“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
– Philippians 4:8
We try to make continuing attempts to update this list. Of course, these are not substitute, at any rate, for the peerless verses of The Inspired Volume (the Bible). Jer 18:14. Please use sparingly.
Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist.
Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God
We fear men so much — because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man’s terror scares you — turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
Your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure. Therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and Heaven shall make amends for all!
When we grow careless of keeping our souls — then God recovers our taste of good things again by sharp crosses.
How sweet is rest, after fatigue! How sweet will Heaven be, when our toilsome journey is ended.
Better be pruned to grow — than cut up to burn.
In our first paradise in Eden there was a way to go out — but no way to go in again. But as for the heavenly paradise, there is a way to go in — but not way to go out.
Look not how the Christian begins — but how he ends
Without Christ, the most stately palace is a Hell.
With Christ, the most stinking dungeon is a palace!We drown our sins in the Red Sea of Christ’s blood.
Christ is not truly prized at all — unless He is prized above all.
All the men in the world are either vessels of mercy or vessels of wrath — according to the will of God.
A believer’s heart is the garden where Christ has planted this sweet flower of His love.
Lovers of the world are much more afraid of losing their earthly substance, than they are of losing their immortal souls.
My sins are as the sand of the sea for number. O that my tears were as the water of the sea for abundance!
He who will be a saint — will be a sufferer.
Affliction, yes, death is to be chosen before iniquity.
It is better to be a chastened son, than an undisciplined bastard.
It is expedient that you should endure the cross — to inherit the crown.
How many men are there, that are easily drawn to immoderate sorrow for worldly crosses.
You never saw God in his mercy — when you do not see him in your afflictions.
To every believer, the debt-book is crossed out; the black lines of sin are crossed out in the red lines of Christ’s blood.
Words are the mirror of the mind — they show what is in the heart.
I believe that if I should preach to you the atonement of our Lord Jesus, and nothing else, twice every Sabbath day, my ministry would not be unprofitable.
The chief aim of the enemy’s assaults is to get rid of Christ, to get rid of the atonement, to get rid of His suffering in the place of men.
Calvary preaching, Calvary theology, Calvary books, Calvary sermons! These are the things we want. And in proportion as we have Calvary exalted and Christ magnified, the gospel is preached.
No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like the scene on Calvary.
I wish that our ministry—that mine especially—might be tied and tethered to the cross. I would have no other subject to set before you but Jesus only.
Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.
I believe that as often as I transgress, God is more ready to forgive me than I am ready to offend.
If you wish to know God, you must know His Word. If you wish to perceive His power, you must see how He works by His Word. If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word.
I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.
If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to pieces, but make it agree with this book. If there be anything in the church to which you belong which is contrary to the inspired Word, leave that church.
I view the difficulties of Holy Scripture as so many prayer stools upon which I kneel and worship the glorious Lord. What we cannot comprehend by our understandings we apprehend by our affections.
Bible study is the metal that makes a Christian. This is the strong meat on which holy men are nourished.
Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up into your very soul, till it saturates your heart!
If my sermons kept people from reading the Bible for themselves, I would like to see the whole stock in a blaze and burned to ashes.
If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all. And the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it. Still, imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on earth to us.
The man who cannot weep cannot preach. At least, if he never feels tears within, even if they do not show themselves without, he can scarcely be the man to handle such themes as those which God has committed to his people’s charge.
I think the preacher should feel a burning desire for his hearers’ conversion, and even an intense anguish of heart for the immediate salvation of those to whom he speaks.
Love your fellowmen, and cry about them if you cannot bring them to Christ. If you cannot save them, you can weep over them. If you cannot give them a drop of cold water in hell, you can give them your heart’s tears while they are still in this body
Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching—where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus.
Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better than I do, but they could not preach a better gospel.
No man ever need fear offering a reward of a thousand pounds to a contented man, for if anyone came to claim the reward, he would prove his discontent.
You say, “If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.” You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.
A man’s contentment is in his mind, not in the extent of his possessions. Alexander the Great, with all the world at his feet, cries for another world to conquer.
What a Magna Carta is this! The old covenant says, “Keep the law and live.” The new covenant is, “You shall live, and I will lead you to keep my law, for I will write it on your heart.”
I can never cease to wonder that God has elected me.
From the Word of God I gather that damnation is all of man, from top to bottom, and salvation is all of grace, from first to last. He that perishes chooses to perish; but he that is saved is saved because God has chosen to save him.
Whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the Word of God as with an iron pen, and there is no getting rid of it.
There is no saint here who can out-believe God. God never out-promised himself yet.
Men will never become great in theology until they become great in suffering.
