A church in the land without the Spirit is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else’s way; you are a fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Come away to private communion. Come away, shut the doors of your chamber and talk with your Lord Jesus and have close and intimate dealing with Him.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Oh, for closest communion with God, till soul and body, head, face, and heart—shine with Divine brilliancy! But oh! for a holy ignorance of our shining!
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne –
Sufficiency in myself is a persistent thought, though I try to judge it. Lord Jesus, Tender Lover of this brute soul, wilt Thou make me weak? I long to understand Thy sufficiency and my inadequacy, and how can I sense this except in experience? So, Lord, Thou knowest what I am able to bear. Send trouble that I might know peace; send anxiety that I might know rest in Thee. Send hard things that I may learn to rely on Thy dissolving them. Strange askings, and I do not know what I speak, but my desire is toward Theeanything that will intensify and make me tender, Savior. O desire to be like Thee, Thou knowest.
– Jim Elliot –
From his journal, October 27, 1948
Do not strive in your own strength; cast yourself at the feet of the Lord Jesus, and wait upon Him in the sure confidence that He is with you, and works in you. Strive in prayer; let faith fill your heart—so will you be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
– Andrew Murray –
If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, and a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus without loss to itself communicates its superabundant water. In the Church at the present day we have many canals but few reservoirs.
– Bernard of Clairvaux –
If you want that splendid power in prayer, you must remain in loving, living, lasting, conscious, practical, abiding union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
– Charles Spurgeon –
LORD strengthen me where I am too weak and weaken me where I am too strong!
– Leonard Ravenhill –
Scripture says, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). The childlike privilege of asking for anything is inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit. The one who yields himself to be led by the Spirit in his everyday life will be led by Him also in his prayers. He will find that father-like giving is the divine response to childlike living.
– Andrew Murray –
from Teach Me to Pray