Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
—Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time, quoted by Carl Trueman in “The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” at 9Marks
Gossip involves saying behind a person’s back what you would never say to his or her face. Flattery means saying to a person’s face what you would never say behind his or her back.
—R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, 139
Learning to pray doesn’t offer you a less busy life; it offers you a less busy heart.
—Paul Miller, A Praying Life, 23
What would they judge of thee if they knew thy heart began to fail thee in thy journey, or thy sins began to allure thee, and to persuade thee to stop thy race? would they not call thee a thousand fools? and say, O, that he did but see what we see, feel what we feel, and taste of the dainties that we taste of! O, if he were here one quarter of an hour, to behold, to see, to feel, to taste and enjoy but the thousandth part of what we enjoy, what would he do? What would he suffer? What would he leave undone? Would he favour sin? Would he love this world below? Would he be afraid of friends, or shrink at the most fearful threatenings that the greatest tyrants could invent to give him? Nay, those who have had but a sight of these things by faith, when they have been as far off from them as heaven from earth, yet they have been able to say with a comfortable and merry heart, as the bird that sings in the spring, that this and more shall not keep them from running to heaven.
—John Bunyan, The Heavenly Footman
Bad Christian writing is usually bad because it is derivative and workmanlike. No new insights. No panache.
—Kevin DeYoung, On Writing, Pt 3
Two messages by Paul Tripp at the 2010 Desiring God Pastor’s pre-conference seminar.
The Pastor: Who Do We Think He Is Anyway?
Ministry is war. That war is not fought in programs or finances. It is fought on the turf of your heart.
The greatest danger to the church of Christ…rests in the heart of the person that stands in the pulpit.
The Pastor: Not Yet Perfect, Still Under Attack.
If you are aware that there are incongruities in your public and personal life, then seek help. You are not designed to do this thing by yourself. Your ministry is a community project.
If God doesn’t rule your mundane, then he doesn’t rule your life.