Pages Of Grace

Blessing Comes from Brokenness

ronman4 — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 04:47:24 +0000

“We can cry ‘Hallelujah’ with authenticity only after we have first cried ‘Woe is me, for I am lost” To honestly proclaim the greatness of Christ requires honestly confessing the bankruptcy of our own souls.” – Jared Wilson, quoting John Stott from Gospel Wakefulness

Is Your Gospel is Too Small?

ronman4 — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 23:10:13 +0000

“A Gospel which is only about the moment of conversion but does not extend to every moment of life in Christ is too small.” Fred Sanders

God Owes Us Nothing

ronman4 — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:56:09 +0000

“In creation God is not obliged to give us the gift of life. He is not in debt to us. The gift of life comes by His grace and stands under His divine authority. The task that is given to mankind in creation is to bear witness to the holiness of God, to be His image bearer. We are made to mirror and reflect the holiness of God. We are made to be His ambassadors.” -The Holiness of God pg 138

The Greatest Thing God Did

ronman4 — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 01:53:32 +0000

“If the greatest thing God ever did for us was to send Jesus to the cross, then perhaps the second greatest thing He has done is to give us our troubles. Troubles ultimately assure us that our hearts have been remade by our Creator, that we are bound for a glorious destination,
well worth every difficult minute of the journey.” Ron Julian from Righteous Sinners

Be Holy

ronman4 — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 04:20:52 +0000

With prophetic insight, A. W. Tozer wrote many years ago:

Were some watcher or holy one from the bright world above to come among us for a time with the power to diagnose the spiritual ills of church people, there is one entry which I am quite sure would appear on the vast majority of his reports: Definite evidence of chronic spiritual lassitude; level of moral enthusiasm extremely low.

Whatever else the professing Christian church may be known for today—great crowds, expensive buildings, big budgets, political clout—it’s not distinguished for its holiness. Bible-believing evangelical Christians make up a sizable minority in the United States, but our presence isn’t making much of an impact on society. The salt seems to have lost its saltiness, and the light is so well hidden that the marketplace is quite dark.

Eight times in Scripture, God said to His people, “Be holy, for I am holy!” This is one of the major themes of Leviticus, a book that teaches us how to avoid sin and how to grow in holiness. My prayer is that the study and application of the spiritual principles in Leviticus will make us all more like Jesus Christ and better able to impact this present evil world. – Warren Wiersbe

The Foundation of Assurance

ronman4 — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:51:08 +0000

” As Christians, we have not been left to our own devices “to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery,” nor have we been left to figure out for ourselves all that God requires of us. We have been blessed with the wisdom and knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for in him “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). What is more, in his sovereign wisdom God provided us with minds to comprehend the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in his Word; and as a loving Father, he provided us with hearts to love and obey his Word. We are a people who are identified by his Word. We have been called to hide the Word in our hearts so that we might not sin against the Lord (Psalm 119:11) and we have been told to allow “the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in our hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). The Word of God is not only true and it does not merely contain truth, it is truth; that is to say, it defines truth (John 17:17). ” – Burk Parsons from Assured by God

We Never Move Beyond The Gospel

ronman4 — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:13:38 +0000

“I once assumed the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, but after they believe it, they advance to deeper theological waters. Jonah helped me realize that the gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. As Tim Keller explains it, the gospel isn’t simply the ABC’s of Christianity, but A through Z. The gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life; it’s the fuel that keeps Christians going everyday. Once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel- and since Christians remain sinners even after they’re converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes everyday. Since we never leave off sinning, we can never leave the gospel.” – Tullian Tchivdjian from Surprised by Grace (God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels)

Christ Was Crucified to Prove God’s Love

ronman4 — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:13:19 +0000

“To assert that the message of the cross is wholly one of divine love (as some have done) is to destroy it’s meaning. For it is only in the recognition of the holiness of God that the sufferings of Christ, which brought forth the cry, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’, can be truly understood. Apart from divine justice that cry is inexplicable. In the words of Thomas Robinson, ‘Sin is nowhere seen so terrible, nor the law so inflexible, as in the cross of Christ.

Yet if we ask why God was so moved to exercise His holiness and justice in such a manner, at such a cost, in the sacrifice of His own beloved Son for our sins, the answer is ‘God so loved the world’. And it was love that led Jesus first to undertake His sufferings, and then to invite all men to enter into the love which His death proclaims. It is the Puritan Thomas Watson who quotes the words of Augustine, ‘ The cross was a pulpit in which Christ preached His love to the world.’ On the same subject John Owen writes: ‘There is no property of the nature of God which He doth so eminently design to glorify in the death of Christ as His love.’ – Iain H. Murray from ‘The Cross, The Pulpit of God’s Love’

Jesus’ Righteousness is Legitimate

ronman4 — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:13:46 +0000

“Only the life and death of Christ offers a legitimate path to freedom from a guilty conscience-legitimate because it was a real, lived in the flesh, finished righteousness, applied to us forever. It was an obedience “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phillipians 2:8) where “Christ offered himself without blemish to God [to] purify our conscience” (Hebrews 9:14) What makes it legitimate for us is that he did it in our place as our substitute.” – Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington from “The Bookends of The Christian Life”

God Takes the Initiative

ronman4 — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 01:08:48 +0000

“I used to think that whenI let God down I would probably have a bad day or my prayers would go unanswered. I assumed God would act in the way I act when people let me down, giving them the cold shoulder. Or I thought I could atone by having a miserable day or sweating it out in prayer, as if the death of Jesus didn’t quite do the job. And so we stand at a distance from God. And all the time He’s looking for us, ready to embrace us, ready to welcome us home. Indeed, as the other parables of Luke 15 remind us, he takes the initiative to bring us home.” – Tim Chester from You Can Change