MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU

JOHN CALVIN                              

John Calvin on 2 Corinthians 12:9-- Grace: The term grace, here, does not mean here, as it does elsewhere, the favor of God, but by metonymy, the aid of the Holy Spirit, which comes to us from the unmerited favor of God; and it ought to be sufficient for the pious, inasmuch as it is a sure and invincible support against their ever giving way.

John Calvin on 2 Corinthians 12:10--For when I am weak, that is — “The more deficiency there is in me, so much the more liberally does the Lord, from his strength, supply me with whatever he sees to be needful for me.” For the fortitude of philosophers is nothing else than contumacy, or rather a mad enthusiasm, such as fanatics are accustomed to have. “If a man is desirous to be truly strong, let him not refuse to be at the same time weak Let him,” I say, “be weak in himself that he may be strong in the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:10.) Should any one object, that Paul speaks here, not of a failure of strength, but of poverty, and other afflictions, I answer, that all these things are exercises for discovering to us our own weakness; for if God had not exercised Paul with such trials, he would never have perceived so clearly his weakness. Hence, he has in view not merely poverty, and hardships of every kind, but also those effects that arise from them, as, for example, a feeling of our own weakness, self-distrust, and humility.

YOU ARE NEVER A LOSER WITH CHRIST

J.C. RYLE

We may rest assured that no person shall ever be a real loser by following Christ. The believer may seem to suffer loss for a time, when they first begin the life of a decided Christian. They may be cast down by the afflictions that are brought upon them on account of their religion. But let them be rest assured that they will never find themselves a loser in the long run. Christ can raise up friends for us who shall more than compensate for those we lose. Christ can open hearts and homes to us, far more warm and hospitable than those that are closed against us. Above all, Christ can give us peace of conscience, inward joy, bright hopes, and happy feelings, which shall far outweigh every pleasant earthly thing that we have cast away for His sake. He has pledged His royal word that it shall be so. None ever found that word fail. Let us trust it, and not be afraid.

Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew, Carlisle, PA: {Banner of Truth}

NOTHING PUTS LIFE INTO MEN LIKE A DYING SAVIOUR

BY CHARLES SPURGEON

NOTHING PUTS LIFE INTO MEN LIKE A DYING SAVIOUR

Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon dated November 2, 1884:
The best preaching is, “We preach Christ crucified.”

The best living is, “We are crucified with Christ.”

The best man is a crucified man.

The more we live beholding our Lord’s unutterable griefs, and understanding how he has fully put away our sin, the more holiness shall we produce.

The more we dwell where the cries of Calvary can be heard, where we can view heaven, and earth, and hell, all moved by his wondrous passion—the more noble will our lives become.

Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.

Get close to Christ, and carry the remembrance of him about you from day to day, and you will do right royal deeds.

Come, let us slay sin, for Christ was slain.

Come, let us bury all our pride, for Christ was buried.

Come, let us rise to newness of life, for Christ has risen.

Let us be united with our crucified Lord in his one great object—let us live and die with him, and then every action of our lives will be very beautiful.

ANYONE FOR BIBLE STUDY?--W.F .BELL

"What some people call 'Bible Study' is too often just a group of unprepared people exchanging their ignorance."

Warren Wiersbe

"What matters is what the Bible says, not our interpretations about what the Bible says."

W. F. Bell

"All is not wise that wise men say; nor all good that good men do; the best of men are but men at the best."

Augustus Toplady

"But we desire that the Scripture speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar."  The King James Version Translators, 1611

"The Bible is, strictly speaking, not a book but a library."

Frederic W. Farrar

"The Bible is a window in this prison world, through which we may look into eternity."

Timothy Dwight     

PRAYER POWER--HUDSON TAYLOR

 J. Hudson Taylor  (1832-1905) was a British missionary with a call to China. He spent 51 years and founded  China Inland Mission (now OMF) leaving a great impact which laid a foundation which erected a Chinese church that has lasted through the harsh communist years. Christian historian Ruth Tucker gave this summation:   "No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematised plan of evangelising a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor "

These are his words: "The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity. If we want to see mighty wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God's standing challenge,'Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not'"

NOTHING GOOD HAVE I DONE- B.B. WARFIELD

Princeton theologian  Benjamin B. Warfield  (1851-1921)  puts it aptly:

"There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be trust as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest."

GRACE FROM FIRST TO LAST

CHARLES SPURGEON 
(Another fine meditation from Mr. Spurgeon)

Many nowadays appear to leap into peace without any convictions of sin — they do not seem to have known what the guilt of sin means; but they scramble into peace before the burden of sin has been felt. It is not for me to judge, but I must confess I have my fears of those who have never felt the terrors of the Lord, and I look upon conviction of sin as a good groundwork for a well-instructed Christian.

I observe as a rule that when a man has been put in the prison of the law, and made to wear the heavy chains of conviction, and at last obtains his liberty through the precious blood, he is pretty sure to cry up the grace of God, and magnify divine mercy. He feels that in his case salvation must be of grace from first to last, and he naturally favors that system of theology which magnifies most the grace of God. Those who have not felt this, whose conversion has been of the more easy kind, produced rather by excitement than by depth of thought, seem to me to choose a flimsy divinity, in which man is more prominent, and God is less regarded.

I am sure of this one thing, that I personally desire to ascribe conversion in my own case entirely to the grace of God, and to give God the glory of it; and I dread that conversion which could in any degree deprive God of being in his everlasting decrees the cause of it, by his effectual Spirit the direct agent of it, by his continued working through the Holy Ghost the perfecter of it. Give God the praise, my brethren. You must do so, if you have thoroughly experienced what God’s anger means, and what the turning away of it means.

From a sermon entitled "A New Song For New Hearts," delivered May 1, 1870.