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.

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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