Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
– AW Tozer –
Dependence
November 30, 2012
The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.
– William Booth –
November 29, 2012
He that willingly submits to the cross, to him its whole burden is changed into a sweet assurance of divine comfort. And the more the flesh is broken down by the cross, the more the spirit is strengthened by inward grace. It is not in man by nature to bear the cross, to love the cross, to deny self, to bring the body into subjection, and willingly to endure suffering. If thou look to thyself, thou canst accomplish nothing of all this. But if thou trust in the Lord, strength shall be given thee from heaven, and the world and the flesh shall be made subject to thy rule. Set thyself, therefore, to bear manfully the cross of thy Lord, who out of love was crucified for thee.
– Thomas a’Kempis –
November 24, 2012
Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things. It is the simplest and the most sublime, the weakest and the most powerful. Its results lie outside the range of human possibilities; they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.
– EM Bounds –
from Purpose in Prayer
November 22, 2012
If anyone would tell you the surest, shortest way to all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself, to thank God for every thing that happens to you.
– William Law –
from A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
November 21, 2012
The first great characteristic of the true Christian is always a sense of thankfulness and gratitude to God.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones –
from Love So Amazing
November 14, 2012
In the Western world the enemy has forsworn violence. He comes against us no more with sword and fagot; he now comes smiling, bearing gifts. He raises his eyes to heaven and swears that he too believes in the faith of our fathers, but his real purpose is to destroy that faith, or at least to modify it to such an extent that it is no longer the supernatural thing it once was. He comes in the name of philosophy or psychology or anthropology, and with sweet reasonableness urges us to rethink our historic position, to be less rigid, more tolerant, more broadly understanding.
– AW Tozer –
from God Tells the Man Who Cares, p171
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 12, 2012
The whole purpose of the Redemption is to give back to man the original source of life, and in a regenerated man this means “Christ . . . formed in you.” Am I willing that the old disposition should be crucified with Christ? If I am, Jesus Christ will take possession of me and will baptize me into His life until I bear a strong family likeness to Him. It is a lonely path, a path of death, but it means ultimately being “presenced with Divinity.” The Christian life does not take its pattern from good men, but from God Himself, that is why it is an absolutely supernormal life all through.
– Oswald Chambers –