Joseph Alleine Warning about This World

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"Will you still be cheated by this deceitful world, and spend all your days in pampering your guts, and providing for the flesh, that must be rotting shortly in a grave? Were you made for no better use than this? May not we bring you to some sober thoughts of your condition? Not one hour seriously to think whither you are going? What! not one awakened look into the world where you must be for ever?"

Joseph Alleine


Andrew Murray on Work and Fruit

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Tuesday, July 30, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"Do not confound work and fruit. There may be a good deal of work for Christ that is not the fruit of the heavenly Vine."

Andrew Murray

B.B. Warfield on Providence

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Monday, July 29, 2013 at 7:47 AM

"In the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His divine plan.  Nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without His ordering, or without its particular fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall be the manifestation of His glory, and the accumulation of His praise."

B.B. Warfield


Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Love

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Friday, July 26, 2013 at 8:09 AM

"Now this is the very nature of love. It must express itself; it is always active; and if our love does not do that, I say it is not true love. You see, the real trouble with the person who is seated there in the study reading beautiful poems or books about love and who feels that he is controlled by it and that he is a fine Christian is this: What is really happening to that person is that he is simply in love with himself, because he appreciates these elevating thoughts. He is loving himself because he thinks he is in love. He has turned in upon himself, and that is the very antithesis to love; love does not look at itself – it is absorbed in the object of its love."
Martyn Lloyd-Jones


A.A. Hodge on Truth and the Courage to Stand Up for It

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Thursday, July 25, 2013 at 6:31 AM

"It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it."

A.A. Hodge


John Owen on Worship

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Wednesday, July 24, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"First, The nature and being of God is the foundation of all true religion and holy religious worship in the world. The great end for which we were made, for which we were brought forth by the power of God into this world, is to worship him and to give glory unto him; for he " made all things for himself," or his own glory, Prov. xvi. 4, to be rendered unto him according to the abilities and capacities that he both furnished them withal, Rev. iv. 11.  And that which makes this worship indispensably necessary unto us, and from whence it is holy or religious, is the nature and being of God himself.  There are, indeed, many parts or acts of religious worship which immediately respect (as their reason and motive) what God is unto us, or what he hath done and doth for us;  but the principal and adequate reason of all divine worship, and that which makes it such, is what God is in himself."

John Owen


A.W. Pink on "Modern Christendom" and Their View of God

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 6:47 AM

"How different is the God of the Bible from the God of modern Christendom! The conception of Deity which prevails most widely today, even among those who profess to give heed to the Scriptures, is a miserable caricature, a blasphemous travesty of the Truth. The God of the twentieth century is a helpless, effeminate being who commands the respect of no really thoughtful man. The God of the popular mind is the creation of maudlin sentimentality. The God of many a present-day pulpit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring reverence."

A.W. Pink


Andrew Murray on Faith

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Monday, July 22, 2013 at 7:25 AM

"Faith expects from God what is beyond all expectation."

Andrew Murray


Ulrich Zwingli on Works and Christ

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Friday, July 19, 2013 at 7:39 AM

"Since Christ is our righteousness, our works are good only insofar as they are of Christ."

Ulrich Zwingli


J.C. Ryle on Humility

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Thursday, July 18, 2013 at 7:24 AM

"Let us learn wisdom from our Savior’s example. We are far too ready to “seek great things” in this world. Let us seek them not. To have a place, and a title, and a position in society, is not nearly so important as people think. It is a great sin to be covetous, and worldly, and proud, and carnal-minded. But it is no sin to be poor. It matters not so much where we live, as what we are in the sight of God. Where are we going when we die? Shall we live forever in heaven? These are the main things to which we should attend.

Above all, let us daily strive to copy our Savior’s humility. Pride is the oldest and commonest of sins. Humility is the rarest and most beautiful of graces. For humility let us labor. For humility let us pray. Our knowledge may be scanty. Our faith may be weak. Our strength may be small. But if we are disciples of Him who “lived in Nazareth,” let us at any rate be humble."

J.C. Ryle

John Owen on the Forgiveness of Sin

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 at 6:57 AM

"He suffered men, indeed, to make trial of other ways; and when their insufficiency for the ends men proposed to themselves was manifested, it pleased him to reveal His way. And what are we, that we should contend about it with Him? God's rejection of the way of personal righteousness, and choosing the way of grace and forgiveness, he reveals, Jeremiah 31:31-34: 'Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers,' (in which administration of the covenant, as far as it had respect to typical mercies, much depended on their personal obedience,) 'but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my law in their hearts, and will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.' Let, then, this way stand, and the way of man's wisdom and self-righteousness perish forever." 

John Owen


A.W. Pink on Prayer

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 7:19 AM

"The prevailing idea seems to be, that I come to God and ask Him for something that I want, and that I expect Him to give me that which I have asked. But this is a most dishonouring and degading conception. The popular belief reduces God to a servant, our servant: doing our bidding, performing our pleasure, granting our desires. No, prayer is a coming to God, telling Him my need, committing my way unto the Lord, and leaving Him to deal with it as seemeth Him best."

