Here are a couple of quotes I’ve found thought provoking and helpful lately.
First, my friend Dave Cleland posted a quote from John Piper’s new book “Finally Alive.”
“…my feelings do not define truth. God’s Word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes- many times- my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens- and it happens every day in some measure- I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.”
John Piper, Finally Alive, p. 165-166
Second, from the blog Of First Importance:
“The doctrines of the gospel are meant to mould us so that our lives begin to ’set’ in the likeness of Christ. We have made little or no impression upon the world, for the very reason that the gospel doctrine has made a correspondingly slight impression upon us. It cannot be overemphasized that men and women who have accomplished anything in God’s strength have always done so on the basis of their grasp of truth.”
- Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1981), 8-9.
Third, again from Of First Importance:
“Luther taught that every time you insist that I am a sinner, just so often do you call me to remember the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulders, and not upon mine, lie all my sins. So, when you say that I am a sinner, you do not terrify, but comfort me immeasurably.”
—Thomas Oden, The Justification Reader (Grand Rapids: Eeerdmans, 2002), 5