THE LIMITS OF HUMAN FRIENDSHIP, THE INFALLIBILITY OF CHRIST'S FRIENDSHIP

'A man may love another as his own soul, yet perhaps with all that love he can do nothing to help his friend. He may pity someone in prison, but be helpless to bring him any comfort. We may suffer with someone in trouble, and yet be unable to help. We cannot love grace into a child, nor mercy into a friend. We cannot love anyone into heaven though we may greatly desire to do so. But the love of Christ, being the love of God, is infallibly effectual. It produces all the good things Christ desires to produce in his people. Christ loves life, grace and holiness into us. He loves us also into a covenant of love with himself. Christ loves us into heaven. Love in Christ is his will to do good to the one he loves. Whatever good Christ by his love wills to do to anyone is infallibly done to that person.'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.72.

INFINTE GRACE

'If all the world should drink free grace, mercy and pardon from Christ, the well of salvation; if they should draw strength from one single promise, they would not be able to lower the level of the water of grace in that promise one hair's breadth. There is enough grace, mercy and pardon in one of God's promises for the sins of millions of worlds, if they existed, because the promise is supplied from an infinite, bottomless reservoir. What is one finite guilt before the infinite and eternal reservoir of grace?'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.70.

DIVINE SATISFACTION NEEDED

'We are too needy to be satisfied by a mere creature.'
John Owen, Communion with God, p.69.

THE EPITOME OF DIVINE GRACE

'This is the epitome of divine grace: a meal in the presence of God.'

Tim Chester, Truth We Can Touch, p.59.

THE COMFORTING ARMS OF OUR PARENTAL GOD

'...what a safe place the saints have to retreat to when they suffer the scorn, reproaches, scandals and misrepresentations of the world. When a child is bullied and hurt in the street by strangers, he quickly runs home to the love and protection of his father. There he tells everything and is comforted. In all the hard words and slanders which the saints meet with in the streets of the world, they may come home to their Father and tell him all their troubles and sorrows and be comforted. 'As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you,' says the Lord (Isa.66.13).'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.40.

SET YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE ETERNAL LOVE OF THE FATHER

'All that we learn of God will only frighten us away from him if we do not see him as loving and merciful to us. But if your heart is taken up with the Father's love as the chief property of his nature, it cannot help but choose to be overpowered, conquered and embraced by him. This, if anything, will arouse our desire to make our desire to make our eternal home with God. If the love of a father will not make a child delight in him, what will? So do this: set your thoughts on the eternal love of the Father and see if your heart is not aroused to delight in him. Sit down for a while at this delightful spring of living water and you will soon find its streams sweet and delightful. You who used to un from God will now be able, even for a second, top keep at any distance from him.'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.37.

THE SACRAMENTS

'...baptism and Communion are God's promise in physical form.'
Tim Chester, Truth We Can Touch: How Baptism and Communion Shape Our Lives, p.36.

BELIEVE GOD LOVES YOU!

'The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.17.

COMMUNION WITH GOD

'Our communion with God lies in his giving himself to us and our giving ourselves and all that he requires to him. This communion with God flows from that union which is in Christ Jesus.

This communion will be perfect and complete when we enter into the full enjoyment of Christ's glory. Then we shall totally give ourselves up to him, resting in him as the utmost fulfilment of all our desires.'

John Owen, Communion with God (Abridged by RJK Law), p.3. 

THE LANTERN OUT OF DOORS

'Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot, fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.'

Gerard Manley Hopkins