Whatever can be said of my life and work, at least I have stayed put.
The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.
He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Proclaim the Word and argue about it less.
Prayer is our working method.
I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second, and third places, and teaching the fourth.
If you are ever inclined to pray for a missionary, do it at once, wherever you are.
What are we here for, to have a good time with the Christians or to save sinners?
I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages - villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world.
As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is worth having; but O how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!
Expect great things of God; attempt great things for God.
Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.
We need to look resolutely away from the impossibilities and to the Lord. His help will come...
I would rather die now than to live a life of oblivious ease in so sick a world.
The motto of every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or schoolmaster, ought to be 'Devoted for life.'
I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone.
The world is the field, and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.
I can plod; I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I own everything.
There are grave difficulties on every hand, and more are looming ahead - therefore we must go forward.
If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.
Americans suffer from mono-lingual myopia - a disease of the tongue that affects the vision.
An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost and the other is a corpse.
Prepare for the worst; expect the best, and take what comes.
The saddest thing one meets is the nominal Christian.
The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says 'Amen' and runs away from God before God has a chance to answer. Listening to God is far more important than giving him your ideas.
Prayer is the core of the day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse...
First and foremost: Go to your work directly from your knees.
Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.
All God's giants have been weak men and women who have gotten hold of God's faithfulness.
...when I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey. Speak about Dr. Carey's Savior.
It has been well for me to remember, when speaking to others, that I am a dying man speaking to dying souls.
Good spiritual logistics demand that we use every means available to us today to reach a lost world that desperately needs Christ.
It's amazing what can be accomplished when you don't worry about who gets the credit.
The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.
We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.
Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens. Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others. Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee, O Lord.
Remember, a small light will do a great deal when it is in a very dark place. Put one little tallow candle in the middle of a large hall, and it will give a good deal of light.
The world would use us just as it did the martyrs, if we loved God as they did.
We can have no power from Christ unless we live in a persuasion that we have none of our own.
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
'Twas an unhappy Division that has been made between Faith and Works; though in my Intellect I may divide them, just as in the Candle I know there is both Light and Heat. But yet, put out the Candle, and they are both gone.
What is said in [James 2:14 ff.] is like a two-coupon train or bus ticket. One coupon says, "Not good if detached" and the other says, "Not good for passage". Works are not good for passage; but faith detached from works is not saving faith.
Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality....The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.
Nobody is so poor he has nothing to give, and nobody is so rich he has nothing to receive.
We ought not to forget that the whole Church, quite as much as any part of it, exists for the sole reason of finally becoming superfluous. Of heaven St. John the Divine said, "I saw no temple therein."
We are all pencils in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to the world.
Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.
If you don't surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos.
The greatness of a man's power is in the measure of his surrender.
One who receives this Word, and by it salvation, receives along with it the duty of passing this Word on....Where there is no mission, there is no Church, and where there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.
Nothing is too great and nothing is too small to commit into the hands of the Lord.
I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and His Angels thither; and when they are there, I neglect God and His Angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
To put it shortly, the Church forgets that Christianity is not an attitude of mind, but a type of life: a man's spirit is not known by his opinion, but by his action and general conduct.
When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.
I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.
We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.
The evidence for Christian truth is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient. Too often, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting - it has been found demanding, and not tried.
Your heart is not the compass that God steers by.
To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.
Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
When we once begin to form good resolutions, God gives us every opportunity of carrying them out.
The love of Jesus is at once avid and generous. All that He has, all that He is, He gives; all that we are, all that we have, He takes.
Accustom yourself gradually to carry Prayer into all your daily occupation - speak, act, work in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be.
Faith, if it be a living faith, will be a working faith.
Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on Earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, smile into His eyes -- ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself.
You must live with people to know their problems, and live with God in order to solve them.
