True lovers of men’s souls learn the art of dealing with them, and the Holy Spirit makes them expert soul-surgeons for Jesus. It is not because a man has more abilities, nor altogether because he has more grace, but the Lord makes him to love the souls of men intensely, and this imparts a secret skill, since, for the most part, the way to get sinners to Christ is to love them to Christ.
– Charles Spurgeon –
from his book The Soul Winner
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
– Jim Elliot –
from his Journal, October 28, 1949
Preacher, keep your knees on the ground and your eyes on the throne.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion;
many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.
– Leonard Ravenhill –
Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.
– Richard Baxter –
If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you’re serving in the wrong place.
The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.
D.L. Moody, upon hearing this challenge said, “I will try my utmost to be that man.”
As I was walking in the fields, the thought came over me with almost overwhelming power, that every one of my flock must soon be in heaven or hell. Oh how I wished that I had a tongue like thunder, that I might make all hear.
– Robert Murray McCheyne –
Some preachers master thier subjects; some subjects master the preacher; once in awhile one meets a preacher who is both master of, and also mastered by his subject. The apostle Paul, I am sure, was in that category.
– Leonard Ravenhill –