There is true pleasure in true religion. … You startle at it, and start from it as a hard saying, like Nathaniel, when he said, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1.46). So you are ready to say, can there be any pleasure in religion? Believe it, sirs, there can be, there cannot but be pleasure in it.
– Matthew Henry –
from The Pleasantness of a Religious Life, 1714
Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like You, Lord Jesus.
– Jim Elliot –
1927-1956
When a worker jealously guards his secret life with God the public life will take care of itself.
– Oswald Chambers –
With what misgivings we turn over our lives to God, imagining somehow that we are about to lose everything that matters. Our hesitancy is like that of a tiny shell on the seashore, afraid to give up the teaspoon of water it holds lest there not be enough in the ocean to fill it again. Lose your life, said Jesus, and you will find it. Give up, and I will give you all. Can the shell imagine the depth and plenitude of the ocean? Can you and I fathom the riches, the fullness, of God’s Love?
– Elisabeth Elliot –
from The Path of Loneliness
Whether we are servants or masters, whether we are poor or rich, let us take this as our watch-word, “As to the Lord, and not to men.” Henceforth may this be the engraving of our seal and the motto of our coat-of-arms; the constant rule of our life and the sum of our motive.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from Council for Christian Workers
When you strip it of everything else, Pentecost stands for power and life. That’s what came into the church when the Holy Spirit came down on the day of Pentecost.
– David Wilkerson –
There are only two kinds of persons: those dead in sin and those dead to sin.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
The great need for the saint is to get his brains at work on the Word of God; otherwise he will stagnate, no matter how much he may name the Name of God.
– Oswald Chambers –
We think of prayer as a preparation for work, or a calm after having done work, whereas prayer is the essential work. It is the supreme activity of everything that is noblest in our personality.
– Oswald Chambers –