December Quotes

One of these days lightning is going to fill the sky from the rising of the sun to its setting, and there is going to appear in the clouds one like a son of man with his mighty angels in flaming fire. And we will see him clearly. And whether from terror or sheer excitement, we will tremble and we will wonder how, how we ever lived so long with such a domesticated, harmless Christ.These things are written that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world. Really believe. 

-John Piper

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

-C.S. Lewis

When God writes our names in the "Lamb's Book of Life," He doesn't do it with an eraser handy. He does it for eternity. 

-R.C. Sproul

Through the blending blue in beauty will the heavenly host appear, / And the saints shall rise to meet Him, crying, “Jesus Christ is here!”

-W. Lomax Childress

Use every ounce of strength you have been given, both physical and spiritual. Something that is in my mind right now... we are given a once in a life time opportunity - YOUTH! Vitality, strength, opportunity, ability - lets take advantage of it! Live now so that when you are 80 years old you can look back on a youth packed to the hilt with an expense of energy and effort into whatever you got into. Whether it be baling hay till 1 in the morning, going street preaching every week witnessing to people late at night, counseling people at church, moving concrete, digging trenches, building relationships, taking people places at 1:30 in the morning, talking through night hours behind the wheel with the lights shining over the country fields, loving people, being there for them, demonstrating a testimony of godliness - be ALL there!!!! Run yourself ragged! It is SO worth it - and you only have one chance to do it! 

-Spencer O’Neill

Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights & heroic courage, otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. 

-CS Lewis

You shouldn't take your spiritual temperature every day. You need to look for progress over months and years, not by minutes and hours.

-Kevin DeYoung

You may not yet be what one day you shall be; but thank God you are no longer what you once were.

-Sinclair Ferguson

There's an argument for the sovereignty of God: Satan has to give an account to God. 

-Derek W.H. Thomas

Another year is dawning: 

Dear Father, let it be, 

In working or in waiting, 

Another year with Thee; 

Another year of progress,

Another year of praise, 

Another year of proving 

Thy presence all the days.

-Frances R. Havergal

Well, friends and readers, that is all for Facing the Waves! I pray that it's been a good journey. The archives will remain up, but please join me on my book review blog (click HERE) as I continue to share the stories and opinions of other authors' works. Here's to 2018 and what it holds!

In Christ,

Kaleigh

November Quotes

The Bible, as a revelation from God, was not designed to give us all the information we might desire, nor to solve all the questions about which the human soul is perplexed, but to impart enough to be a safe guide to the haven of eternal rest. 

-Albert Barnes

Only he who can say, “The Lord is the strength of my life” can go on to say, “Of whom shall I be afraid?” 

-Alexander Maclaren

If Pastor John Piper has coined the phrase, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,” then I would like to (by way of complement) coin the phrase, “God is most satisfied in himself when Christ is most glorified in us.” 

-Mark Jones

If you kill Him, He dies to redeem. If you bury Him, He rises again to bring resurrection.

-Spurgeon

God loves you. His eyes are upon you every moment (2 Chronicles 16:9). You are never out of His thoughts (Isaiah 49:15). He loves you“with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). And nothing will ever “be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). You did nothing to deserve His love. You don’t do anything to maintain it. You didn’t earn it, so you can never lose it. God has chosen to set His love on you, not because of who you are but because of who He is. He is your Father, and you are His child. 

-James MacDonald

The battle after the battle is real. 

-Nancy Leigh DeMoss

There is a wonderful wideness in God’s mercy. Meditate on the rich truth that God abundantly pardons. Take it personally.

-Joseph M. Stowell

It is enough that the man who refuses to assert himself, seeking no recognition by men, leaving the care of his life to the Father, and occupying himself with the will of the Father, shall find himself, by and by, at home in his Father’s house, with all his Father’s property his.

-George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel

The only hope for the sin-sick soul is the mortal wounds of the substitute Savior. 

-H.B. Charles, Jr.

Some unbelievers don't walk in Christianity because they don't accept their sinnerhood. Some Christians don't walk in victory because they don't accept their sainthood.

-Unknown

September Quotes

God's plan will continue on God's schedule. 

