Category: Quotes

Our problem in evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information–it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know.
–Rebecca Pippert

Too many times we don’t share about our relationship with Jesus because we are afraid that we don’t have enough knowledge. We are afraid we will be asked a question that we don’t know the answer to. The problem is that we can never be prepared for every question that could ever be asked. Instead of worrying about what I don’t know, I need to focus on what I do know… and what I know is that my life is different because of my meeting Jesus. My character, attitude, thoughts, speech, and behavior are all different due to how He has transformed me. That is what I need to let people see and hear about. And that is enough to draw people to Jesus. Now… how can I change my conversations with people today so that I can tell someone something about who Jesus is to me?

Being “rich toward God” means looking Godward for heavenly wealth. It means “taking your ease” in Him, finding your security in Him. And it means using your money in a way that enlarges the barn of your joy in heaven, not the barn of your comfort on earth. God gives us money on earth in order that we may invest it for dividends in heaven.
–John Piper

Being a good steward of the money that God has blessed me with on earth means using it for Him. And yet, too often, I find that He rarely enters into my thoughts of how I am using my finances. May I become a good steward for Him and use all that He has blessed me with to bless Him.

Then we may say with Habakkuk in face of economic ruin or any other deprivation:
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength” (Hab 3:17-19). Happy the person who can say these things and mean them!
–J. I. Packer

Father God, help me to say these things and mean them! Help me to be joyful in You as my Savior when everything else around me fails and falls apart.

The only persons in the ancient world who carried a cross were condemned criminals going out to execution; each, like our Lord himself, was made to carry the cross on which he was to be crucified. So, what Christ means is that you must accept for yourself the position of such a person, in the sense that you renounce all future expectations from society and learn to take it as a matter of course if the people around you give you the cold shoulder and view you with contempt and disgust, as an alien sort of being. You may often find yourself treated in this fashion if you are loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ.
–J. I. Packer

Are you willing to renounce all future expectations and gladly endure the contempt of others to gain favor with Him?

It was because Jesus was made to be sin, and bear God’s judgment on sin, that he trembled in the garden, and because he was actually bearing that judgment that he declared himself forsaken of God on the cross.
–J. I. Packer

Perhaps you have wondered about Jesus’ anguish in the garden before going to the cross, and you thought (like I once did) that it was all about the physical pain that He was about to endure. I have heard it preached that way in the past, and have even said it myself from the pulpit. But then we encounter various Christian martyrs who did not seem to flinch at the prospect of enduring pain and/or cruel, torturous deaths for their belief in Jesus. So were they more courageous than Jesus? No, of course not.

So it must have been something else that Jesus was in anguish over… such as the fact that for the first time in all of eternity, His unity with the Father would be severed for a time while He was made to be sin and bear God’s judgment on that sin… my sin.

My sin should have separated me from God. Instead, Jesus chose my punishment. And it was that punishment of being separated from God that caused him to tremble in the garden and declare Himself forsaken of God on the cross.

Thank you Jesus for loving me so much that you would endure that cruel, torturous separation from the Father in my place.