The moment you come to realize that only God can make a man godly, you are left with no option but to find God, and to know God, and to let God be God in and through you.
– Ian Thomas –
Ian Thomas
November 13, 2012
It has been shown that the primary limitation imposed upon you as man, in order that you may be in the likeness of your Maker and bear the image of the invisible, is that of total dependence upon God – in that your behavior, to be godly, must derive directly and exclusively from God’s activity in you and through you. Any activity, therefore, in which you may engage, no matter how nobly conceived, which does not stem from this humble attitude of dependence upon God, violates the basic principles of your true humanity and the role for which you were created. By independence (or the absence of faith), you eliminate God, the source of your own “godliness.” But only God has the right to be the source of His own godliness, so that however unwittingly, you are acting as your own god!
You will still believe or pretend that you are worshiping God; but as the object of your imitation, even Christ Himself may only be an excuse for worshiping your own ability to imitate – an ability vested in yourself. And this is the basis of all self-righteousness!
It is startling to discover that even God may be used as an excuse for worshiping yourself, demonstrating again the satanic genius for distorting truth and deceiving man – for it was to this temptation that Adam and Eve fell in the Garden!
– Ian Thomas –
The Mystery of Godliness, p187
November 10, 2012
Your new birth puts God into action in you. It lets all of God loose, clothed with the redeemed humanity of your own flesh and blood as a forgiven sinner, so that at last you become a normal human being as Jesus was.
– Ian Thomas –
The Indwelling Life, p26
August 16, 2012
Christ in you, on the grounds of redemption – this is the Gospel! To preach anything less than this must inevitably produce “Evan-jellyfish” folk with no spiritual vertebrae, whose faith does not “behave!”
– Ian Thomas –
April 23, 2012
Only Christ can live the Christian life – He never said we could; He always said He would!
– Ian Thomas –
March 3, 2012
It has got to become patently obvious to others that the kind of life you are living is not only commendable, but that it is beyond all human explanation! That it is beyond the consequences of man’s capacity to imitate, and however little they may understand this, clearly the consequence only of God’s capacity to reproduce Himself in you!
– Ian Thomas –
November 7, 2011
There is nothing more boring than being religious. There is nothing more exciting than being a Christian. Sad thing is that countless religious people don’t know the difference between religious and being a Christian.
– Ian Thomas –
May 19, 2011
The Christian life can be explained only in terms of Jesus, and if your life as a Christian can still be explained in terms of you – your personality, your willpower, your gift, your talent, your money, your courage, your scholarship, your dedication, your sacrifice, or your anything – then although you may have the Christian life, you are not yet living it! … True Godliness leaves the world convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only explanation for you, is Jesus.
– Ian Thomas –