If you want to be wise, you’ll start by getting to know God and doing what He says. You’ll love the things He loves and hate the things He hates. You’ll be humble and teachable, willing, eager, and determined to learn His ways.

 Mary A. Kassian, Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010).

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“Listen to this quote from Henry Ward Beecher, Paul”:

The sermon is not like a Chinese firecracker to be fired off for the noise it makes. It is a hunter’s gun, and at every discharge he should look to see his game fall.

 Bruce Mawhinney, Preaching with Freshness (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1997), 67.

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purpose statement should be clearly worded, and it should agree with the purpose the Holy Spirit had in mind when He inspired the writer of that text.”

 Bruce Mawhinney, Preaching with Freshness (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1997), 71.


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He who maketh Ease his god, Sufficiency his altar, Pleasure his priest, and Time his offering knows not what man is born for.

 Elisabeth Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot: Missionary, Martyr, Man of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2021), 278.

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Someone has described unforgiveness as the accumulation of unexpressed anger. Because it is denied, it can often be ignored, while all the time it is building and growing like an invisible tumor.

 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Choosing Forgiveness: Moving from Hurt to Hope (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2022).

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When we choose to hold on to our grudges, we relinquish control of our future. We trade the freshness of the new day and all its possibilities for the pain of the past. 

 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Choosing Forgiveness: Moving from Hurt to Hope (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2022).

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TO BE FORGIVEN IS SUCH SWEETNESS THAT HONEY IS TASTELESS IN COMPARISON WITH IT. BUT YET THERE IS ONE THING SWEETER STILL AND THAT IS TO FORGIVE.

—C. H. SPURGEON

 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Choosing Forgiveness: Moving from Hurt to Hope (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2022).

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The following outline presents some of the characteristics the Bible identifies about the days of Noah and the days of Sodom.

1. Preoccupation with satisfying physical appetites (Luke 17:26–30; Gen 6:5; 19:5–9).

2. Advances in technology including city building (Gen 4:17) by Cain as an act of rebellion, and the making of bronze and iron to be used to thwart the curse on the ground (3:17–19) and for the making of weapons (4:22).

3. Pluralistic and universalistic philosophies dominated all thought (Gen 6:1–2, 4–5; 19:9; Heb 11:7).

4. Materialism ruled the attitudes and interests of the human heart (Gen 6:5, 12; 19:5; Luke 17:28).

5. People were given to excessive devotion to pleasures and physical comforts (Gen 4:19–24; 6:4; 19:5).

6. People had no fear of God in their beliefs or their practices in daily life (Gen 6:5; 19:5; 2 Pet 3:5; Jude 11).

7. The sacredness of marriage was no longer observed (Gen 4:19–24; 6:2–4; 19:5, 8, 14; Matt 24:38).

8. The inspired Word of God was ridiculed and rejected (Gen 6:5–7, 11).

9. The population of the earth grew rapidly (Gen 6:1, 11).

10. Violence and inhumanity to human beings was widespread (Gen 6:11, 13; 19:5, 8, 14).

11. All cultures and all people were thoroughly corrupt (Gen 6:11–12; 19:12–13).

12. People were preoccupied with perverted sexual behavior (Gen 4:19; 6:2–4; 19:5, 8, 12–14).

13. People were engaged in perverse, blasphemous thoughts, words, and actions (Gen 4:19–24; 6:2–5; 11:12; 19:13; Jude 15).

14. Organized and flagrant satanic activity was carried on (Gen 6:1–4; 19:4–9, 12–13).

15. Widespread systems of abnormal human depravity were evident (Gen 6:5–7, 11–12; 19:5, 13).

 Lamar E. Cooper Sr., “The Second Coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament,” in The Return of Christ: A Premillennial Perspective (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2011), 196–197.

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When God doesn’t come through, it is sometimes because we are unprepared. Time is a great problem for most of us, but a great tool for God. We think in terms of the “right now,” but God commands the eternal perspective. Sometimes we need to spiritually soak before the Lord.

 Jack R. Taylor, After the Spirit Comes (Bedford, TX: Burkhart Books, 2013), 59.

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One of the biggest problems in our families, churches, and missions is that we often insist that others think and judge in the same way we do. We do not accept one another in love; rather, we try to remake those around us into our own image.

 Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, Marvin K. Mayers, Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 64.