Oh that God would give me the thing which I long for! That … I may see a people wholly devoted to God, crucified to the world, and the world crucified to them. A people truly given up to God in body, soul and substance! How cheerfully would I then say, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”
– John Wesley –
It is never our earnestness that brings us into touch with God, but our Lord Jesus Christ’s vitalizing death. (See Hebrews 10:19-23)
– Oswald Chambers –
from If You Will Ask
Taking up my “cross” means a life voluntarily surrendered to God.
– AW Pink –
We take our stand at the cross and consent to be nailed to it, voluntarily, actually; to submit to the pain whereby the flesh dies; the hands are pierced that carnal work may no longer be done in the energy of the flesh; the feet are pierced that no longer we may walk according to the flesh; the brow is pierced with the thorn crown that our head may not any longer be held up for human diadems and fading laurel wreaths …
– AT Pierson –
The well-defined spiritual life is not only the highest life, but it is also the most easily lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than the half. It is the man who tries to make the best of both worlds who makes nothing of either. And he who seeks to serve two masters misses the benediction of both.
– Henry Drummond –
Though the cross of Christ has been beautified by the poet and the artist, the avid seeker after God is likely to find it the same savage implement of destruction it was in the days of old. The way of the cross is still the pain-wracked path to spiritual power and fruitfulness. So do not seek to hide from it. Do not accept an easy way. Do not allow yourself to be patted to sleep in a comfortable church, void of power and barren of fruit. Do not paint the cross nor deck it with flowers. Take it for what it is, as it is, and you will find it the rugged way to death and life. Let it slay you utterly.
– AW Tozer –
I am convinced that many evangelicals are not truly and soundly converted. Among the evangelicals it is entirely possible to come into membership, to ooze in by osmosis, to leak through the cells of the church and never know what it means to be born of the Spirit and washed in the blood. A great deal that passes for the deeper life is nothing more or less than basic Christianity.
– AW Tozer –
Atonement by the blood of Jesus is not an arm of Christian truth; it is the heart of it.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Only the blood of Jesus can cleanse us, yet if we withhold ourselves from that blood, we will be unclean forever.
– AW Tozer –