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

Head of Thy church and Lord of all, Hear from Thy throne our earnest call; We come Thy promised grace to seek; We come, O Lord, to hear Thee speak. Without Thy presence, King of saints, Our purpose fails, our spirits faint; Thou must our wavering faith renew, Ere we can yield Thee worship true.   “Lo, I am with you” – that sweet word, Lord Jesus, grant it to be heard; Give exercise to faith and love, And send Thy blessings from above. Lord, send a message from Thy word, That will great joy and peace afford; May Thy blest Spirit now impart Thy grace and love in every heart! -old Gospel hymn, "Doxology"   -------0-------   When an arrow of conviction is at any time shot by the hand of God into thy conscience, by which thy peace and quiet is disturbed, whither dost thou run for ease and relief? The man that is "married to the law," runs to the law for relief and ease. The law is the thing that heals him; his prayers, his tears, his reformation, is that which stops the...

     A naked sinner can be clothed, but a sinner covered with his own righteousness must be stripped. This is always true. We must be stripped of all that has to do with self, or we cannot be clothed with that which pertains to God. We are called to live by faith; we can see nothing with the eye of sense. The Lord Jesus has gone up on high, and we are told to wait patiently for His appearing. God's Word carried home to the heart in the power of the Holy Spirit is the basis of confidence in all things: temporal and spiritual, present and future. He tells us of Christ's completed sacrifice. We by grace believe and commit our souls to the efficacy thereof, and we know we shall never be disappointed.    -preacher Scott Richardson

"Those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified." -Romans 8:30 [KJV]        The justified sinner stands the closest to God of any created being in the universe. Nearer to the throne of the Eternal, he cannot stand. What marvelous love! Who will dare assert that salvation is not from first to last of free, sovereign grace? Let your eye pierce the veil which falls between earth and heaven. Behold that shining, worshiping being, standing so near to the throne of glory, bathed in the overpowering effulgence of its rays! Who is he? He was once a sinner upon earth, the vilest of his race, the dishonored of his generation, forsaken by man, and abhorred of God.  But Jesus met him, and divine love drew him, and sovereign grace rescued, pardoned, and saved him! And now washed from all his guilt by the blood, freed from all condemnation by the righteousness of Christ he stands before the throne "blame...

     Christ is the Rock of the church, the foundation stone upon which the church is built and the chief cornerstone by which the church is measured and held together. The elect of God are the little stones which make up the walls of the church.  The grace, truth, and love of Christ make up the mortar by which all the little stones are held together. In all this, we see how “the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in Whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21-22) .  When men deny or ignore the grace of God in Christ, when they leave the truth of God in Christ, or when they act  without grace, truth, and love in Christ, the church is divided. But rest assured that the true church of the living God cannot and will not be destroyed because as Christ goes, so goes the church – “upon this Rock I will build MY church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt...

"Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."   -I Corinthians 15:58 [KJV] Christian knowledge is the source of comfort, and the spring of obedience. The knowledge of God’s love to us in Christ, received into the heart by faith, animates us to be, and to do, what the Lord calls us to in our lives. St. Paul appeals to Christians, Ye know—what? that you are called, not to loiter, but to labour: not to stand idle, but to work: not merely to talk of the truths of Christianity, but to walk in the ways of the Lord. But what constitutes it the sweetest of all labouring, working, and walking, it is the labour of love, the work of faith, and the walk of hope. And we have Christ’s presence and power in all. We know, we are fully persuaded, we are divinely assured, our labour is not in vain: for it is in the Lord. It is begun by His grace, tarried on by His power, IN sweet fellowship with Him, IN love to Him, IN dependence on him, IN assurance that we are accepted ...

"They made me keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept." -Song of Solomon 1:6 [KJV] My soul, now the day is over, sit down, and look back on the employments of it. What a day hath it been? What portion of it hath been engaged in the service of thy Lord, and the improvement of thy soul? How wholly occupied in the busy and imperious demands of the world, the care of the body, and in procuring the bread that perisheth! Surely the complaint of the church is thine also. Keeper of the vineyards of others, thine own goeth to waste! And of what avail, in the path of grace, if though occupied by a thousand things in the aid of others, thou art making no progress in the heavenly road by thine own soul?    Are not the peace of thy life, and the glorious expectation of a better, to be advanced in the knowledge and enjoyment of Jesus? If I lose sight of Thee, Thou dear Immanuel; if the lively actings of faith upon Thee be remitted, will the recollection of attention...

"And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment."  -Philippians 1:9 [KJV]   Love is especially the effect of knowledge; and love we know is a fruit of the blessed Spirit. As then the Lord the Spirit is pleased to open up the precious truth of God to the soul, love embraces what the Holy Ghost reveals. Thus there is a knowledge of the only true God by the teaching of the Spirit. But our love is to abound not only in knowledge, which is the foundation of it, because if there is no knowledge of the Lord there can be no love to the Lord or His people, but also in all feeling, in all sense, in all experience. Spiritual knowledge, therefore, and experimental feeling are the two feeders of Christian love; the two streams, as it were, that run side by side out of the very throne of the most High, and meet and melt into that boundless river, love. And it is by this union of knowledge and experience, of divine light and heavenly life, of t...