The Gift We Ought To Seek First - Andrew Murray

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord uttered His wonderful "how much more?" (Matthew 7:9-11). Here in Luke, where He repeats the question, there is a difference. Instead of speaking of giving good gifts, he says, "How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit." He thus teaches us that the best of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, that in this gift all others are comprised. The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father's gifts and the one he delights most to bestow. The Holy Spirit is therefore the gift we ought to seek first.

 

Taken from the book Teach Me to Pray by Andrew Murray 1828-1917

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Sickness Helps to Make Us Think Seriously Of God - JC Ryle

Sickness helps to make us think seriously of God, and our souls, and the world to come. Most people in their days of health can find no time for such thoughts. They dislike them. They put them away. They count them troublesome and disagreeable.

 

Now a severe disease has a wonderful power of mustering and rallying these thoughts, and bringing them up before the eyes of a man's soul. Even a wicked king like Benhadad, when sick, could think of Elisha (2 Kings 8:8.) Even unbelieving sailors, when death was in sight, were afraid, and "cried every man to his god." (Jonah 1:5.) Surely anything that helps to make people think is good.

 

Taken from the book Sickness by JC Ryle 1816-1900

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Meditate Before You Pray

Meditate before you pray. Meditate on the promises and presence of God. Ask his gracious help, and the teaching of his Spirit.

 

Taken from the book A Pastor's Counsel: Wise Words for Weary, Wounded, and Wandering Sheep

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Sorrow Is Good For Nothing but Sin - Thomas Watson

Sorrow is good for nothing but sin. If you shed tears for outward losses, it will not advantage you. Water for the garden, if poured in the sink, does no good. Powder for the eye, if applied to the arm, is of no benefit. Sorrow is medicinal for the soul, but if you apply it to worldly things it does no good. Oh that our tears may run in the right channel and our hearts burst with sorrow for sin!

 

Taken from the book The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson 1668

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They Will Not Profit Unless - Matthew Henry

We may entertain ourselves and our hearers long enough with discourses of the pleasantness of wisdom's ways, but they will not profit, unless they be mixed with faith. O that we would all mix faith with this truth! That we would yield to the evidence of it!

 

Taken from the book The Pleasantness of a Religious Life by Matthew Henry 1714

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The More I Suffer the More I – Charles Spurgeon

The more I suffer the more I cling to the gospel. It is true, and the fires only burn it into clearer certainty to my soul. I have lived on the gospel, and I can die on it. Never question it.

 

Taken from the book Letters of Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon 1834-1892

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Stars reflected in Puddles - Thomas Brooks

Although you see the stars sometimes by their reflections in a puddle, or in the bottom of a well, yes, in a stinking ditch; yet the stars have their situation in heaven. So, though you see a godly man in a poor, miserable, low, despised condition for the things of this world, yet he is fixed in heaven, in the region of heaven: "Who has raised us up," says the apostle, "and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph 2:6).

 

Taken from the book Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

by Thomas Brooks 1652

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