Sinclair B. Ferguson Quotes

How do we bring glory to God? The Bible’s short answer is: by growing more and more like Jesus Christ.

My security as a Christian does not reside in the strength of my faith but in the indestructibili ty of my Savior.

When I know that Christ is the one real sacrifice for my sins, that His work on my behalf has been accepted by God, that He is my heavenly Intercessor - then His blood is the antidote to the poison in the voices that echo in my conscience, condemning me for my many failures. Indeed, Christ's shed blood chokes them into silence!

God is God; you are but one of His creatures. Your only joy is to be found in obeying Him, your true fulfillment is to be found in worshiping Him, your only wisdom is to be found in trusting and knowing Him.

Appearances can be deceptive. The fact that we cannot see what God is doing does not mean that He is doing nothing. The Lord has His own timetable. It is we who must learn to adjust to it, not vice versa. When God's time comes nothing will stand in His way. We can therefore wait for Him with this happy confidence: "As for God, His way is perfect" (2 Samuel 22:31).

Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.

Thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign I have no understanding of the gospel.

Jesus Christ is able to set us free because He has dealt with the sin that enslaves us.

True discernment means not only distinguishing the right from the wrong; it means distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the essential from the indifferent, and the permanent from the transient. And, yes, it means distinguishing between the good and the better, and even between the better and the best.

It is only when we want to take our lives out of the Father’s hands and have them under our own control that we find ourselves gripped with anxiety. The secret of freedom from anxiety is freedom from ourselves and abandonment of our own plans. But that spirit emerges in our lives only when our minds are filled with the knowledge that our Father can be trusted implicitly to supply everything we need.

True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!

There is nothing more important to learn about Christian growth than this: Growing in grace means becoming like Christ.

Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you

Knowing God is your single greatest privilege as a Christian

We [should not] make the mistake of thinking that marriage will provide the ultimate satisfaction for which we all hunger. To assume so would be to be guilty of blasphemy. Only God satisfies the hungry heart. Marriage is but one of the channels He uses to enable us to taste how deeply satisfying His thirst-quenching grace can be.

The fear of the Lord tends to take away all other fears... This is the secret of Christian courage and boldness.

The real test that I believe that God is love is that tragedies don't separate me from the conviction that God is love.

We best defend the Lord's glory by speaking first TO Him about unbelieving men rather than speaking first ABOUT Him to unbelieving men.

There is a difference between going to a service "for the worship" and going to a service "to worship the Lord." The distinction appears to be a minor one, but it may imply the difference between the worship of God and the worship of music!

The holiness of God teaches us that there is only one way to deal with sin- radically, seriously, painfully, constantly. If you do not so live, you do not live in the presence of the Holy One of Israel.

This, then, is the foundation of sanctification in Reformed theology. It is rooted, not in humanity and their achievement of holiness or sanctification, but in what God has done in Christ, and for us in union with him. Rather than view Christians first and foremost in the microcosmic context of their own progress, the Reformed doctrine first of all sets them in the macrocosm of God's activity in redemptive history. It is seeing oneself in this context that enables the individual Christian to grow in true holiness.

Our first priority in ministry must be love. Love for His Word, love for His people, and love for His appearing.

You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.

God can be trusted even when he cannot be seen or understood.

For worship is, essentially, the reverse of sin. Sin began (and begins) when we succumb to the temptation, "You shall be as gods." We make ourselves the center of the universe and dethrone God. By contrast, worship is giving God his true worth; it is acknowledging Him to be the Lord of all things, and the Lord of everything in our lives. He is, indeed, the Most High God!

Humility is not simply feeling small and useless - like an inferiority complex. It is sensing how great and glorious God is, and seeing myself in that light.

Repentance is a characteristic of the whole life, not the action of a single moment.

Where God is at the center of things, worship inevitably follows.

The weakest faith gets the same strong Christ as does the strongest faith.

It's the centrality of the Word and not the person who preaches it that's important.

There are actually only ever two pastoral problems you will ever encounter. The first is this: persuading those who are under the dominion of sin that they are under the dominion of sin. That's the task of evangelism. And [second], persuading those who are no longer under the dominion of sin that they are no longer under the dominion of sin because they're Christ's.

The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional...it is theological.

Spiritual growth depends on two things: first a willingness to live according to the Word of God; second, a willingness to take whatever consequences emerge as a result.

Those who are most conscious of forgiveness are invariably those who have been most acutely convicted of their sin.

Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of the Fall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a 'working God.' Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity of his existence.

When you look at the Cross, what do you see? You see God’s awesome faithfulness. Nothing – not even the instinct to spare His own Son – will turn him back from keeping His word.

You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity - you are in Christ

Jesus has a special, compassionate concern for those who are broken and needy.

Christian contentment, therefore, is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal in the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with the provision He is pleased to make.

Our thinking about who we are as Christians should not begin with what we can discover about ourselves by self-analysis. Rather, it begins with what God says about those who trust in Christ.

We can never reflect too much on God's grace.

Secular humanism debases the human.

If you desire anything less for yourself than absolute obedience to God, a life of total devotion to the Lord, a life of absolute sin-less-ness - if you desire anything less, you are fighting against God's desire for you.

Worship is not something we "work up," it is something that "comes down" to us, from the character of God.

Jesus undid everything that Adam did, and did everything Adam failed to do.

Most Christians have more Bibles than they know what to do with, but have little understanding of what is in them.

The conviction that Christian doctrine matters for Christian living is one of the most important growth points of the Christian life.

God's guidance will require patience on our part. His leading is not usually a direct assurance, a revelation, but His sovereign controlling of the circumstances of our lives, with the Word of God as our rule. It is therefore, inevitable that the unfolding of His purposes will take time - sometimes a very long time.

We discover the will of God by a sensitive application of Scripture to our own lives.

Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