-A. W. Tozer

In your struggle against your sin, the victory will be won or lost in the battlefield of your mind. 

-Mary Kassian

We are not at liberty to take one statement of Holy Scripture out of its context with the whole. When we do we exchange the Word of God for our ignorant babble, we must beware.

-Calvin in "The Betrayal" by Douglas Bond

False religions will always attempt to distort Scripture because they must eliminate God's truth before they can justify their own lies. 

-John MacArthur

Death is but a passage out of a prison and into a palace.

-John Bunyan

The pulpit is mightier than any word, so long as the pulpit is where the Word of God is preached. 

-Al Mohler

Let us today go down to Bethlehem, and in company with wondering shepherds and adoring Magi, let us see Him who was born King of the Jews, for we by faith can claim an interest in Him, and can sing, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Jesus is Jehovah incarnate, our Lord and our God, and yet our brother and friend; let us adore and admire.

-Charles Spurgeon

Keep your heart with all diligence and God will look after the universe.

-A. W. Tozer

I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy into it.

-Ed McCully

It is our fight. It will not end here. With every victory this evil will grow. If your father has his way, we will do nothing. We will hide within our walls, live our lives away from the light and let darkness descend. Are we are not part of this world? Tell me, Mellon, when did we let evil become stronger than us? 

-Tauriel, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (film)

August Quotes

There can be no participation in Christ’s life without a participation in his death, and we cannot enjoy the benefits of his death unless we are partakers of the power of his life. We must be reconciled to God in order to be holy, and we cannot be reconciled without thereby becoming holy.

-Charles Hodge

No matter how hard Satan tries, he cannot dim the glory of Jesus. People may close their eyes or turn their backs, but neither of those actions reduces Jesus' divine stature. 

-Woodrow Kroll

A Sovereign Protector I have, unseen, yet forever at hand. 

-Augustus M. Toplady

To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.

-Elisabeth Elliot

“Loving someone requires maintaining a measure of optimism on that person’s behalf. Hope is an attitude that good will eventually come to those who may now be failing. Failure invades every Christian’s life, and it often causes others to give up on the one who fails. Yet, Christians who love continue to hope for the best. This optimism encourages others to keep moving forward. This hope is based not on the Christian, but on Christ. The hope of each Christian is that Christ will preserve him to glory. When a brother falls, it is Christ who picks him up and makes him stand (Rom. 14:4). Christ is the one who promised to finish the work he began".

-(Pratt, R. L., Jr. (2000). I & II Corinthians (Vol. 7). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)

Yet, just as the soil patiently endures the frigid hand of frost and snow and bitter cold, the soul's
winter is only a curving bend to the fair meadows of spring. Only through mourning can one know the exhilaration of joy. Beauty is the by-product of burnt, ash-dust. God looks at a field of stinky, dead earth and says, "This is my garden." I have learned never to begrudge winter, for in her wake lie all the trees of Eden.

-Unknown 

But did the clouds rain free, and the earth open beneath me, I would not stir; for I know who planted me here, and as long as He wills me to stand, neither men or devils can move me hence.
~William Wallace

Mercy is never free. Mercy is very expensive. Mercy requires paying the cost of justice, and that is the cost of our Savior’s life. But that mercy is beautiful to behold for those whom God has given eyes to see it. Mercy changes lives. And the offer of mercy can also harden. 

~Tony Reinke

Hold your ground! Should a Christian flee? Should a Christian be afraid? You are not going anywhere—Hold fast your position! You are not changing the things that God has set. You heed God’s lead, not the Enemy’s! The Enemy will not define the terms of your life. The Enemy will not dictate where you go, what you say, what you don’t say, or what you do, or don’t do. God set you here. Stand firm. Don’t move from this position. Be still and watch what your God will do for those who trust in His Almighty Name! 

~Eric Ludy

What we offer unto God? Stubborn, sinful, rebellious rejection. But unto us? A Child is born. A Son is given.

 ~James MacDonald

July Quotes

When something does not go your way, remember faithful prayer accomplishes far more than your frustrated protests.

