“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus!” Hebrews 12:2

For every look at self take ten looks at Christ! Live near to Jesus—and all things will appear little to you in comparison with eternal realities.

How many millions of dazzling pearls and gems are at this moment hidden in the deep recesses of the ocean caves. Likewise, unfathomable oceans of grace are in Christ for you. Dive and dive again—you will never come to the bottom of these depths!

When you gaze upon the sun—it makes everything else dark; when you taste honey—it makes everything else tasteless. Likewise, when your soul feeds on Jesus—it takes away the sweetness of all earthly things; praise, pleasure, fleshly lusts, all lose their sweetness. Keep a continued gaze! Run, looking unto Jesus. So will the world be crucified to you—and you unto the world!  -Robert Murray M’Cheyne

He gets at our most fundamental idolatry and He ruthlessly crushes it in His unfathomable love and fatherly kindness and inscrutable wisdom and He goes after our greatest treasures and He leaves us with nothing but Himself so that we go limping on our way for the rest of our lives having learned, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.’ Don’t underestimate God. Don’t underestimate His ruthless, compassionate, gracious commitment to His glory or His commitment to your everlasting joy and good. He will pursue you graciously and ruthlessly and rip out the idols of your soul that would otherwise consume you. He is working for your joy and your good even when you cannot perceive it and have ceased to be able to feel anything anymore.

Even when it looks like God is being hard on His servants you can be assured that His provision is staggeringly and lavishly loving and generous and good and kind and that He will relentlessly and ruthlessly pursue you in His compassion in His grace and for your joy.”   -Ligon Duncan, in The Underestimated God: God’s ruthless, compassionate grace in the pursuit of his own glory and his ministers’ joy.

Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of Providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God; hence I infer that losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses or country, are God’s workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you. When the Lord’s blessed will bloweth cross your desires, it is best, in humility, to strike sail to Him, and to be willing to be led any way our Lord pleaseth.  -Samuel Rutherford

If I admit that God’s Will regulates the great movements of the universe I must admit that it equally regulates the small. It must do this, for the great depend upon the small. The minutest movement of my will is regulated by the will of God. And in this I rejoice. Woe is me if it be not so. If I shrink from so unlimited control and guidance, it is plain that I dislike the idea of being wholly at the disposal of God. I am wishing to be in part at my own disposal. I am ambitious of regulating the lesser movements of my will, while I give up the greater to His control. And thus it comes out that I wish to be a god to myself. I do not like the thought of God having all the disposal of my destiny. If He gets His will, I am afraid that I shall not get mine. It comes out, moreover, that the God about whose love I was so fond of speaking, is a God to whom I cannot trust myself implicitly for eternity. Yes, this is the real truth. Man’s dislike at God’s sovereignty arises from his suspicion of God’s heart. And yet the men in our day, who deny this absolute sovereignty, are the very men who profess to rejoice in the love of God, -who speak of that love as if there were nothing else in God but love. The more I understand of the character of God, as revealed in Scripture, the more shall I see that He must be sovereign, and the more shall I rejoice from my inmost heart that He is so.  –Horatius Bonar

Comfort your soul with three plain conclusions:

(1.) Every event is the product of God’s providence; not a sparrow, much less a saint falls to the ground by poverty, sickness, or persecution, but the hand of God is in it.

(2.) God has promised, ‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5).

(3.) God in wisdom conceals the comforts he intends to give you at the various stages of your life, so that he may encourage your heart to full dependence upon his faithful promises now. Thus, to try the metal of Abraham’s faith, he let him go on, until his hand was stretched forth to slay Isaac, and then he came to his rescue. Christ sent his disciples to sea, but he stayed behind himself, with the design to test their faith, and show his love. Comfort yourself with this: though you do not see God in the way, yet you will find him in the end.    – William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour

These words are a great comfort and encouragement to me this morning. Sometimes, living with disability in the family feels like being dragged over gravel. Sometimes, looking at disability square in the face is like seeing it for the first time even though you’ve been seeing and loving that face for thirty seven years. Sometimes, you listen to his words and smile and bite your lip to keep from crying.

And then you turn and make his pancakes through your tears.

If you are having trouble reading your Bible with deep and affecting meaning, imagine that you will die in about eight hours.  -John Piper

That ought to take care of ever reading the Scriptures with a ho-hum attitude.

The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.  -John Flavel

Jude reminds us that life itself is about God’s glory, and everything else is subservient to that.  And that means these two things: It means, first, that everything in our lives must be subsumed to the agenda of glorifying Him…and that says something about our personal priorities.  And, secondly, it says that every situation of our lives must be read in light of His ultimate glory.  Hard things and evil things happening to us is not the big problem in this world; God not getting glory is the big problem in this world.  And that ought to burn very close to the core of our being, the desire to see God get the glory that is due His name.

But I want to tell you something: When you begin to burn for a desire for His glory and your own circumstances and situations become displaced and decentralized, what you find is in your concern for His glory not that your needs are not met, but you find that in living for His glory that He is the One from whom all blessings flow.  -Ligon Duncan, in a sermon on Jude 24-25

Read the whole sermon here.

The Word of God is a spring of living water, a deep mine of costly treasure, a table with all sorts of food, and a garden with a variety of pleasant fruits. It contains the church’s charter with all of her privileges. It has precepts for the Christian’s reformation, and precious promises for her consolation. If the saint is afflicted, it can hold his head above water and keep him from sinking when the billows go over his soul. There are cordials rich enough to revive the most fainting spirit. If the saint is assaulted, the Word is his armour. If the soul is unholy, the Word can sanctify it. This water can wash out all the spots and stains. If the soul is an heir of hell, this Word can save it. This Word is deposited as a special treasure into the hands of the children of men, that they might obey God’s will and know the Just One. It is our duty to search and study this Book. It is a mercy that the tree of knowledge, the Word of God, is not a forbidden, but a commanded fruit. It grows in the very path to the tree of life. If you are a child of Adam, you have a deadly wound by neglecting the Word. You are like a frantic patient that throws away the only medicine that will give a cure. The Scripture is the word of Christ, and God commands your allegiance to hear him. The Word is the cabinet in which your Saviour, the pearl of infinite price, is found; and therefore you are commanded to look into it. (John 5:39). You should search as a covetous man does for silver. If you are a child of God I do not doubt that you delight to look into your heavenly Father’s will, and weigh every word in it, knowing that it is a great legacy bequeathed to you. It is your daily companion and counsellor; you dare not go without this cordial, being liable every day to faint; nor be without this weapon, being called every hour to fight.  -George Swinnock, Works, 1:141-143, in Voices from the Past

Who should rejoice, but those who have an infinite, all-sufficient, eternal God to be their portion, and who are as rich as heaven can make them? Let us break forth into praise. O infinite, astonishing mercy, that God should take dust and ashes into so near a bond of love as to be our God! Let us live as those who have God as their own, and walk in holy lives, that others may see there is something of God in us.  -Thomas Watson