We want the corruption of the world and yet still go to heaven. We want to be like the world with the pleasure of sin but still have the benefits of salvation. But Scripture is clear, though we are in the world, we are not to be OF the world. We are to be entirely different than the world.
– Eric Ludy –
Our modern speech is a great aid to inner hypocrisy, and it becomes a snare because it is easy to talk piously and live iniquitously.
– Oswald Chambers –
It is not what my sin is in the sight of man that I have to consider; but what it is in thy sight, O thou Holy One!—who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
– Robert Candlish –
from The Prayer of a Broken Heart: Expository Discourses on Psalm 51, 1873
The neglected heart will soon be a heart overrun with worldly thoughts; the neglected life will soon become a moral chaos; the church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray.
– AW Tozer –
If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is not obeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being.
– Arthur T. Pierson –
It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensable to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, “How will the work go on without me?” As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, “How will the mails be carried without me?” Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from “Laid Aside, Why?,” The Sword and Trowel, May, 1876
If you don’t plan to live the Christian life totally committed to knowing your God and to walking in obedience to Him, then don’t begin; for this is what Christianity is all about. It is a change of citizenship, a change of governments, a change of allegience. If you have no intention of letting Christ rule your life, then forget Christianity; it’s not for you.
– Kay Arthur –
Our murmuring is the devil’s music.
– Thomas Watson –
Not to be daily mortifying sin, is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who hath furnished us with a principle (and means) of doing it.
– John Owen –
from The Mortification of Sin