“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. F or the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” (Annie Dillard)
“It is not enough to hear a sermon, but you must eat it down, take in what it commands, and then it will purge your heart…Take the word and digest it, squeeze the juice of it into thy heart, and it will purge thee from all contrary corruption.” pg. 73- ‘Mans Guiltiness Before God” (Thomas Goodwin)
This is one of the passages I quote (not all of it) at funerals on John 14…
It is as if he had said, The truth is, I cannot live without you, I shall never be quiet till I have you where I am, that so we may never part again; that is the reason of it. Heaven shall not hold me, nor my Father’s company, if I have not you with me, my heart is so set upon you; and if I have any glory, you shall have part of it… Poor sinners, who are full of the thoughts of their own sins, know not how they shall be able at the latter day to look Christ in the face when they shall first meet with him. But they may relieve their spirits against their care and fear, by Christ’s carriage now towards his disciples, who had so sinned against him. Be not afraid, ‘your sins will he remember no more.’ … And doth he talk thus lovingly of us? Whose heart would not this overcome? (Thomas Goodwin, Works, 4.100, 105)
And John Piper’s
God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied with Him.
Grace Still Amazes 