Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer –
If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is un-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 –
I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize the Lord is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult, His grace is sufficient.
– Hudson Taylor –
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
– Winston Churchill –
You see, then, that the grace in the gospel is not mere persuasion and entreaty, but a powerful work of the Spirit entering into the soul and changing it, and altering the inclination of the will heavenward. We must have great notions of the work of grace. The Scripture has great words of it. It is an alternation, a change, a new man, a new creation, a new birth.
– Richard Sibbes –
from Glorious Freedom, 106
Men of prayer must be men of steel, for they will be assaulted by Satan even before they attempt to assault his kingdom
– Leonard Ravenhill –
Satan fools and feigns, blows and bluffs, and we so often take his threats to heart and forget the “exceeding greatness of God’s power to us.”
– Leonard Ravenhill –
I have often thought that the best Christians are found in the worst of times: and I have thought again, that one reason why we are no better, is because God purges us no more. I know these things are against the grain of the flesh, but they are not against the graces of the Spirit.
– John Bunyan –
To someone asking for some means to get more strength in his arms and hands to be able to seize and hang on to things, a physician would say that his whole constitution must be built up and strengthened. So the cure of a weak faith is only found by revitalizing our whole spiritual life through close fellowship with God.
– Andrew Murray –
from Teach Me To Pray