(1) Please pray for a young lady named Alisa in a Denver hospital (daughter of a very good friend of mine, Jim). She is only 17 and is under going radiation treatment for a brain tumor. Thanks so much. Jim writes:

The latest up-date on my lovely daughter Alisa. 3 weeks ago they did a new MRI. That showed the original tumor had not grown any with the chemo and radiation treatments. But it also showed that a new cyst had developed. She was scheduled to go back to Childrens Hospital on Monday the 17 to possibly have more surgery.

They thought they might need to put in another drain… Alisa had been having severe headaches for the past couple days. They did a new MRI and decided that at 7:30 am Friday they are going back in to put the shunt, back in her head. It seems the liquid has built up and is pushing on the nerves. The MRI did also show that the new cyst has gotten smaller too. So please keep praying for her, GOD BLESS. The picture is Alisa in the center and her 2 awesome sisters. 🙂

(2) There’s a variety of resources in this week’s Friday Ligonier $5 sale worth considering.

(3) Some quotes:

“No therapist, no psychiatrist can relieve you of guilt. He or she may help you to resolve feelings of false guilt that can arise for a variety of reasons. Prescription drugs may provide certain kinds of ease. But no therapy, no course of drugs, can deliver you from real guilt. Why? Because being guilty is not a medical condition or a chemical disorder. It is a spiritual reality. It concerns your standing before God. The psychiatrist cannot forgive you; the therapist cannot absolve you; the counselor cannot pardon you. But the message of the Gospel is this: God can forgive you, and He is willing to do so.” – Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

“Faith is the fruit of regeneration, not the cause of it.” – R.C. Sproul

“Unity without the gospel is a worthless unity; it is the very unity of hell.” J.C. Ryle

“If you do not listen to theology, that will not mean you have no ideas about God, rather it will mean you have a lot of wrong ones.” – C.S. Lewis

“It is true that the Lord’s Supper is only for sinners. But within that group, it is only for repentant sinners.” – Mark Dever

“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” – William James

“The bare knowledge of God’s will is inefficacious, it doth not better the heart. Knowledge alone is like a winter sun, which hath no heat or influence; it doth not warm the affections, or purify the conscience. Judas was a great luminary, he knew God’s will, but he was a traitor.” – Thomas Watson

“A supporter of “easy-believism” argued, “The opposite of “easy believism” is “difficult believism.” So how good exactly does one have to be before he is *really* a Christian in your estimation?”

Answer: The Bible declares that Belief (or faith) is not merely difficult, but rather IMPOSSIBLE for the natural man. So the opposite of “easy believism” is not “difficult believism”. Those who think faith is either “easy” or “difficult” are both wrong, according to the Bible. If someone thinks faith is “easy” or even possible, apart from grace, then they do not understand our condition as human beings or our real need of grace. Those who think faith is something easy are making the same mistake as those who think good works save. Both are trusting in some self-generated meritorious act, rather than Christ alone who provides everything we need for salvation, including a new heart to believe and obey.” – John Hendryx

(1) There’s a variety of resources in this week’s Justification, the Church, the Sacraments, the Papacy and the Marian doctrines. Normally $17 it is just $5 in the online Friday sale. Perhaps you might consider ordering multiple copies to hand out to others who may be confused about these vital issues here.

(2) “Do you mean by that, asks someone, that the saints in the Old Testament were not forgiven? Of course I do not. They were obviously forgiven and they thanked God for the forgiveness. You cannot say for a moment that people like David and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were not forgiven. Of course they were forgiven. But they were not forgiven because of those sacrifices that were then offered. They were forgiven because they looked to Christ. They did not see this clearly, but they believed the teaching, and they made these offerings by faith. They believed God’s Word that He was one day going to provide a sacrifice, and in faith they held to that. It was their faith in Christ that saved them, exactly as it is faith in Christ that saves now. That is the argument.” – Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross, The Vindication of God

(3) Some C. H. Spurgeon quotes:

“When we shall see the dead rise from the grave by their own power, then may we expect to see ungodly sinners of their own free will turning to Christ.”

“My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is now doing for me.”

“Regarding the gospel, make it your ambition to be a copyist, never an original.”

“Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.”

“If there be one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we are to insert ourselves, then we are lost; but this is our confidence, the Lord who began will perfect. He has done it all, must do it all, and will do it all. Our confidence must not be in what we have done, nor in what we have resolved to do, but entirely in what the Lord will do.”

“In one word, the great pillar of the Christian’s hope is substitution. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ for the guilty, Christ being made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, Christ offering up a true and proper expiatory and substitutionary sacrifice in the room, place, and stead of as many as the Father gave him, who are known to God by name, and are recognized in their own hearts by their trusting in Jesus-this is the cardinal fact of the gospel.”

“No man can do me a truer kindness in this world than to pray for me.”