From The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, by Hannah Whitall Smith
Christians are God’s witnesses necessarily, because the world will not read the Bible, but they will read our lives.
We are predestined to be ‘conformed to the image’ of God’s Son. This means, of course, not a likeness of bodily presence, but a likeness of character and nature. It means a similarity of thought, of feeling, of desire, of loves, of hates.
Our trials may be our chariots. We long for some victory over sin and self, and we ask God to grant it to us. His answer comes in the form of a trial which He means shall be the chariot to bear us to the longed-for triumph.
A great many Christians are slaves to the habit of doubting.
One of the most fatal things in the life of faith is discouragement. One of the most helpful is cheerfulness.
We may make out of each event in our lives either a Juggernaut car to crush us, or a chariot in which to ride to heights of victory.
It is the man that makes the action, not the action the man.
The redemption accomplished for us by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary is a redemption from the power of sin as well as from its guilt, and that He is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him.
As the will is the governing power in the man’s nature, if the will is set straight, all the rest of the nature must come into harmony.
Circumstances make men kings in the outward life, but in this hidden life men become kings over circumstances.
This blessed life must not be looked upon in any sense as an attainment but as an obtainment.
Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, according to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to God.
Service becomes perfect freedom, until the Christian is forced to exclaim, ‘This happy service! Who could dream earth had such liberty?’
Doubts are all from the devil, and are always untrue. And the only way to meet them is by a direct and emphatic denial.
If our religion is really our life, and not merely something extraneous tacked on to our life, it must necessarily go into everything in which we live.
God’s promise is, that He will work in us to will as well as to do of His good pleasure. This, of course, means that He will take possession of our will, and work it for us.
God’s works are perfect in every stage of their growth. Man’s works are never perfect until they are in every respect complete.
Let your souls lie down upon His sweet will, as your bodies lie down in your beds at night. Relax every strain and lay off every burden. Let yourselves go in perfect abandonment of ease and comfort, sure that when He holds you up you are perfectly safe.
Do not let there be a day nor an hour in which you are not intelligently doing His will, and following Him wholly. And this personal service to Him will give a halo to your life, and gild the most monotonous existence with a heavenly glow.
There are two things which are more utterly incompatible than even oil and water, and these two are trust and worry.
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