Whenever, in any century, whether in a single heart or in a company of believers, there has been a fresh effusion of the Spirit, there has followed inevitably a fresh endeavor in the work of evangelizing the world.
– AJ Gordon –
Ministry
The Importance of Humility – Charles Spurgeon
It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensable to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, “How will the work go on without me?” As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, “How will the mails be carried without me?” Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from “Laid Aside, Why?,” The Sword and Trowel, May, 1876
That’s Good Preaching – Leonard Ravenhill
Finney preached, and sometimes the whole congregation would get up and leave! That’s good preaching.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
A True Leader Must Have This – Leslie Ludy
A true leader must have enough backbone to stand alone—even when the crowd wants to take the easy road home. A true leader cannot be dependent on companionship for his or her security, but must learn to trust in God alone.
– Leslie Ludy –
from When God Writes Your Life Story
Our Guilty Silence – John Stott
Our Guilty Silence suggests that one of the main reasons for our silence is because we lack either a thorough knowledge of the Gospel or a conviction about its truth or both. There can be no evangelism without an evangelist, no mission without a message.
– John Stott –
from Our Guilty Silence
Men are God’s Methods – EM Bounds
Men are Gods method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
– EM Bounds –
Thinking of the Next World – CS Lewis
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this [one].
– CS Lewis –
Nature of Christ’s Salvation – AW Pink
The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from Hell rather than a Savior from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.
– AW Pink –
Hear Him Bid You Go – William Booth
“Not called!” did you say?
“Not heard the call,” I think you should say.
Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face—whose mercy you have professed to obey—and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
– William Booth –