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

Salvation is not a question of feeling, as so many would make it. It is entirely a matter of faith in a person, in an accomplished fact faith wrought in the soul of a sinner by the power of the Holy Ghost. This faith is something quite different from a mere feeling of the person or an assent of the intellect. Mere feeling and sentimentality (or emotion) can never rise above the source from whence they come and that source is self; but faith has to do with God and His eternal Word, and is a living link, connecting the heart that possesses it with God Who gives it. Feelings and sentiments can never connect with the soul of God. No doubt, faith will produce feeling and sentiments (spiritual feelings and truthful sentiments)—but the fruits of faith must never be confounded with faith itself. He can only be known by His own revelation and by the faith which He Himself imparts. -preacher Scott Richardson

Believers on the one hand are nothing but sin, and on the other hand they have no sin. This is one of the great mysteries of the gospel that keeps God’s people humble, yet hopeful. It causes them to cast all their care on the One that cares for them. It leads them to have no confidence in the flesh, yet to come boldly before the throne of grace. It is the reason they can mourn and rejoice at the same time.  It shows them their inability to satisfy any part of God’s law, and it frees them from the condemnation of the law. It causes them to bow in humble worship as mercy beggars, yet they hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. They are nothing, yet have everything. They are hell deserving, yet heaven bound. They are in abject poverty, and they are infinitely and eternally rich. To the natural man, these things are a contradiction. To the child of God... they are his life.             ...

"... 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, th...