Our infirmities become the black velvet on which the diamond of God’s love glitters all the more brightly.
So honesty, sobriety, and such things may be very good among men. But all these things put together, without faith, do not please God. Virtues without faith are whitewashed sins.
The cardinal error against which the gospel of Christ has to contend is the effect of the tendency of the human heart to rely on salvation by works.
I must frankly confess that of all my expectations of heaven, I will cheerfully renounce ten thousand things if I can but know that I shall have perfect holiness. If I may become like Jesus Christ—pure and perfect—I cannot understand how any other joy can be denied me. If we shall have that, surely we shall have everything.
There is nothing which my heart desires more than to see you, the members of this church, distinguished for holiness. It is the Christian’s crown and glory. An unholy church! It is of no use to the world and of no esteem among men.
In proportion as a church is holy, in that proportion will its testimony for Christ be powerful.
In holiness God is more clearly seen than in anything else, save in the person of Christ Jesus the Lord, of whose life such holiness is but a repetition.
I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
Holiness is better than morality. It goes beyond it. Holiness affects the heart. Holiness respects the motive. Holiness regards the whole nature of man.
There can be no such thing as perfect happiness till there is perfect holiness.
Unless our faith makes us pine after holiness, it is no better than the faith of devils, and perhaps it is not even so good as that.
To me the greatest privilege in all the world would be perfect holiness. If I had my choice of all the blessings I can conceive of, I would choose perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus, or, in one word, holiness.
If you could pray the best prayer in the world without the Holy Spirit, God would have nothing to do with it. But if your prayer be broken and lame and limping, if the Spirit made it, God will look upon it and say, as he did upon the works of creation, “It is very good.
All our perils are nothing, so long as we have prayer.
There is no secret of my heart which I would not pour into [the Lord’s] ear. There is no wish that might be deemed foolish or ambitious by others, which I would not communicate to Him.
If there be anything I know, anything that I am quite assured of beyond all question, it is that praying breath is never spent in vain.
The more we pray, the more we shall want to pray. The more we pray, the more we can pray. The more we pray, the more we shall pray
The Word without the Spirit of God — is like the carcass without the soul.
Whatever afflictions, curses, and punishments are in the world — they are ordained by God for the sin of man.
A heart full of grace, is better than an head full of notions.
Christians are jewels — and Heaven is the golden cabinet where they shall be locked up safe!
Let others be ambitious for honor, knowledge, wealth, pleasure — but you are to be covetous, ambitious, and zealous for holiness.
A sanctified heart — is better than a silver tongue.
The end of study is knowledge, but the end of meditation is holiness.
Believers are wise to admire nothing in this world. Jesus did not care for it when Satan offered him all the kingdoms of the world.
Holiness is spiritual beauty: sin is spiritual deformity.
Two things make the saints maligned by the men of the world. Saints hate what the world loves — and vilify what the world adores.
Hypocrisy mostly ends in apostasy.
A devout heathen is better than a profane Christian.
He who prays without faith and grace is a hypocrite and he who does not pray at all is an atheist.
By the law we see our misery — and by the gospel we see our remedy.
A godly man must not impose on his conscience the necessity of observing such rules of practice which God has not prescribed.
God’s love does not spring from delight in our beauty — but from pity to our deformity.
God presently gives an everlasting assurance of salvation to all who love Christ sincerely.
Would you love Christ — use Him much, and then more you will prize Him, and more you will love Him.
We should love Christ’s person — more entirely than his benefits.
Meditation is a serious, earnest and purposed musing upon some point of Christian instruction.
No man can die in the Lord — who does not live to the Lord.
Good works do not make a good man — but a good man does make works good.
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose
If once a man ceases to pray against sin, he is in danger to commit it.
No man ever miscarried for being a great sinner; but only for being an impenitent sinner.
I had rather be a preacher in a pulpit, than a prince on a throne.
Christianity is no jesting matter; the profession of Christ is the most serious business in the world.
By the key of faith, we fetch daily new grace out of Christ’s treasury to sanctify us more and more.
He who does not care to be like Christ, certainly has no love to him, nor any saving interest in his love.
Sin is infinite because it is against an infinite God, bringing an infinite punishment because it cannot be atoned for by finite creatures.
Let courage animated by faith dwell in you — and you will readily overcome both the frowns and flatteries of the world.
The mission of the church is missions
We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first.
If God calls you to be a missionary, don’t stoop to be a king
Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God
If Christ be our Light, we shall not walk in darkness. If He be our Wisdom, we shall not err. If He be our Life, we shall never see death. If He is our Good, we shall fear no evil.
The myth of influence seduces Christians into believing that by compromising important theological truths more people can be influenced for Christ.