And shall I fear
That there is anything that men hold dear
Thou would’st deprive me of
And nothing give in place?
That is not so —
For I can see Thy face
And hear Thee now:
“My child, I died for thee.
And if the gift of love and life
You took from Me,
Shall I one precious thing withhold —
One beautiful and bright
One pure and precious thing withhold?
My child, it cannot be.”
– Betty Stam –
…I thank Thee that Thou art risen from the dead, that at this very moment Thou dost indwell me in the person and power of Thy divine Spirit; that Thou hast never expected of me anything but failure, yet Thou hast given to me Thy strength for my weakness, Thy victory for my defeat, Thyself for all my bankruptcy! I step out now, by faith, into a future that is limited only by what Thou art! To me to live is Christ!
– Ian Thomas –
It is God who sets us free. Not only free from punishment, curse, uneasiness and terror, but also free from sin itself. You know that He was manifested so that He might take away our sins. Let us receive this thought deep into our hearts – it is God who takes away our sins. The better we grasp this, the more blessed our lives will be. Not everyone receives this. Some seek only to be freed from the consequences of sin, fear, darkness, and punishment. It is for this reason that they do not come to the true rest of salvation. They do not understand that to be saved is to be freed from sin. Let us hold it firmly. Jesus saves through the taking away of sin.
– Andrew Murray –
How beautiful are the arms, which have embrace Christ, the eyes which have gazed upon Christ, the lips which have spoken with Christ, the feet which have followed Christ. How beautiful are the hands which have worked the works of Christ, the feet which treading in His footsteps have gone about doing good, the lips which have spread abroad His Name, the lives which have been counted for Him.
– Christina Rossetti –
… this I know: you will regret nothing when you look back, except lack of faith or fortitude or love. You will never regret having thrown all to the winds in order to follow your Master and Lord. Nothing will seem too much to have done or suffered, when, in the end, we see Him and the marks of His wounds; nothing will ever seem enough.
– Amy Carmichael –
To be “in the will of God” is not a matter of intellectual discernment, but a state of heart … It’s motto is — “My Father can do what he likes with me, He may bless me to death, or give me a bitter cup; I delight to do His will.”
– Oswald Chambers –
Never try to arouse faith from within. You cannot stir up faith from the depths of your heart. Leave your heart, and look into the face of Christ.
– Andrew Murray –
Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it.
– Matthew Henry –
[The Christian life is] to be like [Christ]. To displace self from the inner throne and to enthrone Him; to make not the slightest compromise with the smallest sin. We aim at nothing less than to walk with God all day long, to abide every hour in Christ, and He and His words in us, to love God with all the heart, and our neighbor as ourselves. . . . It is possible to cast every care on Him daily, and to be at peace amidst pressure, to see the will of God in everything, to put away all bitterness and clamor and evil speaking, daily and hourly. It is possible by unreserved resort to divine power under divine conditions to become strongest through and through at our weakest point. . . . It does not depend on wearisome struggle, but on God’s power to take the consecrated soul and to keep him. . . . Christ [is] our righteousness, upon Calvary, received by faith, is also Christ our holiness, in the heart that submits to Him and relies upon Him. . . . A message as old as the Apostles but too much forgotten: the open secret of inward victory for liberty in life and service through the trusted power of an indwelling Christ; Christ in us for our deliverance from sin, for our emancipation from the tyranny of self, for the conquest of temptation.
– Bishop Moule –
from Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, as quoted in The Keswick Story by John Charles Pollock (CLC Publications, 2006, pages 98-99)