William Booth

While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!

Leslie Newbigin

Mission is not a burden laid upon the church; it is a gift and a promise to the church that is faithful. The command arises from the gift. Jesus reigns and all authority has been given to him in earth and heaven. When we understand that, we shall not need to be told to let it be known. Rather, we shall not be able to keep silent.

Martin Luther

Not only are we the freest of kings, we are also priests forever—which is far more excellent than being kings, for as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things.

Timothy Keller

We're all trying to cleanse ourselves, or to cover up our uncleanness by compensatory good deeds. But it will not work. The prophet Jeremiah puts this very vividly: "'Although you wash yourself with soda and use and abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,' declares the sovereign Lord" (Jeremiah 2:22). Outside-in cleansing cannot deal with the problem of the human heart.

Warren Wiersbe

Submission is not subjugation. Subjugation turns a person into a thing, destroys individuality, and removes all liberty. Submission makes a person become more of what God wants him to be; it brings out individuality; it gives him the freedom to accomplish all that God has for his life and ministry.

Thomas Kelly

[The} practice of inward orientation, of inward worship and listening, is no mere counsel for special religious groups, for small religious orders, for special "interior souls," for monks retired in cloisters. This practice is the heart of religion. It is the secret, I am persuaded, of the inner life of the Master in Galilee. He expects this secret to be freshly discovered in everyone who would be his follower. It creates an amazing fellowship, the church catholic and invisible, and institutes group living at a new level, a society grounded in reverence, history rooted in eternity, colonies of heaven.

The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere doctrine, belonging particularly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted or rejected as a mere belief. It is the living Center of Reference for all Christian souls and Christian groups.

Thomas A Kempis

Sometimes it is good for us to have troubles and hardships, for they often call us back to our own hearts. Once there, we know ourselves to be strangers in this world, and we know that we may not believe in anything that it has to offer. Sometimes it is good that we put up with people speaking against us, and sometimes it is good that we be thought bad and flawed, even when we do good things and have good intentions. Such troubles are often aids to humility, and they protect us from pride. Indeed, we are sometimes better at seeking God when people have nothing but bad things to say about us and when they refuse to give us credit for the things we have done! That being the case, we should so root ourselves in God that we do not need to look for comfort anywhere else.

Henri Nouwen

A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God.

The prophet Elijah did not encounter God in the mighty wind or in the earthquake or in the fire, but in the small voice (see 1 Kings 19:9-13). Through the practice of a spiritual discipline we become attentive to that small voice and willing to respond when we hear it.

John Calvin

We can easily se how restless people are who follow their own mind, how many tricks they try, and how they tire themselves in the efforts to obtain the objects of their ambition and avarice, and then again to avoid poverty and humility. If God-fearing people do not want to be caught in such snares, they must pursue another course: they should not hope, or desire, or even think about prosperity without God’s blessing.

John Chrysostom

Do you believe that Christ was raised from the dead? Believe the same of yourself. Just as his death is yours, so also is his resurrection; if you have shared in the one you shall share in the other. As of now the sin is done away with.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The hungry need bread and the homeless need a roof; the dispossessed need justice and the lonely need fellowship; the undisciplined need order and the slaves need freedom. To allow the hungry to remain hungry would be blasphemy against God and one’s neighbor, for what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one’s neighbor.

François Fénelon

But woe to those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and their world! They want and they do not want. They are torn by passion and remorse at the same time. They fear the judgments of God and those of others. They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting its sweet consolations. O, how wretched they are! Ah, if they had a little courage to despise the empty talk, the cold mockings, and the rash criticism of others, what peace they would enjoy in the bosom of God!

Charles Colson

The pursuit of doctrine for the sake of doctrine can be idolatrous. The gospel will not be demystified. God will not be mocked by the pretensions of those who believe they might fully and certainly know his mind. Was that, after all, not the sin of the Garden?

Brennan Manning

To ascertain where you really are with the Lord, recall what saddened you the past month. Was it the realization that you do not love Jesus enough? That you did not seek his face in prayer often enough? That you did not care for his people enough? Or did you get depressed over a lack of respect, criticism from an authority figure, your finances, a lack of friends, fears about the future, or your bulging waistline?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after one’s own. But the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of his character.

Eric Liddell

Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. Our broken lives are not lost or useless. God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love.

Desmond Tutu

There is nothing the government can do to me that will stop me from being involved in what I believe God wants me to do. I do not do it because I like doing it. I do it because I am under what I believe to be the influence of God’s hand. I cannot help it. When I see injustice, I cannot keep quiet, for, as Jeremiah says, when I try to keep quiet, God’s Word burns like a fire in my breast.
But what is it that they can ultimately do? The most awful thing that they can do is to kill me, and death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian.

Mother Pollard

My feets is tired but my soul is rested.

John Piper

If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the only cement that can hold this broken community together.When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.

Timothy Keller

On the cross we see God doing visibly and cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone, though on an infinitely greater scale.

Thomas Merton

Our Lord came to overcome death by love, and this work of love was a work of obedience to the Father unto death – a total gift of himself in order to overcome death. That is our job.

Hannah Whitall Smith

What have we to do with thinking whether we are fit or not for service? The Master-workman surely has a right to any tool He pleases for His own work, and it is plainly not the business of the tool to decide whether it is the right one to be used or not. He knows; and if He chooses to use us, of course we must be fit. And, in truth, if we only knew it, our chief fitness is our utter helplessness. His strength is made perfect, not in our strength, but in our weakness. Our strength is only a hindrance.

C. S. Lewis

The Christian way is different: harder and easier. Christ says, "Give me All. I don't so much of your time and so much of you money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked -- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours."

Catherine of Genoa

May this be our prayer: "I do not want to turn my eyes from you, O God. There I want them to stay and not move no matter what happens to me, within or without." For those who trust in God need not worry about themselves.

François Fénelon

Jesus Christ said to all Christians without exception, "let him who would be my disciple carry his cross, and follow me." The broad way leads to perdition. We must follow the narrow way which few enter. We must be born again, renounce ourselves, hate ourselves, become a child, be poor in spirit, weep to be comforted, and not be of the world which is cursed because of its scandals.

These truths frighten many people, and this is because they only know what religion exacts without knowing what it offers, and they ignore the spirit of love which makes everything easy. They do not know that it leads to the highest perfection by a feeling of peace and love which sweetens all the struggle.

Those who are wholly God's are always happy. They know by experience that the yoke of the Lord is "easy and light," that we find in him "rest for the soul," and that he comforts those who are weary and overburdened, as he himself has said.

Charles Spurgeon

It is God who quickens a soul which was dead, and it is God who maintains the life of that soul; God who nurtures and perfects that life in the Church. We ascribe nothing to ourselves and everything to God. We do not dare for a single moment to think that our conversion or our sanctification is effected by our own efforts or the efforts of another. True, there are means by which we are converted and sanctified, but they are entirely God's work.

Oswald Chambers

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us.

William Law

If we are to love our enemies, our daily life must demonstrate that love. If we are called to be thankful, to be wise, to be holy, they must show forth in our lives. If we are to be a new people in Christ, then we must show our newness to the world. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in the way we spend each day.

Richard Rolle

Love for God and Love for the world cannot coexist in the same soul: the stronger drives out the weaker, and it soon appears who loves the world, and who follows Christ. The strength of people's love is shown in what they do.