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

  “POUR OUT YOUR HEART”   “Trust in Him at all time; ye people, pour out your heart before Him: God is a refuge for us.  Selah.”   -Psalm 62:8 [KJV]    Child of God, come to the throne of grace and let your innermost thoughts and feelings be poured out like water before the secret presence of the Lord.  Hold nothing back, for nothing is hidden from His eyes.  Turn the vessel of your soul upside down and let your private thoughts, desires, sorrows and sins gush out before Him.   Never think that prayer must wait until you are more spiritual.  Feelings of spirituality are dangerous for in reality, they are feelings of self-righteousness.  In and of ourselves we are never more than sinners needing the blood and righteousness of Christ.   It is written , “In my flesh dwelleth no good thing”   (Romans 7:18) .  What warrant then, and what worthiness do we have to draw near so holy a Being?  Our warrant for co...

“Christ is all, and in all.”   -Colossians 3:11 [KJV]  Anything, even if it be the blessed production of the Eternal Spirit of God, which takes the place of Christ, which shuts out Christ from the soul, is dangerous.  In the great work of salvation, Christ must be everything or nothing; from Him solely, from Him entirely, from Him exclusively, must pardon and justification be drawn.   Whatever, then, rises between the soul and Christ—whatever would tend to satisfy the soul in His absence—whatever would take His place in the affections, must be surrendered.   Is it as the plucking out of a right eye?  It must be yielded.  Is it as the cutting off of a right hand?  Let it go.  Christ in His Godhead, Christ in His humanity, Christ in His great and finished work, Christ in His mediatorial fulness, must be all in all to the believer .                              ...

"I like to be with God's people of the poorer class, and of the more struggling and afflicted sort. I like to be with God's people who wrestle hard with sins, and doubts, and fears. If I get spoken to by my very superior brethren, I find that I have very little pleasant fellowship with them for I know nothing about their wonderful experience of freedom from conflict, and complete deliverance from every evil tendency.  I have never won an inch of the way to Heaven without fighting for it. I have never lived a day but I have had to sorrow over my imperfections. I sometimes get near to God, but at that time I weep most about faults and failings. Although I have thus spoken after the manner of men, I do not believe in these superior beings, nor in their superior heaven: but even if I did, I would sooner follow with the flock than run ahead with the greyhounds." -copied  

"If thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it."  - Exodus 20:25 [KJV] This chapter abounds with legal terror. Here, the glorious Jehovah is giving the law with thunderings and lightnings, and the sound of a trumpet. The mountain smoking. Poor sinners, trembling and fleeing, saying, “Let not God speak with us, lest we die.”  Most awfully tremendous! Well might St. Paul call it, “the ministration of death and condemnation”   (II Corinthians 3:7, 9.)   But blessed, blessed be God, it contains precious gospel-grace to law-condemned sinners. Here, rejoice, and say, Let God speak, and we live . For here is an altar commanded. God is accessible to us. “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me.”     Here is gospel-grace. That beloved Son typified, who was made like unto us, and appeared in our earthly nature. Thou shalt offer thy burnt-offerings and peace-offerings upon it. “Our God is a consuming fire”   (Hebrews 12:29.) Yet, “we have ...

"And in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD of hosts." -Zechariah 14:21 [KJV] Oh precious day of God, when will it arrive? Shall the house of Jesus be indeed delivered from all false pastors, all corrupt worship, and the Lord have turned to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent?    Shall my soul indeed be freed, not only from all the sorrows, pains, evils, and afflictions of sin around me; but what is infinitely better than all, from the very being and indwelling of sin within me?   Shall the fountain of corruption, both of original and actual sin, be dried up, so that I shall never think a vain thought, nor speak an idle sinful word any more? Is there such a day, in which the Canaanite shall be wholly driven out? Oh blessed thought: precious, precious promise! Oh dearest Jesus, to what a blessed state hast Thou begotten poor sinners of the earth by ...

"It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD." -Lamentations 3:26 [KJV] The Lord does not bring His poor and needy children to a throne of grace, and send them away immediately they have come. But His purpose is, to shew them deeply what they are, to make them value His favours, to sink them lower and lower in self, that they may rise higher and higher in Christ, to "teach them to profit"   (as the Scripture speaks) , to write His laws upon their hearts in lines of the Spirit's drawing, in deep lines, "graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever;"  not characters traced out in the sand, to be washed out by the rising tide, or effaced by the wind, but in characters as permanent as the soul itself.  The work of the Spirit in the hearts of the redeemed is radical work, work that goes to the very bottom; nothing flimsy, nothing superficial, nothing which can be effaced and obliterated springs ...