The Normal Christian Life

A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.

Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

I do not consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher. I consecrate myself to God to do His will where I am, be it in school, office, or kitchen, or wherever He may, in His wisdom, send me.

Man's thought is always of the punishment that will come to him if he sins. God's thought is always of the glory man will miss if he sins. God's purpose for redemption is glory, glory, glory.

Lord, I am willing to break MY heart that I might satisfy THY heart.

God will not give me humility, or patience, or holiness, or love as separate investments of His grace. He has given only one gift to meet our need, His Son Christ Jesus.

Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could shout with joy as I think, “The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within my heart!” I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person.

God does not blame me for being an individual, but for my individualism. His greatest problem is not the outward divisions and denominations that divide His church, but our own individualistic hearts.

It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust, then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real Christian life begins with knowing this.

Every true work is not done to the poor. Every true work is done to Me.

I must first have the sense of God's possession of me before I can have the sense of His presence with me.

If we throw ourselves open to God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas, locked and barred places in our hearts, where we think, with pride, that we are right.

The author nicely encapsulates Paul's overarching intent in his letter to Corinth, to impress upon those in the church infatuated with the gifts of the Spirit a greater awestruck awareness of His presence in and among them. The author then illustrates thusly: if we have but a few coins, we may carry them lightly with little concern as to whether we lose them. But if we are aware that we carry a great sum, we will carry it with great care. How much more the Treasure of the Holy Spirit within the earthen vessel of our bodies?

The author tells a story wherein a missionary friend of his was invited by unbelievers on a train ride to play cards. The friend declined, saying that he did not bring his hands with him. He explained to the astonished group that the hands attached to what they saw as his body belonged to the Lord, and he was thereby able to explain the Gospel.

There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His children. Therefore, we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make watertight compartments for the working out His Spirit, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We must leave God free to work as He wills and to leave what evidence He pleases of the work He does.

The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea more (Matt. 5:21–48). But what He requires from us, He Himself carries out in us. The Law makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but He Himself fulfills in us the very demands He makes.

We think in terms of apostolic journeys. God dares to put His greatest ambassadors in chains.

We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in in that particular.

It is so easy to become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver—and even, I should add, to the work of God than to God Himself.

They are trying to look within, to differentiate, to discriminate, to analyze, and in doing so are bringing themselves into deeper bondage. Now this is a situation which is really dangerous to Christian life, for inward knowledge will never be reached along the barren path of self-analysis.

The idea of waste only comes into our Christianity when we underestimate the worth of our Lord.

Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the blood is, but I know that the blood has satisfied Thee; so the blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea.

God must bring us to a point--I cannot tell you how it will be, but He will do it--where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves.

The vessel through which the Lord Jesus can reveal Himself in this generation is not the individual, but the body of Christ. True, “God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith” (12:3), but alone in isolation man can never fulfill God’s purpose. It requires a complete body of Christ to attain to the stature of Christ and to display His glory.

The author sees Joseph of Genesis as a type of Christ's Pentecostal power. He who was thought dead has been raised in power, and the power is evident in the chariot he sends for his own.

Every true spiritual experience means that we have discovered a certain fact in Christ and have entered into that. Anything that is not from Him in this way is an experience that is going to evaporate very soon.

We can never know either the hatefulness of sin or the treachery of our self-nature until there is that flash of God upon us. I speak not of a sensation but of an inward revelation of the Lord Himself through His Word. Such a breaking in of divine light does for us what doctrine alone can never do.

How many of us know that, because Christ is risen, we are therefore alive “unto God” and not unto ourselves? How many of us dare not use our time, or money, or talents as we would, because we realize they are the Lord’s, not ours? How many of us have such a strong sense that we belong to Another that we dare not squander a shilling of our money, or an hour of our time, or any of our mental or physical powers?