Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing... Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.
Beware of being obsessed with consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. The important consistency in a saint is not to a principle but to the divine life. It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him.
Suppose God wants to teach you to say, “I know how to be abased” – are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket – to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister?
The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is because we have no Almighty Christ. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment to Jesus Christ.
Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.
The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations – it is a picture of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His unhindered way with us.
The underlying foundation of the Christian faith is the undeserved, limitless miracle of the love of God that was exhibited on the Cross of Calvary; a love that is not earned and can never be.
Moods never go by praying, moods go by kicking. A mood nearly always has its seat in the physical condition, not in the moral.
If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest.
Beware of any work for God which enables you to evade concentration on Him. A great many Christian workers worship their work.
At least once a week examine yourself before God to see if your life is measuring up to the standard He has for you.
In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us, without any calculations. The consequences of abandonment never enter into our outlook because our life is taken up in Him.
I, a guilty sinner, can never work to get right with God – it is impossible. There is only one way by which I can get right with God, and that is through the death of Jesus Christ.
You have inherited the Divine nature, says Peter, now screw your attention down and form habits, give diligence, concentrate. ‘Add’ means all that character means. No man is born either naturally or supernaturally with character, he has to make character. Nor are we born with habits; we have to form habits on the basis of the new life God has put into us.
Never believe that the so-called random events of life are anything less than God’s appointed order.
Our battles are first won or lost in the secret places of our will in God’s presence, never in full view of the world. The Spirit of God seizes me and I am compelled to get alone with God and fight the battle before Him. Until I do this, I will lose every time. The battle may take one minute or one year, but that will depend on me, not God. However long it takes, I.
One of the most difficult questions to answer in Christian work is, “What do you expect to do?” You don’t know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.
Learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in Nature – the sunrises and the sunsets, the sun and the stars, the changing seasons, and your imagination will never be at the mercy of your impulses, but will always be at the service of God.
Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to God Himself.
Never let a hurried lifestyle disturb the relationship of abiding in Him.