Many of those who once were so passionately in love with Christ now run about pursuing their own interests. They’re burdened down with stress and problems, chasing after riches and the things of this world.
– David Wilkerson –
Sin – Temptation
Conviction, Repentance, Obedience, and Humility – Charles Finney
Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one’s will to God in deep humility.
– Charles Finney –
Humility – Henry Scougal
Humility imports a deep sense of our own meanness, with a hearty and affectionate acknowledgment of our owing all that we are to the Divine bounty; which is always accompanied with a profound submission to the will of God, and great deadness toward the glory of the world, and applause of men.
– Henry Scougal –
from The Life of God in the Soul of Man
History of Revival – Adrian Rogers
Study the history of revival. God has always sent revival in the darkest days.
– Adrian Rogers –
A Tongue Like Thunder – Robert Murray M’Cheyne
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; or that I had a frame like iron, that I might visit every one and say, “Escape for thy life! Ah sinner! You little know how I fear that you will lay the blame of your damnation at my door.”
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne –
Godliness is a Joy and Pleasure – Richard Baxter
Will you say that godliness is unpleasant, because it makes a man sorry for his ungodliness?… Would you wish a man that hath lived so long in sin and misery, to have no sorrow for it in his return—especially when it is but a healing sorrow, preparing for remission, and not a sorrow joined with despair, as theirs will be that die impenitently?
– Richard Baxter –
1615-1691
The Allurer of the Soul – William Perkins
Preaching is the flexanima*, the allurer of the soul, by which our self-willed minds are subdued and changed from an ungodly and pagan lifestyle to a life of Christian faith and repentance.
– William Perkins –
from The Art of Prophesying, 1592
*(Flexanima is Latin for: moving, affecting, touching)
The Way We are Brought to Christ – William Guthrie
The most ordinary way by which many are brought to Christ, is by a clear and discernible work of the law, and humiliation; which we generally call the spirit of bondage. … But there is a conviction of sin, an awakening of conscience, and work of humiliation, which as we shall point out, rarely miscarries, or fails of a gracious issue, but ordinarily doth resolve into the Spirit of adoption, and a gracious work of God’s Spirit.
– William Guthrie –
from The Christians Great Interest, 1658
What Do You Find Sweetness In? – Thomas Brooks
Oh what bitterness do I now find in that which Satan, the world, and my own deluded heart told me I should find sweetness in.
– Thomas Brooks –
from Heaven on Earth: A Treatise on Christian Assurance, 1654