Besides public ordinances, we should give ourselves to spiritual exercises in secret.
All the time we can spare from our necessary, civil, and natural actions should be employed in calling to mind what we have seen, heard, or felt of God.
You can never part with sin soon enough; it is a cursed inmate, that will surely bring mischief upon the soul that harbours it. It will set its own dwelling on fire.Works 7:147
To own and stand up for a hated and despised truth will bring more comfort to our souls than all the pleasure the wicked have in their sensual delights.
To humble us in our converses with God. He is good, but we are evil; he is heaven, but we are hell; he is perfect, but we are poor defective creatures. Therefore in all our approaches to him we should come the more humbly to him, and go the more holy from him; for it is sad when we come to the good God, and are never the better. If we go to the fire, we expect to be warm. Oh! when you come to the fountain of goodness, we should come away better.https://www.monergism.com/rich-young-ruler-exposition-mark-1017-27-ebook
As the excellency of his nature giveth him a fitness and a sufficiency for the government of mankind, his creation, preservation, and other benefits give him a full right to make what laws he pleaseth, and to call man to an account whether he hath kept them, yea or no.Works, Volume 10
The main reason why men dote upon the world, and damn their souls to get the world, is, because they are not acquainted with a greater glory!Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices
Oh, you who want unfailing comfort, I commend you to Christ! In Him alone there is no failure. Rich men are disappointed in their treasures. Learned men are disappointed in their books. Husbands are disappointed in their wives. Wives are disappointed in their husbands. Parents are disappointed in their children. Statesmen are disappointed when, after many a struggle, they attain place and power. They find out, to their cost, that it is more pain than pleasure-that it is disappointment, annoyance, incessant trouble, worry, vanity, and vexation of spirit. But no man was ever disappointed in Christ. Holiness (Chapter 20)
Poverty and pride are most unsuitable. It was one of Solomon's odd sights to see "servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth" (Eccl. 10:7). A poor proud man is a prodigy and wonder of pride. He has less temptation to be proud; he has more reason to be humble.
Luxury is living in pleasure. God allows us to use pleasures, but not to live in them; to take delights, but not that they should take us. To live always at the full is but a wanton luxury.
The work of the ministry is not to contend with ghosts and opinions antiquated, but the errors and sins of the present time. Look, as it is the duty of Christians to spend the heat of their indignation on the main sin with which they are surprised: "I kept myself from mine iniquity" (Ps. 18:23); so must ministers chiefly bend their zeal and strength against the present guilt.
The love of the world plucks the heart downward, and the lusts of the flesh are so many weights upon the believer that he cannot mount up in a spiritual cloud of divine affection to Jesus Christ; but the pure and spiritual heart is now more refined and delivered from these impediments, and it is like a pure lamp of oil burning upward. When a man's heart is engaged to anything of this world, love cannot be perfect, for love is a man's master, and "no man can serve two masters."
The kingdom of grace yields "joy unspeakable" (1 Peter 1:8), though not glory unspeakable. We have "songs in the house of [our] pilgrimage" (Ps. 119:54). God will have us to enter upon our possession by degrees: joy enters into us before we enter into our Master's joy. We have first the daystar, then the sun. What a good Master do we serve that gives us a part of our wages ere we have done our work! While we are sowing we have peace, the conscience and contentment of a good action.
Works are an evidence of true faith. Graces are not dead, useless habits; they will have some effects and operations when they are weakest and in their infancy. It is said of Paul as soon as he was regenerate, "Behold, he prayeth" (Acts 9:11). Newborn children will cry, at least before they are able to go. This is the evidence by which we must judge, and this is the evidence by which Christ will judge. Riches