-James McDonald

It is easier to serve God without a vision, easier to work for God without a call because then you are not bothered by what God requires, common sense is your guide, veneered over with Christian sentiment. You will be more prosperous and successful, more leisure hearted, if you never realize the call of God. But if once you receive a commission from Jesus Christ, the memory of what God wants will always come like a goad, you will no longer be able to work for Him on the common-sense basis. 

-Oswald Chambers

What comes into our minds when we think about God, is the most important thing about us.

-A.W.Tozer

Christians are like the several flowers in a garden that have each of them the dew of Heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other.

-John Bunyan 

The world provides no cheerleaders on the pathway to godliness. 

-Kevin DeYoung

A sound theology must be a theology where grace is central to it. 

-R. C. Sproul

Ministry is simply the footprints we leave behind as we run toward Jesus.

-Unknown

The Bible is not only a book of divine revelation; it is also a book of literary grandeur, sublime influence, human interest, amazing accuracy, perfect unity, and everlasting challenge. 

-J. Edwin Orr

Until we discover God’s purpose, there will always be a hole in our soul. And if we let God’s vision die, part of us will die as well.

-Georgia Shaffer

The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you’ll see their flaws. That’s just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don’t last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they’re out of money or under pressure or hungry, for goodness’ sake. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it’s seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.
-Unknown

May Quotes

In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words - than words without a heart.

-John Bunyan

What wings are to a bird, what fruit is to the tree, what the rose is to the thorn, that is praise to a child of God.

-Spurgeon

In true Christianity, there are no short-term commitments and no escape clauses. 

-John Blanchard

In order to receive grace, you must accept Jesus. Not the idea of Jesus, but the actual Jesus; the One who calls you to leave everything behind. The One who says that you must carry your cross, the One who spoke truth in the face of deceit. The Christ who clung unto a world that had let go long ago, Jesus who calls us beloved. If grace is an ocean, you must jump in! 

-T.B. LaBerge

A great white throne: Great, because of the causes that will be decided there ... white, because of its immaculate purity ... a throne, because a King will sit there. 

-F. B. Meyer

Take up the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit for help, lay the promises up in your heart, and fight the good fight — to live by faith in future grace. 

-John Piper

Circumstances don't create character; they reveal character. 

-David Jeremiah

Only men who ken their weakness, find their strength in Christ alone. 

-John Knox

God's plans reach from an eternity past to an eternity to come. Let Him take His own time.

-William S. Plumer

The burden God places on each of us is to become who we are meant to be. We are most fully ourselves when Christ most fully lives in us and through us. The mother shines brightest with her child in her arms, the father when he forgives his wandering son, and the artist when he or she is drawing attention to grace, by showing the pinprick of light overcoming the darkness in the painting, or the story, or the song. The world knows darkness. Christ came into the world to show us light. I have seen it, have been blinded by it, invaded by it. I will tell its story.

-Andrew Peterson

April Quotes

In the stillness of things, when one looks at the stars shining bright in the dark sky, God speaks to us in that silence.

 -Unknown

God has given us the DNA of righteousness. We are saints. Nothing we do will make us more righteous than we already are. Nothing we do will alter this reality. God knows our DNA. He knows that we are "Christ in me."

-John S. Lynch

The saving work of Christ includes deliverance from the death penalty for sin in one’s past life, the power of sin in his present life, and the very presence of sin in the future life.

-Henry Morris

God does not comfort us by showing us the future, but by showing us Himself. 

-Tim Challies

Sometimes when we least expect it, a small cross proves a lovely crown, a seemingly unimportant event becomes a lifelong experience, or a stranger becomes a friend. 

-Louisa May Alcott

“God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). This doesn’t mean we should give only when we’re feeling cheerful. The cheerfulness often comes during and after the act of obedience, not before it. So don’t wait until you feel like giving—it could be a long wait! Just give and watch the joy follow.

-Randy Alcorn

[T]he ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

-C.S. Lewis

Bible commentator R. C. H. Lenski once noted that people with eager but uncertain vows of allegiance to Christianity are like those who view “the soldiers on parade, the fine uniforms, and the glittering arms and [are] eager to join, forgetting the exhausting marches, the bloody battles, the graves, perhaps unmarked.” 