A.W. Pink


Thomas Taylor on the Nature of Spiritual Seed

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Monday, July 15, 2013 at 6:49 AM

“As seed hath a natural heat, life, and virtue in it, by which it increases and begets more seeds like unto itself: so the Word cast into the good ground of a believing heart, hath a supernatural heat in it, being as fire, Jer. 5:14, and a lively power to frame men like itself, to make them of fleshly, spiritual; of blind, quick sighted; of dead in sin, alive in grace. And as one grain quickened, brings sundry tillowes, and many grains in each: so one Christian converted, and receiving this power in himself, gains many, unto God, desiring that everyone were as he is, except his bands and sins.”

Thomas Taylor


John Owen on Holiness and the Gospel

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Friday, July 12, 2013 at 9:11 AM

"I hope I may own in sincerity, that my heart's desire unto God, and the chief design of my life in the station wherein the good providence of God hath placed me, are, that mortification and universal holiness may be promoted in my own and in the hearts and ways of others, to the glory of God; that so the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be adorned in all things:…"
John Owen

(From Preface of: MORTIFICATION OF SIN IN BELIEVERS)


Jospeh Hall on Affliction

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | | Posted On Thursday, July 11, 2013 at 7:21 AM

"A Christian, for the sweet fruit he bears to God and men, is compared to the noblest of all plants, the vine.  Now as the most generous vine, if not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems and grows at last weak and fruitless, so doth the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions.  If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither.  Let me be pruned, that I may grow;  rather than cut up, to burn."

Joseph Hall


John Newton on Salvation

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , , | Posted On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"Thus not only the guilt, but the love of sin, and its dominion, are taken away, subdued by grace, and cordially renounced by the believing pardoned sinner. The blood, which frees him from distress, preserves a remembrance of the great danger and misery from which he has been delivered warm upon his heart; inspires him with gratitude to his Deliverer, and furnishes him with an abiding and constraining motive for cheerful and universal obedience."

John Newton


Thomas Watson on Sin and God's Love

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 7:00 AM


“A stone in the pipe hinders the current of water: so, sin lived in, hinders the sweet current of God's love."
Thomas Watson


James W. Alexander on Applying God's Word

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Monday, July 8, 2013 at 7:00 AM

“He who trusts in God's Word as an infallible directory, will never find a day in which he can live without its guidance. He cannot rise from his sleep, without query how the day's plan may be laid so as to find him, like Enoch, walking with God; or take his early meal, without a purpose that it be sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. He cannot receive his dues, without considering how much he oweth unto his Lord, and how much he is in danger from the mammon of unrighteousness.  He cannot meet a friend, without casting about for a Scripture maxim which may sanctify their union; or an enemy, without guarding his temper by the precept of forgiveness.  Nor can he close his doors, and "go up to the habitation of his bed," until he has looked back over the journey of the day, and applied to it the lesson of God's statutes.  And the fact that all this is unknown in the days of any professing Christians, is too conclusive an argument of their habitual distrust of heavenly truth as the instrument of their sanctification."
James W. Alexander


William Bates on the Duties of a Man and Woman in Marriage

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Friday, July 5, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"The principal duty of husbands and wives is, a tender care for the good of each other's souls. The husband should lead her in the way to eternal life, by his counsel and example; and the wife by her humble and holy conversation, recommend religion to his mind and affections."

William Bates


Hugh Binning on Living to God

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Thursday, July 4, 2013 at 7:00 AM

“We are not our own, therefore we ought not to live to ourselves, but to God, whose we are.”

Hugh Binning




Matthew Mead on Eternity

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Wednesday, July 3, 2013 at 8:11 AM

"Oh! Consider, eternity is no dream! Hell and the worm that never dies, is no melancholy conceit! Heaven is no feigned elysium: there is the greatest reality imaginable in these things; though they are spiritual, and out of the ken of sense, yet they are real and within the view of faith! 'Look not therefore, at the things which are seen, but look at the things which are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen, are eternal.'"  

Matthew Mead


John Angell James on Marriage

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 8:04 AM


"One of the ends which every believer must propose to himself, on entering the state of marriage, is to secure a faithful friend who will be a helpmate to him in reference to the world to come, assist him in the great business of his soul’s salvation, and pray for him and with him. One that will affectionately tell him of his sins and defects, viewed in the light of a Christian. One that will stimulate and draw him by the power of a holy example and the sweet force of persuasive words. One that will warn him in temptation, comfort him in dejection, and in every way assist him in his pilgrimage to heaven."
John Angell James



Jeremiah Burroughs on Contentment

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Monday, July 1, 2013 at 6:59 AM

"It is a good sign that grace and truth are working in your heart if you judge this to be the better thing. That is, it's better to know how to honor God with those good things I have than to know how I can get more.  It's better to know how I might behave myself in the enjoyment of those good things God has given me than to know how to get more of those good things."
Jeremiah Burroughs