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
Good God, whither is man fallen! First, we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it. Sin is first our burden, then our custom, then our delight, then our excellency!
It is usual in providence that they who have God's heart should feel God's hand most heavy. I have observed it, that God's children never question His love so much as in sickness. Our thoughts return upon us in such retirement, and the weakness of the body discomposes the mind and deprives us of the free exercise of spiritual reason; to sense and feeling all is sharp.
Jewels do not lie upon the surface; you must get into the caverns and dark receptacles of the earth for them. No more do truths lie in the surface and outside of an expression. The beauty and glory of the Scriptures is within and must be fetched out with much study and prayer.
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 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.