PRAY TODAY

There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. -G.K. Chesterton (1906) "The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it." -A.W. Tozer "Someone asked, 'Will the heathen who have never heard the gospel be saved?' It is more a question with me whether we-- who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not-- can be saved." -Charles Spurgeon “It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should.” -A.W. Tozer “God Himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ.”- Dietrich Bonhoeffer "How is it that the world couldn't get on with the holiest Man that ever lived and can get on with you and me? Are we compromised? Have we no righeousness that reflects on their corruption?" -Leonard Ravenhill "If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God. -Blaise Pascal "A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." G.K. Chesterton “ God is not looking for brilliant men, is not depending upon eloquent men, is not shut up to the use of talented men in sending His Gospel out in the world. God is looking for broken men, for men who have judged themselves in the light of the Cross of Christ. When He wants anything done, He takes up men who have come to an end of themselves, and whose trust and confidence is not in themselves but in God.” -H.A. Ironside "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." -G.K. Chesterton "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -C.S. Lewis "If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be." -Fyodor Dostoevsky "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -Winston Churchill "Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves." -Blaise Pascal "These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." -G.K. Chesterton (1926) "The atheist can't find God for the same reason that a thief can't find a policeman." Anonymous "Prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God." -Leonard Ravenhill "There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." -G.K. Chesterton "Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe." -Peter Kreeft "The one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history." -Leonard Ravenhill Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness. -Blaise Pascal "God's Word is the only guide man needs to interpret his past and solve contemporary problems." -Francis Schaeffer "I may no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather respond to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not."- Jim Elliot "Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.... The love of God did not protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process."- Elisabeth Elliot "Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision."-G.K. Chesterton "The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Philosophers , they astonish ordinary men- Christians, they astonish philosophers." -Blaise Pascal “I grieve that my love is no stronger, and that I am no more like Him. I wonder at His glory, and sink before Him with shame. How is it that the soul being of such value, and God so great, eternity so near and yet we are so little moved?” -William Bramwell "God doesn't answer prayer, He answers desperate prayer!" -Leonard Ravenhill "To other men, the proof of our conversion is not what you feel, but what you do." -Charles Spurgeon "Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man." -Oswald Chambers "The life of man is a continual death, unless it be that Christ lives in him."—Ignatius "To be prepared to die is to be prepared to live. To be ready for eternity is in the best sense to be ready for time. Who is so fit to live on earth as the man who is fit to live in heaven?"-Charles Spurgeon "The most spiritual teaching fully and constantly presents Christ as able to save to the uttermost. In such teaching there is small room for human theories and reasonings."-Seth Rees "Today's church wants to be raptured from responsibility."-Leonard Ravenhill "I had rather be the echo of truth, than the voice of falsehood."-Charles Spurgeon "Salvation is not a cafeteria where you take what you want and leave the rest. You cannot take Christ as Savior and refuse Him as Lord and be saved."-Vance Havner "It horribly skews the meaning of the cross when contemporary prophets of self-esteem say that the cross is a witness to my infinite worth. The biblical perspective is that the cross is a witness to the infinite worth of God's glory and a witness to the immensity of the sin of my pride."- John Piper "A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in." -C. S. Lewis "On the shallow ground of men's logic, large numbers have been led to assume they have a right to everlasting life and have been given an assurance which does not belong to them." -Walter Chantry "But," says one, "I see no reason why I should be born again." Ah, poor creature, it is because thou hast never seen thyself. -Charles Spurgeon "A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience."-Leonard Ravenhill"Spiritual surgery is more painful than physical surgery. God doesn't use an anesthetic; He doesn't do His work while we are asleep. God can take any brokenhearted believer and make him or her a radiant, loving person. But when He performs such "heart operations," His children are wide awake." -Erwin Lutzer "Brethren, the crying sin of the church is her laziness after God." -Samuel Chadwick "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn "If a man wants scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches, he can only get it by obedience. If things are dark to us spiritually, it is because there is something we will not do. Intellectual darkness comes because of ignorance; spiritual darkness comes because of something I do not intend to obey." -Oswald Chambers "The great care of the life is to put the relationship to God first and everything else second." -Oswald Chamber "Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don't you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I was born of the flesh in 1837, I was born of the spirit in 1855. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit shall live forever." -Dwight L. Moody "Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, 'Leonard, you took Me too seriously'?"-Leonard Ravenhill "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." -The Bible "God calls us to be holy. He expects us to grow in unlikeness to this world, and in likeness to that world that is to come." - Horatius Bonar Too many of us want to make a peace treaty with Christ, but will not make a total surrender to Christ. - Leonard Ravenhill "A limited readiness is no readiness at all in our dealings with Jesus." -Karl Barth Worrying shows that one has little faith in what God can do. There is a difference between worring and genuine concern. Worry immobilizes, but concern moves you to action. -Oswald Chambers May God teach us to know what it means that Christ is our Melchizedek, a priest forever. The spiritual apprehension of this everlasting priesthood-as communicating even here and maintaining an everlasting, unchanging life in us-lifts our inner experience out of the region of effort, change, failure, and into the rest of God so that the immutability of His council is the measure of that of our faith and hope. -Andrew Murray "For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything." -G. K. Chesterton "The Holy Spirit only leads when He is known as the Indwelling One; is waited on in deep humility; and is yielded to in meek resignation." -Andrew Murray "...what joy I had in finding that I had finished with the limited resources of man and begun on the unlimited resources of God!" -Rees Howell "I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of people would die for Him."-Napoleon Bonaparte "What we mean by salvation is this: deliverance from the love of sin, rescue from the habit of sin, setting free from the desire to sin."-Charles Spurgeon "Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?" -the tombstone of Leonard Ravenhill "God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him." -Andrew Murray. "A wife who is 85% faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ." -Vance Havner "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." -C.S. Lewis "The sins of disciples of Christ are a thousand times worse than the sins of unbelievers, because they sin against a gospel of love, a covenant of mercy, against a sweet experience and against precious promises." -Charles Spurgeon "A poor wretch dies of starvation, and men cry out because bread was not given him; but when souls sink into damnation for lack of knowledge, they who withhold the bread of heaven will not allow their consciences to trouble them."-Charles Spurgeon "Jesus Christ is not valued at all until He is valued above all." -Augustine "Sirs, as far as you can, you do kill God, for you put him out of your thoughts, you make nothing of him, and what is that but the crucifixion of God? You despise him so much that his presence has no effect upon you."-Charles Spurgeon "At the day of judgement we shall all meet again." -George Whitefield "The holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him."-Charles Spurgeon "How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven." -George Macdonald "If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would leave things as they are." -J.M.L. Monsabre "If you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but because you never thoroughly intended it." -William Law "He didn't came to make bad men good, He came to make dead men live" -Leonard Ravenhill "Our hearts are a factory of idols." -John Calvin "In the Scriptures I find no shred of encouragement for the proud."-A.W. Tozer "Entertainment is the Devils' substitute for Joy!" -Leonard Ravenhill "50. Resolved, I will act so as I think I shall judge would have been best, and most prudent, when I come into the future world." -Jonathan Edwards "I find it most intriguing to contemplate the fact that while men are considering what place to give Jesus Christ in history, He has already decided what place to give them in eternity." -Leonard Ravenhill "I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to him." -Charles H. Spurgeon "We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross, bearing the marks of the cross." -Vance Havner "It is the will of God that saves. It is the will of man that damns."-Charles Spurgeon "The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men."-E.M. Bounds "The preacher who neglects to pray much must be very careless about his ministry. He cannot have comprehended his calling. He cannot have computed the value of a soul, or estimated the meaning of eternity." -Charles Spurgeon "All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell is terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning." -Oswald Chambers "If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach." -William Barclay "Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." -Ronald Reagan "Man see's our deeds; God see's our reasons." Thomas A. Kempis "He who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God reflects on God." -Soren Kierkegaard "God has many followers, but few servants." Thomas A. Kempis "Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way." -Karl Barth "It is our wisest and our safest course to stand at the farthest distance from sin; not to go near the house of the harlot, but to fly from all appearance of evil (Prov. 5:8, I Thess. 5:22). The best course to prevent falling into the pit is to keep at the greatest distance; he that will be so bold as to attempt to dance upon the brink of the pit, may find by woeful experience that it is a righteous thing with God that he should fall into the pit." -Thomas Brooks "The cross: God's way of uniting suffering with love." -Georgia Harkness "To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Jesus was crucified, not in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves." -George F. MacLeod "We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties." -Oswald Chambers "There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below." -Charles Spurgeon "Christ's cross is such a burden as sails are to a ship or wings to a bird." -Samuel Rutherford There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. -C.S. Lewis "He came to pay a debt He didn't owe because we owed a debt we couldn't pay." -Anonymous "If you see a Bible that is falling apart, it probably belongs to someone who isn't."-Vance Havner "There are two different kinds of revelation, natural revelation, which we find in the world, and special revelation, which we find in the word of God. A basic rule of Biblical interpretation is that we should always interpret natural revelation through the grid of special revelation, that is the word of God. We don't look at the world and then say this is truth, therefore we must conform the Scriptures to what we see. This view is a deadly mistake and would lead to atheism. I interpret science through the lens of the word of God, which presupposes the truth of Genesis 1-3. There is no evidence of higher value or authority than the word of God." -Gene Cook "Nothing worse can happen to a church than to be conformed to this world." -Charles Spurgeon "For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him." -William Barclay "When the book of God's purposes shall be all unfolded in actual history there will be found no blots, mistakes and blunders there. He knows the end from the beginning and his purposes shall be fulfilled in every jot and tittle, and in nothing shall the glory of God be marred. Though Satan may be laughing now, and every now and then the men of the world may boast against the people of God, it shall not be so in the close of the affair." - Charles Spurgeon "A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process." C.S. Lewis "I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. -David Livingstone "No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth."-Charles Spurgeon "Without Christ, not one step; with Him, anywhere! -David Livingstone "Out of 100 men, one will read the Bible, the other 99 will read the Christian." -D.L. Moody "By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men."-G.K. Chesterton "Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it's the only thing -Albert Schweitzer "Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior."-Charles Spurgeon "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." - St. Thomas Aquinas "If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts - i.e., Materialism and Astronomy - are mere accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset." -C.S. Lewis "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. -The Bible

