Burk Parsons Quotes

A person with an increasingly grateful heart is one with a decreasingly complaining mouth.

Reformed theology isn't a sledgehammer with which to hit people, it's a pillow on which they can lay their weary heads.

Much of my learning to follow Jesus is unlearning to follow myself.

We don’t believe ‘in the power of prayer,’ but in our all-powerful God who empowers our inherently powerless prayers.” —Burk Parsons “The

We don’t believe ‘in the power of prayer,’ but in our all-powerful God who empowers our inherently powerless prayers.” —Burk Parsons

For Calvin, to accept compromise when Scripture has spoken is to affront the divine majesty of the Author. What

The very purpose of the sacrament is to give us a tangible experience of the spiritual mystery of our union with Christ. "When we come to this holy table," Calvin told his congregation in Geneva, "we must know that our Lord Jesus Christ presents Himself to confirm us in the unity which we have already received by the faith of the Gospel, that we may be grafted into His body in such a manner that He will dwell in us and we in Him."27

• God has revealed Himself as a Father; therefore, we should behave as His children. • Christ has purified us through His blood; therefore, we should not become defiled by fresh pollution. • Christ has united us to His body as His members; therefore, we should not disgrace Him by any blemish. • Christ has ascended to heaven; therefore, we should leave our carnal desires behind and lift our hearts upward to Him. • The Holy Spirit has dedicated us as temples of God; therefore, we should exert ourselves not to profane His sanctuary, but to display His glory. • Both our soul and body are destined to inherit an incorruptible and never-fading crown; therefore, we should keep them pure and undefiled. For

I farther assure this noble Duke, that I neither encouraged nor provoked that worthy citizen to seek for plenty, liberty, safety, justice or lenity, in the famine, in the prisons, in the decrees of convention, in the revolutionary tribunal, and in the guillotine of Paris, rather than quietly to take up with what he could find in the glutted markets, the unbarricadoed streets, the drowsy Old Bailey judges, or, at worst, the airy, wholesome pillory of Old England. The choice of country was his own taste. The writings were the effects of his own zeal. In spite of his friend Dr. Priestley, he was a free agent. I admit, indeed, that my praises of the British government loaded with all its encumbrances; clogged with its peers and its beef; its parsons and its pudding; its Commons and its beer; and its dull slavish liberty of going about just as one pleases, had something to provoke a Jockey of Norfolk [Thomas Paine], who was inspired with the resolute ambition of becoming a citizen of France, to do something which might render him worthy of naturalization in that grand asylum of persecuted merit.

According to Calvin, "faith is a singular gift of God, both in that the mind of man is purged so as to be able to taste the truth of God and in that his heart is established therein. For the Spirit is not only the initiator of faith, but increases it by degrees, until by it he leads us to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But Calvin recognized that our hearts will never seriously wish for and meditate on the future life unless we have first determined to forsake the vanities of this present life. He writes, "There is no golden mean between these two extremes; either this earthly life must become low in our estimation, or it will have our inordinate love."21

It is entirely the work of grace and a benefit conferred by it that our heart is changed from a stony one to one of flesh, that our will is made new, and that we, created anew in heart and mind, at length will what we ought to will. i -John Calvin

Calvin presents a systematic exposition of his doctrine of providence in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, especially in book 1, chapters 16 and 17.

When preaching, the Reformer writes, "The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off ... wolves.

While urgently pressing the importance of our diligent pursuit of holiness, Calvin is realistic about our meager attainments. He acknowledges that the vast majority of Christians make only slight progress. But this is not to excuse us. Rather, he writes, "Let us not cease to do the utmost; that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair because of the smallness of our accomplishment."9