Matthew C. Bingham > Quotes

“Where we seek refuge in a therapeutic Christianity that appeals to our wounded pride but is ultimately foreign to a scriptural worldview”
― Matthew C. Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation

“You read Scripture and hear God’s voice addressed to you. You meditate on Scripture and think about what he has said. Then your prayers, your words back to God, are a response to his prior word to you, and your prayers, in turn, are profoundly shaped in both form and content by the words of Scripture. When you are with other believers, you exhort and encourage and rebuke one another according to Scripture. Likewise, when you examine yourself, you measure your vices and your virtues not according to the cultural standards of the moment but according to the eternal standards set forth in God’s word. When you reflect on your life and the places God has providentially led you, you process and contextualize that journey within the promises and thought world of Scripture. For Reformation-minded Christians, spiritual formation cannot be reduced to Bible reading, but it can also never be separated from it.”
― Matthew C. Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation

“When one combines the Bible’s basic, overriding redemptive-historical orientation toward the Word and the words of God with the New Testament’s consistent assumption that a Christian pastor’s first priority is to “present [himself] to God as one approved, a worker . . . rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), one can clearly see how the Reformers’ positive agenda began with the need to prioritize the word of God for the people of God.”
― Matthew C. Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation

“medieval Catholicism consistently subordinated Scripture in ways that the Reformers found offensive and unbiblical. Regarding the sacraments, it is certainly not that the Reformers rejected them or had little interest in them—far from it. Rather, they believed that medieval Catholicism had become unduly tilted toward an overemphasis on the sacraments and their role in shaping the Christian community, and the Reformers sought to redress the balance.”
― Matthew C. Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation

“Spiritual formation is the conscious process by which we seek to heighten and satisfy our Spirit-given thirst for God (Ps. 42:1–2) through divinely appointed means and with a view toward “work[ing] out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) and becoming “mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).”
― Matthew C. Bingham, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation