Quotes About Obedience

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

but they knew, either instinctively or from experience, that our impulsive emotions have but little influence over the course of our actions and the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile.

but they knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile.

She cursed her will, which could rear so impetuously and leap over hurdles so dauntlessly when her desires strove toward impossible goals—her will, so weak, so pliant, so broken not only when she was forced to disobey her desires, but also when she was driven by some other emotion.

Commands are no constraints.

For indeed none can love freedom heartily, but good men: the rest love not freedom, but license: which never hath more scope, or more indulgence than under tyrants...consequently neither do bad men hate tyrants, but have always been readiest with falsified names of Loyalty and Obedience to color over their base compliance.

Frei ist, wer der Vernunft gehorcht.

But of the tree whose operation brings Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith, Amid the garden by the tree of life, Remember what I warn thee. Shun to taste. And shun the bitter consequence. For know, The day thou eatest thereof, my sole command Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die, From that day mortal; and this happy state Shalt lose, expelled from hence into a world Of woe and sorrow.

One fatal tree there stands of knowledge call'd Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be sin to know? Can it be death? And do they only stand By ignorance? Is that their happy state, The proof of their obedience and their faith?

God doth not need either man's work or his own gifts, who best bear his milde yoak, they serve his best, his State is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed and post o're Land and Ocean without rest: they also serve who only stand and waite.

When God calls people to do something, their initial response is almost always fear. If there is a challenge in front of you, a course of action that could cause you to grow and that would be helpful to people around you, but you find yourself scared about it, there's a real good chance that God is in that challenge.

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

A believer] is oftentimes at the very brink, at the very door of some folly or iniquity, when God puts in by the efficacy of actually assisting grace, and recovers them to an obediential frame of heart again. And this is a peculiar work of Christ, wherein he manifests and exerts his faithfulness toward his own: 'He is able to succor them that are tempted' (Heb. 2:18)....Here lies a great part of the care and faithfulness of Christ toward his poor saints.

The intendment of all gospel revelation is, not to unveil God's essential glory, that we should see him as he is, but merely to declare so much of him as he knows sufficient to be a bottom of our faith, love, obedience, and coming to him

testify by what means he would subdue the souls and consciences of men unto the obedience of Christ and the gospel, and by what means he would maintain his kingdom in the world. Now, this was not by force and might, by external power or armies, but by the preaching of the word, whereof the tongue is the only instrument. And the outward sign of this gift, in tongues of fire, evidenced the light and efficacy wherewith the Holy Ghost designed to accompany the dispensation of the gospel.

for Owen, circumstances—whether amiable or painful—were not an excuse to stop resisting sin.

What gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do.

To walk in the Spirit is to walk in obedience unto God, according to the supplies of grace which the Holy Ghost administers unto us; for so it is added, that "we shall not then fulfil the lusts of the flesh,"—that is, we shall be kept up unto holy obedience and the avoidance of sin.

Were any of us asked seriously, what it is that troubles us, we must refer it to one of these heads:— either we want strength or power, vigour and life, in our obedience, in our walking with God; or we want peace, comfort, and consolation therein. Whatever it is that may befall a believer that doth not belong to one of these two heads, doth not deserve to be mentioned in the days of our complaints. Now

Every approach unto God by ardent love and delight is transfiguring. And it acts itself continually by,—(1.) Contemplation; (2.) Admiration; and, (3.) Delight in obedience.

He that doth not understand, who is not sensible, that an apprehension by faith of God's electing love in Christ hath a natural, immediate, powerful influence, upon the souls of believers, unto the love of God and holy obedience, is utterly unacquainted with the nature of faith, and its whole work and actings towards God in the hearts of them that believe.

But God himself hath plainly declared what are the qualifications of those souls which are meet to be made partakers of divine teachings, or ever shall be so; and these are, as they are frequently expressed, meekness, humility, godly fear, reverence, submission of soul and conscience unto the authority of God, with a resolution and readiness for and unto all that obedience which he requireth of us, especially that which is internal in the hidden man of the heart.

And whereas holiness may be reduced unto two heads,—1. The renovation of the image of God in us; 2. Universal actual obedience,—they are the sum of the preceptive part of the gospel, Eph. iv. 22–24; Tit. ii. 11, 12.