Loathe sin and leave sin.

The Strait Way to Heaven

Twenty precious directions for your souls—Part I

1. First, Loathe sin—and leave sin.

"He who covers his sins shall not prosper—but whoever confesses and forsakes them, shall have mercy." Proverbs 28:13.

There must be a falling out with our sins—before there be a falling off from our sins. There must be a loathing of sin in our affections. Oh, is it not a thousand times better to part with sin—though ever so sweet—than to part with God, and Christ, and heaven? One of them, you must part with! One sin will damn a soul out of Christ—but no sin can damn a soul in Christ! Sin is the evil of evils! Sin is worse than the devil—for it was sin which made the devil to be a devil. Oh! the love of sin, and the lack of grace—will ruin and destroy our souls forever. It is better not to be—than to be an unrepentant sinner! Oh, therefore kill sin—that sin may not kill you. Mourn for sin—and flee from sin. Do not commit new sins—but repent for old sins!

"Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices!" Ezekiel 36:31. Oh, poor soul—have you not served the flesh and the devil long enough? Yes! Have you not had enough of sin? Is sin so good to you—or is it so profitable for you? Oh, what a place will you be shortly in—of joy or torment! Oh, what a sight will you shortly see—in heaven or hell! Oh, what thoughts will shortly fill your hearts—with unspeakable delight or horror! What work will you be employed in: to praise the Lord with saints and angels, or to cry out in unquenchable fire with devils! Oh, therefore, die unto sin, confess it, mourn for it, and be ashamed of it; hate and loathe it, and flee from it as from a deadly serpent; and though your sins are more than you can number—yet they are not more than God can pardon! "If we confess our sins—he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9

Love and Obedience

The spiritual state of the soul, and the vigour and promptness of its obedience, will correspond with the state and tone of the believer's affections toward God. If decay, coldness, declension, exist there, it is felt and traced through the entire obedience of the new man.

(...)

Love, too, is the great influential principle of the Gospel. The religion of Jesus is pre-eminently a religion of motive: it excludes every compulsory principle; it arrays before the mind certain great and powerful motives with which it enlists the understanding, the will, and the affections, in the active service of Christ. Now the law of Christianity is not the law of coercion, but of love. This is the grand lever, the great influential motive, - "the love of Christ constrains us." This was the apostle's declaration, and his governing motive; and the constraining love of Christ is to be the governing motive, the influential principle of every believer. Apart from the constraining influence of Christ's love in the heart, there cannot possibly be a willing, prompt, and holy obedience to his commandments. A conviction of duty and the influence of fear may sometimes urge forward the soul, but love alone can prompt to a loving and holy obedience; and all obedience that springs from an inferior motive is not the obedience that the gospel of Jesus inculcates. The relation in which the believer stands to God, under the new covenant dispensation, is not that of a slave to his master, but of a child to its father. "And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6)." "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God (Rom 8:16)." "Wherefore you are no more a servant (a slave), but a son (Gal 4:7)." With this new and spiritual relation, we look for a new and spiritual motive, and we find it in that single but comprehensive word - LOVE. And thus our Lord declared it: "If you love me, keep my commandments (Jn 14:15)." "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and he who loves me not, keeps not my sayings (Jn 14:23,24)." It is then only where this love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, that we may expect to find the fruit of obedience. Swayed by this Divine principle, the believer labors not for life, but from life: not for acceptance, but from acceptance. A holy, self-denying, cross-bearing life, is not the drudgery of a slave, but the filial, loving obedience of a child: it springs from love to the person, and gratitude for the work of Jesus; and is the blessed effect of the spirit of adoption in the heart.

An easier way to heaven...

(...)
Men like also to feast on their fleshly liberty, another of their natural appetites, and Satan knows just how to nurture this desire. Man is a son of Belial, without yoke; and if he must wear one, the one which has the softest lining and pinches the flesh least will please him best. Therefore, when sincere teachers of the Word press sincere obedience to it, Satan's overseers come and say, 'What a hard taskmaster you have! They harness you to continual duty, Come
we will show you an easier way to heaven. ' He who sells cheapest will have the most customers. But in the end, truth with self-denial is a better bargain than error with all its flesh- pleasing.

'The Christian in Complete Armour' 

p.92

William Gurnall

Sovereignty

Photo credit: JWB

But let it be said very emphatically that the heart can only rest upon and enjoy the blessed truth of the absolute sovereignty of God as faith is exercised. 

Faith is ever occupied with God. That is the character of it, that is what differentiates it from intellectual theology. Faith endures as 'seeing Him who is invisible' (Heb 11:27); endures the disappointments, the hardships, and the heart-aches of life, by recognising that all comes from the hand of Him who is too wise to err and too loving to be unkind. But so long as we are occupied with any other object than God himself, there will be neither rest for the heart nor peace for the mind. 

