Allen Murray

“Impoverished is the pastor who lacks trusted mentors.”
― Phil A. Newton, Shepherding the Pastor: Help for the Early Years of Ministry

“The best preparation for the study of [the gospel] is neither great intellectual ability nor much scholastic learning but a conscience impressed with a sense of our actual condition as sinners in the sight of God. A deep conviction of sin is the one thing needful in such an inquiry, a conviction of the fact of sin, as an awful reality in our own personal experience of the power of sin as an inveterate evil cleaving to us continually, and having its roots deep in the innermost recesses of our hearts.”
― Jerry Bridges, The Transforming Power of the Gospel

“When pride has made the sermon, it goes with us into the pulpit. It forms our tone, it animates us in the delivery, and it takes us away from that which may be displeasing, no matter how necessary it is, and sets us in pursuit of vain applause. Basically, it makes men, both in studying and preaching, to seek themselves and deny God, when they should seek God’s glory and deny themselves. When they should be asking what they should say and how they should say it to please God best and do the most good, pride makes them ask what they should say and how they should deliver it to be considered an educated, able preacher and to be applauded by all who hear them.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“While we condemn papal infallibility, too many of us want to be popes ourselves and have everyone hold to our decision or opinion, as if we were infallible.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]