Happiness

This is also from lecture eight, which I neglected to mention before is a chapter on love being the opposite of a selfish spirit.

"If you are selfish, and make yourself and your own private interests your idol, God will leave you to yourself, and let you promote your own interests as well as you can. But if you do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things that are Jesus Christ's, and the things of your fellow- beings, then God will make your interest and happiness his own charge, and he is infinitely more able to provide for and promote it than you are. The resources of the universe move at his Bidding, and he can easily command them all to sub-serve your welfare. So that, not to seek your own , in the selfish sense, is the best way of seeking your own in a better sense. It is the directest course you can take to secure your highest happiness. When you are required not to be selfish, you are not required...not to love and seek your own happiness, but only not to seek mainly your own private and confined interests. But if you place your happiness in God, in glorifying him, and in serving him by doing good, -- in this way above all others, will you promote your wealth, and honour, and pleasure here below, and obtain hereafter a crown of unfading glory, and pleasures for evermore at God's right hand."

~ Charity and Its Fruits
Jonathon Edwards

Selflessness

"Everyone who is called by My name,
Whom I created for my glory;
I have formed him, yes, I have made him."

Isaiah 43:7

"For if self be devoted wholly to God, then there is something, above self, that overcomes it; something superior to self, that takes self, and makes an offering of it to God. A selfish principle never devotes itself to another. The nature of it is, to devote all others to self. They that have true love to God, love him as God, and as the Supreme Good; where as it is the nature of selfishness to set up self in the place of God, and to make an idol of self. That being whom men regard supremely, they devote all to. They that idolize self, devote all to self; but they that love God as God, devote all to him."

~Charity and Its Fruits
Jonathon Edwards

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."

Romans 12:1

"They devote all to him: all their heart, and all their soul, and all their mind, and all their strength, or all their powers and faculties. (Mark 12:30)"
~Charity and Its Fruits
Jonathon Edwards


The quotes are from lecture eight of a series of sermons given by Jonathon Edwards in 1738. The sermons are based off of 1 Corinthians 13. Amazingly, he can take a tiny phrase of the chapter and develop a whole intricate lecture thoroughly outlining it! It's one of the most excellently written books on stirring up one to godliness I've ever read!

A New Blog =)

Thanks to a certain 4idbookworm, this is now a functioning site! :-)

I've been wanting to begin a new site for a long time; Facebook isn't really a blog and I've gotten terribly tired of my old Xanga name (especially since vacation is sounding so appealing!). My intention in starting this blog is mostly simply for favorite quotes and other odds and ends that take less time to type than write, but I definitely don't want to forget! It's more a scrapbook than my current events-- and not very original. Not really for public purposes, but I think I won't be making it private for now.

So... onto some quotes. :)