I would walk through mud up to my knees to get to a group where nobody was showing off, where only God was present. The Early Church prayed – talked to God. When they sang, they talked to God and sang about God. Today we have programming, that awful, hateful word ‘programming’; but God is absent.
– AW Tozer –
If we profess to have any real Christianity, let us strive to be of John the Baptist’s spirit. Let us study humility. This is the grace with which all must begin, who would be saved. We have no true religion about us, until we cast away our high thoughts, and feel ourselves sinners. This is the grace which all saints may follow after, and which none have any excuse for neglecting. All God’s children have not gifts, or money, or time to work, or a wide sphere of usefulness; but all may be humble. This is the grace, above all, which will appear most beautiful in our latter end. Never shall we feel the need of humility so deeply, as when we lie on our deathbeds, and stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. Our whole lives will then appear a long catalogue of imperfections, ourselves nothing, and Christ all.
– JC Ryle –
Oh! man, learn to reject pride, seeing that thou hast no reason for it; whatever thou art, thou hast nothing to make thee proud. The more thou hast, the more thou art in debt to God; and thou shouldst not be proud of that which renders thee a debtor.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Thankfulness is a flower which will never bloom well except upon a root of deep humility.
– JC Ryle –
A prayerless man is proud and independent, and any church that neglects corporate prayer is sadly no better. Only God’s humble and needy children take the time to pray. Everyone else is just going through the motions and naively trusting in their own strength!
– David Smithers –
In God’s kingdom, recognition and honor are not sought for and strived after, but given by God alone. And they come not to those who have exalted themselves, but only to those who have taken the lowest place, just as He did…He does not call us to be noticed and applauded by the world. He calls us to decrease, more and more, that He might increase within us.
– Leslie Ludy –
An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly.
― AW Tozer –
We are more concerned about looking stupid (a fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord).
– Ed Welch –
The best training for a soldier of Christ is not merely a theological college. They always seem to turn out sausages of varying lengths, tied at each end, without the glorious freedom a Christian ought to abound and rejoice in. You see, when in hand-to-hand conflict with the world and the devil, neat little biblical confectionery is like shooting lions with a pea-shooter: one needs a man who will let himself go and deliver blows right and left as hard as he can hit, trusting in the Holy Ghost. It’s experience, not preaching that hurts the devil and confounds the world. The training is not that of the schools but of the market: it’s the hot, free heart and not the balanced head that knocks the devil out. Nothing but forked-lightning Christians will count. A lost reputation is the best degree for Christ’s service. It is not so much the degree of arts that is needed, but that of hearts, loyal and true, that love not their lives to the death: large and loving hearts which seek to save the lost multitudes, rather than guard the ninety-nine well-fed sheep in the pen.
– CT Studd –