The Love of God

Psalms 116:1-2: "I love the LORD , because He has heard My voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me..."

After 37 years I am still overwhelmed by the fact that Jesus saved me. Of all the people, we are indeed the most privileged.

Why do you love the Lord?

Endurance

It cannot be stated too frequently that the life of a Christian is a warfare, an intense conflict, a lifelong contest. It is a battle, moreover, waged against invisible foes, who are ever alert, and ever seeking to entrap, deceive, and ruin the souls of men. The life to which Holy Scripture calls men is no picnic, or holiday junketing. It is no pastime, no pleasure jaunt. It entails effort, wrestling, struggling; it demands the putting forth of the full energy of the spirit in order to frustrate the foe and to come off, at the last, more than conqueror. It is no primrose path, no rose-scented dalliance. From start to finish, it is war. From the hour in which he first draws sword, to that in which he doffs his harness, the Christian warrior is compelled to “endure hardness like a good soldier.”

E. M. Bounds

Man's Effort

When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.

Death of Self

When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the caption of the ship sought to turn him back. "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages," he cried. Calvert only replied, "We died before we came here."

David Augsburger

The Ministry

The ministry is a foundry; you are either in the fire or on the anvil being shaped by the Master.

Courage

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to trust in Christ no matter what the situation or outcome.

God's Delays

I want to share something with you that my pastor, Chuck Smith, shared with me years ago: "God's delays are not the delays of inactivity; they are the delays of preparation."

Take heart, beloved of God. He is working behind the scenes on your behalf.

Spurgeon on the Love of God

Daniel 10:11: "A man greatly beloved."


Child of God, do you hesitate to appropriate this title? Ah! has your unbelief made you forget that you are greatly beloved too? Must you not have been greatly beloved, to have been bought with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot? When God smote His only begotten Son for you, what was this but being greatly beloved? You lived in sin, and rioted in it, must you not have been greatly beloved for God to have borne so patiently with you? You were called by grace and led to a Saviour, and made a child of God and an heir of heaven. All this proves, does it not, a very great and superabounding love? Since that time, whether your path has been rough with troubles, or smooth with mercies, it has been full of proofs that you are a man greatly beloved. If the Lord has chastened you, yet not in anger; if He has made you poor, yet in grace you have been rich. The more unworthy you feel yourself to be, the more evidence have you that nothing but unspeakable love could have led the Lord Jesus to save such a soul as yours. The more demerit you feel, the clearer is the display of the abounding love of God in having chosen you, and called you, and made you an heir of bliss. Now, if there be such love between God and us let us live in the influence and sweetness of it, and use the privilege of our position. Do not let us approach our Lord as though we were strangers, or as though He were unwilling to hear us-for we are greatly beloved by our loving Father. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Come boldly, O believer, for despite the whisperings of Satan and the doubtings of thine own heart, thou art greatly beloved. Meditate on the exceeding greatness and faithfulness of divine love this evening, and so go to thy bed in peace.