Self-Confidence & Preaching

…..from one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century, James Henley Thornwell:

“It is a great matter to understand what it is to be a preacher, and how preaching should be done. Effective sermons are the offspring of study, of discipline, of prayer, and especially of the unction of the Holy Ghost… My own performances in this way fill me with disgust. I have never made, much less preached, a sermon in my life, and I begin to despair of ever being able to do so.”

Distrust in oneself must mark the preacher. The most-used preachers in the church have always been those who say, ‘No-one knows how to preach.’ A self-confident preacher ought to be a contradiction in terms.  

Mercy Mixed With Affliction

God intermixeth mercy with affliction: he steeps his sword of justice in the oil of mercy; there was no night so dark, but Israel had a pillar of fire in it; there is no condition so dismal, but we may see a pillar of fire to give light. If the body be in pain, conscience is in peace, –there is mercy: affliction is for the prevention of sin, –there is mercy. In the ark there was a rod and a pot of manna, the emblem of a Christian’s condition, mercy interlined with judgment.

Thomas Watson

Psalm 119:1

Psalm 119:1 NASB

“How blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.”

*How blessed or highly favored and truly happy are those…

Favor is from on high. Being connected to the Almighty in sweet fellowship with the Lord makes one blessed and truly happy. These blessed ones are those whose way is blameless. Above reproach.

Meaning: not sinless but by His grace they sin-less. These are those who keep close accounts with their master and who do not let outstanding debts pile up unaccounted for. Their way is blameless. They take full responsibility for their sins and deal with them before their Lord regularly.

Their way is His way in spite of their weaknesses. These are those rare creatures who walk-live by-and are governed by the law of the Lord. They’re no longer under law but by His empowering grace they are enabled to walk in the law of the Lord and because of Jesus they fulfill it.

By: Steve E. Chavez

Amazing Grace

“It is grace at the beginning, grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lay on our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us at the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, it must continue with grace, it ends with grace.”

–By D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

To Die Is Gain!

To Die Is Gain!.

Many persons profess to receive much comfort from the hope that they shall not die. Certainly there will be some who will be “alive and remain” at the coming of the Lord, but is there so very much of advantage in such an escape from death as to make it the object of Christian desire? A wise man might prefer of the two to die, for those who shall not die, but who “shall be caught up together with the Lord in the air,” will be losers rather than gainers. They will lose that actual fellowship with Christ in the tomb which dying saints will have, and we are expressly told they shall have no preference beyond those who are asleep. Let us be of Paul’s mind when he said that “To die is gain,” and think of “departing to be with Christ, which is far better.” This Psalm 23:1-6 is not worn out, and it is as sweet in a believer’s ear now as it was in David’s time, let novelty-hunters say what they will.”

 

 

No Universal Peace Until Christ Appears

Let us not be carried away by the common idea, that the world will be converted before the Lord Jesus returns, and the earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord. It will not be so. There is nothing in Scripture to justify such expectations. Let us cease to expect a reign of peace. Let us rather look for wars. Let us cease to expect all men to be made holy by any existing instrumentality–schools, missions, preaching, or anything of the kind. Let us rather look for the rise of Antichrist Himself. Let us understand that we live in a day of election, and not of universal conversion. There will be no universal peace until the Prince of Peace appears. There will be no universal holiness until Satan is bound. It may cost us much to hold such opinions as these. But there is not a church or congregation on earth, whose state does not show that these opinions are true, and that while “many are called, few are chosen.” It may bring on us the unkind remarks and the unfavorable judgment of many. But the end will prove who is right and who is wrong. For that end let us wait patiently. Let us labor, and teach, and work, and pray. But let it not surprise us if we find our Lord’s word strictly true – “Narrow is the way which leads unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matt. 7:14)

~ J.C. Ryle

Hello world!

“Whosoever drinketh of water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” It is clear from this that true religion must come to us as a gift. The water that I shall give him, says Christ. There is no suggestion as to digging deep with much learning into the bowels of mysterious truth to find the water for ourselves; this priceless draught is freely handed out to us by our Redeemer, without our bringing either bucket or line. There is no hint in the text that we are to purchase the lifegiving water; it is presented to us without money and without price. There is no allusion to a certain measure of fitness to qualify us for the draught, it is purely a gift to be received by us here and now.

Our Lord Jesus told the woman that had she known the gift of God she would have asked and he would have given. Sinner as she was, she had only to ask and have. There is no other way of obtaining eternal life but as the free gift of sovereign grace. The divine life is not in us by nature, it cannot be produced in us by culture, nor infused into us by ceremonies, nor propagated in us by natural descent, it must come as a boon of infinite charity from heaven, unpurchased, undeserved. Wisdom cannot impart it, power cannot fashion it, money cannot buy it, merit cannot procure it, grace alone can give it.