Before God enables his people to bring in a harvest, he pours out a Spirit of prayer upon them. The surest sign that God is about to send power upon us is a great movement of prayer in our midst.

Your power to give a compassionate witness about Jesus is in direct proportion to how precious Jesus is to you.

Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn't look like one.

The question that Jesus drives us to ask again and again is not, "How much should I give?" but rather, "How much dare I keep?"

If the church has no compelling reasons for believing the biblical portrait of Jesus, then we are acting like well-trained animals who can be turned this way and that by arbitrary incentives.

If you ever meet a man who cares nothing for the praise and approval of men (Mark 12:14), but whose one controlling desire is to glorify God whom he loves with all his heart, believe that man. He is true.

Turn away from all the intellectual, physical, and religious tactics the world uses to evade its guilt, and rest in Jesus.

There is no true freedom where happiness depends on denying the inevitable; there is only slavery disguised in a thousand forms of fun and busyness.

We don't have a deep sense of peace and fulfillment when we have successfully deluded everybody about who we really are or what we really feel or think. There is a deep (and I believe God-given) longing to be authentic, not to be hypocrites.

Trusting Christ as Savior, surrendering to him as Lord, and orienting all of your family relations on him, transforms the home into a little heaven on earth.

We crave to be moved by some rare glimpse of greatness. We yearn for a vision of glory.

Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. Jesus saw that the time had come and set his face to fulfill his mission: to die in Jerusalem for our sake.

When Jesus commits his mother to John's care, he is showing us how our needs will be met when we leave everything to follow him.

Faith never says, "The righteousness that leads to life is inaccessible." But faith recognizes its own helplessness and gladly accepts this righteousness as a gift from God.

What counts in the new people is not who your parents are but whom you live for; and therefore a new symbol for the new covenant people is given, baptism.

If you want to enjoy God's peace and be the aroma of his grace in the world, your knowledge of him has to grow.

If the knowledge of God's glorious promises does not spur us on to strive against the tide, then we will be barren and fruitless and drift to our destruction.

The difference between mythical speculations and Christian faith is history. Our doctrines are not the result of clever head-work. They are the result of historical observation.

The meaning of Scripture does not change with every new reader or every new reading. It cannot be twisted to mean whatever we like. It is what it is, unchanging and unending.

Even though the rebellious and the licentious today may think they are safe, they should learn that "from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction is not sleeping."

The more you know of Christ and his way, the more severe your judgment will be for not trusting and obeying him.

Confident expectation of a new world of righteousness empowers us to live for peace and purity in the present.

A life lived for the world will go naked into judgment; a life lived for Christ will be laden with eternal riches.

The best fertilizer for our hope and godliness is the knowledge of our future in God's grace.

Silence about Christ is dogma. Not to teach the infinite value of Christ is to teach that he is negligible.

How different, how wonderful the use of our mouths would be if we lived by faith in the God who made the mouth and not by sight—by looking at our own clumsy tongue.

We can know God's will and maintain trust in his help, if we are familiar with the trajectories of his Word.

The good news of the Bible is not that we are not worms, but that God helps worms who trust him.

There is no necessary connection between age and wisdom, or youth and folly. Wisdom comes from the Lord and is offered to all ages.

If God undertakes to work for us, he cannot fail. He will succeed in providing all the services we need.

Every Christian has received a gift from God which he is responsible to use for the good of the church and for the glory of God.

God will fight against us and clog the joy of our lives until we return with our whole heart to him. For his purpose is to be God alone in the midst of his people.

Every staff on which we try to lean in our pride will snap and pierce us through. One refuge will be secure: God.

Conversion isn't just changing your mind but exchanging the love of comfort for the love of goodness and justice.

In order to be acclaimed Messiah and Lord, the Son of God had to come, defeat the enemy, and lead his people out of bondage in triumph over sin and Satan and death. And that he did on Good Friday and Easter.

Would I gain my life before a holy God if I died tonight? Am I ready to take my stand in the divine courtroom and hear the Judge pass an eternal sentence on me?

The violent nation will not boast forever. Very soon the recompense will come, and after that all the nations will render an account to God.

When we make disciples, we bid people to come and die to their old, destructive ways and to live for Jesus, who loved them and gave himself for them.

The belly of a fish hardly seems like salvation. But it was.

Nothing you do is a trifle if you do it in the name of God. He will shake heaven and earth to fill your labor with splendor.

The fountain of forgiveness has been opened for you. And if you cleanse yourself through faith in that fountain, all the subsequent promises to God's people are yours.

God uses little towns and youngest sons and slingshots to magnify his glory by contrast, to show that he is not the least dependent on human glory or greatness or achievement.

Christ came at Christmas to build a bridge across the chasm of sin to eternal life, but the name of the bridge is purity. The only way to eternal life is along the path of sanctification.

The point of Hosea is that God exalts his mercy by not giving up on his promiscuous wife.