Thomas Goodwin > Quotes

“Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks.”
― Thomas Goodwin

“The most thankful person is the most fully human.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“Our prayers are granted as soon as we have prayed, even though the process of fulfilling our requests has not yet begun.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“The person who knows Christ best is the person who will pray best.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“It is not enough to hear a sermon, but you must eat it down, take in what it commands, and then it will purge your heart...Take the word and digest it, squeeze the juice of it into thy heart, and it will purge thee from all contrary corruption." pg.73”
― Thomas Goodwin

“Take the fact that you were created to love. Your heart can find real joy only through love - through loving and being loved.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“All that God is, will supply your need.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“Thomas Goodwin Jr. wrote of his godly father: In all the violence of [his fever], he discoursed with that strength of faith and assurance of Christ’s love, with that holy admiration of free grace, with that joy in believing, and such thanksgivings and praises, as he extremely moved and affected all that heard him…. He rejoiced in the thoughts that he was dying, and going to have a full and uninterrupted communion with God. ‘I am going,’ said he, ‘to the three Persons, with whom I have had communion: they have taken me; I did not take them…. I could not have imagined I should ever have had such a measure of faith in this hour…. Christ cannot love me better than he doth; I think I cannot love Christ better than I do; I am swallowed up in God….’ With this assurance of faith, and fullness of joy, his soul left this world.89 ”
― Thomas Goodwin, A Habitual Sight of Him: The Christ-Centered Piety of Thomas Goodwin

“The Indwelling of Christ by faith…is to have Jesus Christ continually in one’s eye, a habitual sight of Him. I call it so because a man actually does not always think of Christ; but as a man does not look up to the sun continually, yet he sees the light of it…. So you should carry along and bear along in your eye the sight and knowledge of Christ, so that at least a presence of Him accompanies you, which faith makes. —Thomas Goodwin, Works, 2:411”
― Thomas Goodwin, A Habitual Sight of Him: The Christ-Centered Piety of Thomas Goodwin

“It is not enough to hear a sermon, but you must eat it down, take in what it commands, and then it will purge your heart...Take the word and digest it, squeeze the juice of it into thy heart, and it will purge thee from all contrary corruption.”
― Thomas Goodwin, Modern King James Version of the Holy Bible

“So, says Christ, injuries and unkindnesses do not so work upon me as to make me irreconcilable; it is my nature to forgive: "I am meek." Yes, but (may we think) he being the Son of God and heir of heaven, and especially being now filled with glory, and sitting at God's right hand, he may now despise the lowliness of us here below; though not out of anger, yet out of that height of his greatness and distance that he is advanced unto, in that we are too mean for him to marry, or be familiar with. He surely has higher thoughts than to regard such poor, low things as we are. And so though indeed we conceive him meek, and not prejudiced with injuries, yet he may be too high and lofty to condescend so far as to regard, or take to heart, the condition of poor creatures. No, says Christ; "I am lowly" also, willing to bestow my love and favour upon the poorest and meanest.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth

“Where God gives opportunity for preaching it is more than likely that he has some people to convert. Usually the Word of God takes root among some, though often in but a few.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“You are to consider that God does not hear you for your prayers’ sake (though not without them), but for His name’s sake and His Son’s sake, and because you are His child. The mother does not neglect to hear and relieve her child when the child cries, but she is tender, not because the child cries more loudly, but because the child cries, and the weaker the child is, the more pity she shows. Again, though the performance in itself might be weak, yet considered as a prayer, it might be strong, because a weak prayer may set the strong God to work. The faith we produce may be weak, yet because its object is Christ, therefore it justifies. So it is in prayer; it prevails, not because of the performance itself, but because of the name in which it is made, even Christ’s name. Therefore, as a weak faith justifies, so a weak prayer prevails as well as a stronger, and both for the same reason, for faith attributes all to God, and so does prayer. As faith is merely a receiving grace, so prayer is a begging grace.”
― Thomas Goodwin, A Habitual Sight of Him: The Christ-Centered Piety of Thomas Goodwin

“When God will have any great matters done, he sets his people's hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“God is infinitely beautiful in himself, and his beauty ought to attract you like a magnet to him.”
― Thomas Goodwin

“Ask God to make you like David: an intercessor, even in the midst of your own great sins and great needs.”
― Thomas Goodwin, What Happens When I Pray

“If through all thy discouragemnets thy condition prove worse and worse, so that thou canst not pray, but are struck dumb when thou comest into his presence, as David, then fall making signs when thou canst not speak; groan, sigh, sob, "chatter, "as Hezekiah did; bemoan thyself for thine unworthiness, and desire Christ to speak thy requests for thee, and God to hear him for thee.”
― Thomas Goodwin