He Prayed.. prayer quotes


Jesus didn't come to make bad men do good things. He came to make dead men live.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Only Christ could build a bridge to God with only two pieces of wood.
The Christian life is a life of paradoxes. We must give to receive, realize we are blind to see, become simple to be wise, suffer for gain, and die to live.
If I might be the means of saving one soul I should prefer it to all the riches and honor in the world
~ Asahel Nettleton
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
~ C.S. Lewis
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.
~ Charles Spurgeon
There are only two days on my calender... today and the day of judgement
~ Martin Luther
Every selfish man, strangely enough, becomes a self slayer
~ Sundar Singh
Everyone recognizes that Stephen was Spirit-filled when he was performing wonders. Yet, he was just as Spirit-filled when he was being stoned to death.
~ Leonard Ravenhill


I did not go through the Book. The Book went through me.
~ A. W. Tozer
In every generation the number of the righteous is small. Be sure you are among them.
~ A. W. Tozer
A pharisee is hard on others and easy on himself, but a spiritual man is easy on others and hard on himself.
~ A.W. Tozer
God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "Oh Lord Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.
~ A.W. Tozer
It is no sin to doubt some things but it may be fatal to believe everything.
~ A.W. Tozer
There has been grave error. I do not mean so much error of doctrine as error of emphasis.
~ A.W. Tozer
Very few things in life matter.
~ A.W. Tozer
You knew one thing about a man who was carrying a cross out of the city... you knew he wasn't coming back.
~ A.W. Tozer
The greatest and best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer.
~ Alexander Whyte
People talk about the curse of sin, but they do not understand that the whole nature has been infected by sin, and that the curse is on everything. My intellect, has that been defiled by sin? Terribly, and the curse of sin is on it, and therefore my intellect must go down into the death. Ah, I believe that the Church of Christ suffers more today from trusting in intellect, in sagacity, in culture, and in mental refinement, than from almost anything else. The Spirit of the world comes in, and men seek by their wisdom, and by their knowledge, to help the Gospel, and they rob it of its crucifixion mark. Christ directed Paul to go and preach the Gospel of the cross, but to do it not with wisdom of words. The curse of sin is on all that is of nature.
~ Andrew Murray
Do you not find yourselves forgetful of Jesus? Some creature steals away your heart, and you are unmindful of him upon whom your affection ought to be set. Some earthly business engrosses your attention when you should have your eye steadily fixed upon the cross. It is the incessant round of world, world, world; the constant din of earth, earth, earth, that takes away the soul from Christ. Oh! my friends, is it not too sadly true that we can recollect anything but Christ, and forget nothing so easy as him whom we ought to remember? While memory will preserve a poisoned weed, it suffereth the Rose of Sharon to wither.
~ C.H. Spurgeon
When filled with holy truth the mind rests.
~ C.H. Spurgeon
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.
~ C.S. Lewis
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
~ C.S. Lewis
If you read history you will find out that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.
~ C.S. Lewis
How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound Him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.
~ C.T. Studd
Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one's will to God in deep humility.
~ Charles Finney
Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
~ Charles H. Brent
Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle.
~ Charles Spurgeon
Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.
~ Charles Spurgeon
If God has fit you to be a missionary, I would not have you shrivel down to be a king.
~ Charles Spurgeon
Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.
~ Charles Wesley
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
~ Charles Wesley
Growth is not more of knowledge or increase of years, it is simply more of Him and less of me.
~ Chip Brogden
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.
~ Corrie Ten Boom
(speaking of Jesus) "He produced mainly three results: Hatred, Terror, Adoration.
~ CS Lewis
'Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God' (Rom. 10:17). That is whence faith comes. It is not for me to sit down and wait for faith to come stealing over me with a strong sensation, but is for me to take God at His Word.
~ D. L. Moody
Our Faith must be tested. God builds no ships but what He sends to sea.
~ D.L. Moody
The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe.
~ D.L. Moody
Work as if everything depended on you and pray as if everything depended on God.
~ D.L. Moody
I love to live on the brink of eternity.
~ David Brainerd
The greatest blow sent Satan-ward is made by weeping warriors of prayer
~ Dick Eastman
The greatest hindrance to effective prayer is sin. Satan's greatest goal is to keep us from our knees.
~ Dick Eastman
(speaking of the Holy Spirit coming upon him) "I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world - it would be as dust in the balance.
~ DL MOODY
Jesus taught that perseverance is the essential element in prayer.
~ E. M. Bounds
The conditions of praying are the conditions of righteousness, holiness, and salvation.
~ E. M. Bounds
The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer.
~ E. M. Bounds
He who would pray, must obey.
~ E.M. Bounds
We can never expect to grow in the likeness of our Lord unless we follow His example and give more time to communion with the Father. A revival of real praying would produce a spiritual revolution.
~ E.M. Bounds
You will find out that in the measure you have allowed yourself to look back you have missed that which God has for you.
~ E.M. Bounds
Is what you're living for worth Christ dying for?
~ Epitaph of Leonard Ravenhill
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
~ G.K. Chesterton
It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to emplore His protection and favor.
~ George Washington
It is an undoubted truth that every doctrine that comes from God, leads to God; and that which doth not tend to promote holiness is not of God.
~ George Whitefield
though they have a Christ in their heads, they have no Christ in their hearts.
~ George Whitefield
Works? Works? A man get to heaven by works? I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand!
~ George Whitefield
We need people that just know God these days. God can gift people, but its something else when a man is in favour with God. When God can say for this man's sake I will not judge this city or will show favour to this church.
~ Greg Gordon
Upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die; another's life, another's death, I stake my whole eternity.
~ Horatius Bonar
The gospel is a declaration, not a debate.
~ James S. Stewart
The Holy Ghost is certainly the best preacher in the world, and the words of Scripture the best sermons.
~ Jeremy Taylor
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
~ Jim Elliot
When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart.
~ John Bunyan
Oh sirs, deal with sin as sin, and speak of heaven and hell as they are, and not as if you were in jest.
~ John Flavel
Tell me, you vain professor, when did you shed a tear for the deadness, hardness, unbelief, or earthliness of your heart? Do you think that such an easy religion can save you? If so, we may invert Christ's words and say, 'Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to life, and may there be that go in there.'
~ John Flavel
Turn in upon yourselves, get into your closets, and now resolve to dwell there. You have been strangers to this work too long; you have kept other vineyards too long; you have trifled about the borders of religion too long. Will you now resolve to look better to your hearts? Will you hate and come out of the crowds of business and clamors of the world and retire yourselves more than you have done? Oh, that this day you would resolve upon it!
~ John Flavel
You ask me, How much time? I do not know. I know it means time enough to forget time.
~ John Mott
It is necessary that our sharpest trials should sometimes spring from our dearest comforts, else we should be in danger of forgetting ourselves and setting up our rest here.
~ John Newton
a minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
