Everything in our Christian life and service flows from our relationship with God. If we are not in vital fellowship with Him, everything else will be out of focus.– J. Oswald Sanders in Enjoying Intimacy with God
All man’s ideologies are spiritually bankrupt. They are impoverished in their inability to save. God alone is the Author of saving wisdom. Every preacher must be deeply persuaded of this reality, or he has no right to the pulpit. – Steven Lawson in The Kind of Preaching God Blesses
Without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still.
– Mark Buchanan in The Rest of God
Hope is essential to human life…. God’s master story, of course, is the story of hope…. This hope strengthens us in the hardships and drudgeries of everyday life. Knowing where all things in heaven and earth are headed, we can wait and persevere…. Without it we are left with grumbling, addiction, or despair.
– Edward Welch in Side by Side
This foundational truth of Christ and Him crucified must be emblazoned upon every preacher’s soul.– Steven Lawson in The Kind of Preaching God Blesses
There is no chance of fire in the pews if there is an iceberg in the pulpit; and without personal prayer and communion with God during the preparation stages, the pulpit will be cold.– Alistair Begg in Preaching for God’s Glory
God made us from dust. We’re never too far from our origins. The apostle Paul says we’re only clay pots – dust mixed with water, passed through fire. Hard, yes, but brittle too. Knowing this, God gave us the gift of Sabbath – not just a day, but an orientation, a way of seeing and knowing. Sabbath-keeping is a form of mending. It’s mortar in the joints. Keep Sabbath, or else break too easily, and oversoon. Keep it, otherwise our dustiness consumes us, becomes us, and we end up able to hold exactly nothing.
– Mark Buchanan in The Rest of God
Suffering reminds us that the world and everything in it, including us, are not quite right. Everything will not be right until Jesus returns and his will is done on earth as it is presently done in heaven. So we are people of hope.– Edward Welch in Side by Side
The attitude of heart with which we come– Alistair Begg in Preaching for God’s Glory
Brian J. Mikul 