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Satan gives Adam an apple, and takes away paradise. Therefore in all temptations let us consider not what he offers, but what we shall lose.
Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.
The Bruised Reed
God is forced to mortify sins by afflictions, because we mortify them not by the Spirit.
usually he empties such of themselves, and makes them nothing, before he will use them in any great services.The Bruised Reed (3)
It is not so easy a matter to pray as men think. In regard of the unspiritualness of our nature compared with the duty itself in which we draw near to a holy God, we cannot endure to be separated from our lusts; and there is great rebellion in our hearts against everything that is good; and Satan also is our special enemy…. When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposes us all he can. But though some may mumble over a few prayers, yet (indeed) no man can pray as he ought, or in faith, that is not within the covenant of grace, nor without the Holy Ghost.
Insomuch as we give way to our will in sinning, in such a measure of distance we set ourselves from comfort. Sin against conscience is a thief in the candle which wastes our joy and thereby weakens our strength. We must know, therefore, that willful breaches in sanctification will much hinder the sense of our justification.
As Satan slanders Christ to us, so he slanders us to ourselves. If thou be not so much as smoking flax, then why dost thou not renounce thy interest in Christ and disclaim the covenant of grace? This thou darest not do. Why dost thou not give up thyself wholly to other enjoyments? This thy spirit will not suffer thee.
Pride is intolerable to pride.
Prayer is a venting of our desires to God from the sense of our wants, and he that is sensible of his wants is empty. A poor man, by the Spirit, earnestly pours out supplications in Christ's name and wrestles with God in prayer.
God can pick sense out of a confused prayer. These desires cry louder in His ears than thy sins. Sometimes a Christian has such confused thoughts that he can say nothing, but as a child cries, "O Father," not able to show what it needs, as Moses at the Red Sea. These stirrings of spirit touch the bowels of God and melt Him into compassion toward us when they come from the spirit of adoption and from a striving to be better.
It is an office of love here to take away the stones and to smooth the way to heaven. Therefore, we must take heed that under pretense of avoidance of disputes we do not suffer an adverse party to get ground upon the truth, for thus may we easily betray both the truth of God and souls of men.
It were good strife among Christians, one to labor to give no offense and the other to labor to take none.
Ingratitude is the grave of all God's blessings.
If we desire the Spirit, we must wait in the way of duty, as the apostles waited many days before the Comforter came. We must also empty our souls of self-love and the love of the world and willingly entertain those crosses that bring our souls out of love with it. The children of Israel in the wilderness had not the manna till they had spent their onions and garlic; so this world must be out of request with us before we can be truly spiritual. Through grace, labor to see the excellency of spiritual things. How despicable then must all the glory of the world appear! These things, duly considered, will raise our desires more and more toward spiritual and heavenly objects.
Knowledge and affection mutually help one another; it is good to keep up our affections of love and delight by all sweet inducements and divine encouragements, for what the heart likes best the mind studies most. Those that can bring their hearts to delight in Christ know most of His ways.
David had sat many months under the lectures of the law, unhumbled for his complicated sin, but Nathan is sent to preach a rehearsal sermon to him of the many mercies that God had graced him with, and while those coals are pouring on his head, his heart dissolves presently (2 Sam. 12:13). The frost is seldom quite out of the earth till the sun hath gotten some power in the spring to dissolve its bands. Neither will hardness of heart be removed until the soul be thoroughly warmed with the sense of God's mercies.
A sincere heart is like a clear stream in a brook: you may see to the bottom of his plots in his words and take the measure of his heart by his tongue.
So a man that hath a watch and understands the use of every wheel and pin, if it goes amiss, he will presently find out the cause of it; but one that hath no skill in a watch, when it goes amiss, he knows not what the matter is and therefore cannot mend it. So indeed, our hearts are as a watch, and there are many wheels and windings and turnings there, and we should labor to know our hearts well, that when they are out of tune we may know what the matter is.
Other things may be the worse for breaking, yet a heart is never at the best till it be broken.
Dead stones in an arch uphold one another, and shall not living? It is the work of an angel to comfort—nay, it is the office of the Holy Ghost to be a comforter not only immediately but by breathing comfort into our hearts together with the comfortable words of others. Thus, one friend becomes an angel—nay, a God to another, and there is a sweet sight of God in the face of a friend.
There is gold in ore which God and His Spirit in us can distinguish. A carnal man's heart is like a dungeon wherein is nothing to be seen but horror and confusion. This light makes us judicious and humble upon clearer sight of God's purity and our own uncleanness and makes us able to discern the work of the Spirit in another.
In melancholy distempers, especially when there is guilt on the soul, we can find no comfort in wife, children, friends, estate, etc. It is a pitiful state when body, soul, and conscience all are distempered, but even now let a Christian look to God's nature and promises. Though he cannot live by sight, yet let him live much by faith.
If men can find no comfort and yet set themselves to teach and encourage weaker Christians, by way of reflection they receive frequently great comfort themselves. So doth God reward this duty of mutual discourse; that those things we did not so fully understand before by discourse we come to know and relish far better. This should teach us to love and often engage in holy conference, for besides the good we do to others, we shall be profited ourselves. Divine Meditations
Certainly when we undervalue mercy, especially so great a one as the communion of saints is, commonly the Lord takes it away from us till we learn to prize it to the full value. Consider well therefore the heinousness of this sin, which that you may the better conceive. First, consider it is against God's express precept, charging us not to forsake the assemblies of the saints (Heb. 10:20, 25). Again, it is against our own greatest good and spiritual solace, for by discommunicating and excommunicating ourselves from that blessed society, we deprive ourselves of the benefit of their holy conference, their godly instructions, their divine consolations, brotherly admonitions, and charitable reprehensions, and what an inestimable loss is this? Neither can we partake such profit by their prayers as otherwise we might, for as the soul in the natural body conveys life and strength to every member, as they are compacted and joined together and not as dissevered, so Christ conveys spiritual life and vigor to Christians, not as they are disjoined from but as they are united to the mystical body, the church.
The church of Christ is a common hospital wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, that we should all have ground of exercising mutually the spirit of wisdom and meekness.
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1. Thomas Watson (196)
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11. John Owen (74)
12. Thomas Manton (70)
13. A.W. Pink (68)
14. Louis Berkhof (63)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
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2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. Thomas Brooks (113)
5. John Calvin (107)
6. John Flavel (96)
7. J.I. Packer (95)
8. William Gurnall (93)
9. George Swinnock (88)
10. John Piper (87)
11. John Owen (74)
12. Thomas Manton (70)
13. A.W. Pink (68)
14. Louis Berkhof (63)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
16. B.B. Warfield (59)
17. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
18. R.C. Sproul (55)
19. Richard Baxter (54)
20. Matthew Henry (54)
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