Category: Quotes

A faith that hasn’t been tested can’t be trusted.
–Adrian Rogers

This is my shortest quote to date. But Adrian Rogers packs a lot into that one short sentence.

It is easy for someone to tell me that they’ll stick beside me through thick and thin. But it is another thing to actually do it.

It is easy for two people to say the words “I do” and to say that I’m with you “for better or for worse; for richer or for poorer; in sickness and in health; as long as we both shall live.” But it is another thing to meet a couple like we had visit the church last night who were celebrating their 77th wedding anniversary! 77 years of commitment – knowing that their vows of commitment had been tested numerous times throughout seven and a half decades!

And in regard to our Christian commitment, it is easy to say “Jesus, I will follow you.” But until our faith is tested, it cannot be trusted to weather the storms of life that will come our way. Many told Jesus that they would follow. And many fell away. Even Peter had a momentary lapse. But when Peter was restored by our gracious, loving, compassionate God who forgives over and over and over again, Peter’s faith became strong and he died for his faith in Jesus.

I don’t know how life may be testing your faith today, but know this… God is there to walk with you through the midst of the struggles. And He wants your faith to become stronger than ever. Hold on to Jesus. If you will do so, then as you come through the pain and suffering you are having to endure, your faith will not only have been tested… it will become trustworthy.

Man needs salvation not because he is imprisoned in a body but because he willfully chooses his own way rather than God’s way. Man’s evil is not in his body; it is in his affections. He loves the wrong things. This affliction is so deep, so basic to man’s life on earth, that only a special Savior can free him from himself. That is why Christianity insists that Ghandhi and all who agree with him are wrong:
     Man does not need a teacher;
        He needs a Savior.
–Bruce Shelley

We need more than a teacher, because our insides are messed up.
From within us we love the wrong things.
We value the wrong things.
We desire the wrong things.

Our affections are for things that are not God-honoring – things that boost our pride, feed our selfishness, drive us to be greedy, stoke our envy and jealousy, etc.

Therefore, we need someone to transform us. To take what is inside and change it so that our desires and affections change.

For that, we need more than a teacher.
We need Jesus… the transforming Savior.

Are you allowing Him to change your affections?

The Bible does not take us as far as we might like to go into the mysteries it contains. Rather it says, “The secret things belong to…God.” The heart of the Bible and the heart of Christianity is not an explanation of where evil came from, but a demonstration of how God enters into it and turns it for the very opposite — everlasting righteousness and joy.
–John Piper

God doesn’t give us all the answers we want. But he does give us all of the answers we need.
It is not extremely important for us to know the full explanation of where evil came from.
But it is important for us to know what we are to do about evil – allow God to enter into the midst of our sin and evil and pain and suffering and turn all of it into everlasting righteousness and joy.

No matter what you are struggling through the midst of right now, know that God is there with you and can turn it in such a way that it will bring glory to Him. Trust Him in the midst of it to take your hand and walk you through it such that you may never get an answer to “Why” but you will understand the answer to “To What End?” and “For What Purpose?” as He shows you how He can use your experience to bring more glory to His Great Name.

A Christian, like Christ his head, is free from all works, yet he ought to empty himself of his liberty, take on him the form of a servant, be made in the likeness of men, be found in fashion as a man, serve, help, and in every way act towards his neighbor as he sees that God through Christ has acted and is acting towards him. All this he should do freely, and with regard to nothing but the good pleasure of God.
–Martin Luther

Martin Luther tells us that as Christians we are to be like Jesus Christ. Because of grace we are free from having to do works to earn salvation. But after receiving salvation that is by grace alone, we are called to empty ourselves of our liberty and do good works toward others. That is what Jesus did for us, and we are to be a servant to Him and to others, following the example of our Great King and seeking to please Him by our lives. This is taken directly from Philippians 2, where we find Paul telling us to be…

…of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
     Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
     For this reason, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

May we give up our liberty and serve others with humility to please our Great God and King, the One who served us in love first.

Those of us who follow Jesus possess a kind of dual citizenship. We live in an external kingdom of family and cities and nationhood, while at the same time belonging to the kingdom of God. In his command, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” Jesus underscored the fundamental tension that can result. For the early Christians, loyalty to God’s kingdom sometimes meant a fatal clash with Caesar’s visible kingdom. Historian Will Durant, in The Story of Civilization, concludes:
      “There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the Word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”
–Philip Yancey

This is important for us to consider and to remember as we worry about the state of our own nation. We are to bear our own trials with fierce tenacity as we quietly multiply while fighting the chaos of our own nation with the Word of God. If we will do so faithfully, we will find that Christ can be triumphant in our nation again, just as He was in Rome.