Worship is more than a Sunday morning thing.
By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to join a local church. My being in Christ means being in Christ with those other who are in Christ. This is my identity. This is our identity…If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as disembodied Christians.
-Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church (Wheaton, Ill, Crossway Books, 2008), 41.
True worship is to be so personally and hopelessly in love with God, that the idea of a transfer of affection never even remotely exists.
-A.W. Tozer
“Being amazed by God’s grace is a sign of spiritual vitality. It is a litmus test of how firm and real is our grasp of the Christian gospel and how close is our walk with Jesus Christ. The growing Christian finds that the grace of God astonishes and amazes.”
- Sinclair B. Ferguson, By Grace Alone (Orlando, Fl.; Reformation Trust Publishing, 2010), xiv.
So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. (Hebrews 4:9)
“Come then, let us labor to enter into this rest. Let us quit the weary toil of sin and self. Let us cease from all confidence, even in those works of which it might be said, ‘they are very good’. Have we any such? Still, let us cease from our own works, as God did from his.
Now let us find solace in the finished work of our Lord Jesus. Everything is fully done: justice demands no more. Great peace is our portion in Christ Jesus.”
- Charles Spurgeon, Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith
“A Godly Leader finds strength by realizing his weakness, finds authority by being under authority, finds direction by laying down his own plans, finds vision by seeing the needs of others, finds credibility by being an example, finds loyalty by expressing compassion, finds honor by being faithful, finds greatness by being a servant.”
- Roy Lessin
(Thanks, Tyler)
“Our sin must be extremely horrible. Nothing reveals the gravity of sin like the cross. . . . It is impossible for us to face Christ’s cross with integrity and not to feel ashamed of ourselves. . . . For if there was no way by which the righteous God could righteously forgive our unrighteousness, except that he should bear it himself in Christ, it must be serious indeed.”
John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.; InterVarsity Press, 1986), 83.
How heart-cheering to the believer is the delight which God has in his saints! We cannot see any reason in ourselves why the Lord should take pleasure in us; we cannot take delight in ourselves, for we often have to groan, being burdened; conscious of our sinfulness, and deploring our unfaithfulness; and we fear that God’s people cannot take much delight in us, for they must perceive so much of our imperfections and our follies, that they may rather lament our infirmities than admire our graces. But we love to dwell upon this transcendent truth, this glorious mystery: that as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so does the Lord rejoice over us.
- Charles Spurgeon, Morning & Evening, September 21
