Consecration is our part, sanctification is God’s part; and we have deliberately to determine to be interested in that only in which God is interested. The way to solve perplexing problems is to ask—”Is this the kind of thing which Jesus Christ is interested in, or the kind of thing the spirit that is [opposite] of Jesus is interested in?”
– Oswald Chambers –
With complete consecration comes perfect peace.
–Watchman Nee –
No flesh shall glory in His presence, and the religious flesh is no more acceptable than the irreligious.
–T. Austin-Sparks –
Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin! The time of waiting is past! The hour of God has struck! War is declared! In God’s Holy Name let us arise and build! ‘The God of Heaven, He will fight for us’, as we for Him. We will not build on the sand, but on the bedrock of the sayings of Christ, and the gates and minions of hell shall not prevail against us. Should such men as we fear? Before the world, yes, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we will dare to trust our God, we will venture our all for Him, we will live and we will die for Him, and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts. We will a thousand times sooner die trusting only our God, than live trusting in man. And when we come to this position the battle is already won, and the end of the glorious campaign in sight. We will have the real Holiness of God, not the sickly stuff of talk and dainty words and pretty thoughts; we will have a Masculine Holiness, one of daring faith and works for Jesus Christ.
– CT Studd –
Exercise great self-denial: “Let him deny himself” (Matthew 16:24). Self-ease, self-ends, whatever comes in competition with (or stand in opposition to) Christ’s glory and interest must be denied. Self is the great snare; self-love undermines the power of godliness. The young man in the Gospel might have followed Christ, but something of self-hindered (Matthew 19:20-22). Self-love is self-hatred. The man who cannot get beyond himself will never get to heaven.
– Thomas Watson –
from The Godly Man’s Picture, 1666
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 ESV)
The majority of us are too indifferent, too religiously sentimental to be caught up in the sweep of the Apostle Paul’s intercession. Have we a lesser idea than that God should do in us what He wants to do? Are we prepared to pray with Murray McCheyne, “Lord, make me as holy as Thou canst make a sinner saved by grace”?
– Oswald Chambers –
from If You Will Ask
In the mathematics of Christianity there is a subtraction as well as there is an addition.
– WB Dunkum –
Saints are made in the furnace of affliction. Great times of trials provide a chance to prove and demonstrate the supernatural!
– JT Crane –
Before God uses the man, God breaks the man.
– Charles Spurgeon –