~ John Owen
He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.
~ John Owen
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.
~ John Owen
It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.
~ John Owen
It is truth alone that capacitates any soul to glorify God.
~ John Owen
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
~ John Owen
The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.
~ John Owen
Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.
~ John Stott
The bible knows nothing of solitary religion.
~ John Wesley
Christ is not only a remedy for your weariness and trouble, but he will give you an abundance of the contrary, joy and delight. They who come to Christ, do no only come to a resting-place after they have been wandering in a wilderness, but they come to a banqueting-house where they may rest, and where they may feast. They may cease from their former troubles and toils, and they may enter upon a course of delights and spiritual joys.
~ Jonathan Edwards
Don't presume upon the mercy of God and so encourage yourself in sin.
~ Jonathan Edwards
Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice....Practice according to what knowledge you have. This will be the way to know more...[According to Ps. 119:100] 'I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.'
~ Jonathan Edwards
The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.
~ Jonathan Edwards
The mind never has any satiety, but Christ's excellency is always fresh and new, and tends as much to delight, after it has been seen a thousand or ten thousand years, as when it was seen the first moment.
~ Jonathan Edwards
Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth: yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, who it may be are at ease, than he is with many of those who are now in the flames of hell.
~ Jonathan Edwards
Preach abroad?. It is the cooping yourselves up in rooms that has dampened the work of God, which never was and never will be carried out to any purpose without going into the highways and hedges and compelling men and women to come in.
~ Jonathon Edwards
If you don't plan to live the Christian life totally committed to knowing your God and to walking in obedience to Him, then don't begin; for this is what Christianity is all about. It is a change of citizenship, a change of governments, a change of allegience. If you have no intention of letting Christ rule your life, then forget Christianity; it's not for you.
~ K. Authur
I'd rather have people hate me with the knowledge that I tried to save them.
~ Keith Green
Calamity clarifies and comfort confuses,Persecution purifies and prosperity pollutes!
~ Kevin Turner
An experience of God that costs nothing does nothing
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you DAMNED?
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Your doctrine can be as straight as a gun barrel and just as empty!
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Everyone wants to be clothed but no one wants to be stripped.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Finney preached and sometimes the whole congregation would get up and leave! thats good preaching.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, 'Leonard, you took Me too seriously'?
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Five minutes after you die you'll know how you should have lived.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
If you have the smile of God what does it matter if you have the frown of men.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
No man is greater than his prayer life.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Praying Christians know nothing of their friends
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Praying men stop sinning and sinning men stop praying.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
The Sunday morning service shows how popular your church is. The evening services show how popular your pastor is. Your private prayer time shows you how popular God is!
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions
~ Leonard Ravenhill
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.
~ Martin Luther
I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.
~ Martin Luther
The first thing I ask is that people should not make use of my name, and should not call themselves Lutherans but Christians. What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone...How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?
~ Martin Luther
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
~ Martin Luther
Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.
~ Martin Luther
Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it.
~ Matthew Henry
Wherever the fear of God rules in the heart, it will appear both in works of charity and piety, and neither will excuse us from the other.
~ Matthew Henry
People in close communion with God are the only realists. Often worldly men are considered realistic, and Christians are put up on a cloud somewhere, we dont know what's going on, but real earthy men, they're the one's who are very realistic... Nonsense. Only ones who are in touch with their maker see things realistically.
~ Michael Phillips
People in close communion with God are the only realists. Often worldly men are considered realistic, and Christians are put up on a cloud somewhere... we dont know what's going on. But real earthy men, they're the one's who are very realistic... Nonsense. Only ones who are in touch with their maker see things realistically.
~ Michael Phillips
The power of the gospel is in the gospel... not in the presenter of the gospel
~ Michael Phillips
When it comes to thinking, remember the letters J-O-Y. Jesus-Others-Yourself. Think of Jesus first, then others, then yourself, and you'll be alright.
~ Michael Phillips
Spiritual rest maketh no man idle, spiritual walking maketh no man weary.
~ Nathaniel Hardy
Beware of reasoning about God's Word - obey It.
~ Oswald Chambers
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.
~ Oswald Chambers
Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men.
~ Oswald Chambers
We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.
~ Oswald Chambers
The blood of Christ stands not simply for the sting of sin on God but the scourge of God on sin, not simply for God's sorrow over sin, but for God's wrath on sin.
~ P.T. Forsyth
Turn to God from idols. For the sword of His wrath that had been aimed at you has been sheathed into the heart of His Son. And the arrows of His anger that had been put against your breast were loosed into the Lord Jesus Christ. Because He has died for you, you were forgiven.
~ Paris Reidhead
There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.
~ Pascal
The reason why many fail in battle is because they wait until the hour of battle. The reason why others succeed is because they have gained their victory on their knees long before the battle came...Anticipate your battles; fight them on your knees before temptation comes, and you will always have victory.
~ R.A. Torrey
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.
~ Richard Baxter
We must feel toward our people as a father toward his children; yea, the most tender love of a mother must not surpass ours. We must even travail in birth, till Christ be formed in them. They should see that we care for no outward thing, neither liberty, nor honor, nor life, in comparison to their salvation... When the people see that you truly love them, they will hear anything from you...Oh therefore, see that you feel a tender love for your people in your hearts, and let them perceive it in your speech and conduct. Let them see that you spend and are spent for their sakes.
~ Richard Baxter
In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes.
~ Richard Sibbes
It is a destructive addition to add anything to Christ
~ Richard Sibbes
Whatsoever is good for God's children they shall have it; for all is theirs to help them towards heaven; therefore if poverty be good they shall have it; if disgrace or crosses be good they shall have them; for all is ours to promote our greatest prosperity.
~ Richard Sibbes
What I have seen in the past 10 years of traveling- performing at a church one day and a casino the next- is that a lot of people in the church want to be entertained, and people in casinos want to be ministered to. That's hard to understand, but I see a hunger in the world that I don't see in the church.
~ Ricky Shaggs (muscian)
God's choice acquaintances are humble men.
~ Robert Leighton
We shall have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but we have only one swift hour before the sunset in which to win them.
