Screwtape on Pleasure

"Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which he has forbidden.... An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.... To get a man's soul and give him nothing in return—that's what really gladdens Our Father's heart."

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
(For the uninitiated, "Screwtape" is a demon!)

Great quote... "Be not dismayed by soul trouble"

"The lesson of wisdom is, be not dismayed by soul-trouble. Count it no strange thing, but a part of ordinary experience. Should the power of depression be more than ordinary, think not that all is over with your usefulness. Cast not away your confidence, for it hath great recompense of reward. Even if the enemy's foot be on your neck, expect to rise amid and overthrow him. Cast the burden of the present, along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future, upon the Lord, who forsaketh not his saints."

- Charles Spurgeon, The Minister's Fainting Fits

great quote...

"Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace, nor are your best days ever so good that you are beyond the need of it."

- Jerry Bridges, Discipline of Grace (Colorado Springs, Co.: NavPress, 1994), 18

Comforting words: "You are a sinner."

"Luther taught that every time you insist that I am a sinner, just so often do you call me to remember the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulders, and not upon mine, lie all my sins. So, when you say that I am a sinner, you do not terrify, but comfort me immeasurably."

Thomas Oden, The Justification Reader (Grand Rapids: Eeerdmans, 2002),

Great Quote...

Power Only in the Cross

“One moment’s believing, close contact with the cross will do more to break the heart for sin, deepen the conviction of its exceeding sinfulness, and disenthrall the soul from all its bondage and its fears, bringing it into a sense of pardon and acceptance and assured hope, than a lifetime of the most rigid legal duties that ever riveted their iron chain upon the soul.”

—Octavius Winslow, The Foot of the Cross