"...the mystery of love... no one can figure out who is doing the giving and who the receiving. Real lovers know giving and receiving are hilarious and splendid parados, in which lo the giving becomes receiving and the receiving giving until any efforts to sort it out collapse in merriment or adoration."
- Thomas Howard
“On the most basic levels, I desire fullness, and fleshly lusts seduce me by attaching themselves to this basic desire. They exploit the empty spaces in me, and they promise that fulness will be mine if I give in to their demands. When my soul sits empty and is aching for something to fill it, such deceptive promises are extremely difficult to resist.
Consequently, the key to mortifying fleshly lusts is to eliminate the emptiness within me and replace it with fullness; and I accomplish this by feasting on the gospel. Indeed, it is in the gospel that I experience a God who glorifies Himself by filling me with His fullness. . . . This is the God of the gospel, a God who is satisfied with nothing less than my experience of fullness in Him! . . .
Indeed, as I perpetually feast on Christ and all His blessings found in the gospel, I find that my hunger for sin diminishes and the lies of lust simply lose their appeal. Hence, to the degree that I am full, I am free. Eyes do not rove, nor do fleshly lusts rule, when the heart is fat with the love of Jesus!”
- Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians (2008), 45-46
“My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ’s sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory.”
—Charles Simeon, quoted in John Piper, The Roots of Endurance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 77
No lightning, no thunder
Just heat and sticky arms
comes as a warning
How I long for you
Probably heat and sticky arms
makes more the yearning
The coolness brought in
Lost heat and sticky arms
Still, dust free morning
Do I look forward to
another heat and sticky arms
knowing the rain would come
“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience et cetera doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of his presence.”
- C.S. Lewis, in a letter to Mary Neylan, January 20, 1942
Verse:
John 3:16; Jn 3:16; John 3
Keyword:
Salvation, Jesus, Gospel
With Operators:
AND, OR, NOT, “ ”
