the sheep and the quotes

We are all constantly teaching and learning, forgiving and being forgive, representing Christ to man when we intercede, and man to Christ when others intercede for us. The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the Body encourages. Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why the worldlings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints. Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.

CS Lewis, ‘The Weight of Glory’

Live as if you thought that Christ might come at any time. Do everything, as if you did it for the last time. Say everything, as if you said it for the last time. Read every chapter in the Bible, as if you did not know whether you would be allowed to read it again. Pray every prayer, as if you felt it might be your last opportunity. Hear every sermon, as if you were hearing once and forever. This is the way to be found ready. This is the way to turn Christ’s second appearing to good account. This is the way to put on the armour of light.

JC Ryle

The Bible gives a full list of large reasons to be thankful. God is thanked for his deliverance (Psalm 35:18), for loving us and being faithful (Psalm 52:9, 107:8), for safe arrival after a long, arduous journey (Acts 28:15), for other believers and for the testimony of their faith (Romans 1:8), for the gift of salvation that enables one not to sin (Romans 6:17), for delivering us from our tendency to sin (Romans 7:25), for the spiritual gift of being able to address God (1 Corinthians 14:18), for resurrection hope (1 Corinthians 15:57), for testimony, deliverance and victory in the midst of persecution (2 Corinthians 2:14), for the support of a colleague in ministry (2 Corinthians 8:16), for other believers (Philippians 1:3, Colossians 1:3, 2 Timothy 1:3, Philemon 4), for those who respond to God’s Word (1 Thessalonians 2:13), for being able to serve others for God (1 Timothy 1:12) and for his attributes (Revelation 4:9). Those are just some of the options for thanksgiving.

Notice that this list includes not one item having to do with things, with possessions. The occasions for gratitude all have to do with relationships or circumstances in relationship to others. Colossians 3:15 says to “be thankful”. That is what the foreigner was [in Luke 17:16]. That is what disciples are to be. Remember thank-yous, especially to our good, gracious and great God - and let the sun shine in.

Darrell Bock, on Luke 17:11-19

Why are we so unhappy in the West, when we have so much?

Maybe it is because success and meaning are being defined in the wrong places by the wrong things. Life’s real blessings are not valued and appreciated, while things that cannot really bless are assigned value and worth they do not really possess. Often our families and friends and, more important, the God of life, are underappreciated, taken advantage of, or ignored - not necessarily to their detriment, but always to ours. 

- Darrell Bock, on Luke 17:11-19

If Jesus gave us the same command - to give everything we have to the poor - most of us would quickly come up with a long list of reasons why we shouldn’t. Not everyone is called to sell all their possessions, we would say. This man may have been told to get rid of everything he had, but his calling is not our calling. We have to provide for our families and take care of our own basic needs, not to mention give our money to support other kinds of kingdom work - not just feeding the poor. 

All of these objections are reasonable enough, but the real issue for most of us is that we always want to place limits on our love. We are ready to give, but only when we have something left over. We are willing to care as long as it isn’t too inconvenient. We are able to love provided that people love us back. Really, we ought to admit that we do not love the way Jesus loved. 

…Jesus is everything that I am not. He alone has ‘love divine, all loves excelling’. This realisation does not crush me; it liberates me, because the love of Jesus is so big that he loves even me. And because he loves me, he has promised to save me, to forgive me and change me.

- Phil Ryken, ‘Loving The Way Jesus Loved’, on Mark 10

“The more the Holy Spirit works, the more Christians will be used in battle, and the more they are used, the more there will be personal cost and tiredness. It is quite the opposite of what we might first think. People often cry out for the work of the Holy Spirit and yet forget that when the Holy Spirit works, there is always tremendous cost to the people of God - weariness and tears and battles.” 

- Francis Schaeffer, The Lord’s Work in The Lord’s Way

In 1940, any political leader might have tried to rally Britain with brave words, although his heart was full of despair. But only a man who had known and faced despair within himself could carry conviction at such a moment. Only a man who knew what it was to discern a gleam of hope in a hopeless situation, whose courage was beyond reason, and whose aggressive spirit burned at it fiercest when he was hemmed in and surrounded by enemies, could have given emotional reality to the word of defiance which rallied and sustained us in the menacing summer of 1940. Churchill was such a man: and it was because, all his life, he had conducted a battle with his own despair that he could convey to others that despair can be overcome. 

- Anthony Storr – Churchill: Four Faces and the Man

Every attempt to squeeze a reason for living out of this world in isolation from its Creator ultimately runs dry, leaving the idolater unfulfilled, frustrated, and bitter. The insufficiency of creation is a billboard for the sufficiency of God.  He alone can meet our deepest needs. 

God’s insistence that he alone be worshipped, so that our exercise of dominion [over the creation] is done in dependence on him, is therefore not an expression of evil egotism but an overture of love. God has created us in such a way that our fulfillment is wrapped up in displaying his glory. When God insists that he alone be our God, he is insisting on our happiness, since nothing compares with God when satisfying our longings. God is glorified by our dependence on him alone, and we are satisfied by trusting in his sovereignty and provision.

- Scott Hafemann, The God of Promise and the Life of Faith

Not in that poor lowly stable

With the oxen standing by

We shall see Him but in heaven

Set at God’s right hand on high

When like stars His children crowned

 All in white shall wait around