The difference between fearmongering and warnings

Arousing alarm is easy, teaching is tough. It takes patience and discipline to teach; any bozo can drop a book on the floor and make people jump. - Garrison Keillor

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. - Apostle Paul (Acts 20:28-32)

The point of every disaster

The point of every deadly calamity is this: Repent. Let our hearts be broken that God means so little to us. Grieve that he is a whipping boy to be blamed for pain, but not praised for pleasure. Lament that he makes headlines only when man mocks his power, but no headlines for ten thousand days of wrath withheld. Let us rend our hearts that we love life more than we love Jesus Christ. Let us cast ourselves on the mercy of our Maker. He offers it through the death and resurrection of his Son.

-- John Piper after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami

Live in Romans 8

Beware of an incomplete Christ

Revelation 5:5,6 - Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered. . . And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. . .

Consider the admirable conjunction of diverse Excellencies in Christ. In Jesus Christ (there is) infinite highness and infinite condescension; infinite justice and infinite grace; infinite majesty and transcendent meekness; deepest reverence toward God and equality with God; worthiness of good and the greatest patience under the suffering of evil; a great spirit of obedience and supreme dominion over heaven and earth; absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation; self-sufficiency and an entire trust and reliance on God.

- Jonathan Edwards, The Excellency of Christ (paraphrased by John Piper in The Pleasures of God)

For whom is the gospel not fitted

Never lose heart in the power of the gospel. Don"t believe that there exists any man, much less any race of men, for whom the gospel is not fitted.
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The offense of defense

"A sin is two sins when its defended." -Henry Smith

Christmas In Six Words

I and the Father are one.
- Jesus

I have been meditating on the incarnation the past few days. The weight and immensity of what I claim to believe regarding God the Son taking on human flesh makes me groan with how casual I am and how absolutely and totally dependent I am on God's grace as I believe in Christ. There is no way to grasp the solemness of the season -- that we offensive, God-belittling, bored-with-the-fountain-of-delights people should be saved from what we so justly deserve. Yet, we read, 'he shall save his people from their sins.'

So when I come to John 10 -- I delight deeply in Jesus' words that the Father who is greater than all has given the sheep to Him and no one is able to snatch them out of His hand (10:29). Salvation procured and secured by the Father and the Son is the kind of salvation I need, and that's exactly what's offered. And there is the joy of the incarnation -- which is not seasonal but always present. What God the Son came for was completed, it was accomplished. The Christmas story -- as we like to label it -- is not complete without the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ. We don't have a faith secured in a baby, our salvation is secured in a Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father ruling. So when Christ states that he and the Father are one I find myself resting in something I can't add to or take away from and that no season can enhance or diminish. My hope is built on nothing less. . .

-- TWMathis

The phantom of liberty and true liberty

When I hear the cry about liberty, I think of the old cry, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians'. Civil liberty is a valuable blessing but if people sin it away, it is the Lord who deprives them of it. . . However a believer has a liberty with which Jesus has made him free which depends upon no outward circumstances. It grieves me to hear those who are slaves to sin and Satan, make such a stir about that phantom which they worship under the name of liberty, and especially to see not a few of the Lord's people so much conformed to the world in this respect.

August, 1775
- Letter from John Newton to John Ryland, Jr.
From Wise Counsel edited by Grant Gordon