O my soul, is it possible for thee to hear the excellency of Scripture thus opened to thee, and not to burn in love to it? Hast thou been all this while in such a host bath, and still cold and shivering?The Christian Man\'s Calling
the decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other.
Years ago I heard the story of an old preacher who told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. "They are going to put you in a box," he said, "and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad." That says it perfectly. Life goes on. If we transfer the convictions successfully, all will be well. If not, our stewardship is in danger . . . or in vain.The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership That Matters (p. 200)
You can divide all leaders into those who merely hold an office or position and those who hold great convictions. Life is too short to give much attention to leaders who stand for little or nothing, leaders who are looking for the next program or riding the latest leadership fad, trying on idea after idea but driven by no deep convictions.The Conviction to Lead, 25
We want character but without unyielding conviction; we want strong morality, but without the emotional burden of guilt or shame; we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend; we want good without having to name evil; we want decency without the moral authority to insist upon it; we want moral community without any limitations to personal freedom. In short, we want what we cannot have on the terms that we want it.
We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.
As Theo Hobson describes it, for a full moral reversal to take place three conditions must be met. The first is this: what was condemned must be celebrated. The second is that what was celebrated must now be condemned. And thirdly, those who will not join in the celebration will be condemned.
In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.
hire on the basis of conviction. This is essential, and yet this is where many leaders subvert their own leadership. We are all easily (and often rightly) impressed with expertise and ability, but these cannot compensate for a lack of conviction. When it comes to hiring leaders who will have a role in directing the work, conviction is nonnegotiable. You cannot possibly lead with conviction if you entrust the future of your organization to people who do not share those convictions. This is how great movements die - they begin with clarity and end with confusion, or worse.The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership That Matters (p. 203-204)
The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church.Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
To be strangers to the word of God, little conversant in it, and to make little use of it, is a great affront done to God. We should acquaint ourselves not with the letter only, as little children learn it by rote, but with the sense and purpose of ithttps://www.monergism.com/rich-young-ruler-exposition-mark-1017-27-ebook
There arises, I confess, some darkness in the scriptures, because of the idiomatic nature, figurative ornaments, and unfamiliar use of the tongues. But that difficulty may easily be helped by study, diligence, faith, and the means of skillful interpreters. I know that the apostle Peter says that in the epistles of Paul "many things are hard to understand." 2Pet 3.16 But he immediately adds, "which the unlearned, and those who are imperfect or unstable, pervert, as they do the other scriptures also, to their own destruction." By this we gather that the scripture is difficult or obscure to the unlearned, unskillful, unexercised, and malicious or corrupted wills, and not to the zealous and godly readers or hearers of it.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
let none of us say hereafter, "Why do I need to care what is written to the Jews in the old Testament, or what the apostles have written to the Romans, to the Corinthians, and to other nations? I am a Christian. The prophets both preached and wrote to the men of their time, and the apostles to those who lived in the same age with them." For if we think uprightly of the matter, we will see that the scriptures of the old and new Testaments should therefore be received by us, even because we are Christians. For Christ, our Saviour and Master, referred us to the written books of Moses and the prophets.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
whoever is ignorant of what the word of God is, and the meaning of the word of God, seems like one who is blind, deaf, and without wit, in the temple of the Lord, in the school of Christ, and lastly, in the reading of the very sacred scriptures.https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
Be thankful to God for the scriptures. What a mercy is it that God has not only acquainted us what his will is, but that he has made it known by writing!A Body of Divinity, p37