Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things. It is the simplest and the most sublime, the weakest and the most powerful. Its results lie outside the range of human possibilities; they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.
– EM Bounds –
from Purpose in Prayer
If anyone would tell you the surest, shortest way to all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself, to thank God for every thing that happens to you.
– William Law –
from A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
The canon-mind is the most honest, happy, holy, and healthy mind in the universe. It’s a mind controlled by the person of Jesus Christ, esteeming the things that He esteems, despising the things that He despises. It is a mind in tune with Heaven, discriminating between light and darkness with the deftness of God Himself. It is a mind radically loyal to the words of Scripture, unbending in opposition, unyielding to doubt and unwavering in its allegiance.
– Eric Ludy –
from The Bravehearted Gospel
It has been shown that the primary limitation imposed upon you as man, in order that you may be in the likeness of your Maker and bear the image of the invisible, is that of total dependence upon God – in that your behavior, to be godly, must derive directly and exclusively from God’s activity in you and through you. Any activity, therefore, in which you may engage, no matter how nobly conceived, which does not stem from this humble attitude of dependence upon God, violates the basic principles of your true humanity and the role for which you were created. By independence (or the absence of faith), you eliminate God, the source of your own “godliness.” But only God has the right to be the source of His own godliness, so that however unwittingly, you are acting as your own god!
You will still believe or pretend that you are worshiping God; but as the object of your imitation, even Christ Himself may only be an excuse for worshiping your own ability to imitate – an ability vested in yourself. And this is the basis of all self-righteousness!
It is startling to discover that even God may be used as an excuse for worshiping yourself, demonstrating again the satanic genius for distorting truth and deceiving man – for it was to this temptation that Adam and Eve fell in the Garden!
– Ian Thomas –
The Mystery of Godliness, p187
The whole purpose of the Redemption is to give back to man the original source of life, and in a regenerated man this means “Christ . . . formed in you.” Am I willing that the old disposition should be crucified with Christ? If I am, Jesus Christ will take possession of me and will baptize me into His life until I bear a strong family likeness to Him. It is a lonely path, a path of death, but it means ultimately being “presenced with Divinity.” The Christian life does not take its pattern from good men, but from God Himself, that is why it is an absolutely supernormal life all through.
We might as well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until he does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. Our moral imprudence puts us always in danger of accidental or reckless self-destruction. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. Then He invades our natures with that ancient and eternal life which is from the beginning. So he conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for himself.
Your new birth puts God into action in you. It lets all of God loose, clothed with the redeemed humanity of your own flesh and blood as a forgiven sinner, so that at last you become a normal human being as Jesus was.
– Ian Thomas –
The Indwelling Life, p26
The Cross in actual history is the point where the real Presence of God enters human history; and the point where the real Presence of God enters human life is the moment of absolute surrender, not of religious sentiment. The first step to sacramental discipleship is the crowning of Jesus as Lord.
– Oswald Chambers –
God is waiting for you to stop so He can begin.
– Watchman Nee –