We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.
Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.
If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.
The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.
Don’t forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.
A time is coming when the whole round world will know that God reigns and that God is Love, when hell and heaven, life and death, sin and salvation, will be read and understood aright at last.
God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection.
The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.
We act like pagans in a crisis–only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.
… God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are.
There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed. Our Brilliant Heritage, 946 R
The degree of panic activity in my life is equal to the degree of my lack of personal spiritual experience.
Jesus doesn’t bring anything up from the wells of human nature–He brings them down from above.
A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord.
The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.
Never look for justice in this world, never cease to give it.
There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.
It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table.
Dec. 31… “Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ. Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.
We have to take the first step as though there were no God. It is no use to wait for God to help us, He will not: but immediately we arise we find He is there.
Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life of the saint. Beware of anything that stops the offering up of prayer.
The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer.
We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
To say that ‘prayer changes things’ is not as close to the truth as saying, ‘prayer changes me and then I change things.’ God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things.
Only one in a thousand sits down in the midst of it all and says—I will watch my Father mend this. God must not be treated as a hospital for our broken “toys,” but as our Father.
When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else once you are back in the light.
The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.
Never be afraid when God brings back your past. Let your memory have its way with you. It is a minister of God bringing its rebuke and sorrow to you.
You may often have to watch Jesus Christ wreck a life before He saves it.
No man by mere high human wisdom would dare undertake a step for Jesus’ sake unless he knows that the Holy Spirit has directly spoken to him; and until He comes, I shall not go.
Narrow all your interests until your mind, heart, and body are focused on Jesus Christ.
…let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.
The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. 69 L
Never ask another person’s advice about anything God makes you decide before Him.
Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus— not love for Jesus Himself.
The Bible attitude is not that God sends sickness or that sickness is of the devil, but that sickness is a fact usable by both God and the devil.
Satan takes occasion of the frailty of the bodily temple and says, ‘Now you know you cannot do that; you are so infirm, you cannot concentrate your mind,’ etc. Never allow bodily infirmities to hinder you obeying the commands of Jesus.
We become side-tracked if we make physical health our aim and imagine that because we are children of God we shall always be perfectly well.
If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood–darkness is the time to listen.
God’s friendship is with people who know their poverty.
The grace you had yesterday will not be sufficient for today.
We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character.
Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it.
One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it.
You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.
We must continually maintain an adventurous attitude toward Him, despite any potential personal risk.
The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.
Emotion is not simply an overplus of feeling; it is life lived at white-heat, a state of wonder. To lose wonder is to lose the true element of religion.
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion.
It is one thing to follow God’s way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a ‘doormat’ under other people’s feet.
Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude because they feel such service is beneath their dignity.
The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.
The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word.
The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are “in the soup” of actual circumstances.
The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus will never draw attention to himself but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control.
I have never met the man I could despair of after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.
If we indulge in inordinate affection, anger, anxiety, God holds us responsible; but He also insists that we have to be passionately filled with the right emotions.
He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy right now, but He’s continually working out His ultimate perfection for you…
Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out, because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus.
The deadliest Pharisaism today is not hypocrisy, but unconscious unreality.
The love of God pays no attention to my prejudices caused by my natural individuality.
Be careful that you don’t become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself.
The Lord’s questions always reveal the true me to myself.
One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.
When God brings a time of waiting, and appears to be unresponsive, don’t fill it with busyness, just wait.
…never act on the impulse of that feeling. If you do, you will cause difficult situations to arise which will take years to untangle. Wait for God’s timing and He will do it without any heartache or disappointment.
Beware of anything that would tarnish God’s mirror in you. It is always something good stains it—good, but not best.
My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life.” Oswald Chambers
Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion.
I am blind to the very things that make for our own peace.
Human nature if it healthy demands excitement and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way it will seek it in the wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics He makes no passionless saints.
We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves The Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
The whole meaning of prayer is that we may know God.
The purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God equally present all the time in every condition.
Every time we pray our horizon is altered our attitude to things is altered not sometimes but every time and the amazing thing is that we don’t pray more.
We have to pray with our eyes on God not on the difficulties.
It is impossible to conduct your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.
It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning.
If you have ever prayed in the dawn you will ask yourself why you were so foolish as not to do it always: it is difficult to get into communion with God in the midst of the hurly-burly of the day.
When a man is at his wits’ end it is not a cowardly thing to pray it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality.
Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying shut the door and talk to God in secret.
There is no need to get to a place of prayer pray wherever you are.
We pray pious blether our will is not in it and then we say God does not answer we never asked Him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.
If we rely on the Holy Spirit we shall find that our prayers become more and more inarticulate and when they are inarticulate reverence grows deeper and deeper.
Prayer is not only asking it is an attitude of heart that produces an atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural and Jesus says “every one that asketh receiveth.”
We pray pious blether our will is not in it and then we say God does not answer we never asked Him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.
We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves The Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
The whole meaning of prayer is that we may know God.
Watch your motive before God have no other motive in prayer than to know Him.
God does not exist to answer our prayers but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God.
Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God not of the answer.
Our understanding of God is the answer to prayer getting things from God is God’s indulgence of us. When God stops giving us things He brings us into the place where we can begin to understand Him.
If God sees that my spiritual life will be furthered by giving the things for which I ask then He will give them but that is not the end of prayer. The end of prayer is that I come to know God Himself.
You say “But He has not answered.” He has He is so near to you that His silence is the answer. His silence is big with terrific meaning that you cannot understand yet but presently you will.
When we pray “in the Name of Jesus” the answers are in accordance with His nature and if we think our prayers are unanswered it is because we are not interpreting the answer along this line.
God’s silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses we are in a very elementary condition of grace.
Pray because you have a Father not because it quietens you and give Him time to answer.
We impoverish God in our minds when we say there must be answers to our prayers on the material plane the biggest answers to our prayers are in the realm of the unseen.
Our Lord never referred to unanswered prayer he taught that prayers are always answered. He ever implied that prayers were answered rightly because of the Heavenly Father’s wisdom.
The greatest answer to prayer is that I am brought into a perfect understanding with God and that alters my view of actual things.
God’s “nothings” are His most positive answers. We have to stay on God and wait. Never try to help God to fulfill His word.
One great effect of prayer is that it enables the soul to command the body. By obedience I make my body submissive to my soul but prayer puts my soul in command of my body.
Prayer is the supreme activity of all that is noblest in our personality and the essential nature of prayer is faith.
Prayer is not logical it is a mysterious moral working of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer is the evidence that I am spiritually concentrated on God.
Prayer is God’s answer to our poverty not a power we exercise to obtain an answer.
Never say you will pray about a thing pray about it.
Beware of surrender that is motivated by personal benefits that may result.
Our ordinary and reasonable service to God may actually compete against our total surrender to Him.
Gaining heaven, being delivered from sin, and being made useful to God are things that should never even be a consideration in real surrender.
God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character. Paul was not conscious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned, totally surrendered, and separated by God for one purpose–to proclaim the gospel of God.
This total surrender to ‘the love of Christ’ is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life. And it will always leave the mark of God’s holiness and His power, never drawing attention to your personal holiness.
To be surrendered to God is of more value than our personal holiness.
Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us.
The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.
When it is a question of God’s almighty Spirit, never say, ‘I can’t.’
If in preaching the gospel you substitute your knowledge of the way of salvation for confidence in the power of the gospel, you hinder people from getting to reality.
The dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared to Jesus Christ.