Random Quotes & Articles to Provide Food for Thought
Love at first sight is easy to understand. It’s when two people have been looking at each other for years that it becomes a miracle. –Sam Levenson, You Don’t Have to Be in Who’s Who to Know What’s What.
It is surprising how much a few hours spent with the right person can change one’s thinking. One day it was my privilege to be the chauffeur for A. W. Tozer and to spend several hours with him. He had already influenced me deeply through his books and editorials. I had been impressed with his wide knowledge of the Christian classics, so when my opportunity came, I quizzed him about his reading habits and the books that had influenced him the most.
“Don’t ever read a good book,” he said, to my surprise. “You don’t have time. You will never read all of the best books. For goodness’ sake, don’t waste your time on a good one!” He spoke with an explosive conviction. “There is a difference between having read widely and having read well. I would much rather be well-read than widely read. That is why I often reread an old work rather than search for a new one. If it is a great book, it deserves more than one reading.”
Decades have passed since that conversation, yet the wisdom of that slight little man is still poignantly impressive to me. It is not possible to read even all the best books, and the number of books one can know with any thoroughness is hauntingly small. So each book that we choose is of great importance. The popular titles will come to have less of a hold on us, and some classics will beckon us to read them again and again. What matters is not the quantity of material that we read, but the truth we gain with understanding.
— This Day With the Master, Dennis F. Kinlaw, June 10
The word for strife in the original means a self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means. So it means a kind of self-promotion—the opposite of humility. Rivalry, someone who makes factions or parties—tries to gain followers for himself or his point of view. Paul says that this kind of thing should not be found in the church.
Humility is not thinking meanly of oneself, but rather it means not thinking of oneself at all. —Vance Havner
Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself. —C. H. Spurgeon
Humility is not simply feeling small and useless—like an inferiority complex. It is sensing how great and glorious God is, and seeing myself in that light. —Sinclair Ferguson
Humility is a most strange thing. The moment you think that you have acquired it is just the moment you have lost it. —Bernard Meltzer
All changes, successes, disappointments–all that is memorable in the annals of history, all the risings and falls of empires, all the turns in human life–take place according to God’s plan. In vain men contrive and combine to accomplish their own counsels. Unless they are parts of His counsel likewise, the efforts of their utmost strength and wisdom are crossed and reversed by the feeblest and most unthought-of circumstances. But when He has a work to accomplish and His time is come, however inadequate and weak that means He employs may seem to a carnal eye, the success is infallibly secured: for all things serve Him, and are in His hands as clay in the hands of the potter. Great and marvelous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints! –John Newton, 1787
What is there in all this world worth living for, but the presence and service of God? I feel a burning desire that all the world may know this God, and serve Him. –William Carey
Just think of God giving His Son to come and pass through all the temptations that come to you, that He might be able to sympathise, and then lifting Him up to the throne of omnipotence that He might be able to succour, and say if you have not reason to trust Him fully. He was made like to us in temptation, that we might become like Him in victory. –Andrew Murray in The Holiest of All
Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know that they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. –C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
Now remember that Christ’s demand of self-surrender, self-sacrifice, continuous effort, rigid limitation, does not come from any mere false asceticism, but is inevitable in the very nature of the case, and is made also by all worthy work. How much every one of us has had to shear off our lives, how many tastes we have had to allow to go ungratified, how many capacities undeveloped, in how many directions we have had to hedge up our way, and not do, or be this, that, or the other; if we have ever done anything in any direction worthy the doing! Concentration and voluntary limitation, in order to fix all powers on the supreme aim which judgment and conscience have enjoined is the condition of all excellence, of all sanity of living, and eminently of all Christian discipleship. –Alexander MacLaren
We can reach our world if we will. The greatest lack today is not people or funds. The greatest need is prayer. Without increasing the number of Christian workers or their financial support, we could see multiplied results if we would only multiply prayer. –Wesley Duewel in Touching the World Through Prayer