Tag: Sanctification

Just As Necessary

~ A Prayer Life ~ Leave a comment

In what, then, are justification and sanctification alike? (a) Both proceed originally from the free grace of God. It is of His gift alone that believers are justified or sanctified at all. (b) Both are part of that great work of salvation which Christ, in the eternal covenant, has undertaken on behalf of His people. Christ is the fountain of life, from which pardon and holiness both flow. The root of each is Christ. (c) Both are to be found in the same persons. Those who are justified are always sanctified, and those who are sanctified are always justified. God has joined them together, and they cannot be put asunder. (d) Both begin at the same time. The moment a person begins to be a justified person, he also begins to be a sanctified person. He may not feel it, but it is a fact. (e) Both are alike necessary to salvation. No one ever reached heaven without a renewed heart as well as forgiveness, without the Spirit’s grace as well as the blood of Christ, without a meetness for eternal glory as well as a title. The one is just as necessary as the other.

~ J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)

Milk & Honey

~ A Prayer Life ~ Leave a comment

“Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey…'”

~ Number 13:27 (NKJV)

The promised land of Canaan was truly an amazing place. Yet it was filled with a mighty and powerful people. It would not come to the Israelites easily, but it would come to them surely for the Lord God had determined it for the good of His people. Anywhere God sends us will be a place filled with milk and honey. God is good and faithful. And the manifestations of His love, grace and mercy are realized in the wonderful blessings His people receive from His kind hand. Though the Christian life may not always be easy, our trials are for our good and eventually lead us to our spiritual and eternal land flowing with God’s milk and honey.

~ apl

Must You Not Be Different?

~ A Prayer Life ~ 1 Comment

That which occasions the honest Christian the most difficulty and distress as he seeks to ascertain whether a miracle of grace has been wrought within him is the discovery that so much remains what it always was, yea, often his case appears to be much worse than formerly – more risings of opposition to God, more surgings of pride, more hardness of heart, more foul imaginations. Yet that very consciousness of and grief over indwelling corruptions is, itself, both an effect and an evidence of the great change. It is proof that such a person has his eyes open to see and a heart to feel evils which previously he was blind unto and insensible of. An unregenerate person is not troubled about the weakness of his the coldness of his affections, the stirrings of self within. You were not yourself while you were dead Godwards! But if such things now exercise you deeply, if your eyes be open to and you mourn over that within to which no fellow creature is privy, must you not be very different now from what you once were?

~ A. W. Pink

Priests of the Lord

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“Ye shall be named the priests of the LORD.“

~ Isaiah 61:6 (KJV)

“This literal promise to Israel belongs spiritually to the seed after the Spirit, namely, to all believers. If we live up to our privileges, we shall live unto God so clearly and distinctly that men shall see that we are set apart for holy service and shall name us the priests of the LORD. We may work or trade as others do, and yet we may be solely and wholly the ministering servants of God. Our one occupation shall be to present the perpetual sacrifice of prayer, and praise, and testimony, and self-consecration to the living God by Jesus Christ.”

~ Charles Spurgeon, Faith’s Checkbook