The Living God alone can make us living men; the mighty God alone can make us mighty men; the loving God alone can make us consecrated men. (Manuscript Addresses to Students)
Our great need is not ardour to save man but courage to face God -- courage to face God with our soul as it is, and with our Saviour as He is; to face God always thus, and so to win the power which saves and services man more than any other power can. We can never fully say 'My brother!' till we have heartily said 'My God!', and we can never heartily say 'My God!' till we have humbly said 'My Guilt!' That is the root of moral reality, of personal religion. (Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind)
We want the new song of those who stand upon the rock, taken from the fearful pit and the miry clay, with the trembling still upon them and the slime still moist. We want the devotion of men whom grace found, and scarcely saved in the jaws of death, and took from the belly of hell. We want more joy, but more of the joy of men who have tasted death either in their own conscience or in the communion of their Redeemer's. We need it to make Faith what in some of its popular forms it is ceasing in any imperial [real] way to be a power and a passion in authority among the passions and powers of the race. (The Taste of Death and the Life of Grace)
Faith is our relation not to what we possess but to what possesses us. (Christian Perfection)
If within us we find nothing over us we succumb to what is around us. (Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind)
He is the true Gospel-bearer that carries it in his hands, in his mouth, and in his heart... A man does not carry it in his heart that does not love it with all his soul; and nobody loves it as he ought, that does not conform to it in his life.
It is a law with us that no one shall sing a song who cannot be the hero of his tale, who cannot live the song he sings. (Within and Without)
As is the business of tailors to make clothes and cobblers to make shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.
If you here stop, and ask yourselves, why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor through inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.
The kingdom of heaven is not come even when God's will is our law; it is fully come when God's will is our will.
What is it to serve God and to do His will? Nothing else than to show mercy to our neighbor. For it is our neighbor who needs our service; God in heaven needs it not.
Does any sane man imagine that the church could cease to be missionary and remain the church?
If added power attends the united prayer of two or three, what mighty triumphs there will be when hundreds of thousands of consistent members of the Church are with one accord day by day making intercession for the extension of Christ's Kingdom.
Faith is not the holding of correct doctrines, but personal fellowship with the Living God....What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation is not truth concerning God but the Living God Himself.
The life of prayer is just love to God, and the custom of being ever with Him.
Wherever...thou shalt be, pray secretly within thyself. If thou shalt be far from a house of prayer, give not thyself trouble to seek for one, for thou thyself art a sanctuary designed for prayer. If thou shalt be in bed, or in any other place, pray there; thy temple is there.
The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity; but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least of all deserve it.
The Church is an organism that grows best in an alien society.
Whatever task God is calling us to, if it is yours, it is mine, and if it is mine, it is yours. We must do it together -- or be cast aside together, and God in his absolute freedom goes on by other means to use His Church in hastening His Kingdom.
It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.
For us in the Pacific, in Asia, in India, and in Africa, Christian unity is not an optional extra. It is an urgent necessity, for our divisions are a real stumbling-block to the proclamation of the Gospel... Mission is at the heart of the divine reality. It is the will of God and the Kingdom of God which are to be made known. Wherever we are, our purpose is not to propagate the Church as an end in itself, but to proclaim Christ as Lord of all life and as Savior of all men.
All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.
The whole being of any Christian is Faith and Love...Faith brings the man to God, love brings him to men.
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
If I did not see that the Lord kept watch over the ship, I should long since have abandoned the helm. But I see Him! - through the storm, strengthening the tackling, handling the yards, spreading the sails - yes more, commanding the very winds! Should I not be a coward if I abandoned my post? Let Him govern, let Him carry us forward, let Him hasten or delay; we will fear nothing!
Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.
Every other consideration and plan and emphasis is secondary to that of wielding the forces of prayer. (The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions, p. 217)
It is possible for the most obscure person in a church, with a heart right toward God, to exercise as much power for the evangelization of the world, as it is for those who stand in the most prominent positions. (The Pastor and Modern Missions, 203)
Without prayer, even though there may be increased interest in missions, more work for them, better success in organization and greater finances, the real growth of the spiritual life and of the love of Christ in the people may be very small. (Key to the Missionary Problem, 145)
The evangelization of the world depends first upon a revival of prayer. Deeper than the need for workers; deeper far than the need for money; deep down at the bottom of our spiritual lives, is the need for the forgotten secret of prevailing, worldwide prayer.
