The widest thing in the universe is not space, it is the potential capacity of the human heart

You can blame circumstances, but backsliding always begins in the heart.

God dwells in the heart where praise is.

The neglected heart will soon be a heart overrun with worldly thoughts; the neglected life will soon become a moral chaos.

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.

Wise leaders should have known that the human heart cannot exist in a vacuum. If Christians are forbidden to enjoy the wine of the Spirit they will turn to the wine of the flesh....Christ died for our hearts and the Holy Spirit wants to come and satisfy them.

God desires and is pleased to communicate with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the souls of the redeemed men and women is the throbbing heart of the New Testament.

The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world's greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little besides ourselves.

Worship is to feel in the heart . . . it is an attitude and a state of mind. It is a sustained act, subject to varying degrees of intensity and perfection . . . Real worship is, among other things, a feeling about the Lord our God . . . It is in our hearts. And we must be willing to express it in an appropriate manner. If we love the Lord and are led by His Holy Spirit, our worship will always bring a delighted sense of admiring awe and a sincere humility on our part.

It requires a serious mind and a determined heart to pray past the ordinary into the unusual.

God’s voice speaking tenderly to our hearts today is the same voice that powerfully called creation into being.

Such words as amen, hallelujah, glory and others of like sacred association are repeated endlessly and meaninglessly in the apparent belief that they have in them some strange power for good. This can be no more than high-grade magic. It will pay us to search our own hearts thoroughly to discover just why we use these words.

It is astonishing, how many difficulties clear up without any effort when the inner life gets straightened out. If half the time we spend trying to fix up outward things were spent in getting our hearts right, we would be delighted with the result. Strange as it may seem, harmony within our hearts depends mostly upon our getting into harmony with God.

God is more concerned with the state of people's hearts than He is with the state of their feelings.

The Christian church was designed to make sinners sweat. I have always believed that, and I still believe it. The messages preached in our churches should make backslidden Christians sweat. And if I achieve that objective when I preach, I thank God with all of my heart, no matter what people think of me.

Most of us go through life praying a little, planning a little, jockeying for position, hoping but never being quite certain of anything, and always secretly afraid that we will miss the way. This is a tragic waste of truth and never gives rest to the heart.

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.

I am looking for the fellowship of the burning heart--for men and women of all generations everywhere who love the Savior until adoration becomes the music of their soul until they don't have to be fooled with and entertained and amused. Jesus Christ is everything, all-in-all.

When you focus on the eternal, victorious Son of God, you break the devil's heart and render him powerless.

Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. Believing, then, is directing the hearts' attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to 'behold the Lamb of God,' and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives.

Real faith invariably produces holiness of heart and righteousness of life.

The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ.

Whenever you see confusion, you can be sure that something is wrong. Disorder in the world implies that something is out of place. Usually, at the heart of all disorder you will find man in rebellion against God. It began in the Garden of Eden and continues to this day.

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.

The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof, and the worshiping heart needs none.

The heart that is constantly overflowing with gratitude will be safe from those attacks of resentfulness and gloom that bother so many persons.

The doctrine of the Trinity...is truth for the heart. The fact that it can not be satisfactorily explained, instead of being against it, is in its favor. Such a truth had to be revealed; no one could imagine it.

God will speak to the hearts of those who prepare themselves to hear; and conversely, those who do not so prepare themselves will hear nothing even though the Word of God is falling upon their outer ears every Sunday.

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 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.

We are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations, and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.

Hope is the music of the whole Bible, the heartbeat, the pulse and the atmosphere of the whole Bible.

Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.

If faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do.

The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the 'poor in spirit.'

Retire from the world each day to some private spot. Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them. Listen for the inward voice till you learn to recognize it.

Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.

The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness.

When the Spirit illuminates the heart, then a part of the man sees which never saw before; a part of him knows which never knew before, and that with a kind of knowing which the most acute thinker cannot imitate.

The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that there is no true faith present. To attempt the impossible God must give faith or there will be none, and He gives faith to the obedient heart only.

The love of Christ both wounds and heals, it fascinates and frightens, it kills and makes alive, it draws and repulses. There can be nothing more terrible or wonderful than to be stricken with love for Christ so deeply that the whole being goes out in a pained adoration of His person, an adoration that disturbs and disconcerts while it purges and satisfies and relaxes the deep inner heart.

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden?

Keep your heart with all diligence and God will take care of the universe.

The heart that knows God can find God anywhere.

What's closest to your heart is what you talk about, and if God is close to your heart, you'll talk about Him.

Jesus came not to condemn, but to reclaim.

If I am to wholly follow the Lord Jesus Christ, I must forsake everything that is contrary to Him.

Everything is wrong until Jesus sets it right.

The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.

The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. And He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who love has for thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men. And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures.