Martin Luther Quotes on Reformation Day

The whole being of any Christian is faith and love. Faith brings the person to God, love brings the person to people.

God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day.

From the beginning of my Reformation I have asked God to send me neither dreams, nor visions, nor angels, but to give me the right understanding of His Word, the Holy Scriptures; for as long as I have God's Word, I know that I am walking in His way and that I shall not fall into any error or delusion.

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!

Pray like it all depends on God, then when you are done, go work like it all depends on you.

Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine; yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.

I'll trust in God's unchanging Word, till soul and body sever. For though all things pass away, His Word shall stand forever.

Feelings come and feelings go, And feelings are deceiving; My warrant is the Word of God-- Naught else is worth believing. Though all my heart should feel condemned For want of some sweet token, There is One greater than my heart Whose Word cannot be broken. I'll trust in God's unchanging Word Till soul and body sever, For, though all things shall pass away, HIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER!

The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.

When Satan tells me I am a sinner he comforts me immeasurably, since Christ died for sinners.

Ah, if I could only pray the way that dog looks at meat.

No one can believe how powerful prayer is and what it can effect, except those who have learned it by experience. Whenever I have prayed earnestly, I have been heard and have obtained more than I prayed for. God sometimes delays, but He always comes.

I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!

The world doesn't want to be punished. It wants to remain in darkness. It doesn't want to be told that what it believes is false. If you also don't want to be corrected, then you might as well leave the church and spend your time at the bar and brothel. But if you want to be saved-and remember that there's another life after this one-you must accept correction.

Great Quotes in Loving Jesus part 5

My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, Galatians 4:19

Thanks be to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast won for us, for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for us.
O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly and follow thee more nearly day by day. -attributed to St Richard of Chichester (1253)

Our age has been sadly deficient in what may be termed spiritual greatness.  At the root of this is the modern disease of shallowness.  We are all too impatient to meditate on the faith we profess… It is not the busy skimming over religious books or the careless hastening through religious duties which makes for a strong Christian faith.  Rather, it is unhurried meditation on gospel truths and the exposing of our minds to these truths that yield the fruit of sanctified character.  -Maurice Roberts

In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds.  If he can keep us engaged in “muchness” and “manyness,” he will rest satisfied.” -Richard Foster

Prayer, secret, fervent, believing prayer—lies at the root of all personal godliness -William Carey

The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer;  they do not go on praying;  they do not persevere.  If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it.  Oh, how good, and kind, and gracious, and condescending is the One with Whom we have to do!  He has given me, unworthy as I am, immeasurably above all I had asked or thought!   -George Muller

We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living.  This attitude finds it way into the church.  We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury.  As a result, discipline practically has disappeared.  What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician’s instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not “disciplined”? -AW Tozer

Great Quotes in Loving Jesus part 4

Apply your heart to instruction (discipline) and your ears to words of knowledge.  Proverbs 23:12

The alternative to discipline is disaster. -Vance Havner

“My central aim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing—by following Him in the overall style of life he chose for Himself.  If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that He knew how to live.  We can, through faith and grace, become like Christ by practicing the types of activities He engaged in, by arranging our whole lives around the activities He Himself practiced in order to remain constantly at home in the fellowship of His Father.” -Dallas Willard

Ours is an undisciplined age.  The old disciplines are breaking down… Above all, the discipline of divine grace is derided as legalism or is entirely unknown to a generation that is largely illiterate in the Scriptures.  We need the rugged strength of Christian character that can only come from discipline. -V. Raymond Edman

“I must take care above all that I cultivate communion with Christ, for though that can never be the basis of my peace—mark that—yet it will be the channel of it.” -Charles Spurgeon

The Spiritual Disciplines are the “Door to Liberation.” Richard Foster

“Freedom and discipline have come to be regarded as mutually exclusive, when in fact freedom is not at all the opposite, but the final reward, of discipline.” -Elizabeth Elliot

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, `Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.' Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus' name, Amen. -AW Tozer

Great Quotes in Loving Jesus part 3

 

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. Psalm 42:1

“Satan’s cause is never more in danger than when a human being no longer desiring, but still intending to do God’s will,  looks around upon a world from which every trace of God seems to have vanished and asks why he has been forsaken, yet still obeys.” C.S. Lewis “The Screwtape Letters”

"If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

 

“The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with god, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. . . . Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache”  CS Lewis,  The Weight of Glory

Great Quotes in Loving Jesus part 2

“At the same moment the Trinity filled me full of heartfelt joy, and I knew that all eternity was like this for those who attain heaven. For the Trinity is God, and God the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and keeper, our eternal lover, joy and bliss—all through our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . We have got to realize the littleness of creation and to see it for the nothing that it is before we can love and possess God who is uncreated. This is the reason why we have no ease of heart or soul, for we are seeking our rest in trivial things which cannot satisfy, and not seeking to know God, almighty, all-wise, all-good. He is true rest. It is His will that we should know Him, and His pleasure that we should rest in Him. Nothing less will satisfy us. . . . We shall never cease wanting and longing until we possess Him in fulness and joy. Then we shall have no further wants. Meanwhile His will is that we go on knowing and loving until we are perfected in heaven. . . . The more clearly the soul sees the blessed face by grace and love, the more it longs to see it in its fullness.” Julian of Norwich, in her Revelations of Divine Love

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." John 6:51
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. John 6:54-56
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.  "You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." John 6:66-69

Great Quotes in Loving Jesus part 1

As the deer pants for streams of water so my soul pants for you, O God. Psalm 42:1

"Are you not thirsty?" said the lion. "I’m dying of thirst," said Jill. "Then drink," said the lion. "May I- could I- would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill. The lion answered this only by a look and very low growl. As Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. "Will you promise not to- do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill. "I make no such promise," said the lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer the lion. "Do you eat girls?" she said. "I have swallowed up, consumed girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. "I daren’t come and drink," said Jill. "Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. "Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then." The lion said, "There is no other stream." (C.S. Lewis "The Chronicles of Narnia")

‘Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts. Their cry has been, ‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?’ Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent Christians look with languid eye and entertain no hope of reaching.’ I can conceive of nothing more significant and compelling than the beatific vision of the living God, and if our capacity for this vision relates to faithfulness in this life, every other concern should pale in comparison.” A.W. Tozer

Counting the COST: by CS Lewis

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13

William Law, in his terrible, cool voice, said,… ‘If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead.’ Those are hard words to take. Will it really make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or art, whisky or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies. Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?

It is a remarkable fact that on this subject Heaven and Hell speak with one voice. The tempter tells me, ‘Take care. Think how much this good resolve, the acceptance of the Grace, is going to cost.’ But Our Lord equally tells us to count the cost. Even in human affairs great importance is attached to the agreement of those whose testimony hardly ever agrees. Here, more. Between them it would seem to be pretty clear that paddling is of little consequence. What matters, what Heaven desires and Hell fears, is precisely that further step, out of our depth, out of our control.

Stay Close: by Sarah Young

Jeremiah 31:25
For I will satisfy the weary soul,

and every languishing soul I will replenish.

You have been on a long, uphill journey, and your energy is almost spent. Though you have faltered at times, you have not let go of My hand. I am pleased with your desire to stay close to Me. There is one thing, however, that displeases Me: your tendency to complain. You may talk to Me as much as you like about the difficulty of the path we are following. I understand better than anyone else the stresses and strains that have afflicted you. You can ventilate safely to Me, because talking with Me tempers your thoughts and helps you see things from My perspective.

Complaining to others is another matter altogether. It opens the door to deadly sins such as self-pity and rage. Whenever you are tempted to grumble, come to Me and talk it out. As you open up to Me, I will put My thoughts in your mind and My song in your heart.

Philippians 2:14-15
Do all things without grumbling or disputing,

that you may be blameless and innocent,

children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.

