William Barclay Quotes

When we accept Christ we enter into three new relationships: (1) We enter into a new relationship with God. The judge becomes the father; the distant becomes the near; strangeness becomes intimacy and fear becomes love. (2) We enter into a new relationship with our fellow men. Hatred becomes love; selfishness becomes service; and bitterness becomes forgiveness. (3) We enter into a new relationship with ourselves. Weakness becomes strength; frustration becomes achievement; and tension becomes peace.

There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.

One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement...It is easy to laugh at men's ideals; it is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word.

The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way.

Prayer is not flight, prayer is power. Prayer does not deliver a man from some terrible situation; prayer enables a man to face and to master the situation.

If we find ourselves becoming critical of other people we should stop examining them, and start examining ourselves.

More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.

Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.

The danger of prosperity is that it encourages a false independence.

A man can be so busy making a living that he forgets to make a life.

There is only one way to bring peace to the heart, joy to the mind, and beauty to the life; it is to accept and do the will of God.

Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.

There is no joy in the world like the joy of bringing one soul to Christ.

In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.

The word grace emphasizes at one and the same time the helpless poverty of man and the limitless kindness of God.

Christian freedom does not mean being free to do as we like; it means being free to do as we ought.

Pride is the ground in which all the other sins grow, and the parent from which all the other sins come.

It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.

I thank you for my friends, for those who understand me better than I understand myself. For those who know me at my worst, and still like me. For those who have forgiven me when I had no right to expect to be forgiven. Help me to be as true to my friends as I would wish them to be to me.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

Faith is not only commitment to the promises of Christ; it is also commitment to his demands.

True prayer is asking God what He wants.

For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him.

The best way to prepare for the coming of Christ is never to forget the presence of Christ.

Christianity does not think of man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of Him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It is not that man's will is crushed, but that man's heart is broken.