I often overestimate my ability and underestimate my need.
– Mr. Gaston –
Abiding
Don’t Be Encumbered With Things That Hinder – John Bunyan
It is but a vain thing to talk of going to heaven, if thou let thy heart be encumbered with those things that would hinder. Would you not say that such a man would be in danger of losing, though he run, if he fill his pockets with stones, hang heavy garments on his shoulders, and great lumpish shoes on his feet? So it is here. Thou talkest of going to heaven, and yet fillest thy pockets with stones; that is, fillest thy heart with this world; lettest that hang on thy shoulders with its profits and pleasures. Alas, alas! thou art widely mistaken. If thou intendest to win, thou must strip, thou must lay aside every weight, thou must be temperate in all things. Thou must so run.
– John Bunyan –
A Place of Difficulty and Hardship – Elisabeth Elliot
This is the very place meant by God to turn your eyes to Him.
– Elisabeth Elliot –
God Gives Us Our Daily Bread – DL Moody
If God could set a table for His people in the wilderness, and feed three millions of Israelites for forty years, can he not give us our daily bread? I do not mean only the bread that perisheth, but also the Bread that cometh from above. If He feeds the birds of the air, surely he will feed his children made in His own image! If He numbers the very hairs of our head, he will take care to supply all our temporal wants.
– DL Moody –
Let Us Always Be With Christ – Brother Lawrence
Let us fear to leave Him. Let us be always with Him. Let us live and die in His presence.
– Brother Lawrence –
from The Practice of the Presence of God
No Flesh Shall Glory in His Presence – T. Austin-Sparks
No flesh shall glory in His presence, and the religious flesh is no more acceptable than the irreligious.
–T. Austin-Sparks –
Breaking a Man Before Using Him – Charles Spurgeon
Before God uses the man, God breaks the man.
– Charles Spurgeon –
The Measure of Your Surrender – William Booth
The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.
– William Booth –
Absolutely Abandoned to Jesus Christ – Oswald Chambers
Whenever our Lord talked about the relation of a disciple to Himself it was in terms of mystical union: “I am the vine [not the root of the vine, but the vine itself], ye are the branches.” We have not paid enough attention to the illustrations Jesus uses. This is the picture of sanctification in the individual, a completeness of relationship between Jesus Christ and myself. Pharisaic holiness means that my eyes are set on my own whiteness and I become a separate individual. I have the notion that I have to be something; I have not, I have to be absolutely abandoned to Jesus Christ, so one with Him that I never think of myself apart from Him. Love is never self-conscious.
– Oswald Chambers –
from Biblical Ethics