From Ron Julian’s “Righteous Sinners: The believer’s struggle with faith, grace, and works“:
Our salvation is pure mercy; we do not deserve God’s kindness. However, who in this life is destined to receive God’s mercy? Not those who hate God. Not those two can’t admit their own sin. Not those who refuse to trust God. Not [...]
Archive for March, 2008
9 Mar
Righteous Sinners
9 Mar
Luther on Assertions and Assurance
The words of Martin Luther:
”[N]ot to delight in assertions, is not the character of the Christian mind: nay, he must delight in assertions, or he is not a Christian. But, (that we may not be mistaken in terms) by assertion, I mean a constant adhering, affirming, confessing, defending, and invincibly persevering. Nor do I believe [...]
9 Mar
Is the “Middle Ground” Always Best?
Dr. Bruce Ware:
“Council of Nicea. This resulted, then, in the Council of Nicea that met in A.D. 325, meeting for the sole purpose of settling this dispute between Arius and Athanasius and to try to bring together the church in a consensus view on how we should understand the nature of Christ in relation to [...]
9 Mar
Excerpts on the Gospel of John
“It seems probable that Nathanael had had some outstanding experience of communion with God… and that it is this to which Jesus refers.Whatever it was, Nathanael was able to recognize the allusion.It is difficult to explain Jesus’ knowledge of the incident on the level of merely human knowledge. Nathanael had never met him before thismoment.We [...]
9 Mar
Excerpts on Perseverance
“Picture a bunch of people who become convinced that they should run and subsequently decide they’re going to run a marathon (or a half-marathon if that’s easier to picture!) They sign up for it and get really excited – they buy shoes, lightweight clothing, all the stuff they’ll need. When the day of the race [...]
9 Mar
Donald Whitney on Forgiveness
Contrast the following, pp. 13-14 from Donald S. Whitney’s “Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health“, with R.T. Kendall’s “Forgiving the Unrepentant“:
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The testimony of Martyn Lloyd-Jones should be the heart-cry of every Christian: “I say to the glory of God and in utter humility that whenever I see myself before God and realize even something [...]
9 Mar
Daniel Akin on Sola Scriptura
From Daniel Akin in Perspectives on Church Government, p. 38:
“This was one of the battles cries of the Reformation. It is here that apostolic authority is properly located. Apostolic authority is communicated by the canonical writings of the apostles, which carry with them apostolic authority. The Bible as the Word of God [is] thebeliever’s sole [...]
9 Mar
Blogging meets shallow intellectual needs?
“Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I haveseen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit ofsustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that theirintellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts andparagraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quiteunderstandable.” –Michael [...]
9 Mar
Age Segregation
Michael Glodo writes:
“The Church, as a demonstration of God’s riches and power, should be made up of people who would normally not associate with one another otherwise. Conversely, the church where this reconciling effect is absent testifies to the absence or impotence of the Gospel. This raises a very serious question. I realize this will [...]
9 Mar
A Simple Way to Read Faster
The following is from p. 40 of “How to Read a Book“, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. Note that the author points out that speed reading is often benefitial to inspectional reading, but not always to analytical reading.
Fixation and Regression
Speed reading courses properly make such of the discovery–we have known it for half [...]