Take up Your Cross: by Henry Blackaby

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”      Matthew 16:24

Your “cross” is God’s will for you, regardless of the cost. Taking up your cross is a choice; it is not beyond your control. You may have health problems or a rebellious child or financial pressures, but do not mistake these as your “cross to bear.” Neither circumstances you face nor consequences of your own actions are your cross. Your cross will be to voluntarily participate in Christ’s sufferings as He carries out His redemptive purposes (Phil. 3:10). Paul said he rejoiced in his sufferings because he knew that by them he was able to participate in the suffering required to bring others into Christian maturity (Col. 1:24).

We tend to want to go immediately from “denying ourselves” to “following Jesus.” But you can never follow Jesus unless you have first taken up your cross. There are aspects of God’s redemptive work that can be accomplished only through suffering. Just as Christ had to suffer in order to bring salvation, there will be hardships you may have to endure in order for God to bring salvation to those around you. Jesus did not talk with His disciples about the cross until they had come to know He was the Christ (Matt. 16:21). You will never be able to endure the suffering of the cross unless you have first been convinced that Jesus is the Christ. Once you have settled your relationship with Christ, He will introduce you to your cross.

There is no Christianity without a cross. If you are waiting for a relationship with God that never requires suffering or inconvenience, then you cannot use Christ as your model. God’s will for you involves a cross. First, take up your cross, then you can follow Him.

Self Talk? or Talk to Self? by M.L. Jones Spiritual Depression

Psalm 42:5-6
 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and
 my God. My soul is downcast within me;

therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon--from Mount Mizar.

I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing “ourselves” to talk to us! 

Do you realize what that means? 

I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. 

Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical?  Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?  Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning.  You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back problems of yesterday, etc.  Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you?  Your self talk is talking to you. 

Now the Psalmist’s treatment was this: 

Instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. 

“Why are you so downcast, O my soul?”

he asks.  His soul had been depressing him, crushing him.  So he stands up and says:

“Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you… Why are you so downcast? – what business have you to be disquieted?…

And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who He is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. 

Then having done that, end on this great note:  Defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the Devil and the whole world, and say with this man “I will yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.”

Psalm 42:7

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

I Talk Back to the Devil! By AW Tozer

James 4:7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you

“The devil makes it his business to keep Christians in bondage, bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in their own grave clothes!”
WHY DOESN’T THE OLD DEVIL, SATAN, give up and bow out of the picture when a person becomes a believing Christian?
Although he is a dark and sinister foe dedicated to the damnation of humans, I think he knows that it is no use trying to damn a forgiven and justified child of God who is in the Lord’s hands.
So, it becomes the devil’s business to keep the Christian’s spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins and trespasses. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in our own grave clothes.
He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage, we will never be able to claim our rightful spiritual heritage. He knows also that while we continue bound in this kind of enslavement we are not much better off than when we were spiritually dead.
This is one reason why the Christians in today’s churches are behaving like a flock of frightened sheep—so intimidated by the devil that we can’t even say “Amen”!
I admit that occasionally you find a few who are just childishly happy about everything, but that is not what I mean. Often these are just like children playing in the market places, having never been seriously engaged in the conflict on the spiritual battlefield.
Show me an individual or a congregation committed to spiritual progress with the Lord, interested in what the Bible teaches about spiritual perfection and victory, and I will show you where there is strong and immediate defiance by the devil!

The Nature of Regeneration: by Oswald Chambers

When it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me… Galatians 1:15-16

If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.

The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.

Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.

Your Real Self: by CS Lewis

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17

There must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also ours, and ours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Approach & Trust: by Sarah Young

while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” Isaiah 6:3

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, And in His word I do hope. Psalm 130:5

 “WHEN YOU APPROACH ME in stillness and in TRUST, you are strengthened. You need a buffer zone of silence around you in order to focus on things that are unseen. Since I am invisible, you must not let your senses dominate your thinking. The curse of this age is overstimulation of the senses, which blocks our awareness of the unseen and world.

The tangible world still reflects My Glory, to those who have eyes that see and ears that hear. Spending time alone with Me is the best way to develop seeing eyes and hearing ears. The goal is to be aware of unseen things even as you live out your life in the visible world.”