preach a religion which is all a mist and a haze, without any definite truths whatever. I take it that man does not preach Christ and him crucified, who can get through a sermon without mentioning Christ’s name once; nor does that man preach Christ and him crucified, who leaves out the Holy Spirit’s work, who never says a word about the Holy Ghost, so that indeed the hearers might say, “We do not so much as know whether there be a Holy Ghost.” And I have my own private opinion, that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith without works; not unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor, I think, can we preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the peculiar redemption which Christ made for his elect and chosen people; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation, after having believed. Such a gospel I abhor. The gospel of the Bible is not such a gospel as that. We preach Christ and him crucified in a different fashion, and to all gainsayers we reply, “We have not so learned Christ.”

~Charles Spurgeon~

Spurgeon’s Sermons – Vol. 1: Sermon 7”Christ Crucified” delivered on February 11, 1855, by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Newton quotes

But if Jesus is the Captain of our salvation, if his eye is upon us, his arm stretched out around us, and his ear open to our cry, and if He has engaged to teach our hands to war and our fingers to fight, and to cover our heads in the day of battle, then we need not fear, though a host rise up against us; but, lifting up our banner in his name, let us go forth conquering and to conquer;

When I hear a knock at my study door, I hear a message from God.
It may be a lesson of instruction;
perhaps a lesson of patience:
but, since it is his message, it must be interesting.