Quotes About Spirituality

The God of Scripture can only be known by those to whom He makes Himself known

Mental tranquility and physical health are coveted, not the approbation of the Lord.

But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4).

Charnock said, "Water and fire may as well kiss each other, and live together without quarreling and hissing, as the holy will of God and the unregenerate heart of a fallen creature.

Hence, as John Owen said: Sin's proper formal object is God It hath, as it were, that command from Satan which the Assyrians had from their king: "fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel," that sin sets itself against. There lies the secret, the formal reason of all opposition to good, even because it relates unto God.... The law of sin makes not opposition to any duty, but to God in every duty.

It is not simply that God "loves," but that He is Love itself.

Just as a blind man may, through labor and diligence, acquire an accurate theoretical or notional conception of many subjects and objects which he never saw, so the natural man may, by religious education and personal effort, obtain a sound doctrinal knowledge of the person and work of Christ, without having any spiritual or vital acquaintance with Him.

True happiness consists only in the enjoyment of God.

There must be a true delight in the purity which the law inculcates, for this is the only effectual preparation for obedience. So long as the law of God utters its voice to us from without only, so long as there is no sympathy in the soul with its demands, so long as the heart is alienated from its spirituality, there can be no obedience. worthy of the name.

God is only truly known in the soul as we yield ourselves to Him, submit to His authority, and regulate all the details of our lives by His holy precepts and commandments. "Then

All by nature are essentially evil, nothing but "flesh"; everything in us is contrary to holiness.

If I preach the law to the unsaved, showing its spirituality and the breadth of its requirements, pressing upon them the justice of its demands, proving they are under its righteous condemnation, and all of this with the object of driving them out of themselves to Christ, then I make a right and legitimate service of the law. I "use it lawfully" (1 Tim. 1:8) and do not pit it against the gospel.

Charnock said, there is "not a moment of a man's life wherein our hereditary corruption doth not belch its froth.

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). As John Gill said, "The design of the apostle in this and some following verses, is to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to set forth the sad estate and condemnation of man by nature, and to magnify the riches of the grace of God, and represent the exceeding greatness of His power by conversion.

Prayer is not appointed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but is designed as a confession to Him of our sense of need.

I have learned how blessed to my own soul is communion with Him, but who would have supposed that my communion was blessed to Christ! Yet it is. For this He still "thirsts." Grace enables us to offer that which refreshes Him.

Even in Christendom the average churchgoer is fully satisfied if he learns by rote a few of the elementary principles of religion. By so doing he comforts himself that he is not an infidel, and since he believes there is a God (though it may be one which his own imagination has devised) he prides himself that he is far from being an atheist. Yet as to having any living, spiritual, influential and practical knowledge of the Lord and His ways he is a stranger, altogether unenlightened.

We heartily agree with Charnock: "In that one word love, God hath wrapped up all the devotion He requires of us.

The prickings of an uneasy conscience are not the same as the conviction of sin which is produced by the Holy Spirit.

If you have been brought low through personal defeat; if there is a call in your soul to a deeper purifying, to a renewed consecration; if there is the challenge of some new task for which you feel ill-equipped—then it is time to inquire of God whether He would not have you separate yourself unto Him in fasting.

When we fast, how long we fast, the nature of the fast and the spiritual objectives we have before us are all God's choice, to which the obedient disciple gladly responds.

The cross must work in us if the life is to be centered in God. Only so can our spiritual motivation be radically altered and become Christward instead of selfward. "He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him" (2 Cor. 5:15, RV).

God reminds His people that the acceptable fast is the one which He has chosen. Fasting, like prayer, must be God-initiated and God-ordained if it is to be effective.

Then there will be times when we shall forget the matter of our personal gain, when we shall be caught up in wonder, love and praise, as we fast unto God.