-John MacArthur

Expecting perfection from ourselves or others is not what holiness is about.

-Kevin DeYoung

March Quotes

A real Christian is an odd number, anyway. He feels supreme love for the One whom he has never seen; talks with familiarly every day to

Someone he cannot see; expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another; empties himself in order to be full; admits he is wrong so he

can be declared right; goes down in order to get up; is strongest when he is weakest; richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels the worst. He dies so he can live; forsakes in order to have; gives away so he can keep; sees the invisible; hears the inaudible' and knows that which passeth understanding.

- A.W. Tozer

Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten. 

-G.K. Chesterton

The moment that we take a significant step of obedience, we will be tested.

-Unknown

If we have learned to be silent before the Word, we shall also learn to manage our silence and our speech during the day."

-Bonhoeffer

When Jesus Christ is magnified, Believers are unified.

-Chad Johnson

There is sweet joy in feeling that God knows all and, notwithstanding, loves us still.

-J. Hudson Taylor

Peace is not a gift that passes from Christ the giver to us the receivers. His peace is ours because he is ours, and the peace he is experiencing we are experiencing. Our experience of peace is his peace in us because he is in us. Similarly his strength. Paul says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” (Ephesians 6:10). Being “in the Lord” is the same as the branch being in the vine. The strength of the Lord is not merely a gift from him to us. When we are strong against the devil and sin, our strength is his strength. He is being strong in us. We are being strong "in the strength of his might."

-John Piper

Walking by faith will cause all of us to recognize that as children of God we are just pilgrims and strangers down here on this earth.

-J. Vernon McGee

If we followed you for a thousand years, we would need your grace just as much the next day, the next moment, as we did the first day we believed.

-prayer by Paul Tripp

It is easier to serve God without a vision, easier to work for God without a call because then you are not bothered by what God requires, common sense is your guide, veneered over with Christian sentiment. You will be more prosperous and successful, more leisure hearted, if you never realize the call of God. But if once you receive a commission from Jesus Christ, the memory of what God wants will always come like a goad, you will no longer be able to work for Him on the common-sense basis.

-Oswald Chambers

February Quotes

If God be glorified, what does it matter where we are? What becomes of us is of small consequence compared with bringing glory to His great name.

-Spurgeon

If you belong to Him, He will shatter you in a million pieces and reconstruct you. He will not share you with the world. He will not allow you to get any fun out of the Vanity Fair.

-Paul Washer

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me. 

-C.S. Lewis

The land of the free begins in the homes of the brave.

-Kirk Cameron

We are indestructable until the Lord calls us home.

-Amanda Daniels

On this day [February 14], in the year AD 298, a Christian pastor was brutally martyred. First, he was beaten with clubs. then stoned, and finally he was beheaded. His crime ...- standing for biblical marriage, that intimacy outside of marriage was sinful, and that marriage was designed by God as between one man and one woman. His name was Valentinus, a man who loved Jesus above all else and who refused to deny the faith. Today, as you enjoy your chocolate and trinkets, remember that the one who is now called St Valentine gave his life in defense of biblical marriage, not rampant promiscuity or perversion. He did not succumb to the politically correct of his day. February 14 is a day that is not rose red, but blood red. 

-James McDonald

Just because you can't, doesn't mean I can't, and just because I can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't.

-Steven Furtick

It is a sign of the times that, in today's public mind, precious little is held sacred except the right to profane living, and nothing is more offensive than moral innocence. 

-Andrew Romanowitz

Your sins aren’t enough to keep your child from God and your strengths aren’t enough to get your child to God.

-Ann Voskamp

If you are more distressed over the sin of the people near you than you are of the sin that is inside you, you won't cry out for grace. 

-Paul David Tripp 

November Quotes

You must not only affirm the truth; you must also proclaim it. You must also defend it. 

-Albert Mohler

If you focus on men, you will always be disappointed. Focus on the principles for which they stood.

-Col. John Eidsmoe

It was in a garden that Adam sinned, and it was in a garden that the Second Adam (Jesus) was arrested. After being killed for the sins of His own, he was buried then rose from the grave in a garden on the third day, breaking Adam's curse. Mary thought at first that the risen Savior was a gardener. Christ is now in Heaven preparing a place for His own, a garden with the Tree of Life at the center, the garden that Eden was pointing to all along!

