Dependence

October 17, 2011

God is not dead. The gospel has lost none of its power. It is we Christians who have lost OUR power with God. God is able right now to give us the same times of blessing that He gave this church one hundred years ago—even greater! Are you willing to let God search your hearts to see that there are no sins which grieve God and keep back the blessing?”

From a sermon of the father of William Chalmers Burns preached at the gravesite of James Robe, whose pastoral efforts brought a great revival in Kilsyth Scotland in 1742

October 5, 2011

My entire energy must be spent on seeking Him; there must be no other concentration.

– Stephen Manley –

September 4, 2011

We are not only to renounce evil, but to manifest the truth. We tell people the world is vain; let our lives manifest that it is so. We tell them that our home is above and that all these things are transitory. Does our dwelling look like it? O to live consistent lives!

– Hudson Taylor –

August 29, 2011

There is no power like that of prevailing prayer, of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat of blood. Add to this list from the records of the church your personal observation and experience, and always there is the cost of passion unto blood. Such prayer prevails. It turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.

– Samuel Chadwick –

August 28, 2011

These days of ours have sore need of a generation of praying men, a band of men and women through whom God can bring his great and his greatest movements more fully into the world. The Lord our God is not straitened within himself, but he is straitened in us, by reason of our little faith and weak praying. A breed of Christian is greatly needed who will seek tirelessly after God—who will give him no rest, day and night, until he hearkens to their cry. The times demand praying men who are all athirst for God’s glory, who are broad and unselfish in their desires, quenchless for God, who seek him late and early, and who will give themselves no rest until the whole earth be filled with his glory.

– E.M. Bounds –

August 26, 2011

There is no such thing as a Christianity without a cross. There is no such things as a Christianity without a cost. It costs everything.

– Nick Thompson –

August 10, 2011

Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little in comparison with eternal realities.

– Robert Murray M’Cheyne –

July 25, 2011

Above all, we must be especially alert against the beginnings of temptation, for the enemy is more easily conquered if he is refused admittance to the mind and is met beyond the threshold when he knocks. — Someone has said very aptly: Resist the beginnings; remedies come too late, when by long delay the evil has gained strength. First, a mere thought comes to mind, then strong imagination, followed by pleasure, evil delight, and consent. Thus, because he is not resisted in the beginning, Satan gains full entry. And the longer a man delays in resisting, so much the weaker does he become each day, while the strength of the enemy grows against him.

– Thomas a Kempis –
from The Imitation of Christ

July 24, 2011

I tremble for those who are preaching the truth – the truth as it is in Jesus, the gospel in its simplicity, in its purity, in its fullness – but preaching it “in persuasive words of wisdom” and not “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2.4), preaching it in the energy of the flesh and not in the power of the Holy Spirit.  There is nothing more deadly than the gospel without the Spirit’s power.

– RA Torrey –
from The Baptism with the Holy Spirit, 35-36