Albert Martin on Crucial Issues in Personal Religion

Image:  Al Martin preaching at Men's Conference at Trinity
Church, Roanoke

Last weekend I and a brother from CRBC enjoyed attending the 2012 Men's Conference at Trinity Church in Roanoke, Virginia.  The folk from Trinity were more than gracious in extending hospitality throughout the weekend.

Pastor Albert Martin preached a series of four messages on Crucial Issues of Personal Saving Religion.  Martin preached vigorously and passionately about the need for personal holiness. The climactic fourth message in the series and its practical challenges on holiness is particularly well worth hearing.

JTR

Many a groan is heard from a sick bed

In his classic work, Human Nature In Its Fourfold State, Thomas Boston describes the Christian's struggle with sin:

Many a groan is heard from a sick bed, but never from a grave. In the saint, as in the sick man, there is a mighty struggle; life and death striving for the mastery: but in the natural man, as in the dead corpse, there is no noise, because death bears full away.

Our struggle with sin, in fact, gives us assurance that we are indeed saved. We are like sick men, getting better, and not dead men.

JTR

Ammunition quotes for fighting pride

A few quotes from Joel Beeke's chapter 17 "Your fight against pride" in Overcoming the World (P&R, 2005): 136-41:

• "The more godly a man is, and the more graces and blessings of God are upon him, the more need hath he to pray because Satan is busiest against him, and because he is readiest to be puffed up with a conceited holiness." --Richard Greenham
• "It is hard starving this sin, whenas there is nothing almost but it can live upon." --Richard Mayo
• "I know I am proud; and yet I do not know the half of that pride." --Robert Murray M'Cheyne
• "I am more afraid of pope 'self' than of the pope in Rome and all his cardinals." --Martin Luther
• "Men frequently admire me, and I am pleased, but I abhor the pleasure I feel." --Henry Martyn
• "Study mortification, brother; study mortification." --John Eliot to a colleague

Some ammunition for fighting pride.

JTR