Saturday, May 5, 2012

Faith's Apparent Ridiculousness

"Faith has an apparent ridiculousness about it. You are not acting by faith if you are doing what everyone around you is doing. Faith always appears to defy the circumstances. It constitutes a risk and a venture."
~Ray Stedman
  from the sermon Is Anything Too Hard for God?

Friday, May 4, 2012

Laughing Revival, Barking in the Spirit, and True Spiritual Experience

"If a person’s emotional response is a biblically warranted response to the biblical message, then it is a “proper” experience. If someone is grieved by a sense of sin, as David was in Ps. 51, then it is a proper experience. If he runs around the church barking like a dog, most likely it is not."

Scripture and the Church's Two-Fold Need

"... because the church on earth consists of imperfectly sanctified sinners, there are always two defects in the lives of its members, both corporately and individually. These are ignorance and error, which cause omissions and mistakes in belief and behavior. The Church, therefore, has two constant needs; instruction in the truths by which it must live, and correction of the shortcomings by which its life is marred. Scripture is designed to meet this two-fold need... It is the church's responsibility to use Scripture for its intended purpose. That it does by complementary activities of exposition followed by reformation."
~ J. I. Packer
Fundamentalism and the Word of God, p.69

Trust in the LORD! (Psalm 115:9-11)

  9 O Israel, trust in the LORD! He is their help and their shield. 10 O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD! He is their help and their...