~ Robert Moffat
For every look at self take ten looks at Christ.
~ Robert Murray McCheyne
Most of God's people are contented to be saved from the hell that is without; they are not so anxious to be saved from the hell that is within.
~ Robert Murray McCheyne
If you find yourself so anxious to do something that it can't wait, it's probably not of God
~ Robert Thompson
Brains can argue, but It takes heart to comfort.
~ Samuel Chadwick
Spirit filled souls are ablaze for God. They love with a love that glows. They serve with a faith that kindles. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They hate sin with fierceness that burns. They rejoice with a joy that radiates. Love is perfected in the fire of God.
~ Samuel Chadwick
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.
~ Samuel Chadwick
Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, are things Christ unsparingly condemned. Destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy, an ethical system, and a superstition.
~ Samuel Chadwick
I exhort you and beseech you in the bowels of Christ, faint not, weary not. There is a great necessity of heaven; you must have it. All other things, as houses, lands, children, husband, friends, country, credit, health, wealth, honour, may be let go; but heaven is your one thing necessary, the good part that shall not be taken from you. See that you buy the field where the pearl is. Sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy; for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory; many are lying dead by the way, that were slain with security.
~ Samuel Rutherford
I will tell you what rule I observed when I was young, and too much addicted to childish diversions-never to spend more time in mere recreation in one day than I spent in private religious devotions.
~ Susanna Wesley
Truly, at the day of judgment we shall not be examined by what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how religiously we have lived.
~ Thomas A Kempis
Our mind is where our pleasure is, our heart is where our treasure is, our love is where our life is, but all these, our pleasure, treasure, and life, are reposed in Jesus Christ.
~ Thomas Adams
Actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary.
~ Thomas Betterton
A man full of hope will be full of action.
~ Thomas Brooks
Better to bear than to swear, and to die than to lie.
~ Thomas Brooks
Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins.
~ Thomas Brooks
All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
~ Thomas Carlyle
'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,....neither can he know them' (1 Cor. 2:14). He may have more insight into the things of the world than a believer, but he does not see the deep things of God. A swine may see an acorn under a tree, but he cannot see a star.
~ Thomas Watson
Afflictions add to the saints' glory. The more the diamond is cut, the more it sparkles; the heavier the saints' cross is, the heavier will be their crown.
~ Thomas Watson
Christ heals with more ease than any other. Christ makes the devil go out with a word (Mark 9:25). Nay, he can cure with a look: Christ's look melted Peter into repentance; it was a healing look. If Christ doth but cast a look upon the soul he can recover it. Therefore David prays to have a look from God, 'Look Thou upon me, and be merciful unto me' (Psalm 119:132).
~ Thomas Watson
Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.
~ Thomas Watson
First we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it.
~ Thomas Watson
How soon are we broken on the soft pillow of ease! Adam in paradise was overcome, when Job on the dunghill was a conqueror.
~ Thomas Watson
If a wicked man seems to have peace at death, it is not from the knowledge of his happiness, but from the ignorance of his danger.
~ Thomas Watson
Knowledge without repentance will be but a torch to light men to hell.
~ Thomas Watson
None so empty of grace as he that thinks he is full.
~ Thomas Watson
None so empty of grace as he that thinks he is full.
~ Thomas Watson
Our murmuring is the devil's music.
~ Thomas Watson
Praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion. In prayer we act like men; in praise we act like angels.
~ Thomas Watson
The right manner of growth is to grow less in one's own eyes.
~ Thomas Watson
The world rings changes, it is never constant but in its disappointments. The world is but a great inn, where we are to stay a night or two, and be gone; what madness is it so to set our heart upon our inn, as to forget our home?
~ Thomas Watson
What if we have more of the rough file, if we have less rust! Afflictions carry away nothing but the dross of sin.
~ Thomas Watson
Where reason cannot wade there faith may swim.
~ Thomas Watson
We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversions; much machinery but few results.
~ Torrey, R.A.
God gave us music that we might be able to pray without using words.
~ unknown
I don't know what the future holds; but I do know who holds the future.
~ Unknown
By the time the average Christian gets his temperature up to normal, everybody thinks he has a fever!
~ Watchman Nee
With complete consecration comes perfect peace.
~ Watchman Nee
One verse in every six in the first three Gospels relates either directly or indirectly to money. Sixteen of our Lords forty-four parables deal with the use of misuse of money. A loving, joyful, liberal giving to the Lord's work is an acid test of a spiritual heart, pleasing to God.
~ William Allen
No sort of defense is needed for preaching outdoors, but it would take a very strong argument to prove that a man who has never preached beyond the walls of his meetinghouse has done his duty. A defense is required for services within buildings rather than for worship outside of them.
~ William Booth
All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient.
~ William Carey
Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
~ William Carey
God loves the saints as the purchase of his Son's blood. They cost him dear, and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost. He that was willing to expend his Son's blood to gain them, will not deny his power to keep them.
~ William Gurnall
Nothing is more contrary to a heavenly hope than an earthly heart.
~ William Gurnall
One Almighty is more than all mighties
~ William Gurnall
Paul was Nero's prisoner, but Nero was much more God's.
~ William Gurnall
The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God.
~ William Gurnall
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little.
~ William Gurnall
The Church is the one institution that exists for those outside it.
~ William Tyndale
A cowardly believer is an unbeliever.
A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience.
A true shepherd leads the way. He does not merely point the way.
About willfull sin: "The scariest thing for a man on judgment day is when he's accounting for his sin and the Lord asks him if he knew what he was doing, and then has to say 'Yes'.
Am I zealous for zeal or zealous for God? One has his mind on living right, one has his mind on God.
Angels are more glorious than men, more wise than men, and greater than men in general. But we are still able to fellowship with God and praise God with the angels and in the same manner, look up to one infinitely greater.
Any method of evangelism will work if God is in it.
Beware of prayerless tears and beware of tearless prayers.
Can't have what you like? Try liking what you have.
Children can tell you what Channel 7 says, but not what Matthew 7 says.
Church unity comes from corporate humility.
Despondency is not a virtue; I believe it is a vice. I am heartily ashamed of myself for falling into it, but I am sure there is no remedy for it like a holy faith in God.
Doctrine's important... yours may be different than mine, but if you've gotten closer to God than I am... tell me how you got there. If you've given more glory to God than I have... tell me how you did it.
Don't confuse every warm fuzzy feeling with love for God. God says "the one who loves me is the one who keeps my commandments."
Eternal life doesn't just mean immortality (John 17:3).
Feelings are notoriously unreliable.
God can't be explained... He can be experienced.
God discovers Himself to 'babes,'" wrote Tozer, "and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials and they will be found to be blessedly few.
God is going to weigh the motives. Don't ask "what did I get out of this meeting", ask "what did God get out of it".
God never requests. He commands. You're either living in obedience to God, or disobedience.
