Nothing but intense, believing prayer can meet the intense spirit of worldliness,
which is complained of everywhere.
– Andrew Murray –
Flesh – Carnal Nature – Selfishness
The Holier a Man Becomes – Charles Spurgeon
I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
– Charles Spurgeon –
No Fault of Christianity – Jerome
It is no fault of Christianity if a hypocrite falls into sin.
– Jerome –
374-420 AD
Have You Obtained a View of God’s Fatherly Countenance – John Owen
Have I obtained a view of God’s fatherly countenance that I might behold his face and provoke him to his face? Was my soul washed that room might be made for new defilements? Shall I endeavour to disappoint the end of the death of Christ? Shall I daily grieve the Spirit whereby I am sealed to the day of redemption?
– John Owen –
Cease from Prayer or Cease from Sin? – John Bunyan
Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.
– John Bunyan –
What Revival Does – Charles Finney
A revival breaks the power of the world and of sin over Christians. It brings them to such vantage ground that they get a fresh impulse toward heaven. They have a new foretaste of heaven and new desires after union with God; and the charm of the world is broken, and the power of sin overcome. When the churches are thus awakened and reformed, the reformation and salvation of sinners will follow, going through the same stages of conviction, repentance, and reformation. Their hearts will be broken down and changed. Very often the most abandoned profligates are among the subjects. Harlots and drunkards and infidels and all sorts of abandoned characters are awakened and converted. The worst among human beings are softened, and reclaimed, and made to appear as lovely specimens of the beauty of holiness. “O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known, in wrath remember mercy” ( Hab. 3:2).
– Charles G. Finney –
Sin Has Destroyed the Capacity to See – Asbury Lowrey
Sin has not only put a film on the eye, but destroyed the capacity to see. It has ruined the faculty of spiritual insight, and struck the soul with blindness. The only perfect cure is the salve of experimental grace. A man may have all the learning in the world, and all the culture the schools can afford, and yet be a mere novice in spiritual understanding.
– Asbury Lowrey –
What is Foreign To Us – John Chrysostom
Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life. These are words by which the slanderers of the nature, of the body, the impeachers of our flesh, are completely overthrown … We do not wish to cast aside the body, but corruption: not the flesh, but death. The body is one thing, corruption another; the body is one thing, death another… What is foreign to us is not the body but corruptibility.
– John Chrysostom –
No Hunger for God – Florence Allshorn
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 –