The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear. 

– J. I. Packer 

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When we are inwardly tossed by various tempests, and when Satan attempts to disturb our consciences, let us remember that Christ is The Prince of Peace, and that it is easy for him quickly to allay all our uneasy feelings.

– John Calvin

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Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

– Collect for the First Sunday of Advent, Book of Common Prayer

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The Lord loves thankful people. They never cease to praise him, and they regularly thank him. In both good times and bad times, they offer praise and thanksgiving to God. They worship the Lord, the God of times, without regard to what the times are like. 

– Athanasius 

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In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. . . . And . . . pretty much anything . . . you worship will eat you alive. 

– David Foster Wallace

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God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. 

– C. S. Lewis

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To reconcile offending man, 
Make Justice drop her angry rod; 
What creature could have formed the plan, 
Or who fulfill it but a God? 
No drop remains of all the curse, 
For wretches who deserved the whole; 
No arrows dipped in wrath to pierce 
The guilty, but returning soul. 
Peace by such means so dearly bought, 
What rebel could have hoped to see? 
Peace by his injured Sovereign wrought, 
His Sovereign fastened to a tree.

– William Cowper 

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Question 33: What is justification? 
Answer: Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone. 

– Westminster Shorter Catechism

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Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in all your troubles and darkness, remember what you are and have. You have been loved with an everlasting love. You are supported by everlasting arms. 
You are recipients of everlasting life and heirs of an everlasting kingdom, all sealed and made sure by the blood of an everlasting covenant. 
Amen. 

— Dale Ralph Davis 

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The love of Christ! . . . It is like the blue sky into which you may see clearly, but the real vastness of which you cannot measure. It is like the deep, deep sea, into [which] you can look a little way, but its depths are unfathomable. It has a breadth without a bound, length without end, height without top, and depth without bottom. 

—Robert Murray M’Cheyne 

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