God's awesome love is shown in the salvation of sinners by the death of His Son. God's abhorrence of sin is sufficiently shown in the suffering of His Son. God's holiness is shown in the walk of His Son. All of God's works are manifestations of His perfect attributes.
He who is content with little possesses much.
How can you pull down strongholds of Satan if you don't even have the strength to turn off your TV?
I doubt that more than two percent of professing Christians in the United States are truly born again.
If a Christian is not having tribulation in the world, there's something wrong!
If God could pay 10,000 heavens to buy 1 man's soul back, He would have done so instead of giving His Son. But the blood of Christ is worth more than we'll ever comprehend, and the only thing that can reconcile a fallen man to a perfect God.
If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified.
If the whole church goes off into deception, that will in no way excuse us for not following Christ.
If you can find it in the scripture plainly you're on solid ground. If you can't, you may just be going on a good idea.
If you knew you were going to go to Hell, would you still serve God simply because He's worthy of your servitude?
If you're too busy to remember God all day, don't ask Him to remember you at night.
If your faith can't be tested, it can't be trusted.
In revival God is not concerned about filling empty churches, He is concerned about filling empty hearts.
It is not want of numbers, but want of holiness that hinders the church.
It's better to die for God than live for nothing.
John the Baptist never performed any miracles. Yet, he was greater than any of the Old Testament prophets.
Leonard Ravenhill once said of Tozer, "I fear that we shall never see another Tozer. Men like him are not college bred but Spirit taught.
Lukewarm teaching makes for lukewarm students
Many people want spiritual maturity but few want the ashes and sackcloth.
Maturity comes from obedience, not necessarily from age.
Men cure sick people... Christ cures dead people.
My main ambition in life is to be on the Devil's most wanted list.
NEVER neglect so great a salvation which was given us freely through Christ Jesus our Lord. Never believe in yourself to keep up the walk.
One kind act today may be cherished forever.
Only God is glorious enough to save a soul by simply having that soul gaze upon Him
Our God is a consuming fire. He consumes pride, lust, materialism, and other sin.
Our seminaries today are turning out dead men.
People often ask 'Why do bad things happen to good men?', when the real question is 'Why do good things happen to bad men?'
satan is mighty, but God is ALMIGHTY.
Say to someone "Shall I stop praying for you just because you don't believe?
See that you don't take pride in your spiritual position. Can one man be the bride of Christ? No, it is the church as a whole that is the bride of the lamb. If you believe yourself to be separate from the church, so you will dwell that way for eternity. If not, be sure to build the brothers and sisters up in faith that you may all be one in Christ.
Some of your worst decisions are made because you care too much about what people think of you.
Some people complain that God placed thorns on roses, while others praise him for putting roses among thorns.
Some women will spend thirty minutes to an hour preparing for church externally (putting on special clothes and makeup, etc.). What would happen if we all spent the same amount of time preparing internally for church with prayer and meditation?
Someone asked Luther, "Do you feel that you've been forgiven?" He answered, "No, but I'm as sure As there's a God in Heaven!
Study scripture with the intent to live it, not preach it
Suffering equips us to be used by God. It burns away the selfish side of us that often demands attention and position. God calls each of us to a firm commitment to Jesus Christ through faith. When we do, the frustrations, the fears, the pain, the times of resentment, and feelings of isolation lose their power; and Christ can truly be Lord of all. We, like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, enter a far deeper depth of spiritual maturity than we ever imagined possible.
Testimonies are wonderful. But, so often our lives don't fit our testimonies.
The Bible is either absolute, or it's obsolete.
The degree to which you press into Christ today determines the degree of your fellowship with Him for eternity.
The devil has done a quite a work in convincing Christians of today that by giving up their main sins (and pass on the little things), they have denied themselves, taken up their cross and are following Jesus.
The greatest man who ever lived needed to borrow a penny to illustrate a lesson (Matthew 22:19).
The last words of Jesus to the church (in Revelation) were 'Repent!'
The Lord can do great things with people who don't care who gets the credit.
The moon is the light of the world in the midst of darkness because of the sun. The church is the light of the world in the midst of darkness because of God's Son.
The more spiritually you grow, the more you realize just how much your thoughts are actually focused on yourself. Even the thoughts that formerly seemed good and acceptable all of the sudden look selfish. Only then do the words "look to Jesus" finally take on real experiential meaning.
The only free people in this world are slaves to God.
The only time you can really say that 'Christ is all I need,' is when Christ is all you have.
The person looking to give glory to God is closer to salvation than the person simply looking to get saved.
The problem isn't with us accepting Jesus, it's with Jesus accepting us. We have every reason to receive Him. But "what is man that thou art mindful of him?"
The secret of Christianity is not asking Jesus into your heart; it is Jesus asking us into His.
The smallest deed is greater than the grandest intention.
The Titanic was built by professionals. The ark was built by amateurs.
The tongue weighs practically nothing, but few people can hold it.
The true nature of a heart is shown by it's response to the unattractive.
There are only two kinds of persons: those dead in sin and those dead to sin.
There's a difference between changing your opinion, and changing your lifestyle.
There's a difference between knowledge and wisdom.
To hear correctly prepares one to obey.
Today God's word is more accessible to us than anyone before us. This makes us far more accountable.
Today's church wants to be raptured from responsibility.
WARNING: In the case of nuclear war, the ban on prayer in schools is lifted".
We don't have to know all the answers to remain faithful.
We must do what we can do for God, before He will give us the power to do what we can't do.
What are you going to say on judgment day?
What good does it do to speak in tongues on Sunday if you have been using your tongue during the week to curse and gossip?
When are people finally going to get serious about getting serious?
When the Father looks for our righteousness He doesn't look at us for one second. He turns to Christ and says "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.
When you pick up a cross, you have to drop everything else.
Why do we expect to be better treated in this world than Jesus was?
William Booth, the leader of the Salvation Army, wished he could suspend each one of his Salvation Army officers over hell for 24 hours. "If they could see the flames and smell the smoke and feel the heat and hear the cries of the damned, they would go out to preach what they had seen and heard. They would then preach like dying men to dying people.
You can have all of your doctrines right yet still not have the presence of God.
You can know a lot about the atonement, and yet receive no benefit from it.
You can know the word of God, and still not know the God of the word.
You can't develop character by reading books. You develop it from conflict.
You know you're on the right track when you're getting grief because of your faith.
You never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there's a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it.
Your character is who you are when no one but God is watching you.
Your true desires are shown by your persistence in prayer for them as the Holy Spirit constantly puts something on your heart.
[Concerning one of the new "movements" in the church that was causing a stir among Christians:] "There's also a stir when the circus comes to town.
[Concerning the darkness that has enveloped most of Christendom:] "When you're sitting in a dark room, you can either sit and curse the darkness or you can light a candle.
[Concerning the fixation that today's church has with numbers, with growth at any price:] "The church has paid a terrible price for statistics!


_________________

WHEN THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST IS PROPEROUS, SHE NEVER HAS REVIVAL. IT'S WHEN SHE'S POOR. PRAYER IS THE LANGUAGE OF THE POOR: "BOW DOWN THINE EAR AND HEAR ME, FOR I AM POOR AND NEEDY."

THE SELF-SATISFIED DON'T NEED TO PRAY.
THE SELF-SUFFICIENT DON'T WANT TO PRAY.
THE SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS CANNOT PRAY.

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shop-window to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off. Poverty-stricken as the church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestles; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God."

There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer. People often ask, "Why do you insist on prayer so much?" The answer is very simple - because Jesus did. You could change the title of the Gospel according to St. Luke to the Gospel of Prayer. It's the prayer life of Jesus.

The other evangelists say that Jesus was in the Jordan and the Spirit descended on Him as a dove - Luke says it was while He was praying that the Spirit descended on Him. The other evangelists say that Jesus chose 12 disciples - Luke says it was after He spent a night in prayer that He chose 12 disciples. The other evangelists say that Jesus died on a cross - Luke says that even when He was dying Jesus was praying for those who persecuted Him. The other evangelists say Jesus went on a mount and He was transfigured - Luke says it was while He was praying that He was transfigured. There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer.

The Scriptures say that the disciples went to bed, but Jesus went to pray - as was His custom. It was His custom to pray. Now Jesus was the Son of God - He was definitely anointed for His ministry. If Jesus needed all that time in prayer, don't you and I need time in prayer? If Jesus needed it in every crisis, don't you and I need it in every crisis?

Now I say very often - and people don't like it - that God doesn't answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer! Your prayer life denotes how much you depend on your own ability, and how much you really believe in your heart when you sing, "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling...." The more self- confidence you have, the less you pray. The less self-confidence you have, the more you have to pray.

The more self- confidence you have, the less you pray. The less self-confidence you have, the more you have to pray.

The tragedy in our colleges and seminaries right now is that we turn men out who know the word of God. - That is never going to turn the world.
The question is not whether they know the Word of God.
The question is:
DO THEY KNOW THE GOD OF THE WORD?


Isn't it staggering when you think that one sermon on the day of Pentecost produced 3000 people? And we had some cities yesterday where 3000 sermons were preached and nobody was saved. And it doesn't even faze us.
The church used to be a lightning bolt, now it's a cruise ship.We are not marching to Zion - we are sailing there with ease. In the apostolic church it says they were all amazed - And now in our churches everybody wants to be amused.

God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age since Pentecost.

Holy jealousy gripped him. Mighty as he had been in other things, Samson now proved mightiest in prayer: "Lord, strengthen me ... this once!' (vs. 28) Would to God that every professed believer in the whole of Christendom would borrow this prayer and mean it. Then with dramatic conclusion, Samson sealed the doom of many more of the enemies of God in his dying than in his living.

