God’s call to any man and the anointing of the Spirit for service are conditioned upon that man’s heart response.
I believe that the sphere of service, your career, the plan which God has mapped out for you and prepared for you, is the greatest agency in His hands to conform You to His character and to His will.
No man can use his Bible with power unless he has the character of Jesus in his heart.
When we get to the end of ourselves, we get to the beginning of God.
The Christian life doesn’t get easier as one gets older.
Let’s keep our chins up and our knees down – we’re on the victory side.
The secret of every discord in Christian homes and communities and churches is that we seek our own way and our own glory.
It’s Satan’s delight to tell me that once he’s got me, he will keep me. But at that moment I can go back to God. And I know that if I confess my sins, God is faithful and just to forgive me.
The condition of an enlightened mind is a surrendered heart.
Our god is the thing, or person, which we think most precious, for whom we would make the greatest sacrifice, and who moves our heart with the warmest love. He is the person or thing that if lost would leave us desolate.
For every discouragement has been allowed to come to us in order that through it we may be cast in utter helplessness at the Saviour’s feet.
In the United States of America there are twenty-seven million people under twenty-one years of age who receive no Christian training at all. Juvenile crime in the big cities is tremendous – sometimes it seems absolutely out of control. Every week one million people are dying without Jesus. In one minute, eighty-five people pass into eternity. In just the brief span of a church service hundreds are passing out into the presence of God. Does that mean anything to you?
Let a man be right with God, reconciled through the blood of the cross, humbled at the foot of Calvary; let him be broken, coming to God guilty and hopeless and needy; and at that moment God takes hold of him and transforms and uses all his gifts and qualities, until that man becomes a mighty influence. But he has first to come down from his ladder of pride to the very foot of the cross.
When you are living by faith through the darkness of circumstances, other people become aware of the radiance and sweetness of your life, and they are truly blessed. When you refuse to admit your failure, God cannot be revealed through you to others, and they may be lost for eternity. Oh, the sin of unbelief has desperate consequences, not only for yourself, but for others!
Heaven’s justice and righteousness must be recognized and maintained. Apart from grace, you find yourself bankrupt and insolvent, desperately in debt and helpless to meet God’s judgment. Therefore, your only hope is to fly to the wounded side of the Lord, who in His life kept God’s law perfectly and in His death paid the price of your rebellion.
So often the providences of God seem to run completely counter to His promises, but only that He may test our faith, only that He may ultimately accomplish His purpose for our lives in a way that He could never do if the path were always smooth.
God doesn’t want new methods; He wants new men.
It is only the love of God shed abroad by the Holy Spirit that can cause effective repentance and cleansing – not simply Christian work or service, but the shining sweetness and fragrance of the love of Jesus Christ. It is this which touches a life that is out of adjustment to the will of God.
We glory in our wonderful gospel of love and mercy for the unsaved, but we usually act as if we have no gospel for the saint who has been tripped up by the devil!
It takes but a moment to make a convert; it takes a lifetime to manufacture a saint.