“When you are with God, that is what you are; you are no more and no less. Who you are with God defines all the rest.”
— Jack Miller
Living in Christ's Reality (John 7:37-39)
“Thou will supply my every need, on to the end whate’er befall. Through life, in death, eternally, Thou art my all.”
—Third verse of “Thou Art My Life” (or “Jesus My Savior”) by Charlotte Elliot, who became an invalid around age 30, and remained so the rest of her life. About her physical condition, Elliott wrote: “My Heavenly Father knows, and He alone, what it is, day afer day, and hour afer hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness and languor and exhaustion, to resolve, as He enables me to do, not to yield to the slothfulness, the depression, the irritability, such as a body causes me to long to indulge, but to rise every morning determined on taking this for my motto, If any man will come afer me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”
Where is our Power? (Psalm 46)
“Be careful what you put your hope in. Every human being functions by hope. You will attach your identity, your meaning and purpose, your inner security to something. It never works to attach your hope to something horizontal. Lasting hope is only ever found vertically. Be careful what you’re afraid of. Fear never produces anything good in your life. I think fear of the march of cultural things that we think are wrong, that threaten human identity, massive changes in sexuality, in gender, in morality – that fear can make you run some place and associate with things that you think are speaking your language that may lead to complete compromise on what you actually believe and where you actually find hope.”
—Paul David Tripp
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The Necessity of the Holy Spirit (Acts 18:24-19:20)
“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe“
—Ephesians 1:15-19a
Divine Perspective (Acts 18:1-23)
“Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring you offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
—Isaiah 43:5-7
Evangelism in Athens (Acts 17:16-34)
“It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.”
—Billy Graham
Upside Down or Right Side Up? (Acts 17:1-15)
“They said the Apostles turned the world upside down. They meant by that, that they were disturbers of the peace. But they said a great true thing; for Christ’s gospel does turn the world upside down. It was the wrong way upwards before, and now that the gospel is preached, and when it shall prevail, it will just set the world right by turning it upside down.”
—Charles Spurgeon
King Jesus against the Roman Empire (Acts 16:16-40)
“Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night; thine eye diffused a quickening ray; I woke the dungeon flames with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.”
—Charles Wesley, And Can It Be
Christ Acting through the Church (Acts 15:36-16:15)
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
— The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church in Ephesus.
The Church in Expansion (Acts 15:1-35)
“God-given prayer and praise have as their essence a waiting on God, a willingness to be wrought upon by the hammer and the fire of the Almighty, until the chains of self-centered desires fall away from the personality, and the love of Christ become the deepest hunger of the inner life.”
—Jack Miller, Heart of A Servant Leader