Category: following Jesus

Fifty of the best:

1. Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer
2. Take the words of Jesus and let them become the Supreme Court of the Gospel to you. –John G. Lake
3. Some wish to hear the word of God, others wish to receive it.–Anonymous
4. Understanding is the reward of obedience. Obedience is the key to every door. –George MacDonald
5. In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience. –Richard Foster
6. The level of our obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us. –Jerry Bridges
7. Many Christians have what we might call a “cultural holiness”. They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God. –Jerry Bridges
8. Holiness has never been the driving force of the majority. It is, however, mandatory for anyone who wants to enter the kingdom. –Elisabeth Elliot
9. The reason for not going out and sinning all you like is the same as the reason for not going out and putting your nose in a slicing machine: its dumb, stupid, and no fun. Some individual sins may have pleasure still attached to them because of the residual goodness of the realities they are abusing: adultery can indeed be pleasant and tying one on can amuse. But betrayal, jealousy, love grown cold, and the gray dawn of the morning after are nobody’s idea of a good time. –Robert Farrer Capon
10. Whatsoever one would understand what he hears must hasten to put into practice what he has heard. –Gregory the Great
11. I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible. –Teresa of Avila
12. Let this be thy whole endeavor, this thy prayer, this thy desire,–that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only. –Thomas à Kempis
13. No man has the mind of Christ, except him who makes it his business to obey him.—George MacDonald
14. One can believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and feel no personal loyalty to Him at all – indeed, pay no attention whatever to His commandments and His will for one’s life. –Catherine Marshall
15. I defy you to read the life of any saint that has ever adorned the life of the Church without seeing at once that the greatest characteristic in the life of that saint was discipline and order. Invariably it is the universal characteristic of all the outstanding men and women of God.—Unknown
16. Men do not decide their future. They decide their habits and their habits decide their future.—Unknown
17. Plant a word in the mind, and you will reap an act. Plant the act and you will reap a habit. Plant a habit and you will reap a character. Plant a character and you will reap a nature. Plant a nature and you will reap a destiny. –Unknown
18. The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.–Blaise Pascal
19. He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. –Jesus Christ
20. If Christ does not reign over the mundane events in our lives, He does not reign at all. –Paul Tripp
21. Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. –Abraham Joshua Heschel
22. The worship of the true God, and to dethrone all rivals to his authority. –Graham Kendrick
23. We must assess our thoughts and beliefs and reckon whether they are moving us closer to conformity to Christ or farther away from it. –John Ortberg
24. Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me? I said, I’m not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me? I said, I’ve never thought about that before! He said, When you’re not following me, you’re resisting me. —Bob Dylan
25. There is no peace in the border lands. The halfway Christian is a torment to himself and of no benefit to others. –Earnest Worker
26. The characteristic of holiness, which is the outcome of the indwelling of God, is blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s word and an amazing tenderness in personal dealings. –Oswald Chambers
27. Christianity does not consist in any partial amendment of our lives, any particular moral virtues, but in an entire change of our natural temper, a life wholly devoted to God. –William Law
28. Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other. –Matthew Henry
29. …Christ did not appoint professors, but followers. If Christianity … is not reduplicated in the life of the person expounding it, then he does not expound Christianity, for Christianity is a message about living and can only be expounded by being realized in men’s lives. —Soren Kierkegaard
30. A holy life has a voice. It speaks when the tongue is silent, and is either a constant attraction or a perpetual reproof. –Hinton
31. Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic. –Hosea Ballou
32. Sometimes we don’t need another chance to express how we feel or to ask someone to understand our situation. Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then lets see something to prove it. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer
33. No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him. –D.L.Moody
34. I surrendered unto Him all there was of me; everything! Then for the first time I realized what it meant to have real power. –Kathryn Kuhlman
35. I dare not say with Paul that I am the slave of Christ, but my highest aspiration and desire is to be the slave of Christ. –George MacDonald
36. Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice; everything is lost by failure to obey God’s call. –Henry P Liddon
37. Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but it screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honor and recognition. –Richard Foster
38. The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life. –John Ortberg
39. The Christian ideal has not been found tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried. — GK Chesterton
40. If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ? –Thomas à Kempis
41. There is no success without sacrifice. If you succeed without sacrifice it is because someone has suffered before you. If you sacrifice without success it is because someone will succeed after. –Rick Joyner
42. The Bible parable says that while men slept, the enemy sowed tares among the wheat. A boy who rises at 4:30 to deliver papers is considered a go-getter, but to urge our young people to rise at 5:30 to pray is considered fanaticism. We must once again wear the harness of discipline. There is no other way. –Leonard Ravenhill
43. To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. –Simone Weil
44. Knowing that we are fulfilling God’s purpose is the only thing that really gives rest to the restless human heart. –Chuck Colson
45. The invitation is not, “Give Me thine head.” The invitation is, “My Son, give Me thine heart.” –John G. Lake
46. At the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself–the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.–Oswald Chambers
47. Whatever God’s dream about man may be, it seems certain it cannot come true unless man cooperates. –Stella Terrill Mann
48. … I gave as an offering my all to Him Who had won me and saved me, my property, my fame, my health, my very words… In considering all these things, I preferred Christ. And the words of God were made sweet as honeycombs to me, and I cried after knowledge and lifted up my voice for wisdom. There was moreover the moderation of anger, the curbing of the tongue, the restraint of the eyes, the discipline of the belly, and the trampling under foot of the glory which clings to the earth. –Gregory of Nazianzus
49. Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by this voluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degrade himself as a man; rather he finds his right place of high honor as one made in the image of his Creator. His deep disgrace lay in his moral derangement, his unnatural usurpation of the place of God. His honor will be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting God over all, he finds his own highest honor upheld. –A.W Tozer
50. It is the Father’s life, and the Father’s life alone, that ever lives the Christian life. It is the Father’s life, and Father’s life alone, which will live the Christian life in you. Embrace a formula or a list in order to “live the Christian life,” and you are doomed to frustration. –Gene Edwards