Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
John CalvinRead
Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the challenges that come with divine calling and the moral responsibilities it entails.
John Calvin suggests that those chosen by God are expected to face numerous trials and adversities. This acknowledgment of hardship aligns with the belief that a virtuous life involves perseverance through struggles and a commitment to righteousness, reinforcing the notion that true fellowship with the divine comes with significant challenges.
In practice
During a church sermon about the struggles of faith.
Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.
Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.
For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any book, however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written, are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.
When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.
I don't want to not be African. The goal is to live in a world where my race doesn't limit my access, where I can see myself represented in the highest level of society without any limitation.
Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.
In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.
We want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are ... It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
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