By Charles G. Finney
Religion is obedience to God, the voluntary submission of the soul to the will of God.
If you will then go over the ground the second time, and give your solemn and fixed attention to it, you will find that the things you have put down will suggest other things of which you have been guilty, connected with them, or near them.
Prayer is the state of the heart. The spirit of prayer is a state of continual desire and anxiety of mind for the salvation of sinners.
A revival of religion is the renewal of the first love of Christians, resulting in the awakening and conversion of sinners to God.
This travail of soul, is that deep agony, which persons feel when they lay hold on God for such a blessing, and will not let him go till they receive it.
Truth by itself will do nothing but harden men in impenitence.
Without this spirit there can be no such sympathy between you and God that you can either walk with God or work with God. You need to have a strong beating of your heart with his, or you need not expect to be greatly useful.
Go and inquire among the obscure members of the church, and you will always find that somebody had been praying for a revival, and was expecting it—some man or woman had been agonizing in prayer.
You must not only recall them to mind, but you must actually renounce them, and leave them off.
Entire consecration to God is indispensable to the prayer of faith. You must live a holy life, and consecrate all to God—your time, talents, influence—all you have.
The Gospel will never produce any great effects, until ministers talk to their hearers, in the pulpit, as they talk in private conversation.
Facts, real or supposed, should be used to show the truth.
Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together.
The results will be just as certain as they are when the farmer breaks up a fallow field, and mellows it, and sows his grain. It will be so, if you will only begin in this way.
When a sinner repents, that state of mind makes it proper for God to forgive him.
Winning souls is converting men.
There is so little principle in the church, so little firmness and stability of purpose, that unless the religious feelings are awakened and kept excited, counter worldly feeling and excitement will prevail.
If you have much of the Spirit of God, it is not unlikely you will be thought deranged, by many. We judge men to be deranged when they act differently from what we think to be prudent and according to common sense.
Pray for ministers, that God would give them this wisdom to win souls.
If you mean to be meek under persecution, and exemplify the temper of the Saviour, and honor religion in this way, you need to be filled with the Spirit.
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