Edmund Clowney on the power of the Spirit:

In the Spirit, Paul wore the armour of God, equipped to stand against the devil and all the powers of darknes (Eph. 6:11-17). In defense he was invincible, in attack irrestistable, wielding weapons mighty beyond all superlatives. No tower of pride could withstand the assault of the Spirit.

Tollkiens' description of the thundering crash of the tower of Barad-dur in the climax of his trilogy The Lord of the Rings touched many a reader of fantasy fiction with an uneasy realization: there is abroad in the world a greater power than that of the ultimate evil empire. History does move toward God's consummation, and His Spirit controls the outcome.

from The Church

I am a doubter, but You are faithful
Though I question Your wisdom
and distrust Your statements of truth
You are the unchanging God

Your love is unchanging, your forgiveness sure
I am a doubter, but You are the faithful God.

How can I possibly expect
forgiveness from You, the Holy God,
again
the 123rd time?

I can expect it in my unchanging God
in the surety of Your promises
in the perfection of Your character
I am a doubter, but You are the faithful God.

What right do I have
to ask for Your manifold blessings
again
the 1,230th time?

I have the right in my unchanging God
in the surety of Your promises
in the perfection of Your character
I may be a doubter, but You are the faithful God.

Jonathan Edwards, on the basis of salvation:

It is none of our own excellency, virtue, or righteousness
that is the ground of our being recieved
from a state of condemnation into a state of acceptance in God's sight,
but only Jesus Christ, and His righteousness, and worthiness,
received by faith.

Alexander Maclaren, Scot "Expositor without peer" on time and work:

We have plenty of time for all our work did we husband our time and hoard it up aright. We cannot look seriously in one another's faces and say it is want of time. It is want of intention. It is want of determination. It is want of method. It is want of motive. It is want of conscience. It is want of heart. It is want of anything and everything but time.

We shroud our indolence under the pretext of a difficulty. The truth is, it is lack of real love for our work.

from Warren Wiersbe's Walking with the Giants

(for more thoughts on time and the spur that instigated this week's Tidbit, see this blog by Ben.)

Jonathan Edwards, on the wrath of God and condition of sinners:

The unconverted are in a condition of infinite sinfulness-guilty of sin against infinite goodness and love-and therefore justly deserve the infinite punishment which now awaits them and from which only the goodness of God has kept them free up to this time...This punishment is utterly beyond imagination-universal, eternal, intolerable-the most extreme that an infinite God infinitely enraged can invent.

The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and trains the bow; and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God-and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all-that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.