JOYOUS CONFESSION

"Trusting in God to meet our needs breaks the power of sin's promise to make us happier" John Piper (ref#220, p247).

"Every time you desire to do and choose to do what is right in God's eyes, you celebrate the grace that is yours in Christ Jesus" Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Dec 17th).

"'Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever' (Ps 73:25-26). These are the words of a man who learned the secret to contentment. When you are satisfied with the Giver, because you have found in him the life you were looking for, you are freed from the ravenous quest for satisfaction that is the discouraging existence of so many people. Yes, it is true that Your heart will rest only ever when it has found its rest in him" Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Jan 6th).

"Sin will rob you of happiness and joy and will give you a sense of condemnation because sin always ultimately breaks fellowship with God and therefore immediately casts us off from the source of all our blessedness. It is no use saying you want to walk with God and then deliberately sinning. The one thing that matters is fellowship with God" Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#189, Oct 1st).

"The conscience only retains its tenderness and purity by a constant and immediate confession; the heart can only maintain its felt peace with God as it is perpetually sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. The soul, kept thus beneath the cross, preserves its high tone of spirituality unimpaired, amid all the harmful influences by which it is surrounded" Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Dec 2nd).

"Sin separates. But sin immediately confessed, mourned over, and forsaken brings God and the soul together in sweet, close, and holy fellowship. Praise Him for any evidence that sin does not have entire dominion" Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Nov 6th).

"God's love is 'an ocean without shores or bottom'" Dane Ortland (ref#382, p192).