We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the test of the new life sermon; the girding on of armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.
"Books," said St. Augustine after his conversion, "could not teach me charity." We still keep on thinking they can. We do not realize...the utter distinctness of God and the things of God. Psychology of religion can not teach us prayer, and ethics cannot teach us love. Only Christ can do that, and He teaches by the direct method, in and among the circumstances of life. He does not mind about our being comfortable. He wants us to be strong, able to tackle life and be Christians, be apostles in life, so we must be trained by the ups and downs, the rough-and-tumble of life. Team games are compulsory in the school of Divine Love -- there is no getting into a corner with a nice, spiritual book. [Light of Christ 1944]
The task of the people of God is to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is a universal kingdom extending to every aspect of human life. In a secular society, religion cannot remain a department of life. It must be the expression of a faith that extends over the whole of life, or it will be nothing.
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified;
Not this way went the Crucified;)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified;
Not this way went the Crucified;)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!
He does not believe, that does not live according to his belief.
Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian.
We think of prayer as a preparation for work, or a calm after having done work, whereas prayer is the essential work.
Every work of God can be traced to some kneeling form.
He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.
The Church on earth is a cross-eyed church, with one eye on God in His heavenly benediction, and one eye on the needy world of men.
The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are not at their prayers early and late and long.
I don't ask God to bless what I do. I pray He will help me to do what He blesses.
As long as I live, I will never appeal for money for the mission of God in this world. This is a degradation of God and of ourselves, which has pauperized us in every way over the centuries. God has no need, and if the mission is God's, then we do not ask for help to give God a boost; therefore we do not appeal for funds. We allow people to take a share in God's work, and this is a very different thing.
A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.
In the absence of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of God's existence.
Since the days of Pentecost, has the whole church ever put aside every other work and waited upon Him for ten days, that the Spirit's power might be manifested? We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.
Christianity does not consist in any partial amendment of our lives, any particular moral virtues, but in an entire change of our natural temper, a life wholly devoted to God.
The criterion for our intercessory prayer is not our earnestness, nor our faithfulness, nor even our faith in God, but simply God Himself. He has taken the initiative from the beginning, and has built our prayers into the structure of the universe. He then asks us to present these requests to Him that He may show His gracious hand.
But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative -- he must leave the ship and come to Him. In the end, the first step of obedience proves to be an act of faith in the word of Christ. But we should completely misunderstand the nature of grace if we were to suppose that there was no need to take the first-step, because faith was already there. Against that, we must boldly assert that the step of obedience must be taken before faith can be possible. Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.
We are, and remain, such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ.
Christ is still journeying whither He has gone before...
Christ is still here toiling...
Christ is still here in want...
Christ is still here in bonds...
Christ is still here in sickness...
For in a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most important thing a Christian can do is to live, and life, understood from the point of view of faith, has an extraordinary explosive force.
For a small reward, a man will hurry away on a long journey; while for eternal life, many will hardly take a single step.
People should think less about what they ought to do and more about what they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine forth brightly. Do not imagine that you can ground your salvation upon actions; it must rest on what you are. The ground upon which good character rests is the very same ground from which man's work derives its value, namely, a mind wholly turned to God. Verily, if you were so minded, you might tread on a stone and it would be a more pious work than if you, simply for your own profit, were to receive the Body of the Lord and were wanting in spiritual detachment.
They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.
God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.
It is possible for the most obscure person in a church, with a heart right toward God, to exercise as much power for the evangelization of the world, as it is for those who stand in the most prominent positions.
Prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Ghost can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer. Pray for prayer -- pray till you can pray.
Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve ... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
Let every man recognize what he is, and be certain that we are all equally priests, that is, we have the same power in the word and in any sacrament whatever.
