There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itselft the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross . . .
God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promises, leading us along the best and straightest paths to Himself . . .
The inactivity, or rather activity in unimportant things, is quite intolerable when one thinks of the brethren and of how precious time is . . .
Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God . . .
The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works . . .
It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others . . .
It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own . . .
One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons . . .
Doubt and reflection take the place of spontaneous obedience when we begin to withhold it from God . . .
The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. … We surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death—we give over our lives to death. … When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. …death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man [or nature] at his call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die…
Whoever I am, you know, O God, I am yours.”