The sovereignty of God

A.W. Pink

Be sober

(...)

'Things seen  and temporal', the pleasures, the riches, the honours of this world, are apt to intoxicate the mind. Men under their supreme influence are regulated more by imagination and appetite than by conscience and reason. What is present and sensible,  occupies the whole mind. What is unseen and future, is overlooked and forgotten, and treated as if it had no existence. Time is everything, eternity is nothing. 

This is mental intoxication; and sobriety, in opposition to this, is the sound estimate which enlightened conscience and reason form of the comparative value of things seen and unseen, things temporal and eternal, with a habitual state of feeling and action corresponding to that estimate. 

I will not let You go, except you bless me.

"I will not let You go, except you bless me." Genesis 32:26

It is the knowledge of his need that gives true eloquence to the petition of the beggar; a sense of destitution, of absolute poverty, of actual starvation, imparts energy to his plea, and perseverance in its attainment; his language is, "I must have bread, or I die." This is just what we want the child of God to feel: what is he but a pensioner on God's daily bounty? what resources has he within himself?- none whatever; and what is he without God?- poor indeed. 
Now, in proportion as he becomes acquainted with his real case, his utter destitution, he will besiege the throne of grace, and take no denial. He must know his needs, he must know what grace he is deficient in, what besetting sin clings to him, what infirmities encompass him, what portion of the Spirit's work is declining in his soul, where he is the weakest and the most exposed to the attacks of the enemy, and what he yet lacks to perfect him in all the will of God; let him examine himself honestly, and know his real condition. This will endear the throne of grace, will stir up the slumbering spirit of prayer, will supply him with errands to God, and give argument, energy, and perseverance to his suit. It was his deep and pressing sense of need that imparted such boldness and power to the wrestlings of Jacob. "I will not let You go, except You bless me;" and the Lord said, "Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince have you power with God and with men, and have prevailed." Thus imitate the patriarch; begin the day with thinking over what you may possibly need before its close- whether any cross is anticipated, or any temptation is apprehended, or any danger to which you may be exposed; and then go and wrestle for the needed and the promised grace. Oh, it is a great mercy to have an errand that sends us to God; and when we remember what a full heart of love He has, what a readiness to hear, what promptness in all His answers, what entering into the minutest circumstance of a believer's history- how it chides the reluctance and rebukes the unbelief that we perpetually manifest in availing ourselves of this most costly, holy, and precious of all our privileges! 

Octavious Winslow, Morning Thoughts

[Bold Emphasis mine]

Run Christian run!

We have only these two shallow brooks , sickness and death to pass through; and ye have also a promise, that Christ shall do more than meet you even that He shall come himself, and go with you, foot for foot, yea and bear you in His arms. 

O then! for the joy that is set before you, for the love of the Man (who is also God over all, blessed forever) that is standing upon the shore to welcome you:

run your race with patience.

S.Rutherford.

Love constraining to obedience

No strength of nature can suffice 

      To serve the Lord aright; 

   And what she has she misapplies, 

      For want of clearer light. 

Dead and Alive

    

Self-Centered

God-Centered

They say a picture is worth a thousands words....so in that estimation I have over two thousand words in this post this far...

Looking unto Jesus

"Looking unto Jesus." Hebrews 12:2.

If Jesus is especially glorified in the faith of His people, let yours be a life of faith in all its minute detail. Live upon Him for spiritual supplies; live upon Him for temporal supplies. Go to Him in dark providences, that you may be kept from sinking: go to Him in bright providences, that you may be kept from falling. Go to Him when the path is rough, that you may walk in it contentedly: go to Him when the path is smooth, that you may walk in it surely. Let your daily history be a traveling to Jesus empty, and a coming from Jesus filled. Keep the truth constantly and prominently before your eye, "The just shall live by faith." If this be so, do not expect that God will ever permit you to live by sight. Bend your whole soul submissively to Him in this matter. Let His will and yours be one. If, in the course of your wilderness journeyings, He has brought you into a great difficulty, yes, to the very margin of the sea, still, at His bidding, "go forward," though it be into that sea. Trust Him to cleave asunder its waters, making a dry passage for your feet, and causing those very waves that threatened to engulf you, now to prove as a cloud canopying you above, and as walls of strength fencing you in on every side.

Octavious Winslow

The Scriptures

That book must be worth reading--that has God for the author!
 William Gurnall

And... rejoice!

27. Lastly. Sit down and rejoice with fear. Rejoice in what God has done for your souls by the everlasting gospel. Weep that you have done no more to improve it, and that you have so neglected the opportunities of enriching your souls.

