It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
Thus we dare not conclude that because we learn about the Spirit we for that reason actually know Him. Knowing Him comes only by a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit himself.
Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid – that is the paradox of faith.
Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.
We do God more honor by believing what He has said about Himself and having the courage to come boldly to the throne of grace than by hiding in self-conscious humility among the trees of the garden.
The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing.
The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the “and” lies our great woe. If we omit the “and” we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.
God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.
To think without a proper amount of good reading is to limit our thinking to our own tiny plot of ground.
The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activity activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.
As long as Christ sits on the mediatorial throne every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation.
I see the time coming when all the holy men whose eyes have been opened by the Spirit will desert worldly Evangelicalism, one by one.
As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace?
Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself.
Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are more likely to explain than to adore.
The great unseen reality is God.
What made Jesus’ death uncommon, unusual? It was the dying of the just for the unjust. It was His sacrificial dying, His vicarious dying. He paid a debt He did not owe in behalf of the others too deeply in debt ever to pay.
My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me. – Psa. 63:8.