People should think less about what they ought to do and more about what they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine forth brightly. Do not imagine that you can ground your salvation upon actions; it must rest on what you are.
What changed these very ordinary men (who were such cowards that they did not dare stand too near the cross in case they got involved) into heroes who would stop at nothing? A swindle? Hallucination? Spooky nonsense in a darkened room? Or Somebody quietly doing what He said He'd do--walk right through death? What do you think?
This is the good and happy news, that Christ has paid for our sin, and through His suffering has redeemed us from eternal death. It is His kingdom and His ministry, to preach the Gospel to the poor; that is His purpose. For to the great and holy He cannot come. They do not wish to be counted sinners, and therefore do not need His Gospel.
The Revelation of God is not a book or a doctrine, but a living Person.
Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.
One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving.
Souls are not made sweet by taking [ill tempers] out, but by putting something in--a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This can only eradicate what is wrong, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does. Therefore "Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus."
Jesus."
An apostolic missionary must have both heart and tongue ablaze with charity.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words.
It is not that I want merely to be called a Christian, but actually to be one. Yes, if I prove to be one, then I can have the name.
The future is as bright as the promises of God.
I always tole God, "I'm gwine [going] to hole stiddy on you, an' you've got to see me through."
"What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt." I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue than be master of all the languages in Europe.
Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but life in scorn of consequences -- a courageous trust in the great purpose of all things, and pressing forward to finish the work which is in sight, whatever the price may be.
To preach the Gospel requires that the preacher should believe that he is sent to those whom he is addressing at the moment, because God has among them those whom He is at the moment calling; it requires that the speaker should expect a response.
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.
It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.
A man who prays without ceasing, if he achieves something, knows why he achieved it, and can take no pride in it... for he cannot attribute it to his own powers, but attributes all his achievements to God, always renders thanks to him and constantly calls upon him, trembling lest he be deprived of help.
The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second.
Prayer is a wine which makes glad the heart of man.
If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.
It may well be that the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph because we will not bring to Christ what we have and what we are. If, just as we are, we would lay ourselves on the altar of service of Jesus Christ, there is no saying what Christ could do with us and through us. We may be sorry and embarrassed that we have not more to bring--and rightly so; but that is not reason for failing or refusing to bring what we have and what we are. Little is always much in the hands of Christ.
In human affairs, we accomplish everything through prayer. What has been properly arranged, we keep in order, what has gone amiss we improve or change, what we cannot change and improve we bear, overcoming all trouble and sustaining all by prayer. Against such forces there is no help but prayer.
Christians fight best on their knees. Whatever good may be done is done and brought about by prayer.
God is not a deceiver, that he should offer to support us, and then, when we lean upon Him, should slip away from us.
One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
One encounter with Jesus Christ is enough to change you, instantly, forever.
The loving service which God sends His people into the world to render includes both evangelism and social action, for each is in itself an authentic expression of love, and neither needs the other to justify it.
It is through dying to concern for self that we are born to new life with God and others; in such dying and rebirth, we find that life is lent to be spent; and in such spending of what we are lent, we find there is an infinite supply.
If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.
It makes a great difference in our feelings towards others if their needs and their joys are on our lips in prayer; as also it makes a vast difference in their feelings towards us if they know that we are in the habit of praying for them. There is no chasm in society that cannot be firmly and permanently bridged by intercession; there is no feud or dislike that cannot be healed by the same exercise of love.
Funds are low again, hallelujah! That means God trusts us and is willing to leave His reputation in our hands.
The best cure for discouragement or qualms is another daring plunge of faith.
This is our Lord's will, ... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large. For if we do not trust as much as we pray, we fail in full worship to our Lord in our prayer; and also we hinder and hurt ourselves. The reason is that we do not know truly that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer springeth; nor do we know that it is given us by his grace and his love. If we knew this, it would make us trust to have of our Lord's gifts all that we desire. For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with sincerity, without mercy and grace being given to him first.
