Richard D. Phillips Quotes

• “Our calling in life really is this simple (although not therefore easy): We are to devote ourselves to working/building and keeping/protecting everything placed into our charge.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Of all men, Christians should work especially hard, giving more than an honest day's work for a day's wage.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “A. W. Pink rightly says:
  Humility is not the product of direct cultivation, rather it is a by-product. The more I try to be humble, the less shall I attain unto humility. But if I am truly occupied with that One who was "meek and lowly in heart," if I am constantly beholding His glory in the mirror of God's Word, then shall I be "changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:18).24”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “What, then, does submission and respect look like for a woman in a dating relationship? Here are some guidelines:
  1. A woman should allow the man to initiate the relationship. This does not mean that she does nothing. She helps! If she thinks there is a good possibility for a relationship, she makes herself accessible to him and helps him to make conversation, putting
  him at ease and encouraging him as opportunities arise (she does the opposite when she does not have interest in a relationship with a man). A godly woman will not try to manipulate the start of a relationship, but will respond to the interest and approaches of a man in a godly, encouraging way.
  2. A godly woman should speak positively and respectfully about her boyfriend, both when with him and when apart.
  3. She should give honest attention to his interests and respond to his attention and care by opening up her heart.
  4. She should recognize the sexual temptations with which a single man will normally struggle. Knowing this, she will dress attractively but modestly, and will avoid potentially compromising situations. She must resist the temptation to encourage sexual liberties as a way to win his heart.
  5. The Christian woman should build up the man with God's Word and give encouragement to godly leadership. She should allow and seek biblical encouragement from the man she is dating.
  6. She should make "helping" and "respecting" the watchwords of her behavior toward a man. She should ask herself, "How can I encourage him, especially in his walk with God?" "How can I provide practical helps that are appropriate to the current place in our relationship?" She should share with him in a way that will enable him to care for her heart, asking, "What can I do or say that will help him to understand who I really am, and how can I participate in the things he cares about?"
  7. She must remember that this is a brother in the Lord. She should not be afraid to end an unhealthy
  relationship, but should seek to do so with charity and grace. Should the relationship not continue forward, the godly woman will ensure that her time with a man will have left him spiritually blessed.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Indeed, this is what modern and postmodern masculinity has been all about-men behaving like little boys forever, serving themselves in the name of self-discovery. (Can we imagine someone like Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill talking about going on a quest to find his masculine self? They were too busy changing the world.)”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Our witness must center not on our experience but on the facts of Christ's coming to this world.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Believing in Christ is the world's great need, and our great obligation is to tell all people that they need to do so.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Christian men who are not yet called into formal church office should never complain that they have nothing to do. We all have much to do in our own hearts and lives, and the requirement for well-qualified men to serve as leaders in the church is always urgent and vital.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “any Christian man who wants to serve the Lord, in any role and at any level, must begin by devoting himself to God's Word. A man who is weak in the Word of God will be of little use for service, for we cannot truly serve God effectively in our own knowledge and strength. But God's Word stirs up in us the faith and spiritual strength needed to serve Him.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “So what is true religion? What does real spirituality look like? First, it is a desire for God himself, for his pleasure and his glory; second, it is concerned with the inner realities of sin and righteousness and only then with consequences and external blessings; third, true spirituality is that which draws from God's Word, hearing and believing and doing according to what God has spoken in the Bible.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Our society tells young adult men to deprive themselves of God's provision for their physical, emotional, and sexual needs so they can remain as immature and self-absorbed as possible, for as long as possible. You know what the Bible says about this: it just is not good.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “In our witness, we are to shine not our own light but Christ's light. Just as a lamp requires oil, we depend on our fellowship with Christ and the Holy Spirit's enlivening ministry through God's Word in order that Christ's light may shine through us.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “God's curse on the man draws him unwholesomely away from the woman, even as God's curse on the woman draws her unwholesomely toward the man. This is why most marital counseling sessions are some variation on this theme: Wife-"You don't pay any attention to me." Husband-"You are too demanding and nag too much." God has cursed the marriage relationship with a poisonous desire for control by the woman and a self-absorbed focus outside the relationship by the man.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “1. Commit to take the lead in the godliness of your relationship. Read the Bible's passages about how men and women and all Christians should treat one another. Especially take the lead in establishing boundaries that will keep you from sexual sin. Assume that this woman is going to be your wife or the wife of some other Christian brother (who might be currently dating your future wife). Treat her as the precious sister in Christ that she is.
  2. Decide in advance whether or not you are willing to love a woman in the self-sacrificing, nurturing way the Bible describes. Until you are ready to faithfully hold a woman's heart in your hand, do not enter into a dating relationship.
  3. Realizing that God wants you to learn to put her interests ahead of your own, ask her the kinds of things she likes to do and be eager to spend time doing them.
  4. Be willing to talk about the relationship. Initiate honest dialogue about how you feel. Do not resent her desire to have the relationship defined, but protect her heart by making your level of commitment clear and thereby making clear the appropriate kind of intimacy to go along with that commitment.
  5. Pay attention to her heart. Ask her about her burdens and cares. Seek ways to minister to her and to make her cares your own. Instead of being critical of her, speak words of encouragement and support.
  6. Do not be shy in ministering the Word of God to her. Do not preach, but exhort her and call to mind
  God's promises and God's love for her in Jesus Christ. Make it a primary goal that she will be spiritually stronger by having been in a relationship with you.
  7. If something about her bothers you, think about how you can encourage her in that area. Realize that none of us is without flaws. Pray for her weakness and try to strengthen her in that area. If your concerns are enough to deter you from wanting to marry her, let her know in a forthright manner while being as considerate as possible.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “For our marriages to regain the love and unity God designed them to have, it is not merely a matter of wives submitting to their husbands in the Lord. Husbands, in fact, have the first and greatest responsibility. As we gain insight about our wives through our shared lives together and our attentive
  and cherishing interest in the affairs of their hearts, we must nourish our wives with God's Word, and with our own encouraging and upbuilding words informed by Scripture.”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “To be clear, male leadership in marriage does not mean the husband does everything or even that he decides everything. Rather, it means he typically initiates and always leads those shared discussions with his wife by which the various aspects of marriage and family life are decided and planned. The wife's opinion is vitally important, and a godly couple should be a close-knit team. But there should be no area of family life in which the husband does not serve as leader, facilitator, and overseer.”

