The Christian life is an impossible one and it isn’t for everyone. You must enter through the narrow [gate] where you must leave everything behind and be stripped naked of yourself. You must get rid of your pride. Many so-called Christians are on the wide road leading to destruction. they may have all the outward signs of being a Christian (go to church, serve, read their bible, pray, etc.) but there is no inward change of repentance.
– Unknown –
“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 –
But is not the ground naturally bad in every heart? Undoubtedly. And can any but God make it good? None. But it is your business, when you hear of the justice and mercy of God, to implore him to work in you that which is pleasing in his sight. No man shall be condemned because he did not change his own heart, but because he did not cry to God to change it, who gave him his Holy Spirit for this very purpose, and which he, by his worldly-mindedness and impiety, quenched. Whoso hath ears to hear let him hear: and may the Lord save the reader from an impenitent and unfruitful heart!
– Adam Clarke –
writing on Matthew 13:23
God never saved any man for being a preacher, nor because he was an able preacher; but because he was a justified, sanctified man, and consequently faithful in his Masters work. Take heed, therefore, to ourselves first, that you he that which you persuade your hearers to be, and believe that which you persuade them to believe, and heartily entertain that Savior whom you offer to them. He that bade you love your neighbors as yourselves, did imply that you should love yourselves, and not hate and destroy yourselves and them.
– Richard Baxter –
The last words of Jesus to the church (in Revelation) were “Repent!”
– Leonard Ravenhill –
A man who loves you the most is the man who tells you the most truth about yourself.
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne –
There is a growing conviction everywhere, and especially among thoughtful people, that unless revival comes, other forces will take the field, that will sink us still deeper into the mire of humanism and materialism.
– Duncan Campbell –
Even if I were utterly selfish, and had no care for anything but my own happiness, I would choose, if I might, under God, to be a soul-winner, for never did I know perfect, overflowing, unutterable happiness of the purest and most ennobling order till I first heard of one who had sought and found the Saviour through my means. No young mother ever rejoiced so much over her first-born child, no warrior was so exultant over a hard-won victory.
– Charles Spurgeon –
If a man is born again, hates sin, and depends upon the Savior for life and grace, I care not whether he be an Arminian or a Calvinist. If he be not born again, he is nothing, let him be called by what name he will.
– John Newton –