All my requests are lost in one: “Father, Thy will be done!”
– Charles Wesley –
Surrender
No Hunger for God – Florence Allshorn
We religious leaders need to look very much more deeply. We can so easily have talks with people, and they can say we have helped, write us grateful letters, even stand steady for a time till the juice we have put into them runs out; but, we may have brought them no hunger for God—because that hunger is no ache in our own heart—nor brought them anywhere near to the end of self.
– Florence Allshorn –
Ability and Need – Mr. Gaston
I often overestimate my ability and underestimate my need.
– Mr. Gaston –
A Place of Difficulty and Hardship – Elisabeth Elliot
This is the very place meant by God to turn your eyes to Him.
– Elisabeth Elliot –
Self-Love is Self-Hatred – Thomas Watson
Exercise great self-denial: “Let him deny himself” (Matthew 16:24). Self-ease, self-ends, whatever comes in competition with (or stand in opposition to) Christ’s glory and interest must be denied. Self is the great snare; self-love undermines the power of godliness. The young man in the Gospel might have followed Christ, but something of self-hindered (Matthew 19:20-22). Self-love is self-hatred. The man who cannot get beyond himself will never get to heaven.
– Thomas Watson –
from The Godly Man’s Picture, 1666
Breaking a Man Before Using Him – Charles Spurgeon
Before God uses the man, God breaks the man.
– Charles Spurgeon –
The Measure of Your Surrender – William Booth
The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.
– William Booth –
Mistaken – Warren Barfield
Oh I want all I am to die
So all He is can come alive
Until everyone I talk to hears His voice
And everything I touch feels the warmth of His hand
Until everyone I meet
Sees Jesus in me
This is all I wanna be
I wanna be mistaken
For Jesus
Oh I wanna be mistaken
– Warren Barfield –
Absolutely Abandoned to Jesus Christ – Oswald Chambers
Whenever our Lord talked about the relation of a disciple to Himself it was in terms of mystical union: “I am the vine [not the root of the vine, but the vine itself], ye are the branches.” We have not paid enough attention to the illustrations Jesus uses. This is the picture of sanctification in the individual, a completeness of relationship between Jesus Christ and myself. Pharisaic holiness means that my eyes are set on my own whiteness and I become a separate individual. I have the notion that I have to be something; I have not, I have to be absolutely abandoned to Jesus Christ, so one with Him that I never think of myself apart from Him. Love is never self-conscious.
– Oswald Chambers –
from Biblical Ethics