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

"Some who have aimed at holiness have made the great mistake of supposing it needful to be morose, contentious, faultfinding, and censorious with everybody else.   Their holiness has consisted of negatives, protests, and oppositions for oppositions sake.  Their religion mainly lies in contrarieties and singularities; to them the text [of Hebrews 12.14] offers this wise counsel, follow holiness, but also follow peace .  Courtesy is not inconsistent with faithfulness. It is not needful to be savage in order to be sanctified. A bitter spirit is a poor companion for a renewed heart. Let your determination principle be sweetened by tenderness towards your fellow-men." -Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Exposition of Hebrews , by Arthur W. Pink, pg. 997

"Therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. The just shall live by faith." -Romans 1:17 [KJV] It is but lost labour, that poor sinners rise up early, late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, in order to make themselves righteous. The Lord makes His beloved people righteous, in a very different way. Righteousness is already perfectly wrought out, to the honouring and magnifying God’s law : it is fully brought into the court of heaven, to the satisfying God’s justice. It is clearly revealed in the gospel, for the hope and encouragement of poor sinners.  Observe, (1st.) By way of eminence it is styled “the righteousness of God.” Not as it is essential to His divine nature. For what comfort, what hope can a guilty sinner take from that? The more plainly that is revealed, the more clearly that is known, so much the more miserable must it make the unrighteous sinner. But it is the righteousness with which God is well pleased, and for t...

"My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up." -Psalm 5:3 [KJV] Sweet thought, my soul, to encourage thee this morning, that thy God in Christ is a prayer-quickening, a prayer-hearing, and a prayer-answering God. Art thou dull, dead, lifeless? One look from Jesus, one influence of the Spirit, will kindle desire, and lead thee to the mercy-seat, and to the throne of grace. Jesus will do more in one moment, to call off thy wandering thoughts, to open to thy views His glory, and to reveal to thee what thy wants are, and to give thee a spirit of prayer suited to thy wants and His praise, than all thy laboured attempts, without an eye to Jesus, can do for thee for ever. Whence is it, my soul, that prayer is ever a burden, but because we have lost a sight of Jesus? Why is it that thou art at times so little affected with the remains of indwelling corruption, and canst neither rightly value God...

"The fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." -I Corinthians 3:13 [KJV] The fire which is to prove every man's work of what sort it is, is not merely God's wrath as manifested at the last day; but His fire as significative of the fiery trial which takes place in this life, and which God mercifully brings upon His people to burn up their wood, hay, and stubble. Now it is an inestimable mercy to have all this combustible material burnt up before we come to a death-bed.  Fiery trials, such as God sends through afflictions, temptations, distressing feelings, and painful soul exercises, will burn up the wood, hay, and stubble which any of His saints may have gathered up as a superstructure. Guilt pressing upon a man's conscience, the terrors of the Almighty in a fiery law, His arrows deeply fixed in the breast and drying up the spirit, fears of death, hell, and judgment, and the terrible consequences of dying under the wrath of God, all th...