If you are in Christ Jesus, by grace through faith, you will be married forever. And Jesus will be married too. He will not remain single forever.
Jonathan Edwards wrote:
The end [goal] of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for His Son Jesus Christ that might enjoy Him and on whom He might pour forth His love. And the end of all things in providence are to make way for the exceeding expressions of Christ’s love to His spouse and for her exceeding close and …

In his book, The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote:
“We have a tendency to think, but not to act.  The more we feel without acting, the less we will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less we will be able to feel.”
I have often thought and felt a lot of things while listening to sermons or while reading Bible-saturated books or while looking at horiffic pictures of starving children on the internet or while watching footage of disasters like the recent earthquake in Haiti.  During …

In a blog post entitled “My Biggest Sin,” McKay Caston writes:
You couldn’t help it, could you? This is gonna be juicy, right? Could be. Okay, let’s get to it. What is my biggest sin? Of course, most of us probably think of the Top 10 list in Exodus. “Thou Shall Not…” But we’ve all broken every one of those. No surprise there. So what is my biggest sin? Here goes: Not believing that I have been fully forgiven, totally accepted, and am dearly loved by the Father. Sorry …

John Owen wrote:
I confess I would rather, much rather, spend all my time and days in making up and healing the breaches and schisms that are amongst Christians than one hour in justifying our divisions even therein wherein, on the one side, they are capable of a fair defense. But who is sufficient for such an attempt? The closing of differences amongst Christians is like opening the book in the Revelation, – there is none able or worthy to do it, in heaven or in earth, but the Lamb: when …

Martin Bucer wrote these passionate words about the great satisfaction that is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ alone:
” . . . Christ our Lord alone is the One who is, gives, and performs for us everything which we can desire for our true advantage, happiness, and honour.”
” . . . all gain, all enjoyment, all honour apart from Christ is poison and death, but . . . in Christ all loss is true and eternal gain, joy, and honour . . . .”
” . . . through …

Jesus said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27
In this passage, Jesus demands absolute, undivided love, commitment, and devotion without rival. The love we are to have for Jesus should make all other loves in our lives seem like hatred. Only if we have …

Exodus 20:17-20: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to …

Geerhardus Vos wrote:
“Faith in its last analysis was to the patriarchs the apprehension, the possession, the enjoyment of God Himself . . . Legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship. It obeys but it does not adore.”
Apparently, Vos was a Christian Hedonist!
Geerhardus Vos, Redemptive History And Biblical Interpretation, The Shorter Writings Of Geerhardus Vos (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1980), 229, 231.

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. Psalm 23:1
This amazing truth is ultimately fulfilled in the Good Shepherd – the Lord Jesus Christ. Only in Him is this supernatural satisfaction fully realized, and for this realization to happen, Jesus had to lay down His life for the sheep (John 10:11).
Jesus had to lack everything for His sheep.
Contra rest in green pastures, He had no place to lay His head (Matthew 8:20)
Contra still waters, He was baptized with the wrath of God (Luke 12:50)
Contra a restored soul, His …

Jonathan Edwards said:
“The following reasons may be given why children ought to love Jesus Christ above things in the world: He is more lovely in Himself. He is one that is greater and higher than all the kings of the earth, has more honor and majesty than they, and yet He is innately good and full of mercy and love.
There is no love so great and so wonderful as that which is in the heart of Christ. He is one that delights in mercy. He is ready to pity those …

J. Gresham Machen wrote:
“The Sermon on the Mount, like all the rest of the New Testament, really leads a man straight to the foot of the cross.”
From:  J. Gresham Machen, Christianity And Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1923), 38.

Louis Berkhof noted:
“It deserves particular attention that, while even the weakest of faith mediates a perfect justification, the degree of sanctification is commensurate with the strength of the Christian’s faith and the persistence with which he apprehends Christ.”1
1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 537.

John Calvin commenting on Ephesians 3:14-19:
“. . . when the Scripture sets Jesus Christ before us, it is not without cause that we are told to rest wholly upon him, and keep to him when we have come to him, because he has all fulness of good things in himself. Therefore we do not need to be wandering here and there, or taking such great trouble in seeking the things that are needful for us. In short, we must no longer go astray, but must adhere wholly to him, as …

Oh Father, please help me claim no rights to myself . . . no right to my understanding; my will; my affections; my body or its members; my tongue; my hands; my feet; my ears; my eyes; or my sexual members and desires. They are all Yours and belong to You. You bought me with Your dear Son’s blood. You own all of me Oh God! Use me as You please for Your glory.
Help me give myself clear away to You today and not retain anything …

Satan’s “Take and Eat:”
Genesis 3:4-5: But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Jesus’ “Take and Eat:”
Matthew 26:26: Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
Commenting on Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve and Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, Ligon Dunan said:
Do you …

