Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Goodwin

“Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks.”

“The most thankful person is the most fully human.”

“Our prayers are granted as soon as we have prayed, even though the process of fulfilling our requests has not yet begun.”

“The person who knows Christ best is the person who will pray best.”

“It is not enough to hear a sermon, but you must eat it down, take in what it commands, and then it will purge your heart...Take the word and digest it, squeeze the juice of it into thy heart, and it will purge thee from all contrary corruption." pg.73”

“Take the fact that you were created to love. Your heart can find real joy only through love - through loving and being loved.”

“All that God is, will supply your need.”

“The Indwelling of Christ by faith…is to have Jesus Christ continually in one’s eye, a habitual sight of Him. I call it so because a man actually does not always think of Christ; but as a man does not look up to the sun continually, yet he sees the light of it…. So you should carry along and bear along in your eye the sight and knowledge of Christ, so that at least a presence of Him accompanies you, which faith makes. —Thomas Goodwin, Works, 2:411”

“Thomas Goodwin Jr. wrote of his godly father: In all the violence of [his fever], he discoursed with that strength of faith and assurance of Christ’s love, with that holy admiration of free grace, with that joy in believing, and such thanksgivings and praises, as he extremely moved and affected all that heard him…. He rejoiced in the thoughts that he was dying, and going to have a full and uninterrupted communion with God. ‘I am going,’ said he, ‘to the three Persons, with whom I have had communion: they have taken me; I did not take them…. I could not have imagined I should ever have had such a measure of faith in this hour…. Christ cannot love me better than he doth; I think I cannot love Christ better than I do; I am swallowed up in God….’ With this assurance of faith, and fullness of joy, his soul left this world.89 ”

“Ask God to make you like David: an intercessor, even in the midst of your own great sins and great needs.”

“Where God gives opportunity for preaching it is more than likely that he has some people to convert. Usually the Word of God takes root among some, though often in but a few.”

“When God will have any great matters done, he sets his people's hearts to work at prayer by a kind of gracious instinct. He stirs them up and moves their hearts by the influence of his Holy Spirit.”

“You are to consider that God does not hear you for your prayers’ sake (though not without them), but for His name’s sake and His Son’s sake, and because you are His child. The mother does not neglect to hear and relieve her child when the child cries, but she is tender, not because the child cries more loudly, but because the child cries, and the weaker the child is, the more pity she shows. Again, though the performance in itself might be weak, yet considered as a prayer, it might be strong, because a weak prayer may set the strong God to work. The faith we produce may be weak, yet because its object is Christ, therefore it justifies. So it is in prayer; it prevails, not because of the performance itself, but because of the name in which it is made, even Christ’s name. Therefore, as a weak faith justifies, so a weak prayer prevails as well as a stronger, and both for the same reason, for faith attributes all to God, and so does prayer. As faith is merely a receiving grace, so prayer is a begging grace.”

“It is not enough to hear a sermon, but you must eat it down, take in what it commands, and then it will purge your heart...Take the word and digest it, squeeze the juice of it into thy heart, and it will purge thee from all contrary corruption." pg. 73- 'Mans Guiltiness Before God”

“God is infinitely beautiful in himself, and his beauty ought to attract you like a magnet to him.”

“Secondly, He bids his ambassadors declare, that as to that point men need not trouble themselves, nor take care about it; for he himself hath further been so zealously affected in this business, that he himself hath made full provision, and took order for that aforehand, and done it to their hand; He hath been in Christ, reconciling the world; that is, in him and by him, as a mediator, and umpire, and surety between them and him, this great matter hath been taken up and accorded. For he and Jesus Christ his only Son have from all eternity laid their counsels together (as I may so speak with reverence), to end this great difference; and they both contrived and agreed, that Christ should undertake to satisfy his Father, for all the wrong was done to him, all which he should take upon himself, as if he were guilty of it; he was made sin, 2 Cor. v. 21, that is, a surety and a satisfaction for it. And God the Father, upon it, is so fully satisfied, as he is ready not only not to impute their sins to them, ver. 19, but to impute all Christ’s righteousness to them, and to receive them into favour more fully than ever they were. He was made sin, that they might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

“Therefore, seeing the Lord, when he doth speak, doth speak by others, and there is a great deal of reason for it, because it is your own request, let not God fare the worse in delivering his word; do not condemn it because men are fain to deliver it to you, for it is your own request. If he should speak himself, he would strike you dead at every word; therefore do not take advantage because God doth not back it with thunder, but receive the word as the word of God; for God himself would speak to you, if you were able to bear him; but because you are not, therefore he speaks by others.”

“Thomas Goodwin Jr. wrote of his godly father: In all the violence of [his fever], he discoursed with that strength of faith and assurance of Christ’s love, with that holy admiration of free grace, with that joy in believing, and such thanksgivings and praises, as he extremely moved and affected all that heard him…. He rejoiced in the thoughts that he was dying, and going to have a full and uninterrupted communion with God. ‘I am going,’ said he, ‘to the three Persons, with whom I have had communion: they have taken me; I did not take them…. I could not have imagined I should ever have had such a measure of faith in this hour…. Christ cannot love me better than he doth; I think I cannot love Christ better than I do; I am swallowed up in God….’ With this assurance of faith, and fullness of joy,”

“If through all thy discouragemnets thy condition prove worse and worse, so that thou canst not pray, but are struck dumb when thou comest into his presence, as David, then fall making signs when thou canst not speak; groan, sigh, sob, "chatter, "as Hezekiah did; bemoan thyself for thine unworthiness, and desire Christ to speak thy requests for thee, and God to hear him for thee.”

“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' saith the Apostle; 'it is God that justifieth,' and it is their being elect that carries it. Yea, his love is so strong that if there be any accusation,—the Apostle makes the supposition, 'Who shall lay anything to their charge?' Sin or devil? —that if at any time sin or devil come to accuse, it moves God to bless. His love is so violent, it is so set, that he takes occasion to bless so much the more.”