Strength & Perseverance
The greatest enemy to man is himself; and the greatest judgment in this life is to be left to himself.
The cause of the weakness of your Christian life is that you want to work it out partly, and to let God help you. And that cannot be. You must come to be utterly helpless, to let God work, and God will work gloriously.
The will rules the whole heart and life; if I really will to have anything that is within my reach, I do not rest till I have it.
The very moment we desert our post, the enemy rushes in.
So then, let’s not sleep, as the rest do, but let’s watch and be sober.
Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
Here was a man of like passions with ourselves. He might have had as much greatness as earth can well give. Rank, power, place, honour, titles, dignities—all were before him, and within his grasp. These are the things for which many men are continually struggling.
For I said with myself, ‘Be it done now, be it done now.’
Our victory does not consist in being insensible to them, but in not consenting to them.
The strength of a man is in proportion to the feelings which he curbs and subdues, and not which subdue him.
Practise it universally, on every one of the thousand occasions which will occur in all circumstances of life! Practise it daily, without intermission.
When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head.
It is just because there is so much of that self-life in us that the power of God cannot work in us as mightily as God is willing that it should work.
He cannot, at one and the same time, follow his own will, and follow the will of God: He must choose the one or the other.
We owe the devil no such service.
It may be nobler to suffer God’s will than to do it, perhaps it is. But there is nothing noble in resignation of this sort—this resignation under protest as it were.
For God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
To deny ourselves, is, to deny our own will, where it does not fall in with the will of God; and that however pleasing it may be.
Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man.
Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
Mortification itself, when once practised, is the greatest pleasure in the world.
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