Tag: thought for today

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 human 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 subserve 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.

—Jonathan Edwards

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

A selfish man is not apt to discern the wants of others, but rather to overlook them, and can hardly be persuaded to see or feel them. But a man of charitable spirit is apt to see the afflictions of others, and to take notice of their aggravation, and to be filled with concern for them, as he would be for himself if under difficulties. And he is ready, also, to help them, and take delight in supplying their necessities, and relieving their difficulties.

—Jonathan Edwards

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

A charitable person, whose heart disposes him to bounty and liberality, will be quick-sighted to discern the needs of others.

—Jonathan Edwards

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

Let us be on the watch for opportunities of usefulness; let us go about the world with our ears and our eyes open, ready to avail ourselves of every occasion for doing good; let us not be content till we are useful, but make this the main design and ambition of our lives.

—Charles Spurgeon

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

There is another that has made you, and preserves you, and provides for you, and on whom you are dependent: and He has made you for himself, and for the good of your fellow-creatures, and not only for yourself. He has placed before you higher and nobler ends than self, even the welfare of your fellow-men, and of society, and the interests of his kingdom; and for these you ought to labour and live, not only in time, but for eternity.

—Jonathan Edwards

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

You are everywhere commanded to be tender and sympathetic, diligent and useful.

—William Wilberforce

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

No man has a right to be idle. . . . [W]here is it in such a world as this that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?

—William Wilberforce

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman