I am the LORD your God

What a privilege to have God as our God! What a happy condition when nothing can hurt you! If one loses his name, it is written in the book of life. If he loses his liberty, his conscience is free. If he loses his estate, he owns the pearl of great price. If he meets a storm, he has a harbor; God is his God, and heaven is his heaven. If God is our God, our soul is safe.  It is hidden in the promises, in the wounds of Christ, and in the decrees of God. If God is our God then all that is in God is ours.  How happy is he who not only inherits the gifts of God but God himself!  -- Thomas Watson

Augustine and Grace

The following are quotes from Augustine on the absolute necessity and exclusivity of God's grace in our salvation and sanctification.  After the quotes is an excerpt from an on-line article summarizing Augustine's view on grace. SDG

‘Can we possibly, without utter absurdity, maintain that there first existed in anyone the good virtue of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his heart of stone? How can we say this, when all the time this heart of stone itself signifies precisely a will of the hardest kind, a will that is absolutely inflexible against God? For if a good will comes first, there is obviously no longer a heart of stone.’


'The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord must be understood as follows: grace is the only thing that delivers human beings from evil; without it, they do absolutely nothing good, whether in thought, or in will and emotion, or in action. Grace not only makes known to people what they ought to do, but also enables them to perform with love the duty that they know.'


'For them [the Pelagians], grace means the knowledge with which the Lord God helps us, by which we can know what our duty is. The true meaning of grace, however, is the love that God breathes into us, which enables us with a holy delight to carry out the duty that we know.'


'It is not enough simply to have choice of will, which is freely turned in this direction and that, and belongs among those natural gifts which a bad person may use badly. We must also have a good will, which belongs among those gifts which it is impossible to use badly. This impossibility is given to us by God; otherwise I do not know how to defend what Scripture says: ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ (1 Cor.4:7) For if God gives us a free will, which may still be either good or bad, but a good will comes from ourselves, then what comes from ourselves is better than what comes from God! But it is the height of absurdity to say this. So the Pelagians ought to acknowledge that we obtain from God even a good will.'


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Augustine on the New Life in Christ

Dr. N.R. Needham

Augustine’s theology of the new life in Christ was really just a way of saying, ‘It’s not up to us.’ Our new life in Christ comes from Christ. From its first stirrings to its final consummation, it comes from Christ. Faith, repentance, the softened heart, and any other virtue that can be named, they all come from Christ. Our conversion comes from Christ. Our regeneration comes from Christ. Our spiritual illumination comes from Christ. Our desire for Christ comes from Christ. Our seeking after Christ comes from Christ. As that great Italian Augustinian, Thomas Aquinas, was to teach 800 years after Augustine’s death, nothing comes before grace. All the things that we might think make us ready for grace are themselves the work of grace. If we insist on talking about ‘accepting grace’, even the acceptance of grace is created in us by grace.

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/augustinenewlife.html

Titus 3 and Spurgeon

Titus 3:4-7 (English Standard Version)


4But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.


"It is a very surprising thing,—a thing to be marveled at most of all by those who enjoy it. I know that it is to me even to this day the greatest wonder that I ever heard of, that God should ever justify me. I feel myself to be a lump of unworthiness, a mass of corruption, and a heap of sin apart from His almighty love; yet I know, by a full assurance, that I am justified by faith which is in Christ Jesus, and treated as if I had been perfectly just, and made an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ; though by nature I must take my place among the most sinful." - C.H. Spurgeon

Quote - Christian Living

Do not be content with easier and cheaper work. Every morning in the planning of your affairs, acknowledge your own disability and commend yourself to the work of God's grace in desire and action. Entreat him for help that Christ may live through you. - Samuel Ward

Quote - Bible Reading

Leave not off reading the Bible till you find your hearts warmed... Let it not only inform you, but inflame you. - Thomas Watson

Quote

"...what an audacious thing it is for man to strive with his Maker. What poor creatures are you, that you should set up yourselves for judges over the Most High; that you should take it upon you to call God to an account; that you should say to the great Jehovah, what dost thou? and that you should pass sentence against him!" - Jonathon Edwards

Quote

There is something inexpressibly pleasing to a justified mind 
   to know that God has all the honor in our salvation, and we have none; 
   to know that God's honor is not violated, but on the contrary, shines more illustrious; 
   to know that God's law is not injured, but magnified and made honorable, 
   to know that we are safe, and God has all the glory.

M'Cheyne, Robert Murray

Prayer

"The criterion for our intercessory prayer is not our earnestness, nor our faithfulness, nor even our faith in God, but simply God Himself. He has taken the initiative from the beginning, and has built our prayers into the structure of the
universe. He then asks us to present these requests to Him that He may show His gracious hand." -- Charles H. Troutman (1914-1990)

Giving

"The only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. Our charities should pinch and hamper us. If we live at the same level of affluence as other people who have our level of income, we are probably giving away too little."

Lews, C. S.

Re: The Bible

"Read and read again, and do not despair of help to understand the will and mind of God though you think they are fast locked up from you. Neither trouble your heads though you have not commentaries and exposition. Pray and read, read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men." -- John Bunyan

"Depend upon it, it is God's Word, not our comment upon it, that saves men's souls" -- Robert Murray M'Cheney