Good Advice From Godly Saints

Colossians 2:6-7 (NLT)

Just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

Polycarp of Smyrna (69-156)

Now may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal high priest himself, the Son of God Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and truth and in all gentleness and in all freedom from anger and forbearance and steadfastness and patient endurance and purity.

Thomas a' Kempis The Imitation of Christ

Finally, I want to teach you the way of peace and true liberty. There are four things you must do. First, strive to do another's will rather than your own. Second, choose always to have less than more. Third, seek the lower places in life, dying to the need to be recognized and important. Fourth, always and in everything desire that the will of God may be completely fulfilled in you.

William Gurnall The Christian in Compete Armour

Dare to be holy, despite men and devils.

Henry Scudder A Key of Heaven: The Lord’s Prayer Opened, and So Applied, that a Christian May Learne how to Pray, and to Procure All Things which May Make for the Glorie of God, and the Good of Himselfe, and of His Neighbour: Containing Likewise Such Doctrines of Faith and Godlines, as May be Very Usefull to All that Desire to Live Godly in Christ Jesus, 1633

Be perfect, says Christ, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48); in every thing, and in every way, be perfect. The way to attain this is first to convince the heart that we ought to be perfect.

Then we must see that we are not already perfect.

Thirdly, let us not look on what we have done, and what is behind, but on that which is before us to be done.

Fourthly, we must be daily purging ourselves from filthiness of flesh and spirit, and so perfect holiness.

Fifthly, that we may do all these, we must daily be reading, hearing, and meditating on the Holy Scriptures; for their end is to make the man of God perfect.

Lastly, give all diligence, and press forward toward the mark and prize of the high calling of God in Christ. (Philippians 3:13-14)

Thomas Gataker, pastor of Rotherhith, member of the Westminster Assembly, on Philippians 3:13-14

(Paul) did as men in a race that look not back to see how many they have passed, or how far they have progressed, but have their eyes fixed on the ground before them (and) how far we are to go, and how far we come short of that Christian perfection that we should all strive and contend to attain unto.

Thomas Manton A Practical Exposition of the Lord's Prayer "Thine is the Glory"

This life is not to be valued but as it yields opportunities to glorify God. Every morning we should revive the sense of this upon our hearts. This day I am going to live with God.

John Newton “The Ascension of Messiah to Glory”

https://books.google.com/books?id=ejYIv91QlGUC&pg=PA302&lpg

Let not those who know Christ be ashamed of their attachment to him. You will not repent in a dying hour, that you once thought too highly of him, or expected too much from him, or devoted yourself with too much earnestness to his service.

Nor yield to unbelief and fear. Though your enemies are many and mighty, and your trials great, greater is he that is with you. If the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the Lord strong and mighty in battle, be for you, who can be against you, so as effectually to harm you? Continue instant in prayer; persevere in well doing. Our ascended Lord will one day return; and then they who have loved and served and trusted him here shall appear with him in glory.

Robert Murray McCheyne

For every one look at your problems, your weaknesses, your failures - take ten looks at Jesus.

F.B. Meyer

Act worthily of the love which summoned you, and of the goal to which you have been called. Stand still and ask yourself before you speak, or act, or decide-Is this worthy of that great ideal which God has conceived for me, when He called me from the rest of men to be his priest, his saint, his son?

A.W. Tozer The Root of The Righteous

The whole Bible and all the great saints of the past join to tell us the same thing. "Take nothing for granted," they say to us. "Go back to the grass roots. Open your hearts and search the Scriptures. Bear your cross, follow your Lord and pay no heed to the passing religious vogue. The masses are always wrong. In every generation the number of the righteous is small. Be sure you are among them."

Thomas More A Godly Meditation, Written in the Tower c. 1534

1. Give me Thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at naught; to set my mind fast upon Thee; and not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths.

2. To be content to be solitary; not to long for worldly company; little and little utterly to cast off the world, and rid my mind of all the business thereof; not to long to hear of any worldly things, but that the hearing of worldly phantasies may be to me displeasant.

3. Gladly to be thinking of God; piteously to call for His help; to lean unto the comfort of God; busily to labour to love Him.

4. To know mine own vility and wretchedness; to humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God. To bewail my sins past; for the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity; gladly to bear my purgatory here; to be joyful of tribulations; to walk the narrow way that leadeth to life.

5. To bear the cross with Christ; to have the last things in remembrance; to have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand; to make death no stranger to me; to foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell; to pray for pardon before the Judge come.

6. To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me; for His benefits incessantly to give Him thanks.

7. To buy the time again, that I before have lost; to abstain from vain confabulations; to eschew light, foolish mirth; and gladness; recreations not necessary to cut off; of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at right nought for the winning of Christ.

8. To think my most enemies my best friends; for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all upon one heap.

Thomas Lye “How Are We to Live by Faith of Divine Providence?”

There are rocks and quicksands that faith must take the utmost care to avoid.

1. Watch for distracting cares (Philippians 4:6).

2. Watch carnal counsel, and do not trust in man or fleshly help.

3. Do not limit the Holy One of Israel to only one manner of deliverance.

4. Watch impatient fretting, murmuring, and quarrelling against God's dispensation.

5. Don't doubt God's love under sufferings. Faith runs in the current of contentment (Philippians 4:11) and humility. Humility steadies the soul and makes it ride out the storm.

John Bunyan A Discourse Touching Prayer 1662

1. Believe that as sure as you are in the way of God you must meet with temptations, trials, and testing.

2. The first day therefore that thou dost enter into Christ's congregation, look for them.

3. When they do come, beg of God to carry thee through them.

4. Be jealous of (guard and examine) thine own heart, that it deceive thee not in thy evidences for heaven (2 Corinthians 13:5), nor in thy walking with God in this world (Lamentations 3:40).

5. Take heed of the flatteries of false brethren.

6. Keep in the life and power of truth.

7. Look most at the things which are not seen. (Your thoughts, desires, motivations.)

8. Take heed of little sins.

9. Keep the promise (of the Gospel) warm upon thy heart.

10. Renew thy acts of faith in the blood of Christ.

11. Consider the work of thy generation

(Bunyan here means your peers in Christ; observe, consider, pray, fellowship, emulate.)

12. Count to run with the foremost therein. (See how Christ is using your “foremost” peers. Aim to “run with” those who are serving him most faithfully and powerfully.)