“Dios es lo más glorioso en lo que nuestras mentes pueden fijarse, lo más atrayente. Los pensamientos acerca de Él deberían tragarse otros pensamientos, ya que no son dignos ni de compartir con Él el mismo día.”
― Thomas Goodwin, La vanidad de los pensamientos

“Paul heard not one sermon of Christ's (that he knew of) while on earth, and received the gospel from no man, apostle or other, but by the immediate revelation of Jesus Christ from heaven, as he speaks, Galatians 1:11-12. But he was converted by Christ himself from heaven, by immediate speech and conference of Christ himself with him, and this long after his ascension.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ

“Nuestros pensamientos y entendimiento fueron asignados para moderar, suavizar, enfriar y apartar nuestras pasiones cuando estas se desbordan, para gobernarlas y dominarlas. Pero, en lugar de eso, se sujetan a nuestras emociones, convirtiéndose en algo parecido al combustible para nuestros malos deseos, y haciéndoles arder más.”
― Thomas Goodwin, La vanidad de los pensamientos

“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' saith the Apostle; 'it is God that justifieth,' and it is their being elect that carries it. Yea, his love is so strong that if there be any accusation,—the Apostle makes the supposition, 'Who shall lay anything to their charge?' Sin or devil? —that if at any time sin or devil come to accuse, it moves God to bless. His love is so violent, it is so set, that he takes occasion to bless so much the more.”
― Thomas Goodwin

“cuidadoso”
― Thomas Goodwin, La vanidad de los pensamientos

“Algunos suspiran durante toda la semana hasta que suceden cosas nuevas, convierten en parte de la felicidad de sus vidas el estudiar cómo va el estado, más que el estudiar cómo marchan sus propios corazones, o incluso sus propios negocios. Sin embargo, no piensan en las miserias de la iglesia de Cristo, ni ayudan con sus oraciones.”
― Thomas Goodwin, La vanidad de los pensamientos

“Jesus heard all Christ's sermons.”
― Thomas Goodwin

“Now, take an estimate of Christ's heart herein, from those two holy apostles Paul and John, who were smaller resemblances of this in Christ. What, next to immediate communion with Christ himself, was the greatest joy they had to live upon in this world, but only the fruit of their ministry, appearing in the graces both of the lives and hearts of such as they had begotten unto Christ?”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth

“Love descends better than ascends, and so does the love of Christ, who indeed is love itself, and therefore comes down to us himself; "I will come again and receive you unto myself" (says Christ), "that so where I am, you may be also." That last part of his speech gives the reason of it, and also divulges his entire affection.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth

“Now the same Spirit dwelling in Christ's heart in heaven, that does in yours here, and always working in his heart first for you, and then in yours by commission from him; rest assured, therefore, that that Spirit stirs up in him bowels of mercy infinitely larger towards you than you can have unto yourselves.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth

“And the word συμπαθῆσαιis a deep word, signifying to suffer with us until we are relieved. And this affection, thus stirred up, is it which moves him so cordially to help us.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth

“Secondly, He bids his ambassadors declare, that as to that point men need not trouble themselves, nor take care about it; for he himself hath further been so zealously affected in this business, that he himself hath made full provision, and took order for that aforehand, and done it to their hand; He hath been in Christ, reconciling the world; that is, in him and by him, as a mediator, and umpire, and surety between them and him, this great matter hath been taken up and accorded. For he and Jesus Christ his only Son have from all eternity laid their counsels together (as I may so speak with reverence), to end this great difference; and they both contrived and agreed, that Christ should undertake to satisfy his Father, for all the wrong was done to him, all which he should take upon himself, as if he were guilty of it; he was made sin, 2 Cor. v. 21, that is, a surety and a satisfaction for it. And God the Father, upon it, is so fully satisfied, as he is ready not only not to impute their sins to them, ver. 19, but to impute all Christ’s righteousness to them, and to receive them into favour more fully than ever they were. He was made sin, that they might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Complete Works of Thomas Goodwin: Volume 5

“The Spirit prays in you, because Christ prays for you. He is an intercessor on earth, because Christ is an intercessor in heaven. As he did take off Christ's words, and used the same that he before had uttered, when he spoke in and to the disciples the words of life, so he takes off of Christ's prayers also when he prays in us; he takes but the words as it were out of Christ's mouth, or heart rather, and directs our hearts to offer them up to God. He also follows us to the sacrament, and in that glass shows us Christ's face smiling on us, and through his face, his heart; and thus helping of us to a sight of him, we go away rejoicing that we saw our Saviour that day.”
― Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth