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

1. ’Tis a point I long to know,   Oft it causes anxious thought;   Do I love the Lord, or no?   Am I His, or am I not? 2. If I am, why am I thus?   Why this dull and lifeless frame?   Hardly, sure, can they be worse,   Who have never heard His name! 3. Could my heart so hard remain,   Prayer a task and burden prove;   Every trifle give me pain,   If I knew a Savior’s love? 4. When I turn my eyes within,   All is dark, and vain, and wild;   Filled with unbelief and sin,   Can I deem myself a child? 5. If I pray, or hear, or read,   Sin is mixed with all I do;   You that love the Lord indeed,   Tell me, Is it so with you? 6. Yet I mourn my stubborn will,   Find my sin, a grief, and thrall;   Should I grieve for what I feel,   If I did not love at all? 7. Could I joy His saints to meet,   Choose the ways I once abhorred,   Find, at times, the promise sweet,   If I did not love the Lord? 8. Lord decide the doubtful case!   Thou Who art Thy people’s sun;   Shine upon Thy work of grace,   If

I left the pulpit one night and a fellow asked me, “Do you believe ‘the law’ to be a believer’s rule of life?” He seemed surprised when I told him I did not. His very next question was, “How do you know how to live?” I told him immediately that I lived just as the Apostle Paul, “The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God , ” (Galations 2:20) . This was the rule of life for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Abel and all others who have nothing but Jesus Christ to live upon.      Someone would say, “You mean you live as you want to?” I wish I could: I’d be filled with the Spirit, I would never sin again, all my motives would be pure, I’d be delivered from this body of death. Oh, I wish I could live just like I want to. The closest thing I have found to living just like I’d like to is living by faith upon Jesus Christ the Dear and Blessed Son of God. -copied

  When the religious accuse us of being lawless, what they are really saying is: “If I believed what you believe, I would be lawless.” They would have nothing to restrain their sin.     Being under the law, they know nothing of the constraining love of Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:14)   Being in the flesh, they know nothing of the power of the Spirit of God. (Romans 8:12-14) Being under the judgment of the law, they know nothing of the law of liberty. (James 2:10-12)       Their accusations are not based on what they see in the believer’s life, but rather on what they fear in their own lives. "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ ." (1 Peter 3:15-16) – preacher Greg Elmquist

" These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me." -Luke 24:44 [KJV] Christ’s work was to fulfil all Scripture. It is ours to believe, that the Scriptures are all fulfilled in Christ. Hence we are filled with all joy and peace in believing (Romans 15:13.) We complain of the weakness of faith. We neglect the means by which it is strengthened. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. By it faith is strengthened. That which comes not from the word, and is not supported by the word, is not faith, but phantom. It will soon evaporate. Our Saviour was now risen. His work was finished. He appeals to the understanding of His disciples. He refers them to what He had spoken to them, before He died for them.  Understanding the word in the heart, is like the stomach receiving, and digesting the food for the whole body. All part