“If Christ has died for me – ungodly as I am, without strength as I am – then I can no longer live in sin, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me. I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend. I must be holy for his sake. How can I live in sin when He has died to save me from it?”
– Charles Spurgeon
“We would have it so happen that, when our life’s history is written, whoever reads it will not think of us as “self-made men,” but as the handiwork of God, in whom his grace is magnified. Not in us may men see the clay, but the Potter’s hand. They said of one, “He is a fine preacher;” but of another they said, “We never notice how he preaches, but we feel that God is great.” We wish our whole life to be a sacrifice; an altar of incense continually smoking with sweet perfume unto the Most High. Oh, to be borne through the year on the wings of praise to God to mount from year to year, and raise at each ascent a loftier and yet lowlier song unto the God of our Life! The vista of a praiseful life will never close, but continue throughout eternity. From psalm to psalm, from hallelujah to hallelujah, we will ascend the hill of the Lord; until we come into the Holiest of all, where, with veiled faces, we will bow before the Divine Majesty in the bliss of endless adoration.”
Charles Spurgeon
“If it were not for hopes, the heart would break”
– Thomas Fuller
Hope gives the ability to stand in the darkness for Hope looks for the morning not the night. People without hope are a people without strength. Jesus came to be everyone’s hope and everyone’s light.
“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”
Matthew 11:28
“BABYLON is the spiritual fabric of iniquity; the mystical great city of the great king of darkness; built in imitation of Zion, painted just like Zion, that it might be taken for Zion, and be worshipped there, instead of the true, eternal, ever living God, and King of Zion.”
“And here, in this there is a great difference between the vessels of Zion, and the vessels of Babylon. The vessels of Zion, they are weak, earthen, foolish, contemptible to the eye of man’s wisdom, (which cannot look for any great matter of excellency there); but the treasure, the liquor of life in them, is precious. The vessels of Babylon make a great show, appear very holy, very heavenly, very zealous for God and Christ, and for the setting up of his church and ordinances all over the world. Thus they appear outside; but they are sepulchers; there is rottenness within. Under all this there lodges an unclean, an unsanctified heart; a heart unsubdued to the spirit and power of the gospel, while it makes such a great show of subjection and obedience to the letter.”
“But their souls never knew the fire in Zion, and the furnace in Jerusalem; by which the very inwards of their spirits must be cleansed, before the pure eye of life is opened which can see Zion.”
“And it is a spiritual city, a mystical city, a city built by the working of the mystery of iniquity, 2 Thes 2:7. whereupon she is called mystery. Rev 17:5. It is not a city of plain wickedness, but a city of sin that is hidden; of sin keeping its life under a covering, under a form of godliness; of sin reigning in the heart under zeal, under devotion, under praying, believing, worshipping, hoping, waiting, etc. Where sin lies hidden within under these, there is Babylon; there is the mystery of witchcraft; there is the painted throne of Satan; there is spiritual Egypt and Sodom, where the Lord of life is daily crucified. This is the city, the mystical city, the spiritual city. Rev. 11:8.”
–Isaac Penington
“The grace that does not change my life will not save my soul”
– Charles Spurgeon
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin,
that grace may abound?”
Romans 6:1
Wisdom of the Ages 