Surrender

Lose Your Life and Find God’s Love – Elisabeth Elliot

With what misgivings we turn over our lives to God, imagining somehow that we are about to lose everything that matters. Our hesitancy is like that of a tiny shell on the seashore, afraid to give up the teaspoon of water it holds lest there not be enough in the ocean to fill it again. Lose your life, said Jesus, and you will find it. Give up, and I will give you all. Can the shell imagine the depth and plenitude of the ocean? Can you and I fathom the riches, the fullness, of God’s Love?

– Elisabeth Elliot –
from The Path of Loneliness

Friendship with God Demands Obedience – Clovis Chappell

Whenever you make up your mind to refuse to go where God wants you to go and to do what God wants you to do, you must make up your mind at the same time to renounce the friendship of God. You cannot walk with Him and at the same time be in rebellion against Him … it is mere mockery, to say “Lord, Lord” and then refuse to do the things that He commands you to do.

– Clovis G. Chappell –

A Life Willing to be Unseen – Samuel Brengle

O Lord, above all things, make me a blessing to my comrades. I am not anxious for a place or name, and if Thou canst better use me to this end at the rear than at the front, I shall rejoice. But let me be a burning and shining light to my comrades!

– Samuel Brengle –

Joy is Found in Self-Abandonment – Elisabeth Elliot

The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. “If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,” Jesus said, “he will find his true self.”

– Elisabeth Elliot –

A Mighty Longing After God – AW Tozer

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

– AW Tozer –

Two Signs of Grace – Robert Candlish

Two unequivocal signs of grace; a desire to be thoroughly washed and cleansed,—”Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin,” (Psalm 51:2)—and a willingness to appear before God for that end, without concealment and without guile,—”I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me” (Psalms 51:3).

– Robert Candlish –
from The Prayer of a Broken Heart: Expository Discourses on Psalm 51, 1873

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

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