The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord.
Laying up treasures in heaven will draw the heart heavenward.
I desire many things concerning myself; but I desire nothing so much, as to have a heart filled with love to the Lord. I long for a warm personal attachment to Him.
As a warning to parents, I mention that my father preferred me to my brother, which was very injurious to both of us. To me, as tending to produce in my mind a feeling of self-elevation; and to my brother, by creating in him a dislike both towards my father and me.
If we desire our faith to be strengthened, we should not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened.
Money is really worth no more than as it can be used to accomplish the Lord’s work. Life is worth as much as it is spent for the Lord’s service.
Where faith begins, anxiety ends; where anxiety begins, faith ends.
God judges what we give by what we keep.
Trials, obstacles, difficulties and sometimes defeats, are the very food of faith.
The joy which answers to prayer give, cannot be described; and the impetus which they afford to the spiritual life is exceedingly great.
It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer.
Oh this is reality, not a fable, that the Lord Jesus Christ is our friend. And we should not be satisfied until we are brought to this.
Often the work of the Lord itself may be a temptation to keep us from that communion with Him which is so essential to the benefit of our own souls.
God is pleased continually to vary His mode of dealing with us, in order that we may not be tempted to trust in donors, or in circumstances, but in Him alone, and to keep our eye fixed upon Him.
If we say we trust in Him, but in reality do not, then God, taking us at our word, lets us see that we do not really confide in Him, and hence failure arises.
If honest of heart and uprightness before God were lacking or if I did not patiently wait on God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow-men to the declarations of the Word of God, I made great mistakes.
There is an intimate connection between the life of the Christian here and the enjoyment and the glory in the day of Christ’s appearing.
When the day of recompense comes, our only regret will be that we have done so little for Him, not that we have done too much.
There were few people, perhaps, more passionately fond of travelling, and seeing fresh places, and new scenes, than myself; but now, since, by the grace of God, I have seen beauty in the Lord Jesus, I have lost my taste for these things.
The Lord Jesus, everything. In himself worse than nothing. By grace, in Christ, the son of the King.
The province of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail.