“In our blindness we approach Him with suspicious reserve. We ask how much of our fun He intends to spoil, how much He will demand from us… If we had the least notion of His loving-kindness and tender mercy… His generosity, His beautiful plans for us; if we knew how patiently He waits for our turning to Him, how gently He means to lead us to green pastures and still waters, how carefully He is preparing a place for us, how ceaselessly He is ordering and ordaining and engineering His Master Plan for our good — it we had any inkling of all this, could we be reluctant to let go of our smashed dandelions or whatever we clutch so fiercely?”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made;

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.”

— Frederick M. Lehman

“Behold your present standing, believer in Christ! Turn your eye away from all your failures in obedience, the flaws and imperfections that mark your sincere endeavors to serve Christ and to glorify God, and see where your true acceptance is: even in the Beloved… The Lord our righteousness.” “

’Accepted in the Beloved’ is the record that will raise you above all the fears and despondencies arising from your shortcomings and failures, and fill you with peace, and joy, and assurance.”

— Octavius Winslow

“to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” Ephesians 1:6-7

“The hammer of the law breaks, but the heart, when thus broken, is like a broken flint, every bit of which is still flint… An old divine says that when the law creates repentance the tears are hard as hailstones in the sinner’s eyes, and I believe it is so. 

But when the gospel makes us repent, our weeping is as the dew of the morning. What a blessed softness grace produces! How tender is the heart which Jesus touches with His pierced hand!

… The love of Jesus has a cleansing and sanctifying power. To kill the love of sin live in the love of Christ… His love is as a fire… it consumes sin, and gives forth a fragrance of virtue. No furnace ever purifies our heart like the love of Jesus, which burns like coals of juniper.”

— Charles Spurgeon

“Apart from prayer — abiding, enduring, believing prayer — we’re as dead as a doorknob with all our doctrine. How I need God! I feel sometimes I can’t breathe — unless I have Him.

Some of you know. And maybe you have forgotten. You remember those times of tarrying in His presence. And you knew God was there, not just because of a doctrine that told you He was omnipresent, but that presence of His was manifest in that room with you. Once that has touched your life, you can’t live without that.

… Read Edwards. Read Brainerd. Read my dearest, Charles Spurgeon. Read Flavel… Our people perish for a lack of knowledge… They need God’s word, but they need the Spirit of God to reveal it. We need the Spirit of God to touch our mouths to touch our hearts, to touch our lives… I’m so tired of words. Yet words are precious. But without the Spirit of God, it’s nothing. Oh, to know Him!”

— Paul Washer

“Whatever your pain — the relational pain, the issues that you have to deal with, the things that seem like they are never going away — remember, they are not forever. There is a limit and God determines the limit, the duration. He knows what you can bear. He knows what He will give you grace to bear. But none of those trials will last forever…those trials are not without purpose. They’re not random. They have purpose. In the midst of it you may not be able to see the purpose. You may not feel like any great sanctification is taking place in you. But God is doing a work in you.”

— Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

“Each of us needs to honestly face and seriously answer this question: How highly do I really value communion with Christ?…Christ has the first claims upon me. Do I realize this? Am I acting accordingly? Am I making it my chief concern to cultivate closer communion with Him? Am I—amidst all the problems, frictions, trials of this life— making Him my principal confident, counsellor, helper? Is it Him I am most seeking to please, honor, and glorify? If not, is it not high time that I did so?

…None but Christ can satisfy the heart, yet we are terribly slow in really believing it. We grasp at shadows, pursue phantoms, seek to feed on ashes, and then wonder why we are so miserable.”

— A.W. Pink