Choosing to Cope in Christ

08/02/2021

14/05/2020

Only the restful soul in the secured being that He is in Christ can show deep and lasting compassion and sympathy to wounded souls around him.

16/04/2020

While excessive gloom is a normal stage of grief, it must, nevertheless, give way to hope.Death is not the end for the believer. We do not grieve as those who are not in Christ. The resurrection allows us to anticipate life after-death-our own and of those we treasure.

- J. Mcarthur

04/04/2020

As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. New wisdom for our leaders?

- N.T. Wright

02/04/2020

The ancient doctrine of the Trinity teaches us to recognize the One God in tears of Jesus and the anguish of the Spirit.

- N.T. Wright

02/04/2020

"Rationalists (including Christian rationalists) want explanations; Romantics (including Christian romantics) want to be given a sigh of relief. But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world. It’s bad enough facing a pandemic in New York City or London. What about a crowded refugee camp on a Greek island? What about Gaza? Or South Sudan?

At this point the Psalms, the Bible’s own hymnbook, come back into their own, just when some churches seem to have given them up. “Be gracious to me, Lord,” prays the sixth Psalm, “for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.” “Why do you stand far off, O Lord?” asks the 10th Psalm plaintively. “Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?” And so it goes on: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?” (Psalm 13). And, all the more terrifying because Jesus himself quoted it in his agony on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22)...''

It's not supposed to

26/03/2020

Whether you realize it or not, you are in an unending conversation with yourself, and the things you say to you about you are formative of the way that you live. You are constantly talking to yourself about your identity, your spirituality, your functionality, your emotionality, your mentality, your personality, your relationships, etc. You are constantly preaching to yourself some kind of gospel. You preach to yourself an anti-gospel of your own righteousness, power, and wisdom, or you preach to yourself the true gospel of deep spiritual need and sufficient grace. You preach to yourself an anti-gospel of aloneness and inability, or you preach to yourself the true gospel of the presence, provisions, and power of an ever-present Christ.

- Paul Tripp

17/03/2020

Bad Things Happen When Maturity is More Defined by Knowing than it is by Being

14/03/2020

“Sickness, when sanctified, teaches us four things: the vanity of the world, the vileness of sin, the helplessness of man and the preciousness of Christ.” The last of those, I submit, overpowers the emptiness of the others. If heaven is what lies ahead for us, what can we possibly complain about?

- Puritan Teacher