Here are your LEGACIES. May the Lord make them of singular use to you, that you may give up your account to the great and glorious God with joy. Make conscience of putting these things into practice until you shall be brought to the fruition of God, where you shall need ordinances, preaching, and praying no more.

-----

End of the Legacies by Thomas Brooks

Loved with everlasting love...

'Twas with an everlasting love

that God His own elected embraced,

Before He made the worlds above

or earth in her position placed. 

Long before sun's first brilliant ray

primeral shades of darkness drove,

saints in His arms of purpose lay, 

loved with an everlasting love. 

Then, in His wonderful decrees, 

Christ and His Church appear as one:

Her sin, by imputation, His, 

while she in spotless splendour shone. 

Such love! how high its glories swell, 

how great immutable and free, 

millions of sins, deserving hell, 

where swallowed up, no more to be!

Loved, when a wretched defiled with sin, 

at war with Heaven, in league with hell, 

a slave to every lust obscene,

who living lived but to rebel. 

Believing, here my comfort stand, 

salvation undeserved and free!

Such everlasting love

demands an everlasting song from me. 

John Kent 

1766-1843

Herein is love!

February 14

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:10.

"Herein is love!" as though John would say, "and nowhere else but here!" That God should punish the innocent for the guilty- that He should exact the blood of His Son to cancel the guilt of His rebels- that He should lay an infinite weight of wrath on His soul, in order to lay an infinite weight of love on ours- that He should sacrifice His life of priceless value for ours- worthless, forfeited, and doomed- that He should not only give His Son, but should bruise Him, put Him to grief, afflict Him, should make His soul an offerinq for sin- that the 'Lord of Glory' should become a 'man of sorrows', the Lord of Life should die, and the Heir of all things should be "as him that serves." Oh depth of love unfathomable! Oh height of love unsearchable! Oh length and breadth of love unmeasurable! Oh love of God, which passes knowledge!

'Morning Thoughts' 

Octavious Winslow

Can you die for that??

26. Walk by no rule but such as you dare die by, and stand by in the day of Jesus Christ. Do not walk with the multitude. Make not the example of great men your rule, which stands in opposition to Jesus Christ. Who dare stand by either of these before him at the great day?

Thomas Brooks-Legacies

True prayer cannot fail to go to heaven for it is from heaven that they came. They are only going home.

C.H.spurgeon

None but Jesus

"Without Me you can do nothing." John 15:5. 

 Oh, that the Church of Christ, and each individual member, would but realize this truth; that simpler, closer, more experimental views of Jesus would essentially strengthen the tone of inward spirituality and comfort! The great secret of all comfort in seasons of affliction is to take the affliction, as it comes, simply to Christ; and the great secret of all holiness is to take the corruption, as it rises, simply to Christ. It is this living upon Christ for all he needs, this going to Christ under all circumstances, and at all seasons, which forms the happy and holy life of a child of God. There is no other path for him to walk in. The moment he turns from Christ he becomes like a vessel loosed from its moorings, and driven at the mercy of the winds from billow to billow. Christ must be all in all to him; friends, domestic comforts, Church privileges, ordinances, means of grace, nothing must suffice for Jesus. And why does the Lord so frequently discipline the soul? Why remove friends, why blight domestic comforts, why rob us of Church privileges, why close up the ordinances, and write death upon the means of grace? Oh, why? but to open a way through which He Himself might enter the believer, and convince that lonely, bereaved, and desolate heart that He is a substitute for everything, while nothing shall ever be a substitute for Him. He will have the supreme affection of His saints; they shall find their all in Him; and to this end He sends afflictions, crosses, and disappointments, but to wean them from their idols and draw them to Himself.

Octavius Winslow

'Morning Thoughts'

This world or the world to come?

I just found in my drafts this very convicting excerpt (below). 

[The worldly man] is fond of the world, fond of money, fond of preferment; one that would not let his religion stand in the way of his advancement, who could pocket all scruples if he could pocket a little gold along with them. [He is] hollow of heart, but with a fair outside; just an Erasmus*; no Luther*, no Calvin*, no Knox*, no confessor, no martyr. His worldly interests are the main thing to him. He would rather not risk offending God, but yet he would not like to lose Balak’s rewards and honors. He would rather not take up his cross, nor deny himself, nor forsake all for his God. Religion with him is not just a thing to be suffered for,—at least if he can help it.

So is it with multitudes amongst us. They want as much religion as will save them from hell; not an atom more. The world is their real God; gold is their idol; it is in mammon’s temple that they worship. Love God with all their heart!—they do not so much as understand the meaning of such a thing. Sacrifice riches, place, honor, friends to Christ!—they scoff at the thing as madness.

