Private Thoughts About Christian Life

The great mistake of life, and the cause of all the wickedness and misery in the world, is looking for happiness here, and especially in externals, where it never will be found.

The things which God hath prepared for them that love Him, are, according to the revelation of His nature and will, in Jesus Christ. In this belief, study to know Him more and more; make Him your treasure and portion, and long for the everlasting enjoyment of Him.

Bearing with thyself in the lack of spiritual strength, or absence of spiritual comfort, is neither more nor less than bearing with Cod, and the effect of no common grace.

He is the greatest saint upon earth, who feels his poverty most in the want of perfect holiness, and longs with the greatest earnestness for the time when he shall be put in full possession of it.

Temptations are not sins, but means of perfection, or causes of strengthening the will; and thrown in our way, that we may resist them in the fear of God, conquer in His help, and increase our reward.

If I prefer any thing in my heart to Cod and His will, my whole state and being, every thought, word, and work, is sinful.

God’s coming and presence in the soul, is best understood by the power of it in the change it works in us.

I have had but little thought or purpose of employing the talents which God has given me solely to His glory. Whenever I do this with a single eye to please Him, I need not be concerned what they are, one or ten, and shall be indifferent about the esteem of the world.

What has Cod for me to do today? I am not to live to myself—so I should have thought all my life, and every day of my life; doing my work faithfully, praising Cod for appointing it, and desiring no other happiness.

He who is Christ’s free-man, is made such by Christian faith and obedience: he is heaven-taught, Spirit-led, has a single desire to know and please Cod better, is aiming at perfection, and grieving for nothing so much as the lack of it.

The Spirit in the children of God is like an organ; one man is one stop; another, another; the sound is different, the instrument the same, but music in all.

In heaven we shall have a perfect knowledge of sin far beyond anything we now conceive of it, in conjunction with the greatness of our deliverance; and the glory of redeeming mercy will be the eternal ground of our love and admiration. On earth it is the great exercise of faith, and one of the hardest things in the world, to see sin and Christ at the same time, or to be penetrated with a lively sense of our desert, and absolute freedom from condemnation. But the more we know of both, the nearer approach we shall make to the state of heaven; and are our own greatest enemies, if, together with the fullest comprehension of sin, and the deepest humiliation for it, we do not look unto Jesus, and see it taken away by the Lamb of Cod.

Oh, for a steady will, to think and do all with a sole regard to the eye of Cod, and with great indifference for the esteem or censure of any man living!

Rev. Thomas Adam (1701-1784) was a godly divine and student of John Newton, who pastored a congregation in Lincolnshire for 58 years. Like lohn Newton, he remained within the Anglican Church all his life.

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