“Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy; for I the Lord am holy.”
(Leviticus 20:7)
“Come, Lord, and abide with me. Come, and occupy alone the throne of my heart; reign there without a rival, and consecrate me entirely to thy service.”
–Charles Spurgeon
But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
Ruth 1:16-18
When a woman consents to marry a man, she (if she’s a Christian) should think about the relationship between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church, His 
Bride. The Church responds to His call. The Bride relinquishes her independence, her name, her destiny, her plans for a “life of her own” (remember Jesus’ words: “If anyone wants to follow Me, let him give up his right to himself”), her family, her home, and perhaps even her country to join the life of this man. She accepts his destiny, his name, his future, and everything else as her own. If she is called to be his wife, she is called to support and encourage him in the work God calls him to do. ..
…(The source of these perorations is not Why I Feel Good About Being Submissive, by Elizabeth Elliot [don't order it---there is no such book], but the Book of Books—check out what it says about Christ and His Bride, and then ask Him to help you live by that paradigm. I’m asking everyday.)
Elizabeth Elliot
“Where Will Complaining Get You?”
November/December 1983 Newsletter
And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
(Matthew 25:10-12, ESV)
Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough
change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice: but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying “I am saved” is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.
-Charles Spurgeon
“Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.”
(Hebrews 12:14)
Say not that you have royal blood in your veins and are born to God, except you can prove your pedigree by daring to be holy.
–William Gurnall, 17th century English Puritan
“But whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: he one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”
(1 John 2:5,6)
The purpose and love of my life is Jesus Christ. I don’t have to argue r
eligion, philosophy, or historical evidence because I KNOW Him. He is just as real, if not more so, as my ‘earthly’ father.
–Lauren McCain, 20, on her MySpace website
(Lauren was one of 32 Virginia Tech students killed last month)
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Matthew 10:34
Becoming a Christian means being sick of your sin, longing for forgiveness and rescue from present evil and future hell, and affirming your commitment to the Lordship of Christ to the point where you are willing to sacrifice everything. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it isn’t just holding up your hand or walking down an aisle and saying “I love Jesus.” It is not easy, it is not user-friendly or seeker-sensitive; it isn’t a rosy, perfect world where Jesus gives you whatever you want. It is hard, it is sacrificial, and it supersedes everything.
–John MacArthur
Hard To Believe, p132-3
I found Foster’s prayer refreshing. I’m making it my prayer today…perhaps it is yours as well…
Blessed Savior,
I pace back and forth at the altar of commitment. I really do want a fixed habit of prayer. At least, that is what I want right now. I’m not sure if that is what I will want two weeks from now. I do know that
without some kind of consistent communion with You I will not know holy obedience. So, as best I can, I promise to set aside time regularly for prayer, meditation and spiritual meditation. Strengthen me in this covenant. Help me to so delight in Your presence that I will want to come home to You often.
In Your Name and for Your sake I make this covenant.
Amen.
–Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding Your Heart’s True Home, p77 (Chapter Seven: “Covenant Prayer”)
“Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
(Luke 22:42)
To applaud the will of God, to do the will of God, even to fight for the will of God is not difficult…until it comes at cross-purposes with our will. Then the lines are drawn, the debate begins, and the self-deception takes over. But in the School of Gethsemane we learn that “my will, my way, my goo
d” must yield to a higher authority…
All of the luminaries in Scripture struggled as well: Abraham as he relinquished his son, Isaac; Moses as he relinquished his understanding of how the deliverer of Israel should function; David as he relinquished the son given to him by Bathsheba; Mary as she relinquished control over her future; Paul as he relinquished his desire to be free of a debilitating “thorn in the flesh.”
–Richard Foster
Prayer, Finding the Heart’s True Home, p50
When Francis of Assisi was attending worship one day, the Gospel lesson was from Matthew: “Do not take along any gold, or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or staff.” (Matt. 10:9-10 NIV). Francis was startled by the reading and suddenly filled with inexplicable joy: “That’s what I want!” he shouted. “This is what I long for with all my heart!”
“He immediately took off his shoes from his feet,” Saint Bonaventure, his biographer, notes, “put aside his staff, cast away his wallet and money as if accursed, was content with one tunic and exchanged his leather belt for a piece of rope. He directed his heart’s desire to carry out what he had heard and to conform in every way to the rule of right living given to the apostles.”
–Mark Galli, Jesus, Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God, pp52-53
“Prayer–secret, fervent, believing prayer–lies at the root of all personal godliness.”
–William Carey
“Prayer changes things,” people say. It also changes us. The latter goal is the more imperative. The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son…
None of us will keep up a life of prayer unless we are prepared to change. We will either give it up or turn it into a little system that maintains the form of godliness but denies the power of it—which is the same thing as giving up.
–Richard Foster
Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, p57
Recent Comments