For fellow participants, what I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see is for people to share quotes from what they're reading. I'd love for you to share quotes occasionally with your readers and let me know about it. If you don't have a blog, you could always leave quotes in the comments here.
“I am the way.” You should learn what this eloquent statement of Christ means. Don’t think of a path that you walk on with your feet. Instead, think of one that you travel on by faith—a faith that clings only to the Lord Christ. There are various ways of walking and wandering through life. First, there are many roads and footpaths for physically walking from one place to another, as cows and horses do. The Scripture teaches nothing about these paths. But there are other kinds of paths in this life. A second kind of path pertains to everyday life. On this path, we lead a good and moral life before the world and seek to preserve government, peace, honor, and order. Over all of these ways is still another path, about which the Scripture and Christ speak here. This third path is the way to get from this life to the next. For this journey, we need a much different way, a much different path. Here Christ is saying, “When you have come to me in faith, you are on the right way. This path is reliable and won’t mislead you.” ~ Martin Luther, "Faith Alone," August 9
All the stories in Holy Scripture, if they are interpreted correctly, point toward Christ. ~
Martin Luther, "Faith Alone," August 12
Whoever understands what it means for the Spirit to be our Counselor will have already won the battle. That person will find nothing but pure comfort and joy in heaven and on earth. Because the Father is the one who sends him to help us, and because Christ is the one who asks him to do so, this sending is certainly not done out of anger. Instead, it flows from a fatherly, heartfelt love. So Christians should remind themselves of this name for the Holy Spirit. He is a counselor, and we are the troubled and timid ones whom he helps. ~ Martin Luther, "Faith Alone," August 16
As I laid down your letter, after reading with interest the graphic account it gives of a very striking scene, I could not help feeling with renewed force a truth, trite enough, yet ever impressive; viz., that it is good to be attracted out of ourselves—to be forced to take a near view of the sufferings, the privations, the efforts, the difficulties of others. If we ourselves live in fulness of content, it is well to be reminded that thousands of our fellow-creatures undergo a different lot; it is well to have sleepy sympathies excited, and lethargic selfishness shaken up. If, on the other hand, we be contending with the special grief,—the intimate trial,—the peculiar bitterness with which God has seen fit to mingle our own cup of existence,—it is very good to know that our overcast lot is not singular; it stills the repining word and thought,—it rouses the flagging strength, to have it vividly set before us that there are countless afflictions in the world, each perhaps rivalling—some surpassing—the private pain over which we are too prone exclusively to sorrow. ~ Charlotte Bronte, 1851
© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible
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