Here are some great quotes from the introduction and text of a book by the great Puritan John Owen that a friend of mine loaned me as I prepped for this week’s sermon.
“By making life easier for ourselves in minimizing the nature and seriousness of our sin, we become greater victims of it.”
“Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
“The vigor, power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.”
“When sin lets us alone (which it won’t) we may let sin alone.”
“He who finds not opposition from it (sin), and who sets not himself in every particular to its mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it.”
Here’s a couple of more gems by Owen:
If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: “God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.” When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage.
“The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it”