You can blame circumstances, but backsliding always begins in the heart.
I am looking for the fellowship of the burning heart--for men and women of all generations everywhere who love the Savior until adoration becomes the music of their soul until they don't have to be fooled with and entertained and amused. Jesus Christ is everything, all-in-all.
What's closest to your heart is what you talk about, and if God is close to your heart, you'll talk about Him.
The heart that knows God can find God anywhere.
When you focus on the eternal, victorious Son of God, you break the devil's heart and render him powerless.
God is more concerned with the state of people's hearts than He is with the state of their feelings.
Real faith invariably produces holiness of heart and righteousness of life.
Retire from the world each day to some private spot. Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them. Listen for the inward voice till you learn to recognize it.
God’s voice speaking tenderly to our hearts today is the same voice that powerfully called creation into being.
What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day... It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we actually trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one. Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us.
It is astonishing, how many difficulties clear up without any effort when the inner life gets straightened out. If half the time we spend trying to fix up outward things were spent in getting our hearts right, we would be delighted with the result. Strange as it may seem, harmony within our hearts depends mostly upon our getting into harmony with God.
Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God.
It requires a serious mind and a determined heart to pray past the ordinary into the unusual.
When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished in my prayer life. But when I stop getting eloquent and give God less theology and shut up and just gaze upward and wait for God to speak to my heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook and take notes on what God is saying to my heart.
The Christian woman should remember that she cannot buy true attractiveness; that radiance which really shines forth in beauty is of the heart and spirit and not of the body.
The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that there is no true faith present. To attempt the impossible God must give faith or there will be none, and He gives faith to the obedient heart only.
The heart that is constantly overflowing with gratitude will be safe from those attacks of resentfulness and gloom that bother so many persons.
God takes that which is nothing and makes something out of it. When you become a Christian, you cannot patch your Christianity onto your old life. You are to start over. Accept God's call as a promotion. Burn the old bridges and fix it so you cannot go back ; then serve God with all your heart.
God will speak to the hearts of those who prepare themselves to hear; and conversely, those who do not so prepare themselves will hear nothing even though the Word of God is falling upon their outer ears every Sunday.
Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. Believing, then, is directing the hearts' attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to 'behold the Lamb of God,' and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives.
The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world's greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little besides ourselves.
The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. No one can hinder him.
Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.
Faith is not merely a journey for the feet, but it is also a journey for the heart.
