You Cannot Avoid Some Reference to God in Any Vow

"However hard you try, Jesus said, you cannot avoid some reference to God, for the whole world is God's world and you cannot eliminate Him from any of it. If you vow by 'heaven', it is God's throne; if by 'earth' it is his footstool; if by 'Jerusalem' it is his city, THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING. If you swear by your head, it is indeed yours in the sense that it is nobody else's, and yet it is God's creation and under God's control. You cannot even change the natural colour of a single hair, black in youth and white in old age."

--John R. W. Stott, from The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Inter-Varsity Press, 1978, p. 101)

Joyful Confidence in Jesus Christ

"It is impossible to read the New Testament without being impressed by the atmosphere of joyful confidence which pervades it, and which stands out in relief against the rather jejune [insubstantial, lacking maturity, dull] religion that often passes for Christianity today. There was no defeatism about the early Christians; they spoke rather of victory. For example, 'thanks be to God! He gives us the victory...'. Again, 'in all these things  (sc. adversities and dangers ) we are more than conquerors...'. Once more, 'God...always leads us in triumphal procession...'.And each of Christ's letters to the seven churches of Asia ends with a special promise 'to him who overcomes'. Victory, conquest, triumph, overcoming--this was the vocabulary of those first followers of the risen Lord. For if they spoke of victory, they knew they owed it to the victorious Jesus."

--John Stott, The Cross of Christ, published by IVP (InterVarsityPress, 1986), p. 227