-Unknown

[A]ll great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both met and overcome with answerable courage.

-William Bradford

Shall we not pray for strength to run well knowing that greater trials are likely ahead, but also knowing that the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us, is greater than all our trials and knowing that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ. 

 -Nathan Francis

Let lovingkindness become the standard of true wisdom; justice, the measure of real power; and righteousness, our criterion of riches. 

-John Piper

Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid youstand, Men of the West!' 

-JRR Tolkien (Aragorn)

It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates.

-Amy Carmichael

The Christian life isn't difficult — it is impossible. If we don't know that, we will try to do things ourselves. Faith is not necessary when we think we can do it ourselves. Faith comes along when we realize that we cannot do it on our own." 

-Joseph Garlingen

Struggling with sin isn't a sign of God's absence, but of his presence. 

-Darrin Patrick

The universe shudders in horror that we have this infinitely valuable, infinitely deep, infinitely rich, infinitely wise, infinitely loving God, and instead of pursuing him with steadfast passion and enthralled fury—instead of loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; instead of attributing to him glory and honor and praise and power and wisdom and strength — we just try to take his toys and run. It is still idolatry to want God for his benefits but not for himself. 

-Matt Chandler

When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "The Cost of Discipleship"

These many years of waiting will only be a sentence in the story. This long day will come to an end, and I believe it will end in glory, when we will shine like suns and stride the green hills with those we love and the One who loves.

-Andrew Peterson

Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. 

-Voddie Baucham

It is not your love that sustains the marriage,

but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

What ends up happening to so many of us is that we spend so much time trying to put sin to death that we don’t spend enough time striving to know God deeply, trying to gaze upon the wonder of Jesus Christ and have that transform our affections to the point where our love and hope are steadfastly on Christ. The goal is this: that Christ would become more beautiful and desirable than the allure of sin. 

-Matt Chandler

September Quotes

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. 

-CS Lewis

Christ clothes us with the cloak of His righteousness, covering our nakedness and shame, and says to us, “Neither do I condemn you.

-R.C. Sproul

What makes a warrior is not his ability to escape fear, but to look death in the face absolutely terrified and still move forward. 

-Unknown

We work for a glorious future which we are not destined to see. We are only morning-stars shining in the dark, but the glorious morn will break.

-David Livingstone

If we are not in Christ, we are born losers. If we are in Christ, we are reborn victors.

-R.J. Rushdoony

God wants to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we would see our need for a relationship with him as well as with others. Every painful thing we experience in relationships is meant to remind us of our need for him. And every good thing we experience is meant to be a metaphor of what we can only find in him.

-Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp

No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.

-J.R.R. Tolkien

There are endless treasures of grace waiting for those who will make even the most feeble attempts to pray. The weakest prayers yield grace.

-Paul Washer

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he shall become as he can and should be.

-Johann von Goethe

By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Don’t ignore the Spirit’s attempts to engage you, my friend. The conviction, the stirring, is the call of your Father, drawing you back to Himself, inviting you to put an end to your running, to start what needs to happen for things to get turned back around. 

-Priscilla Shirer

The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you’ll see their flaws. That’s just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don’t last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they’re out of money or under pressure or hungry, for goodness’ sake. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it’s seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship. 

-Unknown

The high noon of God’s glory will be the second coming of Christ. And that is where the sun will stay forever. 

-John Piper

Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.

-movie quote, unknown

If you know why you believe what you believe, then leadership is inevitable. 

 -Dr. Jeff Meyers

August Quotes

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

-Benjamin Franklin 

Arrogance doesn’t come from having convictions; it comes from having the wrong convictions about how to treat people who don’t share them with you. Humility doesn’t come from not having convictions; it comes from having the right convictions about the importance of gentleness and respect.

-Unknown

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.

-A. Rich

We live in a culture that exalts human autonomy above God's sovereignty and sets the individual’s freedom of expression above God's law.