The Holy Spirit writes:  ”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” 1 Corinthians 15:56
In his new book focusing on this verse, Chris Vlachos writes:
“Now if the Eden account was indeed the source of the Apostle’s catalytic notion of the law, and he considered the law-problematic to be primeval, it would seem to follow that the fundamental problem which the law posed for Paul would not have been its ‘legalistic misuse;’ Eve was enticed to trangress the law, not fulfill it.  Nor would it have …

J. I. Packer writes:
“Holiness is a matter of being Jesus’s disciple, of listening to His word and obeying His commands, of loving and adoring Him as one’s Redeemer, of seeking to please Him and honor Him as one’s Master, and so making ready for the day when we shall see Him and be with Him forever . . .
This Jesus-centeredness is the basic form of Christian holiness, and it is to this that the Spirit leads us all in His sanctifying work. The holiest Christians are not those most concerned …

Edwards wrote:
“We are as much saved by the death of Christ, as his yielding himself to die was an act of obedience, as we are, as it was a propitiation for our sins: for as it was not the only act of obedience that merited, he having performed meritorious acts of obedience through the whole course of his life; so neither was it the only suffering that was propitiatory; all his suffering through the whole course of his life being propitiatory, as well as every act of obedience meritorious …

Spurgeon said:
“I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, ‘What! all this, and Christ too?’”
(In Kerry James Allen, Exploring the Mind & Heart of the Prince of Preachers (Oswego: Fox River Press, 2005), 90.)

1.  The LORD makes people great in the eyes of the world as He chooses:
Genesis 12:1-2: Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.   And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”
Genesis 39:2-3, 21, 23: The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of …

Thomas Watson wrote:
What need does he have to complain of losses who has Christ?  He is His Father’s brightness (Hebrews 1:3), His fullness (Colossians 2:9), and His delight (Proverbs 8:30).  Is there enough in Christ to delight the heart of God?  And is there not enough in Him to ravish us with holy delight?  He is wisdom to teach us, righteousness to acquit us, sanctification to adorn us. He is that royal and princely gift.  He is the bread of angels (according to Bernard), the joy and triumph of …

Elisabeth Elliot comments on  Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth:
Rosalind Bell-Smith, born in London in 1864, was twelve years old when she heard a sermon on John 3:16 at a revival meeting.  The love of God was presented with such fervor and intensity that she yielded herself absolutely to Christ and stood up, along with others, to confess Him publicly as her Lord and Master.
Her father having been an artist, she grew up with a great love for art and went to art school in Toronto.  But there …

“The end of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for His Son Jesus Christ that might enjoy Him and on whom He might pour forth His love. And the end of all things in providence are to make way for the exceeding expressions of Christ’s love to His spouse and for her exceeding close and intimate union with, and high and glorious enjoyment of, Him and to bring this to pass.
And therefore the last thing and the issue of all things is the marriage of the Lamb. …

“David declares that he desires nothing, either in heaven or in earth, except God alone, and that without God, all other objects which usually draw the hearts of men towards them were unattractive to him. And, undoubtedly, God then obtains from us the glory to which He is entitled, when, instead of being carried first to one object, and then to another, we hold exclusively by Him, being satisfied with Him alone. If we give the smallest portion of our affections to the creatures we in so far …

“There were two exegetes who prayed as they entered the library to work on understanding a biblical text. One was a biblical scholar and the other a common lay preacher. The biblical scholar, on route to deep seclusion in the collection of recent monographs, prayed like this:
‘Lord, I thank you that I am not like other exegetes– the youth ministers, authors of popular devotional literature, mass production book publishers or even this lay preacher. I study the Scriptures for hours every day– in their original… and several other languages, not …

I encourage you to read about the persecuted church more often.   No matter how bad a day you may have had in America, your day was probably pretty good compared to them.  Or are they the ones blessed with the most glorious days, being counted worthy to suffer for His sake?  May we pray for them more . . .
“Lateef,” was born and raised in a Coptic Christian family. He became a quiet Christian. In Egypt, where proselytizing is illegal, Lateef rarely shared his faith. Then …

“God’s people are never so exalted as when they are brought low, never so enriched as when they are emptied, never so advanced as when they are set back by adversity, never so near the crown as when under the cross.”
(Theodore Cuyler, God’s Light On Dark Clouds)

There’s no one like Him! Run to Him and be saved, safe, and satisfied!
Psalm 9:10: “And those who know Your name put their trust in You, for You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You.”
Proverbs 18:10: “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.”
Jesus Christ the Righteous, Saviour, Emmanuel, Teacher, Rabboni, Master, Governor, Law Giver, Forerunner, Redeemer, Messiah, Shiloh, Deliverer, Mediator, Intercessor, Messiah and Prince, a Prince and a Saviour, Mighty to Save
Surety of a …

“Turn all your passions into the right channel, and make them all holy, using them for God upon the greatest things. This is the true cure: the bare restraint of them is but a palliate cure; like the easing of pain by a dose of opium. Cure the fear of man, by the fear of God, and the Love of the creature, by the Love of God, and the cares for the body, by caring for the soul, and earthly fleshly desires and delights, by spiritual desires …