Our error today is that we do not expect a converted man to be a transformed man, and as a result of this error our churches are full of substandard Christians. A revival is among other things a return to the belief that real faith invariably produces holiness of heart and righteousness of life.

A Christian should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other. But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself.

A Christian should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other. But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself.

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.

In my creature impatience I am often caused to wish that there were some way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual life painlessly by short, easy lessons; but such wishes are vain. No shortcut exists. God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: The man who would know God must give time to Him.

Most Christians are satisfied living as common Christians, without an insatiable hunger for the deeper things of God.

It is doubtful we can be Christian in anything unless we are Christian in everything.

There are rare Christians whose very presence incites others to be better Christians. I want to be that rare Christian.

The essence of surrender is getting out of God's way so that He can do in us what He also wants to do through us.

To be entirely safe from the devil's snares the man of God must be completely obedient to the Word of the Lord. The driver on the highway is safe, not when he reads the signs but when he obeys them.

Problems patiently endured will work for our spiritual perfecting.

God loves you not because you are worthy, but because He is God and you are a fixture in His mind.

If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.

We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity. Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today.

Nothing should so occupy the mind of the Christian than discovering God each day.

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.

We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals...The tragic results of this spirit all all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies...the glorification of men, trust is religious externalities....salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such of these are the symptoms of an evil disease.

We must never edit God.

One thing the young Christian should be taught as quickly as possible after his conversion is that Jesus Christ is all he needs.

It is a high Christian privilege to pray for one another within each local church body and then for other believers throughout the world. As a Christian minister, I have no right to preach to people I have not prayed for. That is my strong conviction.

Many's very human habit of trusting in himself is generally the last great obstacle blocking his pathway to victory in Christian experience.

Most Christians would rather be happy than feel the wounds of other peoples' sorrows.

We modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct.

Honesty that can be trusted and respected is a very fragrant flower in the life of a Christian.

God doesn't work through us because we're flawless; rather, He works through us in spite of our imperfections.

It's time for us to rise up, get out of the rut and routine, and begin to take our Christian faith seriously.

God takes that which is nothing and makes something out of it. When you become a Christian, you cannot patch your Christianity onto your old life. You are to start over. Accept God's call as a promotion. Burn the old bridges and fix it so you cannot go back ; then serve God with all your heart.

Too often we are Christians by assumption, manipulation or instruction, rather than Christians by regeneration.

There is no limit to what God can do through us if we are a yielded and purified people.

As Christians, we are not to be people without feelings.

Christians aren't finished products. We're God's sons and daughters in process.

God's Kingdom isn't divided into areas of important people and areas of little people. In God's sight, everyone's needful.

The notion that the careless sinner is the smart fellow and the serious-minded Christian, though well-intentioned, is a stupid dolt altogether out of touch with life will not stand up under scrutiny. Sin is basically an act of moral folly, and the greater the folly the greater the fool.

No one will make progress with God until our eyes are lifted to the faithfulness of God and we stop looking at ourselves!

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.

If Jesus Christ isn't the central figure in our lives and in our churches, we're only fooling ourselves.

The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians.

The victorious Christian neither exalts nor downgrades himself. His interests have shifted from self to Christ.

Christian liberty is freedom from sin, not freedom to sin.

What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day... It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we actually trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one. Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us.

The poor quality of Christian that grows out of our modern evangelistic meeting may be accounted for by the absence of real repentance accompanying the initial spiritual experience of the converts. And the absence of repentance is the result of an inadequate view of sin and sinfulness held by those who present themselves in the inquiry room.

Genuine Christian experience must always include an encounter with God Himself.

I want to be a more serious-minded Christian, more detached from this world, more ready for heaven than I have ever been in my whole life. I want an ear that is sharp to know the voice of the enemy, whether it comes from religion, politics, or philosophy ... I would rather stand and have everybody my enemy than to go along with the crowd to destruction. Do you feel that way?

We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician's instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not disciplined?

Christians must understand most emphatically that the world around us is in conflict with the Word within us.

The Christian is a holy rebel loose in the world with access to the throne of God.

One compromise here, another there and soon enough the so-called Christian and the man in the world look the same.

The Christian woman should remember that she cannot buy true attractiveness; that radiance which really shines forth in beauty is of the heart and spirit and not of the body.

He (God) may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile, the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is.