The Wilderness Wanderings and the Cross

“May thy cross be to me

as the tree that sweetens my bitter Marahs.”

Source: A puritan prayer “Calvary’s Anthem”.

Read Full Post »

A distinctly northern Galilean accent.

This stillness will one day be interrupted by a shout from the eastern sky, a joyful call with a distinctly northern Galilean accent.

source: http://www.russellmoore.com/2008/03/10/should-we-miss-our-church-graveyards

Read Full Post »

God’s Providence

That there is a providence. There is no such thing as blind fate, but there is a providence that guides and governs the world.

Providence is God’s ordering all issues and events of things, after the counsel of his will, to his own glory.

I call providence God’s ordering things, to distinguish it from his decrees. God’s decree ordains things that shall fall out, God’s providence orders them.

God orders all events of things, after the counsel of his will, to his own glory, his glory being the ultimate end of all his actings, and the where all the lines of providence meet.

God is not like an artificer that builds a house, and then leaves it, but like a pilot he steers the ship of the whole creation.

Source: Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity
Thomas Watson (c. 1620—1686) was an English, non-conformist, Puritan preacher and author.

Read Full Post »

God’s Providence

“I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes–that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens—that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphis over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence —the fall of leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. He that believes in a God must believe this truth. There is no standing-point between this and atheism. There is no half way between a mighty God that worketh all things by the sovereign counsel of his will and no God at all. A God that cannot do as he pleases–a God whose will is frustrated, is not a God, and cannot be a God. I could not believe in such a God as that.”

Source: Charles Haddon Spurgeon in a the sermon “God’s Providence” October 15th, 1908

Read Full Post »

Great, cursed, scandalous, soul-destroying sins

Sin does not only dwells in us but is also labouring and working to produce sinful acts – always acting, always conceiving, always seducing, always tempting – it will work and labor until it brings forth great, cursed, scandalous, soul-destroying sins.

source: John Owen, The Mortification of Sin

Read Full Post »