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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The bias of nature is toward the wilderness, never toward the fruitful field.
The moral bent of the fallen world is not toward godliness, but definitely away from it.
The truth is that no spiritual experience, however revolutionary, can exempt us from temptation; and what is temptation but the effort of the wilderness to encroach upon our new-cleared field?
The neglected heart will soon be a heart overrun with worldly thoughts. The neglected life will soon become a moral chaos. The church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray.
The only man who can be sure he has true Bible faith is the one who has put himself in a position where he cannot go back. His faith has resulted in an everlasting and irrevocable committal, and however strongly he may be tempted he always replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
The Christian is strong or weak depending upon how closely he has cultivated the knowledge of God.
Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the triune God in personal experience.
The record in the New Testament is plain on this point—many people followed Jesus for a while and then walked away from Him. Once Jesus said to His disciples: “Except ye eat my body, my flesh, and drink my blood, there is no life in you.” Many looked at one another and then walked away from Him. Jesus turned to those remaining and said, “Will you also go away?” Peter gave the answer which is still my answer today:
“Lord, if we wanted to go away, where would we go? Thou alone hast the words of eternal life.”
The great need of the hour among persons spiritually hungry is twofold: first, to know the Scriptures, apart from which no saving
truth will be vouchsafed by our Lord; the second, to be enlightened by the Spirit, apart from whom the Scriptures will not be understood.
We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still.
Our cross will be determined by whatever pain and suffering and trouble which will yet come to us because of our obedience to the will of God. The true saints of God have always borne witness that wholehearted obedience brings the cross into the light quicker than anything else.
“I want to die on that cross and I want to know what it is to die there, because if I die with Him I will also know Him in a better resurrection” (see Philippians 3:10–11).
“The [human] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
