Most often, people who say that others have no love are themselves the ones most lacking. They think the new commandment says, “Love me or I’ll destroy you and your church.” They sit around waiting for other people to love them. How easy it is to see the speck of lovelessness in another’s eye but miss the log of self-centeredness, hypocrisy, and anger in your own eye (Matt. 7:3-5).

[To fulfill their God-given role, husbands are to:] Take the initiative to be the spiritual leader in the home - to pray, to worship at church, and to study God's Word. Take the initiative to see that finances are in order, needs are met and your wife feels financially secure. Take the initiative to ask forgiveness, resolve conflict and ensure your home is a place of encouragement and safety. (Dennis Rainey)

Dedicated to my dear brother in Christ - Marvin Salgado

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbjzPKTfjlc&index=4&list=... - Ludovico Einaudi - Nuvole Bianche (Alexander Flemming)

He does not love us if we love Him. He loves us with an unconditional love; therefore, we should love Him. The message of the covenant is one of God’s totally free grace to His people. Of course, it calls for a response of total commitment. But notice the order: God’s covenant love is not the result of our commitment; it is the cause of it. The pattern is, "I will, therefore you should;" not "I will, but only if you will first." - Sinclair Ferguson)

Reference: A Heart for God, 1987, p. 36-37, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

Psalm 27:5

5 For he will phide me in his shelter

in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;

he will qlift me high upon a rock.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Ps 27:5.

We must keep from sin. If Christ has indeed saved us from sin, we cannot bear the thought of falling into it. Those who take delight in sin are not the children of God. If you are a child of God, you hate it with a perfect hatred, and your very soul loathes it.

The sacred promises, though in themselves most sure and precious, are of no avail for the comfort and sustenance of the soul unless you grasp them by faith, plead them in prayer, expect them by hope, and receive them with gratitude

C. H. Spurgeon, 2,200 Quotations: From the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon : Arranged Topically or Textually and Indexed by Subject, Scripture, and People (ed. Tom Carter; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 168.

The path of God’s love is a path that leaves us overflowing. Our cup cannot contain what God bestows on us. It is only natural, then, that the comfort we received from Christ will overflow into the lives of other people (2 Cor. 1:3-7). Our goal is to love people more than need them. We are overflowing pitchers, not leaky cups. (Ed Welsch)

Church-based counseling is not consigned to the kind of finger-tapping approach that simply waits for the counselee to “come around.” Christ’s agenda for His people is much broader than that. Though much biblical counseling is reactive, we are not mainly to be responders but pursuers, like Jesus. (Robert Jones)

John 14:27 (ESV)

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

The difficulty we modern Christians face , is not misunderstanding the Bible—but persuading our untamed hearts to accept its plain instructions!

Our problem is that our world-loving minds, is that we do not submit Jesus as Lord in fact, as well as in word. For it is one thing to say, "Lord, Lord"—and quite another thing to obey the Lord's commandments. We may sing, "Crown Him Lord of all," and rejoice in the tones of the loud-sounding organ and the deep melody of harmonious voices—but still we have done nothing until we have left the world, and set our faces toward the city of God in hard practical reality. When faith becomes obedience—then it is true faith indeed.

(Tozer)

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. (Henry Ward Beecher)

Legalism...is essentially any attempt to improve on what God has done for us by adding things that we do for Him... It is any attempt to earn approval from God with our imperfect actions, rather than accepting and being pleased with the approval that He freely offers us because Jesus has earned it for us with his perfect sacrifice. Legalism is always doomed to failure because we are imperfect and the God that we seek to impress is perfect. It robs us of peace and joy. (Mike Taylor)

Genesis 9:16

16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Ge 9:16.

Exodus 13:21–22 (ESV)

21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. 22 The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

You aren’t loved because you’re valuable. You’re valuable because God loves you.

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.

Psalm 39:4

Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliance than justice.

Miguel de Cervantes

Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Alresford, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishers Ltd, 2000), 425.

True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in You, O God, who are the truth… Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy. (Augustine)

The lifelessness experienced in so many churches in our day can be traced directly to the multitudes of families in those churches which contain Sunday-morning Christians only. It is plain to see the cause for such deadness when such individuals are not consistently worshiping God in private. Statistics reveal that only 11 percent of all professing Christians in America read their Bible or some portion of it once a day. If so few professing Christians are spending time alone with God, it should not be surprising that family worship as a practice among professing Christian families is practically nonexistent. (Jerry Marcellino)

If liberty is to be saved, it will not be by the doubters, the men of science or the materialists; it will be by religious conviction, by the faith of individuals, who believe that God wills man to be free but also pure.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Alresford, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishers Ltd, 2000), 379.

Will serve as a surface warfare officer on the Destroyer USS McCampbell. Thank you for serving our country!!!

Proud of this girl!!

If we are not heavenly minded, we are of no earthly good - Richard Baxter

What is both surprising and depressing is the sheer prayerlessness that characterizes so much of the Western church. It is surprising, because it is out of step with the Bible that portrays what Christian living should be; it is depressing, because it frequently coexists with abounding Christian activity that somehow seems hollow, frivolous and superficial. - D A Carson

Nature is but a name for an effect whose cause is God.

William Cowper

Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Alresford, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishers Ltd, 2000), 684.

I question whether the defenses of the gospel are not sheer impertinences. The gospel does not need defending. If Jesus Christ is not alive and cannot fight his own battles, then Christianity is in a bad state. But he is alive, and we have only to preach his gospel in all its naked simplicity, and the power that goes with it will be the evidence of its divinity

C. H. Spurgeon, 2,200 Quotations: From the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon : Arranged Topically or Textually and Indexed by Subject, Scripture, and People (ed. Tom Carter; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 13.

In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it – all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27). - Albert Barnes

Explore: 5-7-09 (Position #154)

“If you don't scale the mountain, you can't view the plain” ~Chinese Proverb

My treasured friend Derk Janssen and I hiked Thumb Butte on a wonderful, sunny and warm Sunday morning. Derk lives in Prescott. Derk and I met in 1970 at the University of Arizona (in Tucson), were roommates there and have been great friends ever since.

About Prescott National Forest: Comprised of about 1.25 million acres, the Prescott borders three other National Forests in Arizona: Kaibab, Coconino, and Tonto. Roughly half of the forest lies west of the city of Prescott, Arizona, in the Juniper, Santa Maria, Sierra Prieta, and Bradshaw Mountains. The other half of the Forest lies east of Prescott and takes in the Black Hills, Mingus Mountain, Black Mesa, and the headwaters of the Verde River.

At the lowest elevation, the primary vegetation is of the Sonoran Desert type. As the elevation rises, chaparral becomes common, followed by piñon pine and juniper. Above that, Ponderosa pine dominates the landscape.

I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me, he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else, it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest, tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father’s wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings, and when Jesus is with you in the vessel, the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven

C. H. Spurgeon, 2,200 Quotations: From the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon : Arranged Topically or Textually and Indexed by Subject, Scripture, and People (ed. Tom Carter; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 11.