Law: expect nothing from ourselves

March 14, 2009

Meditation:
    Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless.
    With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies.
    -- Psalm 108:12,13 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Each of these foregoing states has its time, its variety of workings, its trials, temptations, and purifications, which can only be known by experience in the passage through them. The one only and infallible way to go safely through all the difficulties, trials, temptations, dryness, or opposition, of our own evil tempers, is this: It is to expect nothing from ourselves, to trust to nothing in ourselves, but in every thing expect, and depend upon God for relief. Keep fast hold of this thread, and then let your way be what it will, darkness, temptation, or the rebellion of nature, you will be led through all, to an union with God: for nothing hurts us in any state. but an expectation of something in it, and from it, which we should only expect from God. (Continued tomorrow)
    ... William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer [1750], 2.3-41 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    On my own, I can achieve nothing good, Lord.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study

MacDonald: the weakness of words

March 13, 2009

Meditation:
    He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
    -- 2 Corinthians 3:6 (NIV)

Quotation:
    God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human, and therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple. Seeing that it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “The Knowing of the Son,” Unspoken Sermons, Third Series [1889] (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me to be obedient to the Spirit.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study

Fuller: the expositor's prayer

March 12, 2009

Meditation:
    Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.
    -- 1 Corinthians 3:1,2a (NIV)

Quotation:
    Grant that I may never rack a Scripture simile beyond the true intent thereof, lest, instead of sucking milk, I squeeze blood out of it.
    ... Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), Good thoughts in bad times, "Scripture Observations," I. (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word is food for me.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study

Theologia Germanica: life of Christ

March 11, 2009

Meditation:
    In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
    -- Romans 6:11 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Since the life of Christ is every way most bitter to nature and the Self and the Me (for in the true life of Christ, the Self and the Me and nature must be forsaken and lost and die altogether), therefore in each of us, nature hath a deep horror of it.
    ... Theologia Germanica [1518], ch. XX (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    You are life, Lord.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study

Lewis: both sides

March 10, 2009

Meditation:
    You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
    -- Isaiah 64:5,6 (NIV)

Quotation:
    If... you are ever tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane—if, in other words, you think God might be content with us on that ground—ask yourself whether you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of past ages because they excelled in courage or chastity. You will see at once that this is an impossibility. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling of how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Problem of Pain, Macmillan company, 1944, p.52 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Without You, Lord, I know nothing but sin.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study

Tillotson: resolutions

March 9, 2009

Meditation:
    But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
    -- 2 Timothy 4:5 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Resolution is no strange and extraordinary thing; it is one of the most common acts that belong to us as we are men. But we do not ordinarily apply it to the best purposes. It is not so ordinary for men to resolve to be good as to resolve to be rich and great, not so common for men to resolve against sin as to resolve against poverty and suffering. It is not so usual for men to resolve to keep a good conscience as to keep a good place.
    ... John Tillotson (1630-1694), The Works of Dr. John Tillotson, London: J. F. Dove, for R. Priestley, 1820, vol. 7, p. 422 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, help me keep to my promises.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study

Studdert Kennedy: workers together with God

March 8, 2009
    Commemoration of Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, Priest, Poet, 1929

Meditation:
    God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
    -- Genesis 1:28 (NIV)

Quotation:
    He that hath seen Christ has seen the Father, and Christ not only died, but conquered death and rose again. God the Father is suffering, striving, crucified, but unconquerable. We see His triumph now in Nature’s glory, and we hear Him calling to us to join Him in the task of conquering the evils which arise from the necessities of creation. He calls us to combat floods and famine and pestilence and disease. He hates them, and wills with us to overcome them, and they shall be overcome. The Doctor, the Pioneer, the Scientist, are workers with God like the Priest. All good work is God’s work, and all good workers do God’s will. They are laboring to make a world.
    ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), The Hardest Part, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919, pp. 28-29.

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are visible in Your creation.

    See the Christian Quotation of the Day and the Quotations Bible Study