R. C. Sproul Heart Quotations

Sin is not simply making bad choices or mistakes. Sin is having the desire in our hearts to do the will of the enemy of God.

God not only initiated my salvation, He not only sowed the seed, but He made sure that that seed germinated in my heart by regenerating me by the power of the Holy Ghost.

The Word of God can be in the mind without being in the heart; but it cannot be in the heart without first being in the mind.

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him... To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.

Repentance is something that is brought about in the human heart by the work of God the Holy Spirit.

Burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads

It's not the wickedness of the pagan that breaks my heart. It's the compromise of the Christian that grieves my soul.

For the soul of a person to be inflamed with passion for the living God, that person's mind must first be informed about the character and will of God. There can be nothing in the heart that is not first in the mind. Though it is possible to have theology on the head without its piercing the soul, it cannot pierce the soul without first being grasped by the mind.

The very heart of worship, as the Bible makes clear, is the business of expressing, from the depths of our spirits, the highest possible honor we can offer before God.

Fallen man is free to choose what he desires, but because his desires are only wicked he lacks the moral ability to come to Christ. As long as he remains in the flesh, unregenerate, he will never choose Christ. He cannot choose Christ precisely because he cannot act against his own will. His fall is so great that only the effectual grace of God working in his heart can bring him to faith.

It is important for us to make a distinction between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness. A Christian can have joy in his heart while there is still spiritual depression in his head. The joy that we have sustains us through these dark nights and is not quenched by spiritual depression. The joy of the Christian is one that survives all downturns in life.

Reformed theology does NOT teach that God brings the ELECT kicking and screaming, against their will, into His kingdom. It teaches that God so-works in the hearts of the Elect as to make them willing and pleased to come to Christ. They come to Christ because they want to. They want to because God has created in their hearts a desire for Christ.

A Christian is not a skeptic. A Christian is a person with a burning heart, a heart set aflame with certainty of the resurrection.

I cannot have God in my heart if he is not in my head. Before I can believe in, I must believe that.

The fundamental loss of a desire for God is the heart of original sin.

All that God had to do to harden Pharaoh's heart, or to harden your heart, is to withhold His own grace.

Doctrine divides, but doctrine also unites. It binds together the hearts of God's people who celebrate the truth of God together.