“Once sin is allowed to settle in your heart, it will not be turned out at your bidding. Custom becomes second nature, and its chains are not easily broken. The prophet has well said, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). Habits are like stones rolling down hill--the further they roll, the faster and more ungovernable is their course. Habits, like trees, are strengthened by age. A boy may bend an oak when it is a sapling--a hundred men cannot root it up, when it is a full grown tree. A child can wade over the Thames River at its fountain-head--the largest ship in the world can float in it when it gets near the sea. So it is with habits: the older the stronger--the longer they have held possession, the harder they will be to cast out.”
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Sinclair Ferguson is a Scottish theologian known in Reformed Christian circles for his teaching, writing, and editorial work. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen and was a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1971 to 2005, when he transferred to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, serving as the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina. He has served as an editor with the Banner of Truth Trust, worked as a minister at St George's-Tron Church, Glasgow, and a Council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Ferguson is the Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. He is also a Professor of Systematic Theology at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, prior to which he held the Charles Krahe Chair for Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is also a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Ferguson speaks at numerous conferences worldwide, and has written many books.