Inspirational Christian Quotes:

[One Bad Pig]

In response to a Christian affirming LGBTQIA++ apologizing for having rejected it in the past:

ABS.JPG

[Cow Poke]

If service is beneath you, leadership is beyond you.

[lee_merrill]

“He that would be like Christ must study him. We cannot make ourselves holy by merely trying to be so, any more than we can make ourselves believe and love by simple energy of endeavor. No force can effect this.”

“Men try to be holy, and they fail. They cannot by direct effort work themselves into holiness. They must gaze upon a holy object; and so be changed into its likeness ‘from glory to glory.’ “

“They must have a holy being for their bosom friend. Companionship with Jesus, like that of John, can alone make us to resemble either the disciple or the Master.” (Horatius Bonar)

[One Bad Pig]

Take no greater care, then, to correct your will and inner disposition. In this consists all the power of Christian piety. All witness without inwardness is nothing. Whatever is not inside the heart does not exist. In actual fact, virtue is not a virtue when it is not within the heart. Therefore, correct your heart and your will and you shall be good, and your outward deeds will be good, for the inward is the beginning of the outward. When evil is not in the heart, it will not appear outwardly. The hands will do no evil, the feet will not walk toward evil, the tongue and lips will not speak evil, the eyes will not look upon evil, and so on, when the will and the heart do not desire it.
And thus pure streams flow from a spring when the source itself is pure. Likewise, good works come forth from the heart when the heart is good; but there cannot be good works without a good heart, just as from a putrid, noisome spring nothing else can flow but putrid and noisome water. Therefore correct your heart and will and you shall be good. You shall be a true Christian. You shall be a new creature, for all good or evil is from the will and from the heart. When the heart and the world are good, then the whole man is good. A heart which is obedient and in conformity with the will of God is good; a heart which opposes and is contrary to the will of God is evil. Faith makes a well-intentioned heart. "Faith is the mother of a good will," says Saint Ambrose. Therefore, where there is no well-intentioned heart, there is also no faith. Take care, O Christian, to correct yourself within and to be good, and you shall truly be good. Otherwise, whatever you may do, you will be as always evil. Hence you see that faith renews a man. That is the root of good works. It is not possible to correct yourself rightly if you do not recognize the evil hidden in your heart and the calamities that proceed from it. An unrecognized disease remains untreated. The beginning of health is to know your disease and the beginning of blessedness is to know your misfortune and wretchedness. For who, having recognized his illness, does not seek healing, and who, knowing his misfortune, does not seek deliverance from it? Therefore recognize the evil that hides itself within you as a deadly poison, and you will hasten to be delivered from it. And the more you recognize it, the more zealously you will seek deliverance. The evil hidden in the human heart is conceit, self-will, envy, wrath, avarice impurity, and every abominable thing. From these things proceed all iniquity as a foul stream flows from a noisome spring Look often into your heart and little by little you’ll come to understand this.
An untreated disease threatens death, likewise this evil, when it remains uncorrected, threatens eternal death. From the recognition of this evil proceeds the recognition of your misfortune, and wretchedness. From the recognition of misfortune and wretchedness proceed the fear of eternity, humility, sighing, and the desire and zeal for deliverance from misfortune. "God gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6), which corrects and renews a man. So the man who knows himself begins to correct himself and gets progressively better. Know yourself then, and you shall correct yourself.
Temptations and trials show what hides in the heart of a man. Temptation is similar to the medicine called an emetic. An emetic reveals what is hidden in the stomach. So temptations and trials make manifest what is inside a man. The holy word of God and other Christian books point out the corruption of our nature, but we recognize it by actual experience or deed in temptations and trials.
Thus vainglory becomes apparent through the deprivation of glory, avarice through the deprivation of riches, envy through the success of one’s neighbor, and anger through disappointment. If then, you fall into various temptations, O Christian, this all happens by God's permission for your great benefit, that you may thereby know what is in your heart, and so knowing it you may correct yourself. Many flatter themselves, and consider themselves to be good, humble and meek, but they will discover the contrary under temptation . Do not become despondent in temptation, then, but give all the more thanks to God that he thus brings you to knowledge of yourself and wishes you to be corrected and be saved. (Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk)

[lee_merrill]

"Your faith has met unusual trials, and you ask for thoughts which may strengthen you. Your experience of life and of God's goodness is a far better teacher than any suggestions of a fellow being. The thought on which I delight to dwell, as I advance in life, is that God is within me--always present to my soul, to teach, to rebuke, to aid, to bless--that He truly desires my salvation from all inward evils, that He is ever ready to give His Spirit, that there is no part of my lot which may not carry me forward to perfection, and that outward things are of little or no moment, provided this great work of God goes on within. The body and the world vanish more and more, and the soul, the immortal principle, made to bear God's image, to partake of his truth, goodness, purity, and happiness, comes out of my consciousness more and more distinctly; and in feeling God's intimate presence with this, to enlighten, quicken, and save, I find strength, and hope, and peace." (William Channing)

[mossrose]

From today's message at Grace Community Church, regarding the persecution that IS coming to the church:

"It is more glorious for me to have Christ than to have anything that (the world) can take away".

-- Mike Riccardi

And, amen!

[lee_merrill]

To you who are seekers, to you, young and old who have toiled all night and caught nothing, but who want to launch out into the deeps and let down your nets, I want to speak, as simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can. For God can be found. There is a last Rock for your souls, a resting place of absolute peace and joy and power and radiance and security. There is a Divine Center into which your life can slip, a new and absolute orientation to God, a Center where you live with Him, and out from which you see all of life, through new and radiant vision, tinged with new sorrows and pangs, new joys unspeakable and full of glory.

- Thomas Kelly

[lee_merrill]

"So many Christians are disturbed, so many are restless, because they are not living in the knowledge that they are under the care of the Lord; and then there is no power to walk. Why have you so little power in walk or service? It is because you are not yet clear that the Lord is caring for you, that He is in all watchfulness over you, that He has let down the strong pinions of His protecting care till they sweep the ground around you, and if you are wise, you will creep up close under His wings, into the very down." (J.B. Stoney)

[Darfius]

"That no keeping [of the commandments] but a perfect one will satisfy God, I hold with all my heart and strength; but that there is none else he cares for, is one of the lies of the enemy. What father is not pleased with the first tottering attempt of his little one to walk? What father would be satisfied with anything but the manly step of the full-grown son?" - George MacDonald [whose picture is my avatar], Unspoken Sermons, The Way

In the preface to the book (entitled George MacDonald: An Anthology), C.S. Lewis wrote, “I have never concealed the fact that I regard him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”

[lee_merrill]

"To each of us there is something which seems simply impossible to get on top of. I know my special foe and all this week I have had to live looking off to Jesus."
- Amy Carmichael

[lee_merrill]

Our old self is crucified: Is put to death, as if on a cross. In this expression there is a personification of the corrupt propensities of our nature represented as 'our old self,' our native disposition, etc. The picture is here carried out; and this old self, this corrupt nature, is represented as having been put to death in an agonizing and torturing manner. The pains of crucifixion were perhaps the most torturing of any that the human frame could bear. Death in this manner was most lingering and distressing. And the apostle here, by the expression 'is crucified,' doubtless refers to the painful and protracted struggle which everyone goes through when his evil propensities are subdued; when his corrupt nature is slain; and when, a converted sinner, he gives himself up to God. Sin dies within him, and he becomes dead to the world, and to sin; 'for as by the cross, death is most lingering and severe, so that corrupt nature is not subdued but by anguish' (Grotius). All who have been born again can enter into this description. They remember 'the wormwood and the gall.' They remember the anguish of conviction; the struggle of corrupt passion for ascendancy; the dying convulsions of sin in the heart; the long and lingering conflict before it was subdued, and the soul became submissive to God. Nothing will better express this than the lingering agony of crucifixion; and the argument of the apostle is, that as sin has produced such an effect, and as the Christian is now free from its embrace and its power, he will live to God. (Barnes)

[lee_merrill]

"But how can we control our thoughts? No more than we could blot out our sins, or create a world. What then are we to do?"

"We must look to Christ. That is the true secret of self-control. He can keep us not only from the lodgement, but also from the suggestion of evil thoughts. In our own strength we could no more prevent the one than the other. He can prevent both. He can keep the vile intruders, not only from getting in, but even from knocking at the door. When His divine life is our source of life, when the current of spiritual thought and feeling is deep and rapid--when the heart's affections are intensely occupied with the Person of Christ, vain thoughts do not trouble us. It is only when spiritual indolence creeps over us that evil thoughts and their vile and horrible progeny come in upon us like a flood; and then our only resource is to look straight to Jesus."

"The more excellent way is, to be preserved from the suggestions of evil, by the power of preoccupation with good. When the channel of thought is decidedly upward, when it is deep and well formed, free from all curves and indentations, then the current of imagination and feeling, as it gushes up from the deep fountains of the soul, will naturally flow onward in the bed of that channel."

"This, I repeat, is unquestionably the more excellent way. May we prove it in our own experience. When the heart is fully engrossed with Christ, the living embodiment of 'all that is true, all that is noble, all that is just, all that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is admirable', we enjoy profound peace, unruffled by evil thoughts."

"This is true self-control."

- C.H. Mackintosh (adapted)

[Markus River]

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Matt 10:34-37 (KJV)

[rogue06]

Brennan Manning:

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

[rogue06]

Another from Spurgeon:

I wish that our ministry—that mine especially—might be tied and tethered to the cross. I would have no other subject to set before you but Jesus only.