Quotes from Jerry Rankin

Satan doesn't have to create religious opposition and government restrictions to inhibit the kingdom of God from being established among all peoples. If he can just get us to live like the world, indulge the flesh and treat sinful behavior as normative, he has deprived God of His glory and diminished the potential of others receiving the gospel.

Lord, help me resist the inclination to rely upon my own wisdom and strength which makes me vulnerable to temptation. Help me avoid fleeing responsibility and neglecting to run to You for refuge. My natural instincts would lead me to a position in which the enemy would defeat me, but You are my righteousness. I seek You and long to see Your face.

It is not only the far too prominent moral failures among Christians that bring shame to God and deprive Him of being glorified in our lives but simply the lack of Spirit-led submission to one another. Our independent, self-centered attitudes create dissension that paralyzes the work of God and makes us no different from the world.

We tend to think of blessings as providing comfort, well-being, and joy in having what we want in life. Blessing is seen as the opposite of suffering, but to the contrary, anything that draws us closer to God is a blessing.

God cannot entrust His power to someone who doesn't want it enough to be willing to deny self and embrace suffering and sacrifice.

We often feel that passion to know Christ in all of His fullness and to experience the power of the resurrected life but stop short of embracing His sufferings. But you can't have one without the other.

You may not feel that the flesh is dead; it may not seem evident as you deal with temptation and ungodly thoughts that obviously come from that old fleshly nature of sin, but the Bible is saying, "Consider the flesh as being dead—think of it in this way—because that's the way it is!" Reconcile your perception of the flesh with the truth of what God has said about it.

It is not enough to do good things and live a righteous life. God expects us to have pure motives and a sincere heart.