There is no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with great purpose.
Faith is two empty hands held open to receive all of the Lord.
The Bible NEVER flatters its heroes. It tells us the truth about each one of them in order that against the background of human breakdown and failure we may magnify the grace of God and recognize that it is the delight of the Spirit of God to work upon the platform of human impossibilities.
Before we can pray, “Lord, Thy Kingdom come,” we must be willing to pray, “My Kingdom go.”
THINK before you speak. Is it True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind?
When God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible man, and he crushes him.
Give up the struggle and the fight; relax in the omnipotence of the Lord Jesus; look up into His lovely face and as you behold Him, He will transform you into His likeness. You do the beholding – He does the transforming. There is no short-cut to holiness.
Let us learn this lesson from Nehemiah: you never lighten the load unless first you have felt the pressure in your own soul. You are never used of God to bring blessing until God has opened your eyes and made you see things as they are.
We are fit for the work of God only when we have wept over it, prayed about it, and then we are enabled by Him to tackle the job that needs to be done.
God will never plant the seed of his life upon the soil of a hard, unbroken spirit. He will only plant that seed where the conviction of his spirit has brought brokenness, where the soil has been watered with the tears of repentance as well as the tears of joy.
The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment, but the manufacture of a saint is the task of a lifetime.
What we are is much more important to Him than what we do for Him. We mean far more to God than the work we do.
A throne is God’s purpose for you; a cross is God’s path for you; faith is God’s plan for you.
Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains.
We are not saved in order to be a blessing to other people – you will be that inevitably – but primarily we are saved in order to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.