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"Five minutes after you die you'll know how you should have lived."

-Leonard Ravenhill

 

"In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being."

-Francois Fenelon

(On the meaning of self-denial) "To refuse what we know to be deadly poison, though agreeable to the taste"                                                       -John Wesley

"Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little in comparison with eternal realities."

-Robert Murray McCheyne

"I judge all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity."

-John Wesley

"If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead."

-William Law

They Say There Is A Young Lady

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world.  They say that He fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on Him.  If you present all the world to her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it.  She is unmindful of any pain or affliction.  She has a singular purity in her affections.  You could not persuade her to compromise her true Love even if you would give her all the world.  She possesses a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and kindness to those around her.  She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly.  She seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows exactly why.  She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have Someone invisible always conversing with her.

 -Written of Sara Edwards by Jonathan Edwards, her future husband

 For More... 

Set Apart Girl Magazine, Sept/Oct 2010

You Do Not Have Time...

“Suppose someone should offer me a plateful of crumbs

after I had eaten a T-bone steak.

I would say, ‘No, thank you. I am already satisfied.’

Christian, that is the secret -

you can be so filled with the things of Christ,

so enamored with the things of God

that you do not have time

for the sinful pleasures of the world.”

~Billy Graham

Almost all...

"Life is not long enough to live a half-hearted surrender." 
~Megan (journal entry before meeting her Maker)

"Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee."

 ~Frances Havergal

The Choice

"[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that."

"We are half-hearted creatures like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

~C.S. Lewis

An Incomprehensible Kind of Love

"Don't measure God's mind by your own. It would be a poor love that depended not on itself, but on the feelings of the person loved. A crying baby turns away from its mother...but she does not put it away till it stops crying. She holds it closer. For my part, in the worst mood I am ever in, when I don't feel I love God at all, I just look up to His love. I say to Him, 'Look at me. See what state I am in. Help me!' Ah! you would wonder how that makes peace. And the love comes of itself; sometimes so strong, it nearly breaks my heart."  ~George Macdonald

"You did not choose Me but I chose you" ~John 15:16

"A battered reed He will not break off, and a smoldering wick He will not put out"  ~Matthew 12:20

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." ~Romans 5:8

Our Lord is...

“He is too wise to be mistaken, too good to be unkind.”

~Dying testimony of Rev. Basil Woodd, 1831

A More Daring Faith

"His thoughts said, 'I wish that the sea might be made into dry land and the waters divide - then all would understand that Thou art leading me.'

His Father said, 'That crossing of the sea was the first and the easier obedience.  The crossing of the river later on asked for a more daring faith.  The way did not open in Jordan till the feet of the priests were dipped in the water.  But it did open then.  Rivers turn to roads, mountains become valleys, when He who is named the Remover of Hindrances goeth before.  Then no one can forbid.  No power can bar the way.'

But the son still wondered what he should do if he did not hear the Voice directing him, till he came to understand that, as he waited, his Father would work and would so shape the events of common life that they would become indications of His will.  He was also shown that they would be in accord with some word of Scripture which would be laid upon his heart.  This Scripture in the light of these events, and these events in the light of that Scripture, would work together under the hand of his Father, and point in the same direction.  And as he followed step by step the way would open before him.  Only he was warned to be careful that his eye be single.  He must be like David's soldiers, who were not of double heart.'"

Joshua 3:15-16, Isaiah 40:4, Matthew 6:22, 1 Chronicles 12:33

~ Amy Carmichael (from "His Thoughts Said...His Father Said...")