-Paul Washer

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

-Winston Churchill

Ministry is… 

Giving when you feel like keeping; 

Praying for others when you need to be prayed for; 

Feeding other souls when your own soul is hungry; 

Living truth before people even when you can’t see results; 

Hurting with other people even when your own hurt can’t be spoken; 

Keeping your word even when it’s not convenient; Being faithful when your flesh wants to run away.

-Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

Trust is earned, respect is given, loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three.

-Unknown

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

-Elizabeth Stone

Rest in this—it is His business to lead, command, impel, send, call or whatever you want to call it. It is your business to obey, follow, move, respond, or what have you.

-Jim Elliot

It is sweet to know that our tears are understood, even when words fail. Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers, and of weeping as a constant dropping of importunate intercession which will surely wear its way right into the very heart of God's mercy, despite the stony difficulties which obstruct the way. My God, I will "weep" when I cannot plead, for You hear the voice of my weeping! 

-Charles Spurgeon

In the pursuit of joy through suffering, we magnify the all-satisfying worth of the Source of our joy. God himself shines as the brightness at the end of our tunnel of pain. 

-John Piper

Loving one’s enemies leads disciples to the way of the cross and into communion with the crucified one. 

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We should learn to look at the blemishes and faults of others--only through the eyes of love, with sympathy, patience, and compassion. We do not know the secret history of the lives of others around us. We do not know what piercing sorrows have produced the scars we see in people's lives. We do not know the pains and trials which make life hard, to many with whom we are tempted to be impatient. If we knew all the secret burdens and the heart-wounds which many keep hidden beneath their smiling faces--we would be patient and gentle with all people.

 -J. R. Miller

Faith is neither a trust nor a belief in the unknown, but the firm knowledge that God is God, that He is true to His word, and, that what He has promised He will bring to pass.

R.J. Rushdoony

I have learned that breezes are always the precursors to wind. And winds usually push in storms. And we all know Who can calm storms. 

-D. Harrison

July Quotes

Jesus is coming back for HIS church, not yours.

-Unknown

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

We are who we are, not because we are who we are, but we are who we are because we live in Christ.

-Unknown

God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.

-John Piper

God's training is for NOW, not presently. 

His purpose is for THIS MINUTE, not for something in the future. 

We have nothing to do with the afterwards of obedience; 

we get it wrong when we think of the afterwards. 

What men call training and preparation, God calls the end... 

If we realize that obedience is the end, 

then EACH MOMENT IS PRECIOUS. 

-Oswald Chambers

If you remove the snow from the hillside in the late winter, you will find sweet flowers growing there, beneath the cold drifts, unhurt by the storm and by the snowy blankets that have covered them. Just so, should we keep our hearts tender and sensitive beneath life's fiercest winter blasts, and through the longest years of suffering, and even of injustice and wrong treatment. That is true, victorious living.

-J.R. Miller

Those who worry about the loss of time entailed by such small, external acts of helpfulness are usually taking their own work too seriously. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. 

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cheerfully and gratefully I lay myself and all I am or own at the feet of Him who redeemed me with His precious blood, engaging to follow Him, bearing the cross He lays upon me. This is the least I can do, and I do it while my heart lies broken and bleeding at His feet. 

-Elizabeth Prentiss

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.

-John Calvin

Becoming a mentor has got to be something that comes up within you—it’s got to be God’s work. It can’t be our work because we’ll give answers that aren’t God’s answers.

-Patty Webb

In my many years of pastoring, counseling, and traveling, I’ve found an all-too-common and dangerous theme among Christians: no one lays down the law better than the one who thinks they’re keeping it themselves.

-Paul Tripp

Ah, I have kept Him waiting when I ought not, but He has waited even then. Always waiting – so patient with my foolishness, my weakness, my fear. Our fellowship is with God, and fellowship is friendship, and friendship means that partnership which, on His part, is the accommodating of His strength to my weakness. 

-G. Campbell Morgan

If He loved me yesterday, He loves me today. My unmoving mansion of rest is my blessed Lord. Even when prospects are few and hopes are squashed and joy is waning, I have lost nothing of what I have in God. He is "my refuge" to which I continually return. I am a pilgrim in the world, but at home in my God. In the earth I wander, but in God I dwell in a quiet dwelling place.

