If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, and a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus without loss to itself communicates its superabundant water. In the Church at the present day we have many canals but few reservoirs.
– Bernard of Clairvaux –
Whatever call a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Give yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray.
– Robert Murray McCheyne –
Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God’s work and is powerless to project God’s cause in this world.
– EM Bounds –
Loneliness itself is material for sacrifice. The very longings themselves can be offered to Him who understands perfectly. The transformation into something He can use for the good of others takes place only when the offering is put into his hands. Loneliness is a required course for leadership.
– Elisabeth Elliot –
Despite the atrociousness of it, Satan really does have “little cause to fear most preaching.” Most preaching in the modern church is completely devoid of unction. Pastors are too busy playing golf or racquetball to bother spending time on their knees. No wonder some pastors I’ve heard can more readily quote Dr. Laura then bible passages pertaining to prayer. It’s disastrous. Satan need not fear under those conditions.
– A. Reavis –
We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results.
– RA Torrey –
The farmer in the field, or the farmer’s wife in the farmhouse, if they are doing their work by faith for the glory of God, are fulfilling as high and holy a calling as the pastor in the pulpit.
– Martin Luther –
It is my studied judgment that some future generation will deem this to be the darkest century, in spiritual depth and spiritual experience, in church history – that is, unless something very radical happens along… soon.
– Gene Edwards –
