solidground

“I HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN A SPIRIT OF FEAR BUT OF POWER, LOVE AND A SOUND MIND.”

“The heart is a fire in which idols are forged. Feed the flame & gods grow. Consuming fires must be quenched, not controlled.”

“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect and self-respect is the chief element in courage.”

“We sin because in that moment we desire, treasure, delight in, long for, fear, worship, glorify or want something more than we desire God”

Right?  David?  “I yearn for you”, “My flesh longs for you”?  That’s not friendship … I’ve got a lot of friends in here that I haven’t seen in years and my flesh has not ever yearned for any of those guys.  I have never thought of any of those guys through the watches of the night, right?  I have never laid in bed and went, ‘You know, As the deer pants for the water so my soul pants for Driscoll!’  I mean, that has never happened right?  And so you’ve got a guy that’s writing about God in such a way that it’s not friendship and it’s not some mere church building thing, it’s this moaning, groaning, longing for the things of God.
“Without faith you will never trust Him, and if you don’t trust Him you will never follow Him. if you don’t follow Him then you will not obey Him, if you don’t obey Him you will fall into sin. If you fall into sin then you will fall further away from God, if you fall away from God then you will not have a relationship with Him. If you don’t have a relationship with Him then you will not love Him and if you don’t love Him then you will not glorify Him. if you don’t glorify Him then what’s the point?”

“When confronted by the Holy Spirit on a direction, people
who have no intention of submitting to that Lordship, people with  no intention of being
obedient to God will do one of three things.  The first one is the most common.  “Jesus
wants me to be happy.  He wouldn’t ask that of me.”  That’s by far the most common
response to obedience.  “Jesus wants me to be happy.  He would not ask me to do that. 
He would not ask me to go there.  He would not ask me to walk away from that.  He
would not ask me to give that away.  Jesus wants me to be happy.”  Now this is flawed on
an unreal amount of levels.  First of all, you’re going to have a hard time finding that text. 
Okay, so maybe we’ve got a problem.  Maybe your problem isn’t Jesus; maybe your
problem is the Scriptures.  You love Jesus; it’s just the Scriptures you don’t believe. 
Now we’ve got a bigger fundamental problem there.  Because now who is Jesus?  “Well,
He’s whoever I say He is.”  So you’re more comfortable with your invented Jesus than
the historic one?  “Yes I am.”  Why?  “Because my Jesus lets me do what I want.”  Ah
ha, now we’re into the depths of the soul.  Jesus is far more interested in your joy and in
your holiness than in your happiness.  I really believe that the bulk of Evangelicals think
that Jesus is Santa Claus and we’ve been nice and He’s kept track of that, and so there
will never be any coal for us.”

“Can I say something to young ladies here? Umm… I’m trying to pick my words carefully here. Umm… your husband, whoever he is, single ladies, will have an unbelievable amount of influence over your sons and daughters in regards to spiritual things. If you want your children to love Jesus deeply, hold out for a man that is Godly. And let me tell you this: I am well aware that Godly men are rare. Lots of neat Christian boys, not a lot of Godly men. And we’re working our tails off for you to try to develop some into that. But don’t settle. Because, look at me, it’s better that you be lonely now than you be married and lonely later. Are you trecking with me? It is better that you be lonely now than for you to get married to a man that will teach your kids everything but the way of Jesus.” - matt chandler

“On this past Friday, we loaded up everyone in the car because I think two things were happening. One, my wife needed a new pair of jeans, hers were finally gone, and apparently the Lord wanted to discipline me. So, we got in the car and headed to the mall, just an absolute nightmare. I’m loading my four year old into the car, who had just gotten her first bloody nose the night before, and she says, “Does God have blood like me?” Then I said, “No, God is spirit and the true worshipers will worship Him in spirit and in truth.” I don’t know why you guys think that’s funny, that’s what the text says. And so, I could tell she was confused by that, and she said, “Well at church last week, they said that Jesus was God and that He bled on the cross.” So, I was like, “Let’s do this!” I’ve been training 12 years for this. So, I start trying to unpack the Trinity on her. I’m like, “Well, we worship a triune God and they’re three distinct yet one. It’s God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.” And so she was like, “Stinked?! God stinked?!” So I’m like, “No, God doesn’t stink, woman. If it wasn’t for the cross, He might have just killed you right there.” So I’m trying to work through trinitarian doctrine with my four year old. I think in the future, I’m just going to go, “Why don’t we talk about that one later?” - M. Chandler

“If I don’t have an all-knowing, everywhere, sovereign, powerful God then someone
help me understand how we get through life. We have no hope, because God is just as surprised as we are. Bam—tragedy hits, and God’s like, “Aw! Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Gabriel, I need you down there ASAP.” Listen to me. God is not the ambulance driver that shows up after the wreck. He’s the surgeon that will make the cut, knowing exactly what to cut out, exactly what to leave in, exactly what to take, exactly what to let alone. This is the giant, scary, worthy of worship, eternal God of the Bible, who not only knows tomorrow but is already there.” -MC

“Prayer does not stop with “amen.” It rises to its feet and walks off, with our built-up yearning turned into action.” 

