The world does not object to your being a Christian for a time, if she can but tempt you to cease your pilgrimage and settle down to buy and sell with her in Vanity Fair. The flesh will seek to ensnare you, and to prevent your pressing on to glory. “It is weary work being a pilgrim; come, give it up. Am I always to be mortified? Am I never to be indulged? Give me at least a furlough from this constant warfare.” Satan will make many a fierce attack on your perseverance; it will be the mark for all his arrows. He will strive to hinder you in service: he will insinuate that you are doing no good; and that you want rest. He will endeavor to make you weary of suffering, he will whisper, “Curse God, and die.” Or he will attack your steadfastness: “What is the good of being so zealous? Be quiet like the rest; sleep as do others, and let your lamp go out as the other virgins do.” Or he will assail your doctrinal sentiments: “Why do you hold to these denominational creeds? Sensible men are getting more liberal; they are removing the old landmarks: fall in with the times.” Wear your shield, Christian, therefore, close upon your armor, and cry mightily unto God, that by his Spirit you may endure to the end. ~C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, May 26. PM

All the graces of Christianity always go together.  They so go together that where there is one, there are all, and where one is wanting, all are wanting.  Where there is faith, there are love, and hope, and humility; and where there is love, there is also trust; and where there is a holy trust in God; there is love to God; and where there is a gracious hope, there also is a holy fear of God.  ~Jonathan Edwards

Charles Spurgeon

“It is in the gymnasium of affliction that men are modeled and fashioned in the beauty of holiness, and all their spiritual powers are trained for harmonious action. It was meet also that they should suffer, in order to complete their service. Like their Lord, they had to be made perfect through suffering; and if they had not suffered they had not finished the work which he had given them to do. They needed tribulation, moreover, that they might be made like their Savior; for a saint untroubled, how can he be like the man who wore the thorn crown? Never smitten, never slandered, never despised, never mocked at, never crucified, then how could we be like our Head? Shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple above his Lord?” ~From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “What And Whence Are These?,” delivered February 25, 1872.

Andrew Murray

Oh, that what remains of sin in us might become unbearable to us! May we no longer be complacent about the fact that we, as redeemed ones, sin against God’s will in so many ways. May the desire for holiness become stronger in us. Shouldn’t the thought that the blood has more power than we can comprehend, and can do for us greater things than we have yet experienced, cause our hearts to reach out for it with strong desire? If there were more desire for deliverance from sin, for holiness and intimate friendship with a holy God, it would be the first thing needful for being led further into the knowledge of what the blood can do. ~Andrew Murray, “The Blood of Christ”

J. C. Ryle

We ask that God would make us holy. It is a good request indeed. But are we prepared to be sanctified by any process that God in His wisdom may call on us to pass through? Are we ready to be purified by affliction, weaned from the world by bereavements, drawn nearer to God by losses, sicknesses and sorrow? Alas! these are hard questions. But if we are not, our Lord might well say to us, “You don’t know what you are asking.” ~ J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew

Sanctification in Trials

How would the great work of sanctification go on in a person if they had no trial? Trouble is often the only fire which will burn away the dross that clings to our hearts. Trouble is the pruning–knife which Christ employs in order to make us fruitful in good works. The harvest of the Lord’s field is seldom ripened by sunshine only. It must go through its days of wind and rain and storm.

~ J.C. Ryle

Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots, “The Ruler of the Waves”, [Moscow, ID: Charles Nolan Publishing, 2001], 237.