I came across this quote from Spurgeon recently in his chapter called “The Minister’s Fainting Fits” in Lectures to My Students that speaks of the wisdom of something like a sabbatical:

The bow cannot be always bent without fear of breaking. Repose is as needful to the mind as sleep to the body. Our Sabbaths are our days of toil, and if we do not rest upon some other day we shall break down. Even the earth must lie fallow and have her Sabbaths, and so must we. Hence the wisdom and compassion of our Lord, when he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go into the desert and rest awhile.’ What! when the people are fainting? When the multitudes are like sheep upon the mountains without a shepherd? Does Jesus talk of rest? When Scribes and Pharisees, like grievous wolves, are rending the flock, does he take his followers on an excursion into a quiet resting place? Does some red-hot zealot denounce such atrocious forgetfulness of present and pressing demands? Let him rave in his folly. The Master knows better than to exhaust his servants and quent the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength. Look at the mower in the summer’s day, with so much to cut down ere the sun sets. He pauses in his labour – is he a sluggard? He looks for his stone, and begins to draw it up and down his scythe, with ‘rink-a-tink – rink-a-tink – rink-a-tink.’ Is that idle music – is he wasting precious moments? How much he might have mown while he has been ringing out those notes on his scythe! but he is sharpening his tool, and he will do far more when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before him. Even thus a little pause prepares the mind for greater service in the good cause. Fishermen must mend their nets, and we must every now and then repair our mental waste and set our machinery in order for future service. To tug the oar from day to day, like a galley-slave who knows no holidays, suits not mortal men. Mill-streams go on and on for ever, but we must have our pauses and our intervals. Who can help being out of breath when the race is continued without intermission? Even beasts of burden must be turned out to grass occasionally; the very sea pauses at ebb and flood; earth keeps the Sabbath of the wintry months; and man, even when exalted to be God’s ambassador, must rest or faint; must trim his lamp or let it burn low; must recruit his vigour or grow prematurely old. It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we ahsll do more by sometimes doing less. On, on, on for ever, without recreation, may suit spirits emancipated from this ‘heavy clay,’ but while we are in this tabernacle, we must every now and then cry halt, and serve the Lord by holy inaction and consecrated leisure. Let no tender conscience doubt the lawfulness of going out of harness for awhile, but learn from the experience of others the necessity and duty of taking timely rest.

This is the good news about the kingdom of God. How men need this gospel! Everywhere one goes he finds the gaping graves swallowing up the dying. Tears of loss, of separation, of final departure stain every face. Every table sooner or later has an empty chair, every fireside its vacant place. Death is the great leveller. Wealth or poverty, fame or oblivion, power or futility, success or failure, race, creed or culture — all our human distinctions mean nothing before the ultimate irresistible sweep of the scythe of death which cuts us all down. And whether the mausoleum is a fabulous Taj Mahal, a massive pyramid, an unmarked spot of ragged grass or the unplotted depths of the sea one fact stands: death reigns.

Apart from the gospel of the kingdom, death is the mighty conqueror before whom we are all helpless. We can only beat our fists in utter futility against this unyielding and unresponding tomb. But the good news is this: death has been defeated; our conqueror has been conquered. In the face of the power of the kingdom of God in Christ, death was helpless. It could not hold him, death has been defeated; life and immortality have been brought to life. An empty tomb in Jerusalem is proof of it. This is the gospel of the kingdom.

HT: Trevin Wax

This quote from Alan Jacobs’ blog I found to be very applicable to pastors too:

I decided long ago that the one absolutely key commitment one must make in order to survive as an academic is: During work time, work; during play time, play. It’s far too easy for academics — and most other knowledge workers as well — to allow work and play to blur together, so that, yeah, you’re writing that conference paper, but you’re also stopping every five minutes to check your email, tweet, IM with other friends who are similarly procrastinating, follow a rabbit-trail of links on the internet. It’s the habit of succumbing to these temptations that leads to evenings at the office when you ought to be having a glass of wine with your spouse or reading to your children.

In 1857, a day or two before preaching at the Crystal Palace, I went to decide where the platform should be fixed; and, in order to test the acoustic properties of the building, cried in a loud voice, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.’ In one of the galleries, a workman, who knew nothing of what was being done, heard the words, and they came like a message from heaven to his soul. He was smitten with conviction on account of sin, put down his tools, went home, and there, after a season of spiritual struggling, found peace and life by beholding the Lamb of God.