Christ came, not so much to preach the Gospel, as that there might be a Gospel to preach.
The purpose of religion -- at any rate, the Christian religion -- is not to get you into heaven, but to get heaven into you.
Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.
The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.
Here is the great truth that, only when we see things in the light of God, do we see things as they are. It is only when we see things in the light of God that we see what things are really important, and what things are not.
The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? but: Are you in love with Jesus?
Instead of always being one of the chief bastions of the social status quo, the Church is to develop a Christian counter-culture with its own distinctive goals, values, standards, and lifestyle -- a realistic alternative to the contemporary technocracy which is marked by bondage, materialism, self-centeredness, and greed. Christ's call to obedience is a call to be different, not conformist. Such a Church -- joyful, obedient, loving, and free -- will do more than please God: it will attract the world. It is when the Church evidently is the Church, and is living a supernatural life of love by the power of the Holy Spirit, that the world will believe.
Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you yourself shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
Christ had given the apostles a world-wide commission, embracing all the nations; but intellectually they did not understand what He meant. They found that out as they followed the impulse of the Spirit.
Beware in your prayer, above everything, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do.
We have the means to evangelize our country; but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches.
God does not lead all His servants by one road, nor in one way, nor at one time; for God is in all things; and that man is not serving God aright, who can only serve Him in his own self-chosen way.
The evidence for Christian truth is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient. Too often, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting -- it has been found wanting, and not tried.
You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer. It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing.
I know the road to Jericho
It's in a part of town
That's full of factories and filth.
I've seen the folks go down,
Small folk with roses in their cheeks
And starlight in their eyes;
And seen them fall among the thieves,
And heard their helpless cries.
The priests and Levites speeding by
Read of the latest crimes
In headlines spread in black and red
Across the Evening Times.
How hard for those in limousines
To heal the heart of man!
It was a slow-paced ass that bore
The Good Samaritan.
Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality,
as with the ordinary church member.
Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness,
as with the ordinary soldier.
Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice,
as with the ordinary intellectual.
But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world.
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessing of heaven.
Every day the church here [in Antioch] feeds 3000 people. Besides this, the church daily helps provide food and clothes for prisoners, the hospitalized, pilgrims, cripples, churchmen, and others. If only ten [other groups of] people were willing to do this, there wouldn't be a single poor man left in town.
He knoweth nothing as he ought to know it, who thinketh he knoweth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels, and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.
I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.
Christianity is a battle, not a dream.
Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.
Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead.
After saying our prayers, we ought to do something to make them come true.
The Lord ate from a common bowl, and asked the disciples to sit on the grass. He washed their feet, with a towel wrapped around His waist -- He, who is the Lord of the universe! He drank water from a jug of earthenware, with the Samaritan woman. Christ made use, not extravagance, His aim.
The social gospel is not an addendum to the gospel; it is the gospel. If we read the Gospels, it becomes clear that it was not what Jesus said about God that got him into trouble (but) his treatment of men and women, his way of being friendly with outcasts with whom no respectable Jew would have anything to do. It has always been fairly safe to talk about God; it is when we start to talk about men that the trouble starts. And yet the fact remains that there is no conceivable way of proving that we love God other than by loving men. And there is no conceivable way of proving that we love men than by doing something for those who most need help.
The last and highest result of prayer is not the securing of this or that gift, the avoiding of this or that danger. The last and highest result of prayer is the knowledge of God -- the knowledge which is eternal life -- and by that knowledge, the transformation of human character, and of the world.
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
God has no greater controversy with His people today than this, that with boundless promises to believing prayer, there are so few who actually give themselves unto intercession.
I have said that there is nothing in the world or the Church, except its disobedience, to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility…
Prayer is self-discipline. The effort to realize the presence and power of God stretches the sinews of the soul and hardens its muscles. To pray is to grow in grace. To tarry in the presence of the King leads to new loyalty and devotion on the part of the faithful subjects. Christian character grows in the secret-place of prayer.
