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For
by grace are ye saved through faith; and that
not of yourselves:
it is the gift of God:
Not of works, lest any man should
boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 (King James Version)
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"Faith is
rest, not toil. It is the
giving up all the former weary efforts to do or feel something good, in
order to induce God to love and pardon; and the calm reception of the
truth
so long rejected, that God is not waiting for any such inducements, but
loves and pardons of His own goodwill, and is showing that goodwill to
any sinner who will come to Him on such a footing, casting away his own
poor performances or goodnesses, and relying implicitly upon the free
love
of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. ..."
Horatius
Bonar (1808-1889), "The Everlasting
Righteousness"
"Faith
is the acknowledgment of the
entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross
as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His,
not ours, from first to last."
Horatius
Bonar (1808-1889), "The Everlasting
Righteousness"
"There is a
God in heaven who overrules
all things for the best; and this is the comfort of my soul."
David
Brainerd
"Faith has this
excellency, that it is able to
bring life out of death, light out of darkness. It has a kind of
creating virtue."
Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Conversation, p.297-298
"Now we
shall possess a right definition
of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's
benevolence
toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in
Christ,
both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy
Spirit."
John
Calvin
"Faith
is always at a disadvantage; it is a
perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors."
G.K.
Chesterton
"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."
Kahlil Gibran
"My trust
is in the mercy and
wisdom
of a kind Providence, who ordereth all things for our good."
Robert E. Lee
"It
is a dreadful truth that
the
state of having to depend solely on God is
what we all dread most....
It
is good of Him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is
good
at the time."
C.S.
Lewis, Dec. 6, 1955
"If God promises something, then faith
must fight a long and bitter fight, for reason or the flesh judges that
God's promises are impossible. Therefore faith must battle against
reason
and its doubts ............. Faith is something that is busy, powerful
and creative, though properly speaking, it is essentially an enduring
than
a doing. It changes the mind and heart. While reason holds to what is
present,
faith apprehends the things that are not seen. Contrary to reason,
faith
regards the invisible things as already materialized. This explains why
faith, unlike hearing is not found in many, for only few believe, while
the great majority cling to the things that are present and can be felt
and handled rather than to the Word."
Martin
Luther, The Promises
"Faith
is a living, daring confidence
in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on
it a thousand times."
Martin
Luther
"Well
knows
he who
uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge
thrives by exercise, as
well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is
compar'd in Scripture to a
streaming fountain; if her water flow not in a perpetual progression,
they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition."
John
Milton
"Do we want to know
whether Christ was resurrected on Easter? God provides the grace to
believe
in that, but note: Such belief requires less faith
in things unseen
than
believing that the world as we know it evolved out of nothing."
Marvin Olasky
"We are... living in a free society without the faith that built that society - and
without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it... We still have the cathedral
of freedom but how long will it last without the faith?"
Thomas Sowell
"The state of faith
allows no mention of impossibility."
Tertullian, (c.
160-c. A.D. 230) Theologian
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