John Owen may refer to:
The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.
See in the meantime that your faith brings forth obedience, and God in due time will cause it to bring forth peace.
It being our duty to mortify. . . we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, does but half his work.
The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.
If private revelations agree with Scripture, they are needless, and if they disagree, they are false.
Consider who and what you are; who the Spirit is that is grieved, what he has done for you, what he comes to your soul about, what he has already done in you; and be ashamed. Among those who walk with God, there is no greater motive and incentive unto universal holiness, and the preserving of their hearts and spirits in all purity and cleanness than this: That the blessed Spirit, who has undertaken to dwell in them, is continually considering what they give entertainment in their hearts unto, and rejoices when his temple is kept undefiled.
Temptation gains power by persistent solicitations that beget thoughts that make evil less serious
Christ is our best friend, and ere long will be our only friend. I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of everything else but converse and communion with Him.
The love of God is like himself – equal, constant, not capable of augmentation or diminution; our love is like ourselves – unequal, increasing, waning, growing, declining. His, like the sun, always the same in its light, though a cloud may sometimes interpose; ours, as the moon, has its enlargements and straightenings.
Pardon comes not to the soul alone; or rather, Christ comes not to the soul with pardon only! It is that which He opens the door and enters by, but He comes with a Spirit of life and power.
The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.
As rivers, the nearer they come to the ocean whither they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more fully and freely in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.
If the Word does not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.
Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.
Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification.
This day was yesterday to-morrow nam'd: To-morrow shall be yesterday proclaimed: To-morrow not yet come, not far away, What shall to-morrow then be call'd? To-day.
Meditate on the Word in the Word.
You have your season, and you have but your season; neither can you lie down in peace, until you have some persuasion that your work as well as your life is at an end.
He that hath slight thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God.
Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit?