"I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: 'Early will I seek thee'; 'Thou shalt early hear my voice.' Family prayer loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me. The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed, the lamp not trimmed. Then when in secret prayer the soul is often out of tune, I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see his face first, to get my soul near him before it is near another."  (Robert Murray McCheyne)

"If you have not received something from God that you want very badly, realize that the decision to withhold that thing from you has been made by the One who loved you so much that He gave His Son for you.  Surely, such a God is most happy to freely give you all things truly needful for your eternal good.  It must be, then, that God is withholding that thing from you because it is not ultimately in your best interest to have it right now.  He is seeking to do a richer work and thereby impart to you some greater good that can only come to you through the absence of the thing that you desire.  Hence, you must view the withholding itself as a gift from an all-wise God who knows how to love you better than you know how to love yourself, and you must open your heart to the greater good that He is seeking to impart to you.

Additionally, remember that God gave His Son for you and delivered over His Son to suffer to the fullest extent in order to save you and make you His child.  Therefore, if the Father were to withhold anything from you that is essential to your eternal good, such withholding would be an insult to His Son.  Hence, you can rest assured that God is giving you all things truly needful for your ultimate good, not simply because He loves you, but also because He loves His Son who suffered so much for you.

We are “for us” and so is God.  But God is more intelligent and wise in His actions “for us” than we would ever be toward ourselves.  If we had full sovereignty, we would destroy ourselves (& others) in the way we went about giving ourselves everything that we thought we needed.  So let us thank God for what He gives us, and let us thank Him for what He withholds from us, knowing that His choices toward us are always best and will always redound to His greatest glory and our greatest good."  (from Milton Vincent's sermon, "What Shall We Say to These Things?", preached March 4, 2012)

Pornography is a universal temptation precisely because it does exactly what the satanic powers wish to do. It lashes out at the Trinitarian nature of reality, a loving communion of persons, replacing it with a masturbatory Unitarianism.

And pornography strikes out against the picture of Christ and his church by disrupting the one-flesh union, leaving couples like our prehistoric ancestors, hiding from one another and from God in the darkness of shame.

And pornography rages, as Satan always does, against Incarnation (1 Jn. 4:2-3), replacing flesh-to-flesh intimacy with the illusion of fleshless intimacy."  (from Russell Moore at russellmoore.com, in his January 23, 2012 blog entitled, "Should I Marry a Man with Pornography Struggles?  My Reponse")

Lord, help me not to think too much of tomorrow’s battles,

lest I grow discouraged in the face of what confronts me today.

Lord, help me to make much of yesterday’s victories,

cherishing them as wonders wrought by You

and as indicators of Your power to help me always.

But save me, Lord, from making too much of yesterday’s victories,

as if those victories are to my credit,

and as if yesterday’s grace makes failure impossible today.

Help me to think of today, of Your abiding presence with me,

and of Your loving resolve to make me more than a conqueror today.