It is our duty to grow and thrive in holiness. Now what God requires of us, we are to believe he will help us to achieve. But we must not only believe that he will help us, but we must also believe that he is now helping us, we must not rely on our feelings of whether we are aware of being holy or not.
– John Owen –
from The Holy Spirit (abridged by RJK Law)
There is no rowing to paradise except upon the stream of repenting tears. Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.
– Thomas Watson –
Nothing is more contrary to a heavenly hope than an earthly heart.
– William Gurnall –
I owe everything to the gift of Pentecost. For fifty days the facts of the Gospel were complete, but no conversions were recorded. Pentecost registered three thousand souls. It is by fire that a holy passion is kindled in the soul whereby we live the life of God. The soul’s safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power Destitute of the Fire of God, nothing else counts; possessing Fire, nothing else matters.
– Samuel Chadwick –
Having the reality of God’s presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually.
– Oswald Chambers –
The whole history of the Church is one long story of this tendency to settle down on this earth and to become conformed to this world, to find acceptance and popularity here and to eliminate the element of conflict and of pilgrimage. That is the trend and the tendency of everything. Therefore outwardly, as well as inwardly, pioneering is a costly thing.
– T. Austin-Sparks –
God takes away the world, that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity.
– Thomas Watson –
Every wise workman takes his tools away from the work from time to time that they may be ground and sharpened; so does the only-wise Jehovah take his ministers oftentimes away into darkness and loneliness and trouble, that he may sharpen and prepare them for harder work in his service.
– Robert Murray McCheyne –
[Speaking of the Holy Spirit coming upon him]
I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world—it would be as dust in the balance.
– DL Moody –