J. I. Packer

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.

He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity.

We need to discover all over again that worship is natural to the Christian, as it was to the godly Israelites who wrote the psalms, and that the habit of celebrating the greatness and graciousness of God yields an endless flow of thankfulness, joy, and zeal.

The fruit of wisdom is Christlikeness, peace, humility and love. And, the root of it is faith in Christ as the manifested wisdom of God

Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be ADOPTION THROUGH PROPITIATION, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.

Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.

Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.

We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?

Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God.

I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, One who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted for me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor -- spending and being spent -- to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others -- and not just their own friends -- in whatever way there seems need.

God has not abandoned us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep.

To mend our own relationship with God, regaining God's favor after having once lost it, is beyond the power of any one of us. And one must see and bow to this before one can share the biblical faith in God's grace.

Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart.

God's ways do not change... Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that hew owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own effort, that they themselves have found life.

It is often the case, as all the saints know, that fellowship with the Father and the Son is most vivid and sweet, and Christian joy is greatest, when the cross is heaviest.

Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God's holiness and sovereignty...a cknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.

Simple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by Biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent of this kind would be to secure only false conversions.

The Trinity is the basis of the gospel, and the gospel is a declaration of the Trinity in action.

The preachers commission is to declare the whole counsel of God; but the cross is the center of that counsel.

The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.