A marble cutter, with chisel and hammer, was changing a stone into a statue. A preacher looking on said: 'I wish I could deal such changing blows on stony hearts.' The workman answered: 'Maybe you could, if you worked like me, upon your knees.'
The missionary church is a praying church. The history of missions is a history of prayer. Everything vital to the success of the world's evangelization hinges on prayer. Are thousands of missionaries and tens of thousands of native workers needed? 'Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest.'
When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.
The Bible insists that the best test of a nation's righteousness is how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable in its midst.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
For the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, Do all the good you can, To all the people you can, In all the ways you can, As long as ever you can.
The love that loves God is not idle. Instead, it is strong and works great things always. And if love isn't willing to work, then it isn't love. God's love must be seen in the actions of our mouths and minds and bodies. A person must fulfill God's word with goodness.
We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that night be said of Him.
Make sure that you let God's grace work in your souls by accepting whatever He gives you, and giving Him whatever He takes from you. True holiness consists in doing God's work with a smile.
If New Testament Christianity is to reappear today with its power and joy and courage, men must recapture the basic conviction that this is a Visited Planet. It is not enough to express formal belief in the "Incarnation" or in the "Divinity of Christ"; the staggering truth must be accepted afresh--that in this vast, mysterious Universe, of which we are an almost infinitesimal part, the great Mystery, Whom we call God, has visited our planet in Person. It is from this conviction that there springs unconquerable certainty and unquenchable faith and hope.
Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is leading, with the thoughts he is thinking, with the deeds he is doing; when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is still, in spite of all, the child of God.
I cannot imagine a much greater misfortune for a man (not to say a clergyman) than not to know, or knowing, not to minister to, any of the poor.
Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not "follow the footsteps of his most holy life" by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.
The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning. Without mission there is really no Church.
It behooves us to accomplish what God requires of us, even when we are in the greatest despair respecting the results.
Christ's call is... to save the lost, not the stiff-necked; He came not to call scoffers but sinners to repentance; not to build and furnish comfortable chapels, churches, and cathedrals at home in which to rock Christian professors to sleep by means of clever essays, stereotyped prayers and artistic musical performances, but to capture men from the devil's clutches and snatch them from the very jaws of Hell. But this can be accomplished only by a red-hot, unconventional, unfettered Holy Ghost religion, where neither man nor traditions are worshipped or preached, but only Christ and Him crucified.
From my ten years' experience I can unhesitatingly say that the Cross bears those who bear the Cross.
Conversion does not mean a change of outward appearance; rather it requires a change of mind and results in a transformed life.
The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. It is the key to the whole mission problem. All human means are secondary.
Prayer alone will overcome the gigantic difficulties which confront the workers in every field.
Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.
Outward as well as inward morality helps to form the idea of a true Christian freedom. We are right to lay stress on inwardness, but in this world there is no inwardness without an outward expression.
I belong and will ever belong to "The Great God Party." I will have nought to do with "The Little God Party..." Christ wants not nibblers of the possible, but grabbers of the impossible.
Nothing is small or great in God's sight; whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling, and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.
"But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?"
I answer, "What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need--the need of Himself?"
I answer, "What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need--the need of Himself?"
Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a Christian experience. We think we are doing our duty when we're only talking about it.
To some men it is hard seeing a call of God through difficulties; when if it would but clothe itself with a few carnal advantages, how apparent it is to them! They can see it through a little cranny.
I have so much to do (today) that I should spend the first three hours in prayer.
When we rely upon organization, we get what organization can do; when we rely upon education, we get what education can do; when we rely upon eloquence, we get what eloquence can do. But when we rely upon prayer, we get what God can do.
The man who will not act till he knows all will never act at all.
Love always involves responsibility, and it always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.
I'm not afraid of failure. I'm afraid of being successful in the wrong things.
We must become "narrow" in the right way -- "narrow" in the sense that we live only for Christ.
We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with.... Oh that God would make us dangerous!
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