The words of the Lord hurt and offend until there is nothing left to be hurt or offended. Jesus has no tenderness whatsoever toward anything that is ultimately going to ruin a person in his service to God. If the Spirit of God brings to your mind a word of the Lord that hurts you, you may be sure that there is something He wants to hurt to death.
– Oswald Chambers –
Keep as far as you can from those temptations that feed and strengthen the sins which you would overcome. Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out, by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.
– Richard Baxter –
God never asks us to do anything we can do. He asks us to live a life which we can never live and to do a work which we can never do. . . . Self is the only obstruction to that life and to that work. May we each one pray from our hearts: “O Lord, deal with me!”
– Watchman Nee –
from “Sit, Walk, Stand” page 69
You will ask me, are you satisfied? Have you got all you want? God forbid. With the deepest feeling of my soul I can say that I am satisfied with Jesus now; but there is also the consciousness of how much fuller the revelation can be of the exceeding abundance of His grace. Let us never hesitate to say, ‘This is only the beginning.’
– Andrew Murray –
They Found the Secret, page 116
How infinitely blessed it is to be entirely Christ’s. To think that you and I are never to have another care or another fear, but that Jesus has undertaken simply everything for us! And isn’t it grand to have the privilege of being His instruments? It does seem such loving condescension that He should use us.
– Francis Havergal –
But we never can prove the delights of His love, until all on the altar we lay.
– Hymn: Trust and Obey –
The secret of the success of the Apostles lay not in what they did and said, but in the presence of Christ in them and with them. They saw with the eyes of Christ, felt with His heart, and worked with His energies. They were nothing; Christ was everything. Christ was living, breathing, and triumphing in their personal lives. Their entire nature being replete with His life, their spirits bathed in His light, and their souls kindled with the fires of His love, they moved in the midst of men as embodiments of supernatural power… Brethren, this is what we must be, if this mighty Empire (China) is to be moved through us. But to be this, the throne of grace must be our refuge, the secret place of the Most High must be our daily and hourly habitation.
– Griffith John –
I want to deliberately encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long in vain.
– AW Tozer –
from The Pursuit of God
It is not enough just to know about Christ, or to know about what He did for us, nor even to experience His work in us. What is needed is to experience Him in us . . .
– Walter Elwell –
from They Found the Secret (Edman), 11