C. Samuel Storms is an American Calvinist, Charismatic, theologian, pastor and author. He currently is the pastor of Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City, and president-elect of the Evangelical Theological Society.
There's always the threat of "spiritual one-up-manship" that we must avoid.
Everything without God is pathetically inferior to God without everything.
God limits the happiness and pleasure we have now precisely so we might not become attached to this world or dependent upon it or fearful of leaving it (dying), as well as to stir in our hearts a longing and yearning and holy anticipation for what is yet to come.
You need never fear feeling too good about God.
The Christian is not free to do what the Bible forbids. Christian freedom does not entail the right to fornicate or to steal or to lie or to persist in an unforgiving attitude or to do anything else the Scriptures explicitly prohibit. And a person who lovingly points this out to you is not a legalist for having done so!
Worship is first and foremost a feasting on all that God is for us in Jesus. . . [One] in which God is the host, the cook, the waiter, and the meal itself.
If you come to worship for any reason other that the joy and pleasure and satisfaction that are to be found in God, you dishonor Him. . . God's greatest delight is your delight in Him.
When it comes to satisfying our spiritual appetites, there is no such thing as excess. There are no restraints placed on us by God. There are no rules of temperance or laws requiring moderation or boundaries beyond which we cannot go in seeking to enjoy Him. We need never pause to inquire whether we've crossed a line or become overindulgent. You need never fear feeling too good about God.
The only reason integrity should be a burden to you is if you enjoy being dishonest.
God loves to glorify himself by suspending his gifts and blessings on our asking him for them. We should never presume to receive from God apart from prayer what he's clearly told us in Scripture will be ours only through prayer.
The Spirit has determined that he will operate through certain means and at certain times and if we sinfully put obstacles or warnings or prohibitions in the way, he may well not do for us what he otherwise would have done.
Whatever and whenever God blesses, Satan curses. What God creates, Satan counterfeits.
God's creative design was that your ravenous appetite for pleasure find fulfillment in Him, for nothing more wonderfully reveals His glory than the joy the creature has in its Creator.
This is the glory and miracle of grace, that God, through the Holy Spirit, is able to transform a stubborn, rebellious, and unbelieving will into a passionate, obedient, believing will without violating the integrity of the individual or diminishing the voluntary nature of one's decision to trust Christ for salvation.
Sin turns ugly and is subject to defeat only when seen in the light of Christ's beauty.
If your reason for worshipping God is merely from a sense of moral duty, God would rather you not worship Him at all. To say that God is pleased with worship that lacks passion is to say God endorses hypocrisy.
The biblical basis is the numerous biblical texts which describe prophecy as a spiritual gift that should characterize God's people in the age of the New Covenant.
Sometimes people base their identity on their gifting. But our identity is in Christ and ultimately has no relation to whatever gift the Spirit may have granted to us.
The ordinances do not impart eternal life to the believer, but they do confirm, strengthen, and heighten our awareness and enjoyment of that life. The bread and wine are means or instruments by which God quickens us to apprehend, understand, visualize, and experience the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit and his unique ministry of shining the light of illumination and glory on Jesus.
Grace does not demonize our desires nor destroy them nor lead us to deny them. Grace is the work of the Holy Spirit in transforming our desires so that knowing Jesus becomes sweeter than illicit sex, sweeter than money and what it can buy, sweeter than every fruitless joy. Grace is God satisfying our souls with His Son so that we're ruined for anything else!