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

"I cried unto Thee; Save me, and I shall keep Thy testimonie s ."   - Psalm 119:146 [KJV] If you know anything for yourself inwardly and experimentally of the evils of your heart, the power of sin, the strength of temptation, the subtlety of your unwearied foe, and that daily conflict betwixt nature and grace, the flesh and the spirit, which is the peculiar mark of the living family of heaven, you will find and feel your need of salvation as a daily reality. Think not that the only salvation to be felt and known is salvation past—salvation accomplished by the bloodshedding and death of the Son of God. There is salvation present— an inward, experimental, and continual salvation communicated out of the  fulness of Christ as a risen Mediator.       Don't you want to be daily and almost hourly saved? But from what? Why, from everything in you that fights against the will and word of God. Sin is not dead in you. If you are reconciled and brought near to God; if you h...

Weekend Gospel message to follow for All Hands (07-09JAN22) Heads-Up --- Please find enclosed encouragement in SO GREAT SALVATION by the perfect and finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ in saving poor, needy and wretched sinners by His sovereign free grace - God's unmerited favor - from our sins and from Hell: “ O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before Him, all the earth.” -Psalm 96:9 [KJV] True spiritual worship is not natural to fallen, sinful people. The only worship that is natural to such people is the worship of idols, mostly in self-worship. True godly, spiritual, and acceptable worship (acceptable to God) is the response of a chosen, justified, redeemed, and born-again (regenerated and converted) sinner honoring, praising, and glorifying God as He is revealed to be both a just God and a Savior in the glorious Person and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.   Christ crucified and risen from the dead, by Whom our sins are purged away, and righteousn...

"That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." - Hebrews 6:12 [KJV] Patience is necessary in order to prove the genuineness and reality of faith. The Lord generally—I may say invariably—does not accomplish His purposes at once. He usually—I might say almost invariably—works by gradations. Is not this the case in creation? Do we see the oak starting up in all its gigantic proportions in one day? Is not a tiny acorn committed to the ground; and is not the giant oak, whose huge limbs we admire, the growth of a century? Men and women are years growing up to their full stature. So spiritually. "He that believeth shall not make haste." Faith in the soul is of slow growth for the most part; for the Lord takes care that every step in the path shall be tried by the perplexities and difficulties that surround it.     And He has appointed this that it may be a means of distinguishing the faith of God's elect from the...

"Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts." - Proverbs 31:6 [KJV] The wise mother of king Lemuel gave her son gracious directions when she spake these words. It is when we begin to feel the misery into which we have been cast by sin, and thus become ready to perish, and of heavy hearts, that the pure wine of gospel grace is suitable to our lost condition. As the holiness  and justice of God are discovered to the conscience, and we are made to see and feel the depths of the Adam fall, we look out of ourselves for a salvation which we could not find in our fallen nature or in our deeply corrupt and unbelieving heart.     When, then, we obtain by living faith a view of the Son of God as a Mediator between God and men , when we see by the eye of faith the blood of the cross, and the full and complete atonement which He, as the Lamb of God, made for sin, then we heartily embrace Him as "of God made unto us wisdom, and r...

  Are you a Grace Believer? Part 1   by D.G. Miles McKee   Not everyone who claims to be a believer is a Grace Believer.  What about you?  Are you a Grace Believer?  It took me a long time to become a Grace Believer. Although I thought I was a Grace Believer I was more of a legalist than a grace man.   Maybe you are struggling to know the difference between living in grace and living under law. If you are, I hope the following is helpful.    1. Grace Believers trust that they are saved entirely and utterly by someone else … the Lord Jesus Christ. They believe that their sole qualification for salvation is found, not in their worthiness, but in their unworthiness.  You say... well OK I can agree with that. But hold on, we are not finished yet. The Grace Believer sees Christ as his complete and continual acceptance with the Father (Philippians 3:4-9). We are saved entirely by grace .   2) Grace Believers understand that to know C...

"Wilt Thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise Thee? Shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave, or Thy faith-fulness in destruction?"   -Psalm 88:10, 11 [KJV] This is not the language of a soul dead in trespasses and sins, but it is the breathing of a living soul struggling and grappling with death. What a difference there is, where there is life working in and under death, and where death reigns absolutely! between the quickened soul and that in which there  is nothing but death, death without one spark of spiritual life, death without one ray of heavenly teaching. There is no groan, no sigh, no lamentation, no piteous inquiry, no pouring out of the heart before God, where the soul is utterly dead, any more than there is life and breath in a corpse in the tomb. But wherever life is implanted in the soul from the Fountain of life, that life groans under death. It sighs from out of the grave; it gasps for breath, under the corpse which overlies i...

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."  -John 12:32 [KJV] Wherever Jesus is graciously and experimentally manifested to the soul, and made known by any sweet revelation of His glorious Person, atoning blood, and finished work, a secret yet sacred power is put forth, whereby we are drawn unto Him, and every grace of the Spirit flows toward Him as towards its attractive centre. Thus Jeremiah speaks of the saints of God as coming and singing in the height of Zion, and   flowing  together to the goodness of the Lord (Jeremiah 31:12). And thus Isaiah speaks to the church of God, "Then thou shalt see, and  flow  together, and thine heart shall fear [or as the word rather means, shall 'palpitate' with love and joy] , and be enlarged" (Isaiah 60:5).    This view of Christ by faith is what the apostle speaks of to the Galatians, as Jesus evidently set forth before their eyes (Gal. 3:1). As thus set before our eyes, He becomes the...