If we would be angry and not sin, we must be angry at nothing but sin; and we should be more jealous for the glory of God than for any interest or reputation of our own.
The prayers and supplications that Christ offered up were, joined with strong cries and tears, herein setting us example not only to pray, but to be fervent and importunate in prayer. How many dry prayers, how few wet ones, do we offer up to God!
It is a sin against God not to pray for the Israel of God, especially for those of them that are under our charge. Good men are afraid of the guilt of omissions ( I Samuel 12).
The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies, and, put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks.
Were a man to live as long as Methuselah, and to spend all his days in the highest delights sin can offer, one hour of the anguish and tribulation that must follow, would far outweigh them.
That which is won ill, will never wear well, for there is a curse attends it, which will waste it; and the same corrupt dispositions which incline men to the sinful ways of getting, will incline them to the like sinful ways of spending.
We have no sufficient strength of our own. All our sufficiency is of God. We should stir up ourselves to resist temptations in a reliance upon God's all-sufficiency and the omnipotence of his might.
Those, and those only, can expect to be taught by God, who are ready and willing to do as they are taught... Those who go up to the house of the Lord with an expectation that He will teach them His ways, must go with a humble resolution that they will walk in His paths.