Past "Thoughts for Today"

“Jock” Colville, Winston Churchilll’s personal secretary, said, “Churchill’s greatest intellectual gift was for picking essentials and concentrating on them.”

“Christ wins our salvation through losing, achieves power through weakness and service, comes to wealth via giving all away. And those who receive his salvation are not the strong and accomplished but those who admit they are weak and lost.”

“Our standing is not founded upon the subduing of our sins, but upon that foundation that never fails, and that is Christ Himself.”

What is grace? Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. It is being loved when you are the opposite of loveable.

Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualification the receiver may personally hold.

“Pharisaism runs deep in human nature. People always want to add something they do to what God has done, and they want to look down on people who haven’t done it, whatever ‘it’ is.”

Wise people are not wise because they are prophets who see the future. Wise people are not wise because they can look into men’s hearts and discern their thoughts and motives. Wise people are not wise because they are better at learning from experience. Wise people are not those who’ve been blessed with superior intellect.

Wise people are those who treasure the lamp of God’s Word, seeking out and crying out for the light of truth. In other words, wise people are simply prepared people—biblically prepared and equipped for whatever might come along. People become wise when by God’s grace they are humble enough to accept how unprepared they actually are in themselves. Sacrificing the false god of their own independence, they run to the one place where actual certainty can be found. Then they’re able to live hopefully, productively, and courageously. Then they’re prepared for whatever comes along—not because they saw it coming, but because they’ve been students of the Word of God.

“Blessed be God, our calamities are matters of time, but our safety is a matter of eternity.”

I am convinced that the first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.

We need not be afraid to look at sin and study its nature, origin, power, extent and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Though sin has abounded, grace has much more abounded.

“Christ’s death changes death for all his people. When you die, you will not carry your sin and guilt into your death because he carried it into his death for you. If you are in Christ, you will never know what it is like to die a sin-bearing death.

When our sin reached its full horror, God’s love was displayed in all its glory. If you doubt God’s love for you, look at the cross. No other love can match this. Nothing else in our experience can come close. God’s love for us in Christ is greater than we ever dared top dream.”

“How do you handle discouragement?  … Some of us can become impatient, some of us may give in to murmuring, some of us may opt for some form of self-medication in hopes of just drowning the discouragement out.  What kept the apostle Paul from throwing in the towel was the mercy of God.  When you know you deserved death, and you get life, it changes everything.  Paul never got over having experienced the mercy of God in his life – of being able to get what he didn’t deserve.  That gives Paul the power to persevere.  Paul’s secret is that he never lost sight of it.  He never got over God’s mercy, and throughout his life it changed everything. Mercy was Paul’s medicine.”