The Contrite Heart: True repentance includes sorrow for sin and contrition of heart. It breaks the heart with sighs and sobs and groans, for a loving God and Father is by sin offended, a blessed Saviour afresh crucified, and the sweet Comforter, the Spirit, grieved and vexed.
– Thomas Brooks –
What is the great sin, the fountain sin, the head of all your sins, but unbelief?
– William Bridge –
from A Lifting Up For The Downcast, 1649
Those who resemble God are the most likely to understand God. If a man is not willing to turn from sin, he will not know God’s will. God will not reveal His secrets to him. But, if a man is willing to turn from sin, he will be surprised to see how the light will come in!
– DL Moody –
from The Way to God
As the Lord makes use of all the seasons of the year, frost and heat, to produce the harvest, so all prosperous and adverse providences are for the promoting of the work of holiness in the soul.
– Thomas Watson –
from The Godly Man’s Picture
I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Sin is, in truth, the hardest of all masters. In its service there is plenty of fair promises, but an utter dearth of performance. Its pleasures are but for a season. Its wages are sorrow, remorse, self-accusation, and too often death. They that sow to the flesh, do indeed reap corruption.
– JC Ryle –
from Expository Thoughts on the Gospels [Matt 27:1-10], 1856
We are called to change the world, not be changed by the world.
– Eric Ludy –
The last word of our Lord to the church was not the Great Commission. The last thing He said to the church was “Repent.” He said that to five out of seven.
– Vance Havner –
(see Revelation 2-3)
We religious leaders need to look very much more deeply. We can so easily have talks with people, and they can say we have helped, write us grateful letters, even stand steady for a time till the juice we have put into them runs out; but, we may have brought them no hunger for God—because that hunger is no ache in our own heart—nor brought them anywhere near to the end of self.
– Florence Allshorn –