Randy Alcorn:

It was on his deathbed that this man told the story of his conversion, the result of God speaking to him through a single verse of Scripture uttered by Spurgeon…. This man will be forever grateful that when Spurgeon stood up front to do a sound check, he did not simply count to ten!

Randy Alcorn, We Shall See God: Charles Spurgeon’s Classic Devotional Thoughts on Heaven (Carol Stream: Tyndale, 2011), 108.

Almighty God, just because He is almighty, needs no support. The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of God that is precisely what we see. Twentieth century Christianity has put God on charity. So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of God’s free determination, not by our desert nor by divine necessity.

Probably the hardest thought of all for our natural egotism to entertain is that God does not need our help. We commonly represent Him as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated Father hurrying about seeking help to carry out His benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world… The God who worketh all things surely needs no help and no helpers.

Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of Almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his listeners, not only for the heathen but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for want of support. I fear that thousands of younger persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation His love has gotten Him into and His limited abilities seem unable to get Him out of. Add to this a certain degree of commendable idealism and a fair amount of compassion for the underprivileged and you have the true drive behind much Christian activity today.

A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy, ch. 6. quoted in David Platt’s talk.

There were some other great extended quotes, but I can’t find them right now. One was from C.J. Mahaney’s talk where he quoted extensively from Spurgeon’s “The Minister’s Fainting Fits” in Lectures To My Students. The other was from Charles Hodge on regeneration in Kevin DeYoung’s talk.

You can listen to all the sessions for free at www.t4g.org!

What will be gone is not Earth and our bodies, but sin and death and the Curse!

We are not past our peak – we will be raised to a new life and a new body on a new Earth, all beyond our wildest dreams.

The New Earth will be a place where the impulses to come home and to launch out into a new adventure will both be fully satisfied. It’ll be a place where we’re constantly discovering – where everything is always fresh, and possession of a thing is as good as the pursuit of it. Yet it’s the place where we’ll be fully at home – where everything is as it ought to be and where we find, undiminished, that mysterious something we never fully found in this life.

What Won’t Be in Heaven? No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom.
No arthritis, no handicaps, no cancer, no taxes, no bills, no computer crashes, no weeds, no bombs, no drunkenness, no traffic jams and accidents, no septic-tank backups. No mental illness. No unwanted e-mails.
Close friendships but no cliques, laughter but no put-downs. Intimacy, but no temptation to immorality. No hidden agendas, no backroom deals, no betrayals.
Imagine mealtimes full of stories, laughter, and joy, without fear of insensitivity, inappropriate behavior, anger, gossip, lust, jealousy, hurt feelings, or anything that eclipses joy. That will be Heaven.

Will Time No Longer Exist in Heaven? …the presence of music in Heaven implies time, because meter, tempo and rests, all of which are intrinsic to music, are time related. (What is a half note or a quarter note without time?) Songs, like conversations, have a beginning, middle, and end.

It’s going to be great! And it’s ours in Jesus!!

Perhaps we dread death less from fear than from boredom, thinking the life to come will be an endless postlude to where the action really happens. This is betrayed in how we speak about the ‘afterlife’: it happens after we’ve lived our lives. The kingdom, then, is like a high-school reunion in which middle-aged people stand around and remember the ‘good old days.’ But Jesus doesn’t promise an ‘afterlife.’ He promises us life – and that everlasting. Your eternity is no more about looking back to this span of time than your life now is about reflecting on kindergarten. The moment you burst through the mud above your grave, you will begin an exciting new mission – one you couldn’t comprehend if someone told you. And those things that seem so important now – whether you’re attractive or wealthy or famous or cancer-free – will be utterly irrelevant.

The kingdom of God, both now and in the age to come, is ultimately about what Paul calls being ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3-4) – finding your life and mission in Jesus’ own, not in fitting him into the kingdom you design for yourself. For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to ‘invite Jesus into your life.’ Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life’s a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life. And his life isn’t boring or purposeless or static. It’s wild and exhilarating and unpredictable.

