R.C. Sproul (Robert Charles Sproul) was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in 1939. He was a child during World War II, which had a tremendous impact upon his life. He loved sports as a child and was a true fan of the Pittsburg Steelers and Pirates. He loved to play sports too but during his high school years he had to give up his extracurricular time to get a job due to his father’s illness. In his senior year of high school his father died, the family lost their home and R.C. became angry with God.
God used R.C.’s love of sports in his college days to introduce him to Jesus. It was a star college football player that talked about Jesus as though he was his best friend in the whole world. On that same night R.C. accepted Jesus as his savior. Not long after his conversion, his childhood sweetheart was also converted during a visit at his college. They were eventually married and even moved to the Netherlands so R.C. could complete doctoral studies at the Free University of Amsterdam. Upon receiving the news of his mother’s illness, they returned home to the states. He was asked to teach in a lay minister’s class and it was then that he realized that lay people were more on fire for the teachings of the Lord than those that he had seen in seminary.
In the early 1970’s lay education became his calling and R.C. went on to teach students about Scripture, philosophy, apologetics, theology, and church history. His Ligonier Ministries provided for the student’s study, room and board in the Sproul’s home and in the homes of others in the study. The style of teaching and the ministry was very much like that of Francis Schaeffer’s European study center, L’Abri. R.C. also preaches on the popular radio ministry “Renewing Your Mind” which kicked off in 1994. His bestselling book “The Holiness of God” which was first published in 1985 is one of more than 60 books that he has written. Today he is known as an American Calvinist Theologian and pastor.
Take a look at these great R.C. C. Sproul Quotes:
Featured R. C. Sproul Quote: “Not until we take God seriously will we ever take sin seriously.”
Church, Praise & Worship
The complaint that church is boring is never made by people in awe.
The visible church refers to the institution called ‘the church’ that has visible participants whose names appear on the roll of a local congregation. In most churches anyone who makes an outward profession of faith (and meets other criteria for membership) is admitted to active fellowship in the visible church.
The Greek work for church, ecclesia, is made up of a prefix and a root. The prefix is ek – out of. The root is the verb coleo, to call. The church in the New Testament is made up of those who are called out from the world, from darkness, from damnation, from paganism, to become members of the body of Christ.
One does not structure the church to meet the felt needs and desires of the tares. The purpose of corporate assembly, which has its roots in the Old Testament, is for the people of God to come together corporately to offer their sacrifices of praise and worship to God. So the first rule of worship is that it be designed for believers to worship God in a way that pleases God.
The church has been established by Christ to be an army (but) armies, in order to be effective, must be very sensitive in caring for their wounded… There is always a major work to be done within the church in terms of ministering to the needs of the people.
It is imperative that the Christian, at the beginning of his pursuit to understand what true worship is, gets it clear that the object of our worship is to be God and God alone
The most effective churches that I know are churches where the ministerial staff devote many hours in training and mobilizing their congregations to be mighty armies of saints, as they minister to a dying world.
The visible church may be distressingly and sorely fractured and fragmented into all different kinds of denominations and groups, but the invisible church is the true body of Christ. Everyone who is in Christ, and in whom Christ dwells, is a member of this one universal church.
God
Without God man has no reference point to define himself.
To announce to people indiscriminately that God loves them “unconditionally” (without carefully distinguishing among the distinctive types of divine love) is to promote a perilous false sense of security in the hearers.
God’s plan never changes because He never changes and because perfection admits to no degrees and cannot be improved upon.
We are called to live Coram Deo, defined as: before the presence of God, under the authority of God and to the glory of God.
If there is one maverick molecule in all the universe, then God is not sovereign. And if God is not sovereign, He is not God.
Grace
God is not obligated to save anybody, to make any special act of grace, to draw anyone to Himself. He could leave the whole world to perish, and such would be a righteous judgment.
Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people – for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.
If God is able to make everything that happens to us work together for our good, then ultimately everything that happens to us is good. We must be careful to use the word ultimately. On the earthly plane things that happen to us may indeed be evil. …Yet God in His goodness transcends all these things and works them out to our good. For the Christian, ultimately, there are no tragedies.
Love & Marriage
Throughout the ages the church has understood that the most significant manifestation of true faith is love. Faith without love is not faith, only speculation or knowledge or mere intellectual assent. The fruit of authentic faith is always love.
To solve a marriage problem, you have to talk with each other about it, choosing wisely the time and place. But when accusations and lengthy speeches of defense fill the dialogue, the partners are not talking to each other but past each other. Take care to listen more than you speak. If you still can’t agree on a solution, consider asking a third party, without a vested interest, to mediate.
In the New Testament, love is more of a verb than a noun. It has more to do with acting than with feeling. The call to love is not so much a call to a certain state of feeling as it is to a quality of action.
The biblical union of two people into one flesh did not involve the annihilation of personal identity. The unity of marriage is not to be monistic but a unity in duality.
To be sure, it is much easier to be loving if you’re in love, but being in love is not intrinsically necessary to being loving – else the Great Commandment is a farce.
A married person does not live in isolation. He or she has made a promise, a pledge, a vow, to another person. Until that vow is fulfilled and the promise is kept, the individual is in debt to his marriage partner. That is what he owes. “You owe it to yourself” is not a valid excuse for breaking a marriage vow but a creed of selfishness.
Final Thoughts
R.C. Sproul was raised by ordinary parents in an ordinary city with ordinary activities. But because he surrendered to what God would have him to do, he has made extraordinary strides to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Perhaps He is calling you to do something that you think you cannot do. Surrender to His calling and let Him equip you for what He wants you to do. He is able.
Related Reading: 22 Great Max Lucado Quotes
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