Your Custom Text Here
“[Jesus] is saying that our attitude to the law of God is an index of our attitude to God himself. If we treat the law lightly and encourage others to do so, we show that we are strangers to the promise of the new covenant in Christ. But if we love and keep even the least of the Lord’s commandments, and we encourage others to do so as well, that is a sure mark that we love Christ and belong to his kingdom.”
— Sinclair Ferguson
“The church does not become good because we have some capable members, some powerful members, some influential members, some rich members, or some accomplished members. No. What should a church glorify in? It should glorify in the suffering of Christ, the body that suffers for the sake of Christ, the life of the martyrs. What a church glorifies in, who it glorifies in, what kind life it glorifies in, will demonstrate whether it is a faithful church that is filled with longing for the end times.”
— Wang Yi, Pastor, Early Rain Covenant Church, Chengdu, China (arrested and in state custody since December, 2018)
“I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:
God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
He’s all I’ve got left.”
—Eugene Peterson, The Message, Lamentation 3:19-24
“For many, Christianity is just a beautiful dream. It is a world in which every day reality goes a bit blurred. It is nostalgic, cozy, and comforting. But real Christianity isn’t like that at all. Take Christmas, for instance: a season of nostalgia, of carols and candles and firelight and happy children. But that misses the point completely. Christmas is not a reminder that the world is really quite a nice old place. It reminds us that the world is a shockingly bad old place, where wickedness flourishes unchecked, where children are murdered, where civilized countries make a lot of money by selling weapons to uncivilized ones so they can blow each other apart. Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don’t light a candle in a room that’s already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that is so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…Christmas, then, is not a dream, a moment of escapism. Christmas is the reality, which shows up the rest of ‘reality’. And for Christmas, here, read Christianity.”
—NT Wright, For All God’s Worth