Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now.
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.
Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith.
We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.
We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is.
The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground of existence.
The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.
You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.
Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.
Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.
True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.
Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.
[D]on’t try to know everything. You can’t. Find Him in the Word, for the Holy Ghost wrote this Book. He inspired it, and He will be revealed in its pages.
The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader up to inform himself.
When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.
The only power God recognizes in His church is the power of His Spirit whereas the only power actually recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man.
What we think about when we are free to think about what we will – that is what we are or will soon become.
God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.
Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.
I am positive that much that passes for the gospel in our day is very little more than a very mild case of orthodox religion grafted on to a heart that is sold out to the world in its pleasures and tastes and ambitions.
It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees and whispers, “God.” The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship. He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things.
If I understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desire for honor among men made belief impossible.
Whatever comes into your heart and mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.
What God says to His Church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour.
As the sailor locates his position on the sea by “shooting” the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God.
Christians don’t tell lies they just go to church and sing them.
Men who cannot be silent will not say anything when they talk.
The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.
The Bible is a whole series of highways, all leading toward God. And when the text has been illuminated and the believer of the text knows that God is the end toward which he is moving, then that man has real faith.
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.
But be sure that human feelings can never be completely stilled. If they are forbidden from their normal course, like a river they will cut another channel through the life and flow out to curse and ruin and destroy
A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man’s greatest tragedy and God’s heaviest grief.
Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.
Did you ever stop to think that God is going to be as pleased to have you with Him in Heaven as you are to be there?
When God plans to bless a man, he takes this poor time-cursed creature into His hand and says., My son, I breath into you eternity and immortality.
The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ.
As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol.
To be effective the preacher’s message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God’s present voice to a particular people.
I remind you that there are churches so completely out of the hands of God that if the Holy Spirit withdrew from them, they wouldn’t find it out for many months
Worship is no longer worship when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us.
If you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship and so on.
What God made, God loves, because it’s inconceivable that God should make anything that He didn’t love.
Everything God does has purpose and intention behind that design. It is a master design, and every little thing has its proper place and function.
What made Jesus’ death uncommon, unusual? It was the dying of the just for the unjust. It was His sacrificial dying, His vicarious dying. He paid a debt He did not owe in behalf of the others too deeply in debt ever to pay.
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.
The author relates by way of illustration that the human heart contains both a throne and a cross. If we occupy the one, Jesus occupies the other.
We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts
God wants the whole person and He will not rest till He gets us in entirety. No part of the man will do” (101) – “The Pursuit of God
Always, everywhere God is present, and always He seeks to discover Himself to each one
We get the odd notion that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No. Jesus died because God is showing mercy.
It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be.
Eschatology is the dustbin into which we sweep everything we don’t want. To believe. We believe that the Lord will manifest Himself to men, but He’ll do it tomorrow, or the day after, or the next millennium.
Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ in-dwelling us and changing us into His likeness.
The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being sense its kinship to God and leaps us in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God.
This is the tragedy and woe of the hour–that we neglect the most important One who could possibly be in our midst–the Holy Spirit of God. Then, in order to make up for His absence, we have to do something to keep up our own spirits.
A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.