Temptations in the life of faith are not accidents; each temptation is part of a plan, a step in the progress of faith.
If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed.
Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.
The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold.
God does not expect us to imitate Jesus Christ; He expects us to allow the life of Jesus to be manifested in our moral flesh.
Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose for which I was created and born again, not from successfully doing something of my own choosing.
There is no greater threat to our devotion to Christ than our service for Christ.
The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould.
When obedience is in the ascendant, He will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist you with all His Almighty power.
The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.
Faith is the inborn capacity to see God behind everything.
Watch the things you say you can’t believe, and then recall the things you accept without thinking, like your own existence.
It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.
We are not meant to be seen as God’s perfect, bright-shining examples, but to be seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of His grace.
What is the sign of a friend? Is it that he tells you his secret sorrows? No, it is that he tells you his secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you.
Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. It will cost everything that is not of God in us.
Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God.
God does not make us holy in the sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence, and we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices.
The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is.
If God allows you to be stripped of the exterior portions of your life, He means for you to cultivate the interior.