The religious sentimentalist who sings "Just a closer walk with Thee" but walks close to the ungodly and sits with the blasphemers, is not taken seriously in either heaven or hell. Be very sure, friend, that this vile world is not "a friend to grace to help on to God." We need to pray the Father to put some blood into this "water" that runs through our veins. Our Simon-like natures need the Upper Room fire to clean us out and the discipline of the Spirit to shape us into soldiers.

Prayer is battle. Could it be that in our churches the right
slogan over the door of most of our prayer rooms would be "We
Wrestle *Not*"? I often see listed in churches names of athletes
who will play ball of some kind, but I would like to see these
"muscle men" operating where strength really counts - that is, in
the place of prayer. Prayer taxes even the physical frame; prayer
wears on the nerves; prayer involves the whole man. Prayer *must*
have priority. Prayer *must* be our bolt to lock up the night,
our key to open the day. Prayer is power. Prayer is wealth.
Prayer is health of the soul.

And we have nice caparpet and cushions and stuff on the floor so we don’t hurt our darling little knees and God pity us we can’t even muster a corporal’s guard to pray.

Americas living on borrowed time. We’ve passed the safety line years ago. We’re heading for hell as quick as any nation on earth. But if we saw the glory of God on Sunday in every church in America, we’d shake the country for God the next week.”-

Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself.

There are people who think that God is only around to help us. We have a great utility God, they think. You pray, and He does this! You pray, and He does that! You pray, and He sends you money. You pray, and He gets you out of a jam. He’s not somebody you worship in speechless adoration, but He’s a utility God! And some on TV are exploiting that to the maximum."

"The only reason we don't have revival, is because we are willing to live without it."

"The greatest tragedy ever, is a sick church in a dying world."

“We have to make up our minds if this Book is absolute or obsolete.
It's either got the answer for our generation or forget it."
"We’re preaching an acceptable Gospel today, making it as painless as we can. And all we do is give people a shot to put them to sleep so they get to hell quicker. We need some hellfire preaching on repentance" - Leonard Ravenhill

God himself says in the Bible: "If a liar and deceiver comes and says, 'I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' he would be just the prophet for this people!" (Micah 2:11)

You know what we're doing with our modern methods for effective evangelism? We're grieving God, we're making a fool out of Him! We think the Bible isn't good enough. We need examples! The Holy Ghost is history. We need entertainment. And now we got two problems. First of all, the Church fully relies on these methods (instead of relying on God) and they seem to work.

The second problem is that Christianity receives new strength. But not the strength from God. In Isaiah it says: "You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, 'It is hopeless.' You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint." (Isaiah 57:10). This chapter is directed to the sons of a sorceress, offspring of adulterers and prostitutes! This is the spiritual state of the Church of Christ today! But in spite of her terrible state, she gains new strength...power from this world.

Lots of Christians like these days. They think that God is working...well, perhaps I'm wearing very dark sunglasses, but I believe we live in the darkest days ever!

I thank God there are still people who see this darkness and they dare to preach boldly. They don't merely point out that there's darkness, but they also lit a candle! Before revival comes, we need to see that we are dead! That's what revival means: RE = again + VIVAL comes from "Life". So revival means to come back to life again, which makes clear that at this moment we (as the Church of Christ) are as dead as a dodo!

We're going down people! So let us go down also...to our knees! May we be encouraged by God as He says: "You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest, till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth" (Isaiah 62:6-7)

This much is sure:

If we could merit revival by fasting, there would be many martyred by starving.

If we could organize revival, we would pool our thinking to outwit the powers of darkness.

If we could buy this elusive revival with the mammon of unrighteousness, we could get a score of what we call Christian millionaires to underwrite the thing for us.

If we could blast the devil from this present world, we would pledge the politicians for an atom bomb.

God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age since Pentecost.

We are too earthbound we live too much in time, we invest our time like the world invests it, we invest our money like the world does. We are supposed to be a different breed of people on this earth.

How can you pull down strongholds of Satan if you don’t even have the strength to turn off your TV?


This one thing I do..." I sell out to God's will totally.
Well, what does this become? Well, I believe this thing becomes an obsession, as I was saying to a brother this morning. For fifty years I've wept, and I've prayed, and I've groaned, and I've read, and I've fasted, and I've met with guys for nights of prayer, and days of prayer, and days and days of prayer, for revival.



You see, what people are seeking today is a painless Pentecost. There isn’t such a thing. What happened immediately after Pentecost? They prospered? Yes? No! They went to jail! It wan’t prosperity; it was prison, pain, privation, and persecution.


The men that have been the most herioc for God have had the greatest devotional lifes.

Can you imagine the Apostle Paul daring to step into Rome, this city of hatred and violence with any less comprehension of the power of the Cross than he had?
Our gimmick-geared gospel would have fallen as flat in that day as in our day. Can you imagine Paul and his party confronting this pagan, wicked hoard with hip-swinging girls and hand-clapping boys singing, “Something Good is Going to Happen to you,” or offering them a Prosperity Pack for a donation?

The Church used to be a lifeboat rescuing the perishing. Now she is a cruise ship
recruiting the promising.


There is a 'deeper life.' It is as deep as a personal Gethsemane and as costly as a personal Calvary.

We talk Apostolic doctrine
but lack Apostolic deeds.
We claim Apostolic faith
but lack Apostolic fruit.
Some trumpet Apostolic power
but lack Apostolic poverty.
Some claim Apostolic enduement
but lack Apostolic accomplishment.
We may have Apostolic vocabularies.
Do we have Apostolic victories?
Many claim Apostolic succession.
Few, if any, dare claim Apostolic success!

I read of the revivals of the past, great sweeping revivals where thousands of men were swept into the Kingdom of God. I read about Charles G. Finney winning his thousands and his hundreds of thousands of souls to Christ. Then I picked up a book and read the messages of Charles G. Finney and the message of Jonathan Edwards on 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' and I said, 'No wonder men trembled; no wonder they fell in the altars and cried out in repentance and sobbed their way to the throne of grace!'


Many pastors criticize me for taking the Gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me, saying, ‘Leonard, you took Me too seriously’?

The offense of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. That is not to say that prayer is a partner to mental sloth. But in these days, efficiency and smartness are at a premium. Prayer is conditioned to one thing alone, and that is to spirituality. One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined book shelves, self-confidence and a sense of having arrived - the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. Preaching of the type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. The pulpit can be a shop window to display our talents; the closet speaks death to display.

The tragedy of this last hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people. There is a strange thing that I have seen even in the fundamentalist circles: it is preaching without unction. What is unction? I hardly know what it is, but I know what it is not, or at least I know when it is not upon my own soul. Preaching without unction kills instead of giving life. The unctionless preacher is a savor of death unto death. The Word does not live unless the unction is upon the preacher. Preacher, with all thy getting, get unction.

