"Ungodliness may be defined as living one’s everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God’s will, or of God’s glory, or of one’s dependence on Godthe sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God. We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out into the day’s activities and basically live as though God doesn’t exist.”
"Envy is the painful and oftentimes resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by someone else. Sometimes we want that same advantage, leading to the further sin of covetousness. And sometimes we just resent the other person having something we don’t have. But we don’t just envy people in general. Usually, there are two conditions that tempt us to envy. First, we tend to envy those with whom we most closely identify. Second, we tend to envy in them the areas we value most.”
"When we see how really bad the bad news is, we’ll be in a better position to appreciate how really good the good news is"
"At the end of his life, [John] Newton said to a friend, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.”
"not only does the gospel prepare me to face my sin, it also frees me up to do so. Facing our sin causes us to feel guilty. Of course we feel guilty because we are guilty. And if I believe, consciously or unconsciously, that God still counts my guilt against me, my instinctive sense of self-protection forbids me to acknowledge my sin and guilt, or, at the least, I seek to minimize it. But we cannot begin to deal with a particular manifestation of sin, such as anger or self-pity, until we first openly acknowledge its presence and activity in our lives. So I need the assurance that my sin is forgiven before I can even acknowledge it, let alone begin to deal with it."
"we need to be honest and humble enough to admit our subtle sins in order to experience the love that comes through the forgiveness of those sins. But we must also face them in order to deal with them. The worst sin of all, in practical terms, is the denial of the subtle sins in our lives. We cannot deal with them until We admit their presence. The first step in dealing with any sin is to acknowledge it and repent in one’s attitude toward it."
"It is forgiveness that sets a man working for God. He does not work in order to be forgiven, but because he has been forgiven, and the conciousness of his sin being pardoned makes him long more for its entire removal than he ever did before.An unforgiven man cannot work. He has not the will, nor the power, nor the liberty. He is in chains. Israel in Egypt could not serve Jehovah. "let my people go, that they may serve me" was God's message to Pharaoh (Exodus 8:1): first liberty, then service.A forgiven man is the true worker, the true lawkeeper. He can, he will, he must work for God. He has come into contact with that part of God's character which warms his cold heart. Forgiving love constrains him. He cannnot but work for Him who has removed his sins from him as far as the east is from the west. Forgiveness has made him a free man, and given him a new and most loving Master. Forgiveness, recieved freely from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, acts as a spring, an impulse, a stimulus of divine potency. It is more irresistible than law, or terror, or threat"
"The extent to which we realise and acknowledge our own sinfullness, and the extent to which we realise the total forgiveness and cleansing from those sins, will determine the measure of our love to God. So if we want to grow in our love for God and in the acceptable obediance that flows out of that love, we must keep coming back to the cross and the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. That is why it is so important that we keep the gospel before us evey day. Because we sin every day, and our consciences condemn us evey day, we need the gospel every day."
