Conversion Not Victims...

Every one must study his own nature. Some of you can sustain life with less food than others can, and therefore I desire that he who needs more nourishment shall not be obliged to equal others, but that every one shall give his body what it needs for being an efficient servant of the soul. For as we are obliged to be on our guard against superfluous food which injures body and soul alike, thus we must be on the watch against immoderate fasting, and this the more, because the Lord wants conversion and not victims.

~ Francis of Assisi

Power of the Blood

"We must know the power of the Blood if we are to know the power of God. Our knowing experimentally the power of the Word, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the power of prayer is dependant upon our knowing the power of the Blood of Christ."

~ R. A. Torrey

A Cross Not a Crown

"God led Jesus to a cross, not a crown, and yet that cross ultimately proved to be the gateway to freedom and forgiveness for every sinner in the world. God also asks us as Jesus' followers to carry a cross. Paradoxically, in carrying that cross, we find liberty and joy and fulfillment."

~ Bill Hybels

The Cross Bears...

"From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross."

~ Sadhu Sundar Singh

Where is Your Faith?

"It seems we are tempted to put our faith in a host of things other than work of Christ on the cross. Some have even placed faith in faith itself, or in a search for fulfillment or even in a worship style or philosophy."

~ Chip Stam

Let Your Love Grow

Instead of allowing yourself to be unhappy, just let your love grow as God wants it to grow. Seek goodness in others. Love more persons more... love them more impersonally, more unselfishly, without thought of return. The return, never fear, will take care of itself.

~ Henry Drummond

Loving Others through Prayer

I found this quote at Tiffany's blog.

"If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others."

~ Richard Foster, quoted from Prayer

Truly Love

If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer: Intercession is a way of loving others.

~ Richard J. Foster

Love and Obedience

The Christian life consists of two words, "love" and "obedience."

John R. Clemens

Moderate Love?

Faith tolerates a moderate love of ones fellow man no more than it tolerates a moderate love between God and man.

~ John McKenzie

Open Your Heart

Open your hearts to the love God instills... God loves you tenderly. What He gives you is not to be kept under lock and key but to be shared.

~ Mother Teresa

Our merriment must be ...

Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

~ C. S. Lewis

God's Grace

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.

~ Anonymous

Character is...

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture of the blending notes of music which constitute the man.

~ J. R. Macduff

It's within your power...

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

~ Samuel Johnson

Choose Kindness

I choose kindness... I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me.

~ Max Lucado

Love

Not all of passion is love and not all of love is passion.

~ Ed Cole

Love is...

Love is an act of endless forgiveness.

~ Jean Vanier

Unlovables

Faith is believing He, the miracle worker, can turn my stone-cold indifference into a fire of love toward certain "unlovables".

~ Pamela Reeve

Faith is not a feeling.

Faith is not a feeling. It is not even the feeling that something is going to happen in answer to our prayers . Faith may be easier to exercise when such feelings are present. Nevertheless, feelings of that sort never constitute faith. Faith is a response on our part, the obedient response of our wills to who God is and what He says.

~ John White

God is God

God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will, a will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.

~ Elisabeth Elliot

Have courage...

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

~ Victor Hugo

Hope's Daughters

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

~ Augustine

Hope

The best we can hope for in this life is a knothole peek at the shining realities ahead. Yet a glimpse is enough. It's enough to convince our hearts that whatever sufferings and sorrows currently assail us aren't worthy of comparison to that which waits over the horizon.

~ Joni Eareckson Tada

Nothing is Hopeless When...

When you say that a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.

~ Charles L. Allen

The Cost

"It costs to be faithful. It cost Abraham the yielding up of his only son. It cost Esther to risk her own life. It cost Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being put into a fiery furnace. It cost Stephen death by stoning. It cost Paul his life. Does it cost you anything to be faithful to your Lord and King?"

~ Anonymous

He Sustains

"Often times God demonstrates His faithfulness in adversity by providing for us what we need to survive. He does not change our painful circumstances. He sustains us through them."

~ Charles Stanley

Are you rich?

Rich is the person who has a praying friend.

~ Janice Hughes

Unity is necessary...

Unity is necessary to the outpouring of the Spirit of God. If you have 120 volts of electricity coming into your house but you have broken wiring, you may turn on the switch, but nothing works - no lights come on, the stove doesn't warm, the radio doesn't turn on. Why? Because you have broken wiring. The power is ready to do its work..., but where there is broken wiring, there is no power. Unity is necessary among the children of God if we are going to know the flow of power...to see God do His wonders.

~ A. W. Tozer

A faint beginning

If I do not look with eyes of hope on all in whom there is even a faint beginning, as our Lord did when, just after His disciples has wrangled about which of them should be accounted the greatest, He softened His rebuke with those heart-melting words, "Ye are they which continue with Me in my temptations," then I know nothing of Calvary love.

~ Amy Carmichael

Persuaded by...

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

~ Blaise Pascal