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• “He calls us to do this by being leaders and servants in the ultimate cause of displaying God's glory and bearing the fruit of God's love in real relationships.”

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• “Arthur W. Pink summarizes the human condition:
  Whether he articulates it or not the natural man, the world over, is crying "I thirst." Why this consuming desire to acquire wealth? Why this craving for the honors and plaudits of the world? Why this mad rush after pleasure, the turning from one form of it to another with persistent and unwearied diligence? Why this eager search for wisdom-this scientific inquiry, this pursuit of philosophy, this ransacking of the writings of the ancients, and this ceaseless experimentation by the moderns? Why the insane craze for that which is novel? Why? Because there is an aching void in the soul. Because there is something remaining in every natural man that is unsatisfied. This is true of the millionaire equally as much as the pauper: the riches of the former bring no real contentment. It is as true of the globe-trotter equally as much as of the country rustic who has never been outside the bounds of his native country: traveling from one end of the earth to the other and back again fails to discover the secret of peace. Over all the cisterns of this world's providing is written in letters of ineffaceable truth, "Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again."7”

  Richard D. Phillips

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• “Salvation requires a radical revamping by which we are made inwardly new. J.C. Ryle explains, 'It is a thorough change of heart, will, and character. It is a resurrection. It is a new creation. It is a passing from death to life. It is the implanting of our death hearts of a new principle from above.”

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• “It is not sufficient for fathers to send their children to church, Sunday school, Christian camp, or private Christian school. You must read the Bible to your children yourself. Obviously, our children must see some correspondence between the Bible and our lives. But even as we work out our own Christian growth, we must read God's Word to and with our children.”

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• “Paul concludes, "And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (v. 14). A romantic relationship begins with attraction and then grows through affection for each other. But a relationship matures toward true and godly love as it ripens into a desire to give, a longing to bless, and a willingness to sacrifice and to serve. The Bible gives the highest expression of love in terms of God's gift of his only Son, Jesus Christ: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16). This is the love with which we are to bind our thoughts and words, our feelings and interactions. The result, when two people love with the love that comes from God, is that most wonderful realization of
  unity, in which two people give all of their individuality into what Paul calls a "perfect harmony.”

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• “...don't let what you don't know keep you from witnessing to what you do know.”

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• “John the Baptist set an ideal example of this. His message was not about his experiences or what he felt about God, but about Jesus. When”

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• “Of this blest man, let this just praise be given, Heaven was in him, before he was in heaven."9”

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• “think St. Augustine was right to associate the dove that descended on Jesus with the dove Noah sent out when the ark landed in the new world that had been cleansed by the flood. As the waters of God's wrath subsided, Noah sent out a dove, and when it returned with an olive leaf in its mouth, "Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth" (Gen. 8:11b). St. Augustine comments, "As a dove did at that time bring tidings of the abating of the water, so doth it now of the abating of the wrath of God upon the preaching of the Gospel. ,5 Moreover, as Noah's dove signaled the arrival of a world cleansed of sin, the dove of the Holy Spirit symbolizes the new creation in Christ, the life cleansed from sin that every Christian begins when he or she trusts in Jesus Christ.”

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