…a word in due season, how good it is! (Prov. 15:23 KJV)
“Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is.”
―
“The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an
ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the
fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate
world.
His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his
kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his
absorptions in the love of Christ; and because with his circle of friends
there are few who share his inner experiences, he’s forced to walk alone.
The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused
them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord himself suffered in
the same way.
The man (or woman) who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual
inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few
who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so
he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk.
For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is
avoided, and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for the
friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes
and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he, like Mary
of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find
human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere
else.”
A.W. Tozer
“Speak to the suffering, and you will never lack an audience. There is a broken heart in every crowd.”
– Joseph Parker
“When God wants to judge a nation,
He gives them wicked rulers.”
John Calvin
“Prayer requires more of the heart than of the tongue”
Adam Clarke
“No man can become a saint in his sleep”
Henry Drummond
“It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.”
– Helen Keller
“In the small seeds of plants lie hidden both bulk and branches, bud and fruit. In a few principles lie hidden all comfortable conclusions of holy truth. All these glorious fireworks of zeal and holiness in the saints had their beginning from a few sparks.”
– Richard Sibbes
“In nature everything moves in the direction of its hungers. In the spiritual world it is not otherwise. We gravitate toward our inward longing, provided of course that those longings are strong enough to move us. Impotent dreaming will not do. The religious urge that is not followed by a corresponding act of the will in the direction of that urge is a waste of emotion.”
AW Tozer
“Go, set a watchman,
let him declare what he seeth.”
Isaiah 21:6
“In vision the prophet is placed upon a lofty pile, and from that eminence he looks abroad upon the whole field of human action, and reports what passes under his own eyesight. A watchman is not a warrior. We must always notice the distribution of functions in spiritual and social life. Though the watchman is not a warrior, yet the warrior would be weaker did he lack the guidance of the watcher’s eyes. The watcher draws no sword, yet to him may the victory in no small degree be due. We need in the Church quiet, observant, contemplative men. Yet there must be a limit even to a watchman’s silence. The lifting of a finger may be enough in some instances, or the holding forth of an appointed signal. In other cases there must be a loud crying out, so that men may know that danger is imminent. The circumstances of each case will determine the watchman’s duty. The unfaithful watchman is a murderer. This doctrine applies to preachers, teachers, statesmen, patriots, and to all persons susceptible of deep conviction and charged with high responsibilities. Woe to the world when the watchmen are asleep or are selfishly silent.”
The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker