"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

"... and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace." -Ephesians 6:15 [KJV] Soldiers of Christ , you are not only commanded to stand against every enemy, but to march on: to follow the Captain of your salvation, in the way to eternal glory. Here you must expect the enemy will strive to retard your march. He will strew the road with difficulties and entanglements—with briers and thorns—make it rugged, and almost impassable, as though every step was upon sharp stones and goading spikes.  Your feet must be shod, or you will halt when you should march: turn back when you should go forward. No one can make a shoe to the creature’s foot, so as he shall go on easy, in a hard way, but Christ. He can do it to the soldier’s full content. How doth He it? Truly, no other way than underlaying it: or, if you will, lining it with the peace of the gospel. What though the way be set with sharp stones? If this shoe go between the Christian’s foot and them, they ...

"And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt." -Genesis 45:4 [KJV] What an interview was this, in the first manifestation the governor of Egypt made of himself to his brethren! We are told that he wept aloud. His bowels yearned over them.  [ Now thinking about JESUS ...] He had long smothered in His own bosom those He now manifests Himself to every poor sinner, whom, by His grace, He makes partaker in the first resurrection on whom the second death hath no power?   I am Jesus, your brother , saith that adored Lord; but He doth not add, whom ye sold for worse than a slave. There is no upbraiding, nothing of our baseness and sins. And yet we have all not only sold Him, but by our transgressions crucified Him. What a beautiful feature this is in the Redeemer; and how much even the love of Joseph falls short of Jesus! And what endears it still more, is the peculiar attention the Redeemer manifesteth upon the occasion. If there be one of His brethr...

"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 3:13, 14 [KJV] The faith that rests short of believing in, laying hold of, and resting upon the Son of God in His finished work, will not be the work of faith that God will own and crown with His approbation; the love that never labours for an entrance into the mysteries of His dying love, will be found to be a love more in lip and tongue than in heart and life; and the hope that anchors in anything short of the finished work of the Son of God, will be a brittle cable which will snap asunder, or a rotten piece of iron which will break in the first heavy storm. Do not rest in the knowledge of a few doctrines in the letter of truth. Do not take up with a few passing thoughts and feelings; do not be ...