“Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once, and He volunteered.” – R.C. Sproul, Jr.

“A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.” – Leonard Ravenhill

“Do not then spend the strength of your zeal for your religion in censuring others. The man that is most busy in censuring others is always least employed in examining himself.” – Thomas Lye

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!” – Abraham Kuyper

“No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him.” – D.L. Moody

“While the Law defines righteousness, only grace delivers it. The Law was never intended to be a means of obtaining grace; it was given to demonstrate to men that grace was desperately needed.” – Bob Deffinbaugh

“He is much happier that is always content, though he has ever so little, than he that is always coveting, though he has ever so much.” – Matthew Henry

“As base a thing as money often is, yet it can be transmuted into everlasting treasure… It can keep a missionary actively winning lost men to the light of the gospel and thus transmute itself into heavenly values. Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.” – A. W. Tozer

“The Christian who has stopped repenting has stopped growing.” – A.W. Pink

Dane Ortland: This side of several months pondering Bavinck’s writings on justification, here’s my best attempt at a single (run-on) sentence articulating his view: “Justification, the outstanding blessing of salvation, is the Triune God’s counterintuitive gift of forensic acquittal and right status, an end-time decision announced now in the middle of history, consisting of Christ’s own righteous obedience freely imputed to sinners united to Christ through self-divesting and Christ-riveted faith.”

“Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.” – Augustine

Hudson Taylor was a British missionary to China. When he died in 1905, his Bible was found with a slip of paper as a bookmark. On that paper was written a prayer that Hudson prayed every day. It read:

Lord Jesus make Thyself to me
A living bright reality
More present to faith’s vision keen
Than any outward object seen
More near, more intimately nigh
Than e’en the sweetest earthly tie

“The idea of a hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a just and holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally, that the only person who would have enough authority to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus Himself.” – John Gerstner

“God is more interested in our holiness than in our comfort. He more greatly delights in the integrity and purity of his church than in the material well-being of its members. He shows himself more clearly to men and women who enjoy him and obey him than to men and women whose horizons revolve around good jobs, nice houses, and reasonable health. He is far more committed to building a corporate “temple’ in which his Spirit dwells than he is in preserving our reputations. He is more vitally disposed to display his grace than to flatter our intelligence. He is more concerned for justice than for our ease. He is more deeply committed to stretching our faith than our popularity. He prefers that his people live in disciplined gratitude and holy joy rather than in pushy self-reliance and glitzy happiness. He wants us to pursue daily death, not self-fulfillment, for the latter leaders to death, while the former leads to life.” – D.A. Carson

“When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy.” – Corrie Ten Boom

“I have never once feared the devil, but I tremble every time I enter the pulpit.” – John Knox

“God’s purpose in redeeming men from sin is not to give them freedom to do as they please but freedom to do as He pleases.” – John MacArthur

“Neither individuals nor councils created the canon; instead they came to recognize and acknowledge the self-authenticating quality of these writings, which imposed themselves as canonical upon the church.” – Bruce Metzger

“Scripture is of no use to us if we read it merely as a handbook for daily living without recognizing that its principle purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ and his gospel for the salvation of sinners. All Scripture coalesces in Christ, anticipated in the OT and appearing in the flesh in the NT. In Scripture, God issues commands and threatens judgment for transgressors as well as direction for the lives of his people. Yet the greatest treasure buried in the Scriptures is the good news of the promised Messiah. Everything in the Bible that tells us what to do is “law”, and everything in the Bible that tells us what God has done in Christ to save us is “gospel.” Much like medieval piety, the emphasis in much Christian teaching today is on what we are to do without adequate grounding in the good news of what God has done for us in Christ. “What would Jesus do?” becomes more important than “What has Jesus done?” The gospel, however, is not just something we needed at conversion so we can spend the rest of our Christian life obsessed with performance; it is something we need every day–the only source of our sanctification as well as our justification. The law guides, but only the gospel gives. We are declared righteous–justified–not by anything that happens within us or done by us, but solely by God’s act of crediting us with Christ’s perfect righteousness through faith alone.” – Michael Horton, Justified: Modern Reformation Essays on the Doctrine of Justification

“My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart, and to heal the broken one.” – John Newton

“According to the Bible, our repentance and faith are gifts of God to us; our conversion, our great change, occurs only by God’s grace.” – Mark Dever

“I simply define glory as the beauty of God unveiled. Glory is the resplendent radiance of His power and His personality. Glory is all of God that makes God God, and shows Him to be worthy of our praise and our boasting and our trust and our hope and our confidence and our joy.” – Sam Storms

“It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God.” – A.W. Tozer