Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don’t ‘feel called’ to the mission field. We don’t need a call; we need a kick in the pants. We must begin thinking in terms of ‘going out,’ and stop weeping because ‘they won’t come in.’ Who wants to step into an igloo? The tombs themselves are not colder than the churches. May God send us forth.” – Jim Elliot

And all this in a garden of love, the Paradise of God, where everything has a cast of holy love, and everything conspires to promote and stir up love and nothing to interrupt its exercises; everything is fitted by an all-wise God for the enjoyment of love under the greatest advantages. And all this shall be without any fading of the beauty of the objects believed, or any decaying of love in the lover, and any satiety in the faculty which enjoys love.

O! what tranquillity may we conclude there is in such a world as this! Who can express the sweetness of this peace? What a calm is this, what a heaven of rest is here to arrive at after persons have gone through a world of storms and tempests, a world of pride and selfishness and envy, and malice, and scorn, and contempt and contention and war?… What joy may we conclude springs up in the hearts of the saints after they have passed wearisome pilgrimage to be brought to such a paradise?

Here is joy unspeakable indeed; here is humble, holy, divine joy in its perfection.

- Jonathan Edwards

^“1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.”

- Psalm 19

H/T Liquid Squid

² Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-

³ who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,

⁴ who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,

⁵ who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Psalm 103

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation to be controlled by ideas […] which prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.”

- J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913): 7.

Lord, keep us right, true in doctrine, true in experience, true in life, true in word, true in deed. Let us have an intense agony of spirit concerning the many who are going down to the everlasting fire of which our Master spoke. Lord, save them! LORD, SAVE THEM! Stay, we pray Thee, the torrents of sin that run down the streets of London; purge the dead sea of sin, in which so many of the heathen are lying asoak. Oh! that the day were come when the name of Jesus shall be a household word, when everybody knew of His love, and of His death, and of His blood, and of its cleansing power. Lord, save men, gather out the company of the redeemed people; let those whom the Father gave to Christ be brought out from among the ruins of the fall to be His joy and crown. “Let the people praise Thee, O God, yea, let all the people praise Thee.” Let the ends of the earth fear Him who died to save them. Let the whole earth be filled with the glory of God.

- Charles Spurgeon

Amen

Oh! give us to serve Thee, and especially, and this prayer we have already prayed but we pray it again, make us useful in the salvation of our fellow man. O Lord, have we lived so long in the world and yet are our children unconverted? May we never rest until they are truly saved. Have we been going up and down in business, and are those round about us as yet unaware of our Christian character? Have we never spoken to them the Word of Life? Lord, arouse us to a deep concern for all with whom we come in contact from day to day. Make us all missionaries at home or in the street, or in our workshop, wherever Providence has cast our lot, may we there shine as lights in the world.

- Charles Spurgeon

Amen