Quotable Quote || J. Campbell White

"Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ's purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ's undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards."

-  J. Campbell White, the secretary of the Laymen's Missionary movement in 1909

Quotable Quote || John Newton

"If people are satisfied of a surgeon’s skill and prudence, they will not only yield to be cut at his pleasure without pretending to direct him where, or how long he shall make the incision, but will thank him and pay him for putting them in pain, because they believe it for their advantage. I wish I could be more like them and my concerns. My body, as I said is, through mercy, free from considerable ailments, but I have a soul that requires surgeon’s work continually."

C.S. Lewis on Horses (There's gold in them there hills/words)

 "To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, ‘Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?’ Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world- shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else— since He has retained His own charger—should we accompany Him?”

Efficiency

The other day I went into the auto repair store to get a new air filter for the car. With my bizarre sense of humor, I noticed on the box for the air filter, that it said that it was 90% efficient (see picture).  In my bizarre way of thinking, I wondered if that meant that it was 10% inefficient. I asked the clerk if he thought that meant that it was 10% inefficient. To his credit, he quickly understood my strange sense of humor, and said he wasn't quite sure. I said to him that if the filter is working at 90% efficiency, it's still doing a lot better than I am. It may be as much as 50 or 60% more efficient than I am. As I walked out I was thinking about the fact that there are so few things that are 100% efficient. I am so grateful for the blood of Jesus Christ that is 100% efficient for forgiving my sin and making me acceptable to God, propitiating the wrath of God, and bringing me into an experience of the love of God by the Holy Spirit. 

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."

The Bandit and the Ninja...

My Favorite Kid in the World

 

Quotables - Jeremiah Burroughs

"The contentment of a man or woman who is rightly content does not come so much from outward arguments or from any outward help, as from the disposition of their own hearts. The disposition of their own hearts causes and brings forth this gracious contentment rather than any external thing.

Let me explain myself. Someone is disturbed... If you come and bring some great thing to please them, perhaps it will quiet them and they will be contented. It is the thing you bring that quiets them, not the disposition of their own spirits, not any good temper in their own hearts, but the external thing you bring them. But when a Christian is content in the right way, the quiet comes more from the temper and disposition of his own heart than from any external argument or from the possession of anything in the world.

I would unfold this further to you with this simile: to be content as a result of some external thing is like warming a man's clothes by the fire. But to be content through an inward disposition of the soul is like the warmth that a man's clothes have from the natural heat of the body. A man who is healthy in body puts on his clothes, and perhaps at first on a cold morning they feel cold. But after he has had them on a little while they are warm. Now, how did they get warm? They were not near the fire? No, this came from the natural heat of his body. Now when a sickly man, the natural heat of whose body has deteriorated, puts on his clothes, they do not get hot after a long time. He must warm them by the fire, and even then they will soon be cold again.

This will illustrate the different contentment of men. Some are very gracious, and when an affliction comes on them, though at first it seems a little cold, after they have borne it a while, the very temper of their hearts makes their afflictions easy. They are quiet under it and do not complain of any discontent. But now there are others that have an affliction upon them and have not this good temper in their hearts. Their afflictions are very cold and troublesome to them. Maybe, if you bring some external arguments to bear upon them like the fire that warms the clothes, they will be quiet for a while. But alas, if they lack a gracious disposition in their own hearts, that warmth will not last long.  The warmth of the fire, that is, a contentment that results merely from external arguments, will not last long but that which comes from the gracious temper of one's spirit will last. When it comes from the spirit of a man or woman - that is true contentment."

- Jeremiah Burroughs
The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

Ben Affleck talks about Batman

"Wouldn’t it be nice if there was somebody who can save us from all this, save us from ourselves, save us from the consequences of our actions and save us from people who are evil?”

Ben, I'd like to tell you about Jesus.

Quotables - Francis Schaeffer

"The young man Joshua was learning a lesson that anybody who is ever going to be worth anything in leadership must learn. None of us learns it completely, of course, and yet we must master it if we are going to be of any use in the Church of God. A leader must never confuse himself with God. When a person begins to exercise certain gifts and God brings him to a place of leadership in the Church of Christ, how easy it is to do this. Yet this is the destruction of all true spiritual leadership."

- Francis Schaeffer from Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History, page 159

Quotables - Charles Spurgeon

If you have to give a carnival to get people to come to church, then you will have to keep giving carnivals to keep them coming back.

- Charles Spurgeon

How Depression Feels

"What does mental illness actually look like and feel like? How is depression different from just feeling sad or discouraged or blue? I'm not the only one, certainly, to try to describe it. In his award-winning book Darkness Visible, William Styron writes:

'The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying - or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity - but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.' "

Darkness Is My Only Companion - Kathryn Greene-McCreight, pg 39

"Depression meant that every breath, every thought, every moment of consciousness ached, throbbed, stung."

Darkness Is My Only Companion - Kathryn Greene-McCreight, pg 55

Quotables - Charles Spurgeon

None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves.

- Charles Spurgeon

My Favorite Kid in the World

Quotables - R.C. Sproul

Quotables - Francis J. Grimké

Mark on a Zip Line

Mark in the Hamster Ball

Quotables - Jonathan Edwards

Men that have their spirits heated and enraged and rising in bitter resentment when they are injured act as if they thought some strange thing had happened to them. Whereas they are very foolish in so thinking for it is no strange thing at all but only what was to be expected in a world like this. They therefore do not act wisely that allow their spirits to be ruffled by the injuries they suffer.

As love to God prevails, it tends to set persons above human injuries, in this sense, that the more they love God the more they will place all their happiness in him. They will look to God as their all and seek their happiness in portion in his favor, and thus not in the allotments of his providence alone. The more they love God, the less they set their hearts on their worldly interests, which are all that their enemies can touch.

Quotables - A.W. Pink

Jesus is Our Righteousness - R.C. Sproul