Seeing our lives now, and the universe around us, as precursors to the life to come, we’re freed from the ingratitude that turns away from God’s good gifts. We pour ourselves into loving, serving, and working because these things are seeds of the tasks God has for us in the next phase. At the same time, we don’t invest any of those things with infinite meaning. My life’s meaning isn’t found in the brief interval from birth to grave – in a happy marriage, a satisfying job, or the kind of ‘success’ my in-laws would recognize at the Thanksgiving table.

Instead, I can give thanks to God for a life, a universe, and a flow of history that are, in the long run, Christ-shaped. I long for the arrival of the kingdom that has long bubbled around us, invisible as yeast. And I yearn for the moment when, an heir to the throne of the cosmos, I join with my brothers and sisters – and our Galilean pioneer – to sing out, ‘Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for yesterday we were dead.’

“A Purpose Driven Cosmos: Jesus Christ embodies the meaning of life, the goal of history, and the pattern of the future,” in Christianity Today (February, 2012), 33.

For Christians are distinguished from the rest of men neither by country nor by language nor by customs. For nowhere do they dwell in cities of their own; they do not use any strange form of speech. … But while they dwell in both Greek and barbarian cities, each as his lot was cast, and follow the customs of the land in dress and food and other matters of living, they show forth the remarkable and admittedly strange order of their own citizenship. They live in fatherlands of their own, but as aliens. They share all things as citizens and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land. … They pass their days on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven.

I pray this would describe our church in Chicago!

You need to remember that you are not the Messiah. You don’t have to build the kingdom. That’s God’s work. You don’t have to atone for anyone’s sins. Jesus has taken care of that. I know you have big plans and dreams. That’s good. Really it is. But big plans are only accomplished after many days and years of small things. What I’m trying to say is, pray for the extraordinary, but expect the ordinary. Don’t try to do too much right away. This is a big city in a big country in a big world. Get to know your neighbors. Invest in a few key leaders. Work hard at your sermons and don’t fret about changing the planet.

Practice patience. Lots of patience. And a day off every week. Don’t forget that.

Metaxas’ explanation of Bonhoeffer’s take on preaching – “Anything good must come from God, so even in a sermon that was poorly written and delivered, God might manifest himself and touch the congregation. Conversely in a sermon wonderfully written and delivered, God might refuse to manifest himself. The ‘success’ of the sermon is utterly dependent on the God who breaks through and ‘grasps’ us, or we cannot be ‘grasped’” (81).

In a letter from Bonhoeffer describing his experience in America – “The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events. As long as I’ve been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear something like a genuine proclamation…. In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life” (106).

“Bonhoeffer took preaching seriously. For him a sermon was nothing less than the very word of God, a place where God would speak to his people. Bonhoeffer wanted to impress this idea on his ordinands, to help them see that preaching was not merely an intellectual exercise. Like prayer or meditation on a scriptural text, it was an opportunity to hear from heaven, and for the preacher, it was a holy privilege to be the vessel through whom God would speak. Like the incarnation, it was a place of revelation, where Christ came into this world from outside it” (272).

Recollections of Bonhoeffer’s best friend, Eberhard Bethge, on Bonhoeffer’s instruction to his seminary students on preaching – “Write you sermon in daylight; do not write it all at once; ‘in Christ’ there is no room for conditional clauses; the first minutes on the pulpit are the most favorable, so do not waste them with generalities but confront the congregation straight off with the core of the matter; extemporaneous preaching can be done by anyone who really knows the Bible” (272).

To his friend Franz Hildebrandt – “A truly evangelical sermon must be like offering a child a fine red apple or offering a thirsty man a cool glass of water and then saying: Do you want it?” (272).

Other advice he gave his seminarians – “We must be able to speak about our faith so that hands will be stretched out toward us faster than we can fill them…. Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic…. Do not defend God’s Word, but testify to it…. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity!” (272).

“He had once told a student that every sermon must contain ‘a shot of heresy,’ meaning that to express the truth, we must sometimes overstate something or say something in a way that will sound heretical – though it must certainly not be heretical” (364).

In a letter to his parents from Tegel prison – “The occasional appearances of you and Maria, for a brief hour as though from a great distance, are really the thing for which and from which I principally live. If, besides that, I could sometimes hear a good sermon on Sundays… it would still be better” (459; emphasis mine).