Misc Quotes

I am hoping to get to post something on New Testament Worship later, but for now will just post this quote by Thomas Chalmers

This is a repost:

“I didn’t realize I liked my life so much until everything changed.”
—”Neighbours” Channel 5

That was certainly true for me, before I became ill this way; and based on my own experience this way, it strikes me we are often very ungrateful when life is good or reasonable for us, we often do not even seem to notice how blessed we are. WE are often filled with darkness and melancholic thoughts, because all things in our life are not to our liking, which speaks of very great pride, that we will be dark and gloomy because God hasn’t quite made our life “perfect.” And it also speaks of great ingratitude, because if we looked around and saw all the good things that are making our life overall so pleasant and good, we would praise God instead of going into blackness for the things that are less than perfect.
One cannot simultaneously praise God, and yet also experience total darkness or bad melancholy at the same time. If when things are good for us, or at least reasonable, when we start to succumb to the blues, or melancholy, we would do well to look around us and see all the good things in our lives, the very many blessings, and force our minds off the things that are less than perfect, and Praise Him, for those blessings and good things, and realize that we actually like our life quite a lot, and have much to be thankful for, and are not deserving of any of them, because we are all worthy of hell, in both this life and the next.
I only say in this in hindsight of course, of my life changing beyond anything that leaves any of it recognizable to me any longer. But I should have been more thankful before it changed, and are left agreeing with the quote above, “I didn’t realize I liked my life so much until everything changed”

And another reason is, all these things are uncertain blessings. We all tend to take our lives for granted, even the best among us. But everyone of those good things could be gone or destroyed by tomorrow. My life has not one thing left in it, that I used to so love and cherish, its all gone. Best to enjoy those good things God gives us, and use them for His glory, by us praising and thanking Him, for the good things He has done, and for His mercy on unworthy sinners such as we. It’s like the person who gets the news that he has six months to live. That news can so gall him, that he will spend the remaining of his days, utterly miserable because he knows his time is short, and he is anxious, afraid, angry and all the rest. Or he can realize his time is indeed short, and live every day as if it is his last, and make the most of what he has got while he has got it. I don’t mean by that, an eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die philosphy. But rather using the good things God has given us, in the way he intended for them to be. They are not just for our comfort and ease, and pleasure, they are also supports to our faith to keep us standing in it, when things take a turn for the worse. We should never enjoy the gifts without thinking of the giver. And we would never be in abject misery or melancholia, if we have good things in our lives and many blessings, if we were truly grateful, and thankful to the Giver of those things, and unless our pride didn’t tell us, we deserve more, because every single thing is not quite perfect.

If we are not thankful, and succumb to melancholia or angst despite them, then God has every reason to remove those things from us, and then we will realize like the quote, that we really do like our lives and have much to be thankful for, and concentrate on those rather than the wants, desires that we still have in our souls.

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Many do not pay attention to this, and regard the matter as if the practice of godliness consisted of only confessing the Christian faith, diligently attending church and the Lord’s Supper, being careful not to commit offensive sins, and living aimably with one’s neighbours. In this way, many people have decieved themselves all too quickly into thinking that they are truly godly, while they really only have the appearance of godliness.

If we do not want to be decieved in this important matter, we should accept that the practice of godliness is a very strenuous undertaking that spreads like a good leaven until it has permeated every part of life, including the entire thought and the entire conduct of a person.
—Willem Teellinck

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You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?

And wherefore should you love your God the more
Because to you alone his smiles are given,
Because He chose to pass the many o’er
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?

And wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove
Because for all the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?

Say does your heart expand to all mankind
And would you ever to your neighbour do,
– The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind -­
As you would have your neighbour do to you?

And, when you, looking on your fellow men
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!

That none deserve eternal bliss I know:
Unmerited the grace in mercy given,
But none shall sink to everlasting woe
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.

And, O! there lives within my heart
A hope long nursed by me,
(And should its cheering ray depart
How dark my soul would be)

That as in Adam all have died
In Christ shall all men live
And ever round his throne abide
Eternal praise to give;

That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies
And when their dreadful doom is past
To life and light arise.

I ask not how remote the day
Nor what the sinner’s woe
Before their dross is purged away,
Enough for me to know

That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They’ll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.

Anne Bronte

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin
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At last we arrive at an entire annihilation of ourselves, and an absolute acquiescence and complacency in the will of God, which afford the only full answer to all our doubts,  and the only radical cure for all our evils and perplexities.

—David Hartley [1705-1757]

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Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness (for GOD), the energies of love and then, for the second time in history, man will have discovered fire.
—Pierre Teilhard deChardin

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For now we see God’s grace feely
In Christ offered us so fair:
Let go the whore of Babylon,
And buy no more her wares.

Of Chrstian blood so much she shed,
That she was drunken withall;
But now God’s Word hath broken her head,
And she hath gotten a fall.
God hath raised some men in deed,
To utter her great wickedness:
Let go the whore of babylong,
And her ungodliness.

Ye hypocrites, what can ye say?
Woe be unto you all!
Ye have beguiled us many a day,
hertiks ye did us call,
For loving the Word of Christ the Lord,
Whom ye do always resist.
Let go the Whore of babylon,
That rideth upon the beast.[Miles Coverdale]

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