Lydia on Genuine Relationship with God!

"Genuine relationship starts when we see that the Father wants us desperately regardless of our choices in life. Regardless of our behavior. When we see His love is greater than our mistakes, we will trust Him. We won't fear Him because His love is perfect. And we know that perfect love casts out fear".

Lydia Joy - "Today's Musings ..." - A Joy to Be Me - Monday 22nd June 2009.

John Piper on the Cost of the Great Commission

"The Great Commission is not child's play. It is costly. Very costly. The coddled Western world will sooner or later give way to great affliction. And when it does, whose vision of God will hold? Where are Christians being prepared for great global sorrows? Where is the Christian mind and soul being prepared for the horrors to come? Christians in the West are weakened by wimpy worldviews. And wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. God is weightless in our lives. He is not terrifyingly magnificent. His sovereignity is secondary (at best) to His sensitivity".

John Piper - "Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ" - Crossway Books (2008) - (p13).

Dave Bish on the Song of Solomon

"I turned to Song of Songs and didn't follow the popular line taken by the likes of MacArthur, Mahaney and Driscoll. I'm happy to derive lessons for marriage from the Song but convinced that firstly we must read it about Christ and his bride, the church".

Dave Bish - "Song of Songs 3:6-5:1 (Reading Family Church)" - The Blue Fish Project - Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Terry Virgo and the Challenge of Faith

"The challenge is to make sure that faith remains faith even when we experience delay. We must not slip the car into neutral and begin to coast. We must keep the gear of faith fully engaged, especially when we encounter unexpected curves in the road".

Terry Virgo - "Faith to inherit – Part 2" - Terry Virgo's Blog - June 15th, 2009

John Piper on the Song of Solomon

"It is no accident that centuries of biblical scholars construed the Song of Solomon as a story about Christ and the church ... they were not wrong in seeing that the ultimate meaning of marital sex is about the final delight between Christ and His Church".

John Piper - "This Momentary Marriage - a Parable of Permamence" - IVP, Leicester (2009) - (p128).

Don Carson on the True Joy and Power of the Gospel

"If you and I, whether we are ministers of churches, simply talking to a neighbour over the fence, leading a choir or teaching a Sunday School Class, lose the joy of our salvation, we have bastardized the gospel. If ever we want simply the power of the gospel, but no longer delight in the simple and profound truth that before the heavens were formed our names were written down in the Lamb's book of life; if ever we want the power of the gospel and the unction of the Spirit of God but do not delight that our sins are forgiven, that endless eons into eternity still we will be trusting the Christ who shed His blood on our behalf - not cut off, not condemned, not confined to eternal perdition, but forgiven, transformed, renewed by the love of God in Christ Jesus - then the proclamation of the gospel degenerates to mere game".

Don Carson - “Rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven" - The Gospel Witness 61:7 (June 17, 1982): 6–7, 26–27.

Don Carson on the Puritans

"Their works are not infallible, and in terms of scholarly criticism and modern exegetical tools, their tomes are strangely dated. Nevertheless it is impossible to read them without feeling the fire burn within, without being humbled by their almost fantastic grasp of Scripture, of theology. Indeed, it is a little disturbing to testify how difficult it is to find areas in which the Puritans may be faulted. Such an apparent scarcity of defects is likely to reduce the credibility of a historical account. If God by matchless grace has worked to to produce an abundant fruit of superior quality in centuries past, let us lay on Him with the importunate cries of faith to perform in men once again the good work done in those whom history dubs "the Puritans".

D A Carson - "THE PURITANS: WHAT THEY HAVE THAT THE MODERNS HAVE NOT" - Northwest Journal of Theology 1 (1972): 75–92.

Dr Stanley Jebb on Ezekiel 37 (Word and Spirit)

"A doctrinalist may be very sincere, or he may not, he may be a religious hypocrite ... This is illustrated by Ezekiel’s vision in Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones. The bones are like doctrine. When they came together in proper order they were like a good systematic theology! But very dry. They needed flesh and sinews in order to live, move, act. In other words, the flesh, muscle, can illustrate living the life.

The flesh is shaped by the skeleton beneath it, and supported by it. Without the skeleton the muscle and sinew would be a heap on the ground. But those reconstituted bodies needed the life, the Spirit blowing through them. Only when all three were together did they become a living army. The skeleton alone (doctrinalism) is not enough. But the flesh and the Spirit without the skeleton becomes a writhing mass on the ground. We need sound doctrine, lived out in godly lives, empowered by the Holy Spirit".

Dr Stanley Jebb - "Beware of Doctrinalism" - Alethinos Reflections - June 9, 2009.

Don Carson on the Balance Between Intellect and Emotion

"Biblical warnings about how knowledge puffs up but love builds up (e.g., 1 Cor 8) do not condone anti-intellectualism; conversely, biblical mandates to love God with our minds do not grant scholarship an elevated status that exempts it from adoration, faith, obedience, and love. At some level, scholarship without humility and obedience is arrogant; talk of knowing and loving God without scholarship is ignorant".

Don Carson - "The Scholar as Pastor" - Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School - Thursday, April 23, 2009.

Kathryn Kuhlman on Why God Sometimes Doesn't Heal

"Most of us have our own personal interpretations of how God should run the universe - based on our own limited personal experiences. Kathryn on the other hand, defied all tradition. She defied the boxes men tried to fit her into. When asked why many who were sick left her service unhealed, she would just shake her head and say; "I don't know - I just don't know". In fact she once said that the very first question she wanted to ask Jesus when she got to heaven was, "Why were some not healed?".

The theologians had answers. Hundreds of them. But the theologians never saw miracles. Kathryn, who was one of the greatest instruments of the miracle power of the Holy Spirit had no answers. "I have no healing virtue", she said over and over again. "I cannot heal a single person. All I do is preach faith. God does the healing. Whom He heals and whom He chooses not to heal is His business. I am, but His handmaiden".

Jamie Buckingham - "Daughter of Destiny - The Only Authorised Biography of Kathryn Kuhlman" - Bridge-Logos, Florida (2008 - 6th edition) - (p48).

Joel Virgo on the Presence of God in Church

"A central idea of Paul’s is that each member of the gathered church shares the privilege of carrying and conducting the presence of God and his many gifts. This adds enormous potential to what happens when we gather".

Joel Virgo - "1 Corinthians 14:1-25 Gifts and Ministries of the Holy Spirit Part III" - CCK Blog - June 1st, 2009.