When the time comes to die, make sure that all you have to do is die!

There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.

Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?

He makes His ministers a flame of fire. Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things’.

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.

The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman.

Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself.

Does God ask us to do what is beneath us? This question will never trouble us again if we consider the Lord of heaven taking a towel and washing feet.

We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now.

God never withholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God’s refusals are always merciful- “severe mercies” at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.

Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship.

Spiritual strongholds begin with a thought. One thought becomes a consideration. A consideration develops into an attitude, which leads then to action. Action repeated becomes a habit, and a habit establishes a “power base for the enemy,” that is, a stronghold.

A man’s thoughts ‘dye’ his soul, (attributed to Marcus Aurelius)

Holiness has never been the driving force of the majority. It is, however, mandatory for anyone who wants to enter the kingdom.

The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive.

We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.

I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.

Self-pity is a death that has no resurrection, a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink.

Experience has taught me that the Shepherd is far more willing to show His sheep the path than the sheep are to follow. He is endlessly merciful, patient, tender, and loving. If we, His stupid and wayward sheep, really want to be led, we will without fail be led. Of that I am sure.