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Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/sustained-by-sovereign-grace-forever
I desire to cast my crown at the feet of Jesus, and to cry grace! grace! Dear Sir, what a charming word is that? I am sure I can freely own, that all my salvation is of grace, unmerited, distinguishing, electing grace!
Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.
The best man is more unworthy to receive anything from God than the worst can be to receive from us.
Repentance was never yet produced in any man's heart apart from the grace of God. As soon may you expect the leopard to regret the blood with which its fangs are moistened, as soon might you expect the lion of the wood to abjure his cruel tyranny over the feeble beasts of the plain, as expect the sinner to make any confession, or offer any repentance that shall be accepted of God, unless grace shall first renew the heart.
You need grace! But someone says if you throw that much grace around it will be a liscence for sin. Only among the unconverted Church members. Oh they will take it as an excuse for sin. The genuinely converted will say this, if grace be such. If it be so large and so wide... depths I cannot sound. Then oh let me be holy! Unknown
Many blush to confess their faults, who never blush to commit them.
Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; Knowing God (The Grace of God, 152)
God's children have various degrees of grace: some are little children who only feed upon the milk of the gospel; others are young men grown to maturity; others are fathers who are ready to take their degree in glory. Each has the vitality of godliness. The Scriptures speak both of the cedar and of the bruised reed: each is a plant of God's creation -each of His care; so the weakest plant in God's garden of the church is equally regarded by Him with the strongest. God can read the work of His Spirit on the soul which has received the dimmest impression.
The meditation of the excellency of grace would make us earnest in the pursuit after it. We dig for gold in the mine, we sweat for it in the furnace. Did we meditate on the worth of grace, we would dig in the mine of ordinances for it. What sweating and wrestling in prayer? We would put on a modest boldness and not take a denial.
Many men are changed in a moral sense, and one may say they are become new men, but they are in heart and nature the same men still. They are not changed in a spiritual and supernatural sense, and therefore it cannot be said of them they are become new creatures. Restraining grace may cause a moral change, but it is renewing grace that must cause a saving change. Now many are under restraining grace, and so changed morally, that are not under the power of renewing grace, and so changed savingly.
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.
Grace doth not pluck up by the roots and wholly destroy the natural passions of the mind because they are distempered by sin! That were an extreme remedy to cure by killing and heal by cutting off; no, but it corrects the distemper in them. It dries not up this main stream of love but purifies it from the mud which it is full of in its wrong course or turns it into its right channel, by which it may run into happiness and empty itself into the ocean of goodness. The Holy Spirit turns the love of the soul toward God in Christ, for in that way only can it apprehend His love. So then Jesus Christ is the first object of this divine love; He is medium unionis, through whom God conveys the sense of His love to the soul and receives back its love to Himself.
Grace is not of an equal extent to nature: grace is not native, but donative; not by generation, but by regeneration. It is from the Father of spirits, not fathers of our flesh. Who can bring a clean thing out of filthiness? The new birth is "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man" (John 1:13).
Nature may teach a man to loathe sin in others, but 'tis only grace that teacheth us to abhor sin in ourselves.
He that knows the true worth of grace thinks he hath never enough till satisfied with it in glory.
Grace is of a stirring nature and not such a dead thing, like an image, which you may lock up in a chest, and none shall know what God you worship. No, grace will show itself; it will walk with you in all places and companies; it will buy with you and sell for you; it will have a hand in all your enterprises; it will comfort you when you are sincere and faithful for God, and it will complain and chide you when you are otherwise. Go to, stop its mouth and heaven shall hear its voice; it will groan, mourn, and strive even as a living man when you would smother him. I will as soon believe the man to be alive that lies peaceably as he is nailed up in his coffin, without strife or bustle, as that thou hast grace and never exercise it in any act of spiritual life.
I knew a man who, when he came under convictions, endeavored with all his might to stifle them. His convictions grew stronger, and he hardened himself against them. He saw their tendency but was so opposite to it that he resolved, in express terms, he would not be a Puritan, whatever came of it. To the church he must go, his master would have it so. But this was his wont—to loll over the seat with his fingers in both his ears. Here general or conditional grace was surely nonplussed. But a chosen vessel must not be so lost. Now steps in electing grace, and by a casual slip of his elbows drew out the stoppers and sent in a word from the pulpit, which, like fire from heaven, melted his heart and cast it in a new mold. Surely in this the Lord did not wait for the man's compliance or improvements; His word was not originated thence nor dependent thereon.
He who lives up to a little light shall have more light; he who lives up to a little knowledge shall have more knowledge; he who lives up to a little faith shall have more faith; and he who lives up to a little love shall have more love. Verily, the main reason why men are such babes and shrubs in grace is because they do not live up to their attainments.
There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.
Grace is beyond gifts. Thou comparest thy grace with another's gifts; there is a vast difference. Grace without gifts is infinitely better than gifts without grace. In religion the vitals are best; gifts are extrinsical, and wicked men are sometimes under the common influence of the Spirit. But grace is a more distinguishing work and is a jewel hung only upon the righteous. Hast thou, the seed of God, the holy anointing? Be content.
He is not a covetous man who lays up something providentially, but he is a covetous man who gives out nothing willingly. He is as prudent a man who sometimes distributes discreetly as he who accumulates hastily. Men frequently discover more wisdom in laying out than in laying up. Reader, the hope of living long on earth should not make you covetous, but the prospect of living long in heaven should make you bounteous. Though the sun of charity rise at home, yet it should always set abroad.
Where there is no confidence in God, there will be no continuance with God. When the wind of faith ceases to fill the sails, the ship of obedience ceases to plough the seas.
Religious company brings fire to our graces to kindle them when they are freezing, but irreligious company brings water to quench them when they are flaming. Nonsuch Professor, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A74686.0001.001
Grace comes not to take away a man's affections, but to take them up.
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