-Charles Spurgeon

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.

-John Calvin

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins.

-Charles Alexander Eastman

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.

-Leo C. Rosten

A Bigger Picture, Part Two

If you haven't seen it, yet, check out my other book review blog! You'll find it in the headings ("My Book Reviews") at the top of this blog or click HERE. It's my aim to post reviews 2-3 times a month. Leave a comment on any books you've read so far and tell me what you thought about them. :)

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1. What is “Second Temple Judaism” and how does it help us understand the writings of the New Testament? Provide specific examples.
2. In chapter 9, what does Schreiner mean by the phrase “already but not yet”?
3. How does the “already but not yet” concept help Christians better understand the “big picture” of the Bible?

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The Second Temple Judaism is “the time between the temple’s reconstruction (516 BC) and its final destruction (AD 70).” [1] Of the important writings from this time period, the Apocrypha, the pseudepigrapha of the OT, the writings of Josephus, and of Philo document information about the history, culture, and life of the New Testament era. The Dead Sea scrolls, the Targums, and the rabbinic literature also record some evidence, though the primary source of evidence lies in the New Testament itself.[2] Though not regarded as divinely inspired the Apocrypha books are included in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox scriptures. The pseudepigrapha is part of the Apocrypha and it helps us understand the beliefs of different Jewish schools of thought during the time period of the Second Temple Judaism.[3] Some of the books reveal history of the ancient forefathers such as Noah, Moses, Enoch and Ezra. [4] The Dead Sea scrolls contain parts of all the OT books (except Esther) and provide evidence of the nature and beliefs of the Khirbet Qumran, the dwelling of an ancient religious community.[5] Using these documents from the Second Temple Judaism era, we are provided with insight into the beliefs of different Jewish schools of thought and documentation on which to help with the translation of Scripture.[6]

Perhaps John’s Gospel explains the phrase “already but not yet”, as coined by Schreiner. The promise of the Kingdom in the Synoptic Gospels aligns with the truth of eternal in the Gospel of John. Schreiner explains this phrase by referring back to the promises already made by God through the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants. The new covenant was also created, but even by the time John the Baptist came around these promises had not yet been realized. Until Jesus came fulfilling the spiritual aspect of these covenants there was no immediate completion of the promises. John’s Gospel explains that though they already have fulfillment of the some of the promises, there is still more coming. His Gospel “looks ahead to the day of the final resurrection, when every person will be judged for what he or she has done….the future and final fulfillment is in view as well.”[7] The day of salvation is already here, but the final resurrection, judgment, and glorification are yet to come for all believers. We live on this earth as a reminder that we are not home. We struggle with sin and we battle trials as a reminder that there is something more glorious to come. Jesus reigns on His throne, but death sin attempt to rule us still. Until all things have been subjugated to Him, we await the complete fulfillment of those covenants.[8]

Christians today can better understand the bigger picture of the Bible by their understanding of the “already but not yet” phrase. Just as the New Testament’s Christ was the fulfillment of the One who would crush the serpent’s head in the Old Testament, so the fulfillment of the new heavens and new earth will point back to the promises of eternal life, salvation, and the Comforter. We understand the Kingdom on earth today in terms of spiritual salvation which Jesus presented in His Person and through His ministry.[9] The Kingdom begins as a grain of mustard seed or like leaven in dough, but it will one day return with apocalyptic power and destroy the present world, renewing it in perfection and holiness.[10] Though we have the Kingdom of God already, it is not yet completely realized or fulfilled, and so we as believers today continue to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.[11]

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[1] Wayne Grudem et al., Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible (Illinois: Crossway, 2012), 79.

[2] Ibid., 79-80.

[3] J.D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 1191.

[4] Wayne Grudem et al., Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible (Illinois: Crossway, 2012), 80.

[5] J.D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 342.

[6] Ibid., 344.

[7] Wayne Grudem et al., Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible (Illinois: Crossway, 2012), 111.

[8] Ibid., 111-112.

[9] Ibid., 110.

[10] Ibid., 110-111.

[11] Matthew 6:10, ESV.