Quotes from Joel Beeke

Give yourself-not just your time-to prayer. Remember that prayer is not an appendix to your life and your work, it is your life your real, spiritual life-and your work. Prayer is the thermometer of your soul.

the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, once completed, became for the church the "only external means of divine supernatural illumination.

God, through the Law, His alien work, brings man to despair and humility and to a recognition of his need, and through the Gospel, His appropriate work, He gives man faith and the knowledge of His forgiveness.

Many forget that most of the greatest theologians God has given to the church were also pastors and teachers in the local church.

Christ did not come to earth simply to be our moral teacher. If that were His only mission, He could have come as He did in former times, as the Angel of the Lord, without our flesh and blood to encumber Him. Instead, He had to become like us so that He could raise us up to be like Him.

The ultimate expression of truth appeared on this earth in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Preaching was uniquely honored by God "in that it serveth to collect the church and to accomplish the number of the elect" and also "it driveth away the wolves from the folds of the Lord."

The constant challenge in Christian theology is to preach the whole counsel of God, while not emphazing one point of doctrine in a way that denies another.

Now I know not anything that will contribute more to the furtherance of this good work than the bringing of family religion more into practice and reputation. Here the reformation must begin.

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean.

Puritan Thomas Gataker (1574—1654) said, "There is no society [relationship] more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual, than the society of man and wife." By the grace of God, such friendship between husbands and wives is possible and practical and should be our priority.

Death breaks the union between the body and the soul but perfects the union between Christ and the soul.