Tag Archives: Speech

November 10, 2021 · 12:00 pm

“Help me to devote all my words and thoughts to You” by Hilary of Poitiers (A.D. 315-368)

“I know, O Lord God Almighty, that I owe You, as the chief duty of my life, the devotion of all my words and thoughts to Yourself.

The gift of speech which You have bestowed can bring me no higher reward than the opportunity of service in preaching You and displaying You as You are, as Father and Father of God the Only-begotten, to the world in its blindness and the heretic in his rebellion.

This is, to be sure, only the expression of my will. Besides this, I must pray for the gift of Your help and mercy that You may fill the sails of our faith and profession which have been extended to You with the breath of Your Spirit and direct us along the course of instruction that we have chartered.

The Author of this promise is not unfaithful to us who says: ‘Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.’ (Matthew 7:7)

We, of course, in our helplessness shall pray for those things that we need, and shall apply ourselves with tireless zeal to the study of all the words of Your Prophets and Apostles and shall knock at all the doors of wisdom that are closed to us, but it is for You to grant our prayer, to be present when we seek, to open when we knock.

Because of the laziness and dullness of our nature, we are, as it were, in a trance, and in regard to the understanding of Your attributes we are restricted within the confines of ignorance by the weakness of our intellect.

Zeal for Your doctrine leads us to grasp the knowledge of divine things and the obedience of faith carries us beyond the natural power of comprehension.

And therefore we look to Your support for the first trembling steps of this undertaking, to Your aid that it may gain strength and prosper.

We look to You to give us the fellowship of that Spirit Who guided the Prophets and the Apostles, that we may take their words in the sense in which they spoke and that we may explain the proper meaning of the words in accordance with the realities they signify.

We shall speak of things which they preached in a mystery; of You, O God Eternal, Father of the Eternal and Only-begotten God, Who alone are without birth, and of the One Lord Jesus Christ, born of You from everlasting.

We may not sever Him from Thee, or make Him one of a plurality of Gods, on any plea of difference of nature. We may not say that He is not begotten of You, because You are One.

We must not fail to confess Him as true God, seeing that He is born of You, true God, His Father.

Grant us, therefore, precision of language, soundness of argument, grace of style, loyalty to truth.

And grant that what we believe we may also speak, namely, that, while we recognize You as the only God the Father and the only Lord Jesus Christ from the Prophets and the Apostles, we may now succeed against the denials of the heretics in honoring You as God in such a manner that You are not alone, and proclaiming Him as God in such a manner that He may not be false.”

–Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, trans. Stephen McKenna, vol. 25, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 25: 33–34. (1.37-38)

“Whatever our tongue utters should savor of His excellence” by John Calvin

“Whatever our mind conceives of God, whatever our tongue utters, should savor of His excellence, match the loftiness of His sacred name, and lastly, serve to glorify His greatness.”

–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; vol. 1; The Library of Christian Classics; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 388. (2.8.22)

“The grace of patience” by Charles Spurgeon

“Be satisfied as you are, and do not wish to choose another man’s cross. Christ says, ‘Take up the cross, and follow me. He does not say, ‘Desire to have another man’s cross.’ Observe, too, that Christ does not say, ‘Murmur at your cross.’ That is the very reverse of taking it up.

As long as a man is alive, and out of hell, he cannot have any cause to complain. Be he where he may,—be he placed in the most abject position conceivable,—the man is better off than he deserves to be. Let not a single murmur, then, ever escape our lips.

Blessed is the grace of patience, but hard is it to be acquired. May the Lord, of His infinite mercy, teach us to bear all His holy will, and bear it cheerfully, and so to take up our cross for Jesus’ sake!”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “A Procession of Cross-Bearers,” The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. LI (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1905), 365. Spurgeon preached this sermon on Mark 10:21 on May 2, 1875 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.

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Filed under Charles Spurgeon, Christian Theology, Jesus Christ, Patience, Puritanical, Quotable Quotes, The Gospel

Tagged as Better than I deserve, Charles Spurgeon, Complaining, grace, hell, James 5:9, Mark 10:21, Patience, Speech

February 16, 2011 · 11:01 pm

“Will we so resolve?” by Sinclair Ferguson

“Here are twenty resolutions on the use of the tongue to which the teaching of the letter of James gives rise:

1) Resolved: To ask God for wisdom to speak and to do so with a single mind.
‘If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him… in faith with no doubting… For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything… he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways’ (James 1:5–8).

2) Resolved: To boast only in my exaltation in Christ or my humiliation in the world.
‘Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away’ (James 1:9–10).

3) Resolved: To set a watch over my mouth.
‘Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one’ (James 1:13).

4) Resolved: To be constantly quick to hear, slow to speak.
‘Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger’ (James 1:19).

5) Resolved: To learn the gospel way of speaking to the poor and the rich.
‘My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?’ (James 2:1–4).

6) Resolved: To speak in the consciousness of the final judgment.
‘So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty’ (James 2:12).

7) Resolved: To never stand on anyone’s face with words that demean, despise, or cause despair.
‘If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?’ (James 2:15–16).

8) Resolved: To never claim a reality I do not experience.
‘If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth’ (James 3:14).

9) Resolved: To resist quarrelsome words as marks of a bad heart.
‘What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?’ (James 4:1).

10) Resolved: To never speak evil of another.
‘Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge’ (James 4:11).

11) Resolved: To never boast in what I will accomplish.
‘Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes’ (James 4:13).

12) Resolved: To always speak as one who is subject to the providences of God.
‘Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’’ (James 4:15).

13) Resolved: To never grumble, knowing that the Judge is at the door.
‘Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door’ (James 5:9).

14) Resolved: To never allow anything but total integrity in my speech.
‘But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation’ (James 5:12).

15) Resolved: To speak to God in prayer whenever I suffer.
‘Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray’ (James 5:13).

16) Resolved: To sing praises to God whenever I am cheerful.
‘Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise’ (James 5:13).

17) Resolved: To ask for the prayers of others when I am sick.
‘Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord’ (James 5:14).

18) Resolved: To confess it whenever I have failed.
‘Therefore, confess your sins to one another’ (James 5:16).

19) Resolved: To pray for one another when I am together with others in need.
‘Pray for one another, that you may be healed’ (James 5:16).

20) Resolved: To speak words of restoration when I see another wander.
‘My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins’ (James 5:19–20).

Will we so resolve?”

–Sinclair Ferguson, “The Bit, the Bridle, and the Blessing: An Exposition of James 3:1-12,” in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, Eds. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 56-59.