WORLD TRANSFORMING CHRISTIANITY

'We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world. Willingly they sacrificed fame, fortune and life itself on behalf of a cause they knew to be right. Quantitively small, they were qualitatively giants. Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ.'

Martin Luther King Jr., 'Transformed Nonconformists' in The Gift of Love, p.16.

THE DANGER OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE

'Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service to him.'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.149.

ALL OF LIFE IS SACRAMENTAL

'Edwards teaches us, then, of the God-centredness of all joy in this fallen world. He reminds us that the formula of joy is not God and _____ so much as God in _____. Christ is not one more element to fit into an already packed schedule - one more item on a growing list of priorities. Knowing Christ means seeing all of life in a new way, with new glasses. Jesus Christ gives meaning to all properties, not only heading the list but coloring every one with new and exciting meaning. To become a Christian is to make all of life sacramental. "From him and though him and to him are all things" (Rom.11:36). True joy derives not from God and job, family, sex, friends, food, rest, driving, buying a home, reading a book, drinking coffee - but from God in these things.'

Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.77.

CHRISTIAN BEAUTIFICATION

'Christian living is participation in God, in "the supreme loveliness of his nature". And if what defines God supremely is his beauty or loveliness or excellency, then to participate in the triune life of God is to be swept up into, and to exude that heavenly resplendence. A Christian is one who id being beatified.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, p.146.

LIVING THE SIMPLE CHRISTIAN LIFE

'Living Christianly is not complicated, though it is profound (and exceedingly difficult). The simplicity flows from the fact that everything commanded comes down to loving God and neighbor, while everything forbidden can be traced back to the worship of false gods, which places some other god before the Lord.' 

James M Hamilton Jr. Work and our Labor in the Lord, p.74. 

BELIEF & BEHAVIOUR

'There is an indissoluble link between conduct and conviction.'
Michael Green, 2 Peter and Jude, p.152. 

REPLICATING MIRACLES TODAY

'We love the miraculous stories of Jesus, his feeding of the five thousand, his divine healing, his contagious grace. And we miss the most obvious things about these stories: that we are meant to replicate them in ordinary, nonmiraculous ways.' 

Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, p.100. 

LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE

'The call to Christian living is a call to fix our eyes on the horizon of the new creation, a horizon marked by peace, justice, harmony, and true life, and "live up" to that horizon, wrestling to live now as we will all live then.' 

Paula Gooder, Body, p.82. 

BELIEF & BEHAVIOUR

'Throughout Jesus' teaching...two words know and do occur constantly and always in that order. We cannot do until we know. but we can know without doing.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'No little people, no little places' in, No little people, p.28.