“Like the disciplines of fidelity & charity, simplicity & generosity, acts of service and stewardship are not just quaint or pious exercises to make us better people. They are down payments on our faith that the reality of power, that most slippery of all human realities, is not as it appears. The lesson of both exodus and resurrection is that the powerless are never as powerless as they seem. Perhaps that is the truest sense of the “good news to the poor” that Jesus came to proclaim: the poor are not as poor as they, and we, think they are. The creative God of history has made his resurrection power available to them. He has made his power available to us if we will become poor in spirit—no longer simply accumulating power but sharing it freely.”

“Perfect love is to love the one who made you unhappy…unhappiness is not to love without being loved, but to be loved when one does not love.”

“The issue is not “What must I do in order to secure my salvation?” but rather, “What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?” … Otherwise our nonviolence is premised on self-justifying attempts to establish our own purity in the eyes of God, others, and ourselves, and that is nothing less than a satanic temptation to die with clean hands and a dirty heart.” 

“We begin to grow when we take responsibility for the growth of another person. Ministry to others is not an add-on to our growth, it is an essential ingredient.”

“We don’t get to our futures any faster if we hurry. And we certainly don’t become better people in haste. More likely than not, the faster we go the less we become.”

“Singleness, whether it’s short or long, or whether we’re married for long or not, in all those seasons, the same objective exists, which is to glorify God and His purposes.”

“The objects of most of our desires are not evil. The problem is the way they tend to grow, and the control they come to exercise over our hearts. Desires are a part of human existence, but they must be held with an open hand. … The problem with desire is that in sinners it very quickly morphs into demand (‘I must’). Demand is the closing of my fists over a desire. Even though I may be unaware that I have done it, I have left my proper position of submission to God. I have decided that I must have what I have set my heart on and nothing can stand in the way. I am no longer comforted by God’s desire for me; I am threatened by it, because God’s will potentially stands in the way of my demand. … There is a direct relationship between expectation and disappointment, and much of our disappointment in relationships is not because people have actually wronged us, but because they have failed to meet our expectations.”
— Paul Tripp

“Lust is the craving for salt of a person who is dying of thirst.”—Frederick Buechner

“God means his church to be a community of mutual support… We are not to leave caring for one another to an elite of professional comforters or counselors. These have an important role to fulfill, of course, but supporting, caring, encouraging, and comforting are ministries which belong to all members of the Body of Christ.” -B. Hughes


the question is not “do I sin?” but rather, “am I actively walking in on going repentance?” - Matt Chandler

“There is a direct relationship between expectation and disappointment, and much of our disappointment in relationships is not because people have actually wronged us, but because they have failed to meet our expectations.” - Paul Tripp

“Men trust God by risking rejection. Women trust God by waiting.” — Carolyn McCulley

“Finally, no dead people struggle for life. Only those who are alive struggle. Likewise, the dead in sin, the unregenerate do not struggle against their sins. Christians do.”

“What you really want is joy. You don’t really want a car. You don’t really want a perfect family. You don’t really want a hot lover. What you really want is infinite happiness.”

“In their search for facts men have confused truths with truth. The words of Christ, ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ have been wrenched from their context and used to stir people to the pursuit of knowledge of many kinds with the expectation of being made ‘free’ (John 8:32), by knowledge. Certainly this is not what Christ had in mind when He uttered the words… It is the Son who is the Truth that makes men free. Not facts, not scientific knowledge, but eternal Truth delivers men…” Tozer

“Says God, ‘Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he is lost.’”

“Ultimately it is only the man who feels quite hopeless about himself who really trusts God.” - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“I get so set in my drivenness that I just miss the beauty right around me. I miss what God is doing today because I’m trying to figure out next week.” - Luc Jackson

“Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.” 
-Rob Bell

“Freedom is not having everything we crave, it’s being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it. ” - R.B.

“There is a difference between being saved and becoming more and more and more the person God created you to be” -Kirk Scott

“As sinful as you are, You’re free” -Kirk Scott

“It’s ok not to be ok. It’s not ok to stay there.” -Mat Chandler

“I have taken my good deeds and my bad deeds and thrown them together in a heap. Then I have fled from both of them to Christ, and in Him I have peace.” -Derek Webb