What defines a compelling life? Someone who is available to God and regularly experiences God’s fellowship, presence, and empowerment. There are no substitutes, no shortcuts. We are not compelling; on the contrary, we are sinful, often poor imitations of our Lord. But when God lives through us, shines through us, and overcomes our worst inclinations with his merciful transformation – that’s compelling. People become interested not so much in us but in what’s so different about us. The non-Christian notices the changes as we become more and more like Christ – if indeed we are experiencing more and more of Christ.
– Gary Thomas in Holy Available
Category: PASSION Quotes
A Pastor’s Longing
One of the great longings of my life is that we at Bethlehem [Baptist Church] would be the sending base of ever-increasing numbers of missionaries to the unreached peoples and that we would send them with ever-increasing effectiveness and ever-increasing faithfulness and ever-increasing care for them and their families. When I think about not wasting my life, this is what I think about as often as anything: study and pray and write and speak and lead in a way that results in more and more visionary young people and restless mid-career people and wise, mature retired people who pull up their stakes, pack their tents, and go with Jesus and the gospel to unreached peoples of the world, no matter where they are – far or near.
– John Piper in A Holy Ambition
May we have the same passion for missions!
Missions and Worship
Missions is about the worship of Jesus. The goal of missions is the global worship of Jesus by his redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The outcome of missions is all peoples delighting to praise Jesus. And the motivation for missions is the enjoyment that his people have in him. Missions aims at, brings about, and is fueled by the worship of Jesus.
– David Mathis in A Holy Ambition
Pride and Honor
How often do we expect to be treated in a certain way
because of our position, our age, or our knowledge?
How we respond when we are not given the honor that we expect
is a good indication of how much pride we have in our hearts.
– Wayne A. Mack (with Joshua Mack) in Humility
Pride and Worry
I have to remember that whenever I feel buried under care,
the real issue is pride and my self-sufficiency.
I must deliberately and specifically cast my cares upon Him
and thereby humble myself.
Don’t be mistaken. God hasn’t gone anywhere.
He’s just as sovereign, just as good, just as faithful.…
The issue isn’t God. It’s my pride that resists trusting in Him through dependence upon Him.
– C. J. Mahaney in Humility
Pride and Grumbling
Those who grumble and complain about the circumstances of their lives are manifesting a spirit of pride. A person who complains about his circumstances does so because he thinks he deserves better.
A humble person, on the other hand, willingly accepts whatever God ordains. He says with Paul, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11).
– Wayne A. Mack (with Joshua Mack) in Humility
Definitions of Pride
Pride is when sinful human beings
aspire to the status and position of God and
refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon him.
– C. J. Mahaney in Humility
Pride consists in attributing to ourselves
and demanding for ourselves the honor,
privileges, prerogatives, rights, and power
that are due to God alone.
– Wayne A. Mack (with Joshua Mack) in Humility
All of God
God is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. Nothing exists without his creating it. Nothing stays in being without his sustaining word. Everything has its reason for existing from him. Therefore nothing can be understood apart from him, and all understandings of all things that leave him out are superficial understandings, since they leave out the most important reality in the universe. We can scarcely begin to feel today how God-ignoring we have become, because it is the very air we breathe.
– John Piper
in A God Entranced Vision of All Things
Revival
Revival is God touching minds and hearts in an arresting, devastating, exalting way, to draw them to himself through working from the inside out rather than from the outside in. It is God accelerating, intensifying, and extending the work of grace that goes on in every Christian’s life…. It is the near presence of God giving new power to the gospel of sin and grace. It is the Holy Spirit sensitizing souls to divine realities and so generating deep-level responses to God in the form of faith and repentance, praise and prayer, love and joy, works of benevolence and service and initiatives of outreach and sharing.
– J. I. Packer
in A God Entranced Vision of All Things
Family Quotes To Ponder
The joy of marriage: To be loved well and known deeply by one
is far more fulfilling than being adored by many and truly known by none.
– Gary Thomas
How soon marriage counseling sessions would end
if husbands and wives were competing in thoughtful self-denial.
— Walter Chantry
Some say, “I can’t love my spouse because he/she is so different than me.”
Then how will you ever love God? Is He just like you?
– Gary Thomas
Begin early to teach, for children begin early to sin.
— C.H. Spurgeon
