Do you have a pastor who faithfully preaches the gospel? Spurgeon says that you should “encourage, sustain, and help them with all your heart. Those who are faithful to the truth of God should find us faithful to them.”
"the voluntary sufferings of Christ surpass our powers of thought and imagination, reaching infinitely beyond all human experience."
~Professor Franklin Johnson, D.D., LL. D.
Popular culture celebrates tolerance of anything, except a call to righteousness. Agree with the agenda through forced celebrations or be convicted by the jury of popular sentiment and punished into forced conformity.
"It is the idea of an umbrella that you put up and invite someone to its shelter from the beating rain. It is the roof put up over the head. Love acts as a roof over other people, shielding them from the storm as it sweeps."
~G. Campbell Morgan
'Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch' taps into one of the oldest human impulses: the belief that we can restrain the flesh through increasingly strict rules.
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God is not glorified by white-knuckled control over every pleasure.
~Tilly Dillehay
J.I. Packer:
The Church is and will always be at its healthiest when every Christian can line up with every other Christian to sing:
Bearing shame and scoffing rude
In my place condemned he stood,
Sealed my pardon with his blood
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
He has absolute power to restrain me. He can vaporize me instantly if it is His pleasure. Or He can keep me on a long leash and let me do my worst. He will only permit me to do my worst if my worst coincides with His perfect providential plan."
-RC Sproul
"If I have a choice to sin or not sin, God also has a choice in the matter. He always has the ability and the authority to stop me from exercising my will...