Oh, be on the side of God, out and out. Do not trifle with religion. Do not mock God and Christ. Love not the world. Be religious in your inmost soul. Do not mistake sentimentalism for religion, or a good character for the new birth. You may go very far and yet not be a Christian. You may follow Christ in some things; but if not in all, what is your following worth?

This world or the world to come; that is the alternative, not this world and the world to come. Christ all or nothing. The soul more precious than worlds, or utterly worthless. No middle ground; no half-discipleship; no compromise. No! The friendship of the world is enmity with God. Come out and be separate. The new birth or no religion at all!

Horatius Bonar

[bold emphasis mine]

Notes:

Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469-1536) – leading Christian humanist scholar of the Renaissance; wanted to reform Roman Catholicism, but never broke with it; initially neutral toward Martin Luther’s reforms, he later condemned them.

Martin Luther Martin Luther (1483-1546) – German Reformer.

John Calvin (1509-1564) – French Reformer.

John Knox (c. 1513-1572) – Scottish Reformer.

The terms

25. Make conscience of making good the terms on which you closed with Christ, namely, that you would deny yourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him.

Thomas brooks -Legacies

Happy New Year!

'Happy New Year!'

I just heard this the other day and thought it was really strange thing to hear at the end of January.

Gracious Habits

Sin must not reign in our mortal bodies that we should obey it. Romans 6:12

Though sin may remain as an outlaw, though it may oppress as a tyrant, yet let it not reign as a king. Let it not make laws, nor preside in councils, nor command the militia, let it not be the uppermost in the soul so that we should obey it. (...) Sin lies very much in the gratifying of the body, and humoring that. (...)
As every sinful act confirms the sinful habit, so every gracious act confirms the gracious habit: serving righteousness is unto holiness, one duty fits us for another, and the more we do the more we may do for God. 

MHC on Romans 6

Spiritual Condition

23. Never enter upon the trial of your spiritual estate, but when your hearts are in the fittest temper.

24. Always make the Scripture, and not your carnal reason, or your bare opinion (or that of others) the rule by which to judge of your spiritual condition.

Christ's love

Of all the blessings enjoyed while on this earth, there is nothing to compare with 
this one: fellowship with the Lord. One minute of fellowship with Christ leaves a more lasting impression in the soul than all other enjoyment we may have in things of this life! Dear friends press on...

Christ's love- only eternity is sufficient to reveal to our minds. 

Christ's love will be always unfolding- but never fully unfolded. 

It will always be displayed - but never fully displayed. 

We may stand in the centre and endeavour to follow its lines- but Christ's love defies our powers ans drowns our thoughts into immensity.

  James Smith

Jesus bids you to look into his heart...

When you savages of Louisiana were going to murder Lasale, or his Italian friend, he told them that, such was his regard for them, that he had them all in his heart; and would they murder a man who loved them so well? At the same time applying a small looking- glass to his breast, he desired them to look, and see if it was not so. it is said that the poor savages, observing their own image, had their barbarity melted into the most tender compassion and love; they would not for the world have hurt him or suffered him to be hurt by others." Now believing communicants, Jesus bids you to look into his heart, and see yourselves there. "Behold," said He, "You were on my heart from eternity, when I undertook for you; then My delights were with the sons of men, and I rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth. Lo! you were on my heart on Calvary, when it was melted as the wax with the wrath due to your crimes! Behold you are on my heart, now that I am in the midst of the throne, while I appear in the presence of God for you and prepare a place for you!" 

 John Brown

Marks of Fellowship

" You ask me concerning marks of fellowship with our Lord Jesus. Alas! that I should know so little about that happiness. How easy to talk about spiritual things, when we feel not their power; but, without doubt, our communion with Christ is real, if it make us lie in the dust before Him, and cause us to loathe and abhor ourselves in His presence...Real communion, too, melts the heart with love to God, and to His laws, ordinances, and people, and renders us vexed and shamed that we cannot love Him to purpose. But it is one thing to know these matters in our head, and another thing to feel them in our heart. Ah! how many of us called Christians are led like beasts by the head;  and how few, like saints indeed, are led by the heart. '

John Brown

p. 203

More Legacies...

20. Hold on and hold out in the ways of well-doing, in the lack of all outward discouragements. Follow the Lamb, though all others follow the beast and the false prophet.

21. In all your natural, civil, and religious actions, let divine glory rest upon your souls; let the glory of Christ lie nearest your hearts.

22. Record all special favors, mercies, providences, and experiences. Little do you know the advantages that will redound to your souls upon this.

Faith

Faith thinks no hard thoughts of God. 

I think the quote above  is by from one of  Samuel Rutherford's letters ...

Dear Friends, remember this precious truth, that the Lord is ever more loving than I am deserving, more gracious than I cam conceive! Rejoice on!