20 More Great Quotes from Maturity: Growing Up and Going On in the Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson
We recently looked at Sinclair Ferguson’s excellent new book Maturity; Growing Up and Going on the Christian Life. (Click to read the review). Here are 20 more excellent quotes from the book:
- If you become a Christian, you must both expect and be prepared for opposition.
- Growth in grace and the conquest of sin come only when we allow ourselves to be exposed before God, hide nothing from him, confess our wanderings, are ashamed of our own failure, and long for a clean heart and a new spirit (Psa. 51:10).
- We cannot embrace the cross, or, more accurately, embrace the Christ who died on it and now lives forever, without renouncing sin.
- Tests, trials, and temptations abound in the Christian life. If we are to grow to maturity, we must learn how to handle them.
- In temptation we seem to be offered a more abundant life but wrapped within its folds lies death.
- God works in our lives through temptation. So, for us times of temptation can be means, not of destruction, but of sanctification.
- In God’s purposes, when we are tempted, we discover the truth about ourselves; we learn to think less of ourselves and more of our Savior.
- The Lord has promised to hear us; he will not turn a deaf ear to our cries for help. The dependence that is thus produced in our hearts, as we later discover, is simply one further way in which he brings us through temptations to maturity. After all, he makes everything work together for our good.
- How easily our witness is marred and nullified because we fail to be the son or daughter, parent, husband, wife, colleague or boss that God has called us to be!
- What the gospel provides for us then is the armor which Christ himself wore in his battles with the enemy. When engaged in conflict with Satan those who are in Christ wear his armor.
- Wearing the breastplate of righteousness means knowing this: I can never be more justified than I was the first moment I trusted Christ. And I can never be any less justified than Jesus. Nor can I be one whit less justified than the greatest believer who has ever lived.
- The New Testament teaches us that suffering is part and parcel of the Christian life.
- God uses tribulations to separate the spiritual chaff in our lives from the spiritual wheat.
- The believer does not interpret events in his life by the wisdom of men but by the word and wisdom of God.
- Afflictions focus our attention on the things that really matter, and thus restore us to single-mindedness and recalibrate our love for Christ.
- How slow we are to learn that God is willing to go to any lengths to transform us. No matter what it costs he has set his heart on us. The cross proves his determination. He means to make us like his Son, Jesus Christ. For this is the goal of our maturity.
- When we go through seasons of suffering, we should not forget that we are living our Christian life on the battlefield on which Satan is at war with the kingdom of God.
- True service is always marked by a recognition that we live for and serve others, not ourselves.
- Clearly perseverance is a basic feature of Christian living. Persevering is as important as initiation; continuing is as important as beginning.
- All sin, every sin, sin in any shape or form must be put off.