More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
If we are truly surrendered, we will never be aware of our own efforts to remain surrendered.
The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.
If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth.
Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are.
One of the penalties of sin is our acceptance of it.
It is not a lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure, but a lack of working to keep our eyes focused and on the right goal.
Any goal we have that diverts us even to the slightest degree from the central goal of being “approved to God” (2 Timothy 2:15) may result in our rejection from further service for Him.
My worth to God publicly is measured by what I really am in my private life. Is my primary goal in life to please Him and to be acceptable to Him, or is it something less, no matter how lofty it may sound?
one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world.
When God gives us a vision, we must transact business with Him at that point, no matter what the cost.
If the Spirit of God detects anything in you that is wrong, He doesn’t ask you to make it right; He only asks you to accept the light of truth, and then He will make it right.
Over and over again, we try to be amateur providences in someone’s life. We are indeed amateurs, coming in and actually preventing God’s will and saying, “This person should not have to experience this difficulty.”
Our life with God may be right and our inner purity unblemished, yet occasionally our outer life may become spotted and stained. God intentionally does not protect us from this possibility, because this is the way we recognize the necessity of maintaining our spiritual vision through personal purity.
This sense of expectation will give our life the attitude of childlike wonder He wants it to have.
In other words, we must stop using religion as if it were some kind of a lofty lifestyle—we must be spiritually real.
We see where other people are failing, and then we take our discernment and turn it into comments of ridicule and criticism, instead of turning it into intercession on their behalf.
It is not that we are able to bring God into contact with our minds, but that we awaken ourselves to the point where God is able to convey His mind to us regarding the people for whom we intercede.
Dark times are allowed and come to us through the sovereignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do what He wants with us?
Whenever God causes a doubt about something, stop it immediately, no matter what it may be. Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.
You may have just victoriously gone through a great crisis, but now be alert about the things that may appear to be the least likely to tempt you.
Beware of thinking that the areas of your life where you have experienced victory in the past are now the least likely to cause you to stumble and fall.
Do not try to predict where the temptation will come; it is the least likely thing that is the real danger.
Worrying means exactly what this servant implied—“I know your intent is to leave me unprotected and vulnerable.”
God never guides us at some time in the future, but always here and now.
