by A.B. Simpson
Abide in me—John 15:4
Christianity may mean nothing more than a religious system. The Christian life may mean nothing more than an earnest and honest attempt to follow and imitate Christ.
The Christ life is more than these and expresses our actual union with the Lord Jesus Christ. He is actually in us as the life and source of all our experience and work.
This conception of the highest Christian life is at once simpler and more sublime than any other. We do not teach that the purpose of Christ’s redemption is to restore us to Adamic perfection, for if we had it we should lose it tomorrow. Rather, it is to unite us with the second Adam, and to lift us up to a higher plane than our first parents ever knew.
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by Joseph Chambers
An encounter with Jesus Christ where you are totally transformed into a new creature is the greatest moment you will ever experience. Heavens joy will flood your soul and at the same time the burden of sin will disappear. Martin Luther rightly said, “A Born Again Christian can do what they please to do.” When you have been totally “re-born” by the Word and the Spirit, you are a free soul. A “New Born” Christian is not bound to the Law they actually live above the Law. The law was a “school master” to bring us to Christ. It shows us how wretched we are and how desperately we need a Redeemer.
We must remember that regardless of how religious or upright we live, unless we are “Born Again” we are still eternally lost. The multitude of decent people that will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire is the saddest thought I ever have. I watch people, share their burdens, even preach funerals and see their lost condition and weep. Jesus left no room to doubt,
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John 3:3b)
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by A.W. Tozer
We live by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7
True faith is not the intellectual ability to visualize unseen things to the satisfaction of our imperfect minds; it is rather the moral power to trust Christ. To be contented and unafraid when going on a journey with his father the child need not be able to imagine events; he need but know the father. Our earthly lives are one shining web of golden mystery which we experience without understanding, how much more our life in the Spirit. Jesus Christ is our all in all. We need but trust Him and He will take care of the rest. Possibly it is because of my own innate dullness that I have found such deep satisfaction in these words of the prophet:
"I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them" (Isa. 42:16).
God has not failed me in this world; I can trust Him for the world to come.
by A.W. Tozer
by Vance Havner
God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 6:14
We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross bearing the marks of the cross.
Paul was a MAN of the cross. He gloried in it. “I am crucified with Christ.” (Gal. 2:20). With him it was not a theory but an experience. His message was the cross.
“I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
He bore the marks of the cross:
“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Gal. 6:17).
We are hearing a new version of Christianity that avoids all this. It is not foolishness to the world and it is without offense. It involves no crucifixion of self, it presents no bleeding Saviour, it offers medals instead of scars. But if any man or an angel preach a crossless Christ let him be accursed. For such a Christ is without offense and without effect.
by Vance Havner
by Martyn Lloyd Jones
We must emphasize the fact that there is only ‘one Lord’. This was the very essence of apostolic preaching. Peter states it unequivocally and boldly when he and John were arraigned before the authorities.
‘There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12) There is no other! There is no second!
You cannot put anybody by His side. He is absolutely unique. He is no mere man, teacher, or prophet. He is the Son of God! He is the Lord of glory who has taken to Himself human nature! ‘One Lord Jesus Christ’ — and there is no other. Paul puts it thus in a memorable statement:
‘For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth … but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him’ (1 Corinthians 8:5, 6).
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by Vance Havner
We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord. 1 Corinthians 4:5
By diverse paths and through varying experiences God’s men through the ages have arrived at the simple conclusion that what matters is Christ Himself, in doctrine, in experience, in preaching. We assume that everybody knows this, but here is our weakness. We assent to it theoretically, but we take it for granted and what we take for granted we never take seriously. We assume it but we ought to assert it. What we take as a matter of course we should be shouting from the housetops.
My own personal experience, reached through several stages, has arrived at the conviction with which I should have started – that the issue is simply Christ Himself. Familiar? Yes, but do we need anything so much these days as to familiarize ourselves with the familiar?
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by Oswald Chambers
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment . . . and plunged into the sea —John 21:7
Have you ever had a crisis in your life in which you deliberately, earnestly, and recklessly abandoned everything? It is a crisis of the will. You may come to that point many times externally, but it will amount to nothing. The true deep crisis of abandonment, or total surrender, is reached internally, not externally. The giving up of only external things may actually be an indication of your being in total bondage.
Have you deliberately committed your will to Jesus Christ? It is a transaction of the will, not of emotion; any positive emotion that results is simply a superficial blessing arising out of the transaction. If you focus your attention on the emotion, you will never make the transaction. Do not ask God what the transaction is to be, but make the determination to surrender your will regarding whatever you see, whether it is in the shallow or the deep, profound places internally.
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by A.B. Simpson
