Alvin > Alvin's Quotes

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
― D.A. Carson

“... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior. ”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“...sometimes God chooses to bless us and make us people of integrity in the midst of abominable circumstances, rather than change our circumstances.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

(Letter 16, 1657)”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters

“Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.”
― Blaise Pascal

“No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“All truth is given by revelation, either general or special, and it must be received by reason. Reason is the God-given means for discovering the truth that God discloses, whether in his world or his Word. While God wants to reach the heart with truth, he does not bypass the mind.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“And yet some people actually imagine that the revelation in God’s Word is not enough to meet our needs. They think that God from time to time carries on an actual conversation with them, chatting with them, satisfying their doubts, testifying to His love for them, promising them support and blessings. As a result, their emotions soar; they are full of bubbling joy that is mixed with self-confidence and a high opinion of themselves. The foundation for these feelings, however, does not lie within the Bible itself, but instead rests on the sudden creations of their imaginations. These people are clearly deluded. God’s Word is for all of us and each of us; He does not need to give particular messages to particular people.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory.”
― Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections

“One of these grand defects, as I humbly conceive, is this, that children are habituated to learning without understanding.”
― Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 16: Letters and Personal Writings

“It does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend, as well as preaching, to give a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion in their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already. ”
― Jonathan Edwards

“Nothing sets a Christian so much out of the devil's reach than humility.”
― Jonathan Edwards

“If Christ has died for me, I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.”
― C.H. Spurgeon

“As for His failing you, never dream of it -- hate the thought of it. The God who has been sufficient until now, should be trusted to the end.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“God's thoughts of you are many, let not yours be few in return.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: Spurgeon's Classic Work on the Psalms

“A sheep in the midst of wolves is safe compared with the Christian in the midst of ungodly men.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Revival begins by Christians getting right first and then spills over into the world.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty of it, but it has either been led captive by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“All the devils in hell and tempters on earth could do us no injury if there were no corruption in our own natures.”
― C.H. Spurgeon