The Great Design of God (and other short items)

 The Great Design of God (and other short items)

The Great Design of God

It is one of the Lord's dealings with His beloved children, to make them feel their wickedness, and His power; their pollution and His holiness; their nothingness and His all sufficiency.

The more we are brought under the teachings of the Holy Spirit, the more we shall find the truth of this remark.

It is the great design of God to humble our naturally proud hearts, to bring down our naturally self-righteous spirit, to root our our naturally idolatrous affections.

~Thomas Reade~

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The Christian's Heaviest Burden

"Behold, I am vile!" (Job 40:4).

Sin is the Christian's heaviest burden - and his greatest grief!

"We are lying if we say we have fellowship with God - but go on living in darkness" (1 John 1:6). Repentance is not only a sorrowing for sin - but also a turning away from it; the throwing down of the weapons of our warfare against God.

If we truly love God, we will forsake our sins, abandon our idols, and mortify our lusts. An honest soul cannot do otherwise; anything short of that would be hypocrisy.

The upright man is the one who "fears God - and turns away from evil" (Job 1:8).

~A. W. Pink~

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Sailing Through the Narrow Strait of Repentance

To bless God for mercies - is the way to increase them; to bless Him for miseries - is the way to remove them.

Christ uncrowned Himself - to crown us! He put off His robes - to put on our rags! He came down from heaven - to keep us out of hell! He came from heaven to earth - that He might send us from earth to heaven!

There is no going to the fair haven of glory - without sailing through the narrow strait of repentance. 

~William Dyer~

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Nothing But the Cross!

"They will look on Me whom they have pierced, and they will mourn" (Zechariah 12:10).

Nothing but the Cross will melt a hard heart, or bend a stubborn will, or give a death-blow to corruption.

A sight of hell ever frightened one out of the love of sin. The thunders of Sinai never made a rebellious heart submit to God.

Pliny, the naturalist, says that blood readily extinguishes fire. However that may be - the blood of Christ not only quenches the flaming wrath of God, but it also extinguishes the fires of unhallowed desires in the soul. It begets hatred to sin - and love to holiness.

When the Romans saw Caesar's bloody robes, they said, "His murderers shall die!" And when by faith, the sinner sees how his sins crucified the Lord of glory - he will mortify his sins!

~William Plumer~