Unction cannot be learned, only earned by prayer. Unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet. The meeting is won or lost before the preacher's foot enters the pulpit. Unction is like perfume. Unction is like dynamite. Unction comes not by the medium of the bishop's hands, neither does it mildew when the preacher is cast into prison. Unction will pierce and percolate. It will sweeten and soften. When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.


The ugly fact is that the altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen - degrees or no degrees. Where are our unctionized pulpit crusaders? Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls.

"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." (Ps. 126:5). This is the divine edict. This is more than preaching with zeal. This is more than scholarly exposition. This is more than delivering sermons of exegetical exactitude and homiletical perfection. Such a man, whether preacher or pew dweller, is appalled at the shrinking authority of the Church in the present drama of cruelty in the world. And he cringes with sorrow that men turn a deaf ear to the Gospel and willingly risk eternal hell in the process. Under this complex burden, his heart is crushed to tears.

Many of us have no heart-sickness for the former glory of the Church because we have never known what true revival is. We stagnate in the status quo and sleep easy at night while our generation moves swiftly to the eternal night of hell. Shame, shame on us! Jesus whipped some money changers out of the temple; but before He whipped them, He wept over them. He knew how near their judgment was The Apostle Paul sent a tear-stained letter to the Philippian saints, writing: "I have told you often and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ" (Phil. 3:18). Notice that he does not say they are enemies of Christ; they are, rather, the enemies of the cross of Christ. They deny or diminish the redemptive values of the cross. There are many like this today. The church of Rome does not stand as an enemy of Christ; it traces heavily on His holy name. Yet it denies the cross by saying that the Blessed Virgin is co-redemptive. If this is so, why was she not also crucified? The Mormons use the name of Christ, yet they are astray on the atonement. Have we tears for them? Shall we face them without a blush when they accuse us of inertia at the Judgment Seat saying that they were our neighbors and an offense to us, but not a burden because they were lost?


America cannot fall - because she is already fallen! This goes for Britain, too. She cannot go into slavery - because her people are fettered at the moment in the chains of self-forged, self-chosen moral anarchy. Here are millions, diseased morally, with no longing for healing. Here are men paying for shadows at the price of their immortal souls.

This is an hour in need of burning hearts, bursting lips and brimming eyes! If we were a tenth as spiritual as we think we are, our streets would be filled each Sunday with throngs of believers marching to Zion - with sacks on their bodies and ashes on their shaking heads, shaking at the calamity that has brought the Church to be the unlovely, unnerved, unproductive thing that she is!


If we wept as much in the prayer closet as devout Jews have done at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, we would now be enjoying a prevailing, purging revival! If we would return to apostolic practice - waiting upon the Lord for apostolic power - we could then go forth to apostolic possibilities! This is the hour when we are asked over and over again, "Is everybody happy?" God's purpose for us is not happiness, but HOLINESS!

We’re in grave danger when we let our accomplishments become the ground of our confidence. Oh boy, how we want to be esteemed! How we want to be respected…how people should realize what precious gifts of the Spirit are given, do you know why you don’t? Because you stink with pride! Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet; it is won or lost before the preacher’s foot enters the pulpit.

Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls. Away with this palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb, and nourished in a fireless, prayerless soul. We may preach and perish, but we cannot pray and perish.

Colossians 4:12 (New International Version)

Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves. When our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little. When we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord.


PRAYER OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

"I would rather train twenty men to pray, than a thousand to preach; - A minister's highest mission ought to be to teach his people to pray." -H. MacGregor

"We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism...To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don't hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist! " - C. T. Studd

“The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!” -A. B. Simpson

“Oh, to realize that souls, precious, never dying souls, are perishing all around us, going out into the blackness of darkness and despair, eternally lost, and yet to feel no anguish, shed no tears, know no travail! How little we know of the compassion of Jesus!" - Oswald J. Smith

"He can do all things who prays well. All soul-winners have conquered on their knees. Wherever the secret of prevailing prayer is found, something supernatural will come to pass." - G. F. Oliver
"The true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the worldliness of the Church...grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil." - Leonard Ravenhill

"The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph."-Samuel Zwemer

"This much is sure in all churches, forgetting party labels; the smallest meeting numerically is the prayer- meeting. If weak in prayer we are weak everywhere." - Leonard Ravenhill

"Wherever the Church is aroused and the world's wickedness arrested, somebody has been praying." – A. T. Pierson
"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.’" – John R. Mott

"We give ourselves to prayer. We preach a Gospel that saves to the uttermost, and witness to its power. We do not argue about worldliness; we witness. We do not discuss philosophy; we preach the Gospel. We do not speculate about the destiny of sinners; we pluck them as brands from the burning. We ask no man's patronage. We beg no man's money. We fear no man's frown…Let no man join us who is afraid, and we want none but those who are saved, sanctified and aflame with the fire of the Holy Ghost." – Samuel Chadwick

"The Church gives more time, thought, and money to recreation and sport than to prayer." – Samuel Chadwick

"Let methods be changed, therefore, if necessary, that prayer may be given its true place. Let there be days set apart for intercession; let the original purpose of the monthly concert of prayer for missions be given a larger place; let missionary prayer cycles be used by families and by individual Christians; let the best literature on prayer be circulated among the members of the Church; let special sermons on the Subject of intercession be preached. By these and by all other practical means a larger, deeper, wider spirit of prayer should be cultivated in the churches." – John R. Mott

"The Church has not yet touched the fringe of the possibilities of intercessory prayer. Her largest victories will be witnessed when individual Christians everywhere come to recognize their priesthood unto God and day by day give themselves unto prayer." – John R. Mott

"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." – John R. Mott
"Revival is the assemblies of God manifesting the oneness of the membership in the mystical, supernatural body of Christ, delivered from denominational bigotry." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the saints of God agonizing on behalf of lost souls going to hell." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the people of God living in the power of an ungrieved, unquenched Spirit." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the child of God desperately in love with his glorious Savior and Lord." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is living the Christ life in the home." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the heathen saying, "The Lord hath done great things for them" (Psa. 126:2). – James A. Stewart

"Revival is Zion travailing in spiritual childbirth." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the Church of God as a conquering army putting to rout the hosts of hell." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is torrents of living water flowing out of the individual believer." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the beauty of holiness adorning the saints." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the recognition of the ministry of insignificant members of the body, and deliverance from idol worship of the more prominent members who are in the limelight." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is restoring the years the locusts have eaten." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the people of God constrained, gripped, overmastered, and overwhelmed by the love of Christ, so that they are feverishly restless to win souls for Christ." – James A. Stewart

"Revival is the whole assembly powerfully and passionately winning lost souls to Christ." – James A. Stewart