From Lectures on Revivals of Religion, by Charles G. Finney
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.
Pray for ministers, that God would give them this wisdom to win souls.
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.
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.
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 minister must preach just as he would talk, if he wishes to be fully understood.
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.
God does not trifle with his children. He does not go and excite in them a desire for one blessing, to turn them off with something else.
It is therefore impossible it should take place without his agency, for it consists in his acting right.
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.
A revival of religion is the renewal of the first love of Christians, resulting in the awakening and conversion of sinners to God.
Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together.
The conversion of a sinner consists in his obeying the truth.
Confess and forsake your sins. God will never lead you as one of his hidden ones, and let you into his secrets, unless you confess and forsake your sins. Not be always confessing and never forsake, but confess and forsake too.
Truth by itself will do nothing but harden men in impenitence.
Religion is obedience to God, the voluntary submission of the soul to the will of 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 is the food for the mind—it is what gives the mind strength.
You must not only recall them to mind, but you must actually renounce them, and leave them off.
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