“When the Holy Spirit is at work in you, He’s at work in all of you, crafting you into the godly person He wants you to be. No weakness goes unaddressed. No sin pattern is off the table.”

“These nine words [fruit of the Spirit] are a highway leading you in the direction of greater degrees of fruitfulness, not a cul-de-sac leading you to park the car of your sanctification. Godliness is the goal. Being above reproach is the aim. As the Holy Spirit put it, both the Old and New Testaments, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44; 1 Pet 1:16).” —Aaron Menikoff

“The gospel therefore neither leads us to live a guilty life (since God has lovingly accepted us), nor an unholy life (Since the God who has accepted us is perfectly holy). To forget the first is to fall into the mistake Paul deals with in [Gal 5:1], and lose our freedom; to forget the second is to make the [Gal 5:13] error, and abuse our freedom. Both mean we lose grasp of the gospel.” —Tim Keller

One generation of Mennonites believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments.The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments.The following generation denied the gospel: the “entailments” became everything.—DA Carson

“Putting your faith in Christ means that you utterly renounce any other hope of being counted righteous before God. Do you find yourself trusting in your own good works? Faith means admitting that they are woefully insufficient, and trusting Christ alone. Do you find yourself trusting what you understand to be your good heart? Faith means acknowledging that your heart is not good at all, and trusting Christ alone. To put it another way, it means jumping off the edge of the pool and saying, ‘Jesus, if you don’t catch me, I’m done. I’ve no other hope, no other savior. Save me, Jesus, or I die.’ That is faith.”—Greg Gilbert

“But if the gospel is true, it does not matter who you are or who you were. You may be a spiritual and moral outcast, as marginal as the single, barren woman was in those ancient days. It does not matter. You will bear fruit, the kind that lasts. The gospel says: Grace is not just for fertile Hagars, but for barren Sarahs. If Sarah can havea future, anyone can! In fact it goes deeper even that this, because Paul is saying that the gospel of grace is especially for hte barren. The able and the ‘fertile’ think they can attain without God, and so they reject the gospel of grace … The gospel shows us that it is the ‘strong,’ moral, good, religious, and self-righteous who, in the end, are the slaves.”—Tim Keller

"I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace,Might more of his salvation know, and seek more earnestly his face,I hoped that in some favored hour at once He’d answer my requestAnd, by his love’s constraining pow’r, subdue my sins and give me rest.Instead of this, He made me feel the hidden evils of my heartAnd let the angry pow’rs of hell assault my soul in every part.‘Lord, why is this,’ I trembling cried; “Wilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?’’Tis in this way,’ the Lord replied, ‘I answer prayer for grace and faith.’These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set thee freeAnd break the schemes of earthly joy that thou may’st find thy all in Me.’”——John Newton

“A Church thus constituted ought forthwith to choose them a Pastor, Elder or Elders, and Deacons, (we reading of no other Officers, or Offices abiding in the Church) and what kind of Men they ought to be, and how qualified, is laid down by Paul to Timothy and to Titus. Moreover, they are to take special care, that both Bishops, Overseers, or Elders, as well as the Deacons, have in some competent manner all those Qualifications; and after in a Day of solemn Prayer and Fasting, that they have elected them, (whether Pastor, &c., or Deacons) and they accepting the Office, must be ordained with Prayer, and laying on of Hands of the Eldership; being first prov’d, and found meet and fit Persons for so Sacred an Office: Therefore such are very disorderly Churches who have no Pastor or Pastors ordained, they acting not according to the Rule of the Gospel, having something wanting.”—Benjamin Keach, 1697

Membership hardly feels meaningful when dozens or even hundreds of ‘members’ never show up. Now of course, some have good reasons for not attending church. The elderly, the sick, and those serving with the military or as missionaries are not the people I have in mind. Instead, i’m thinking of those on your membership rolls who long ago lost connection with your church. THese people should no longer be members of your church, for your sake and theirs. My own church went through this process of cleaning up our membership roll some time ago: two older women in the congregation spent nearly a year trying to locate the four hundred members who no longer attended. . . . And in one educationally lengthy members meeting, we voted each of the remaining people out of membership as an act of discipline. It was an act of discipline because as best we knew, they have failed to obey Hebrews 10:25, which tells us not to forsake assembling together. Before this meeting we had taught extensively about the importance of membership—and the importance of making membership meaningful. So the congregation was ready. But the process was painful nonetheless.” —Jamie Dunlop

“Granted that most of us know some individuals who are remarkable prayer warriors, is it not nevertheless true that by and large we are better at organizing than agonizing? Better at administering than interceding? Better at fellowship than fasting? Better at entertainment than worship? Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration? Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying?”—D. A. Carson

“But now, God has spoken ‘in Son’—we might paraphrase, ‘in the Son revelation.’ It is not that Jesus simply mediates the revelation; he is the revelation. It is not that Jesus simply brings the word; he is himself, so to speak, the Word of God, the climactic Word. . . .

[T]the author of Hebrews sees that teh climax of all the Old Testament revelation, mediated through prophets and stored in books, is not, strictly speaking, more books—but Christ Jesus himself. The New Testament books conregate around Jesus and bear witness to him who is hte climax of revelation.”

—D. A. Carson