Here’s how the spiritual economy of life works for believers: Obedience to God garners intimacy and nearness, divine blessing and favor. Always. And disobedience creates a sense of distance and loss, grief and regret. Always. Sometimes the consequences of caving to temptation are practical and tangible, changing your daily experience, drastically enough in certain cases to fundamentally affect the rest of your life. But no matter how immediately noticeable the cost, the ripple effects of sin always affect your connection with the Father.
Discipline
Leonard Ravenhill
No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.
Priscilla Shirer
Disciplined runners consistently clear their heads and focus fully on the journey ahead because their passion and zeal for the goal supersede the strain. The goal beckons them onward. Passion doesn’t negate weariness; it just resolves to press beyond it.
Dr Caroline Leaf
Multitasking is a persistent myth. Paying deep, focused attention to one task at a time is the correct way.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.”
Danny Silk
The everyday practice of knowing God, hearing Him and living in His Word is what chases fear away.
Ralph Erskine
Faith, without trouble or fighting, is a suspicious faith; for true faith is a fighting, wrestling faith.
Ed Stetzer
April 28, 2020
Nominal Christians are like marathon runners who signed up for the race, got their official number, and bought the fancy running gear—but never went out and did the actual training ahead of time. They can’t run the race because they have not prepared. They haven’t developed the habits of faith—like prayer, Bible study, and worship—that would transform them into true disciples. They are not part of a community that can sustain and inform their worldview. They have the T-shirt but not the ability to complete the race. So they run in vain.
Ed Stetzer
Dan Wilt
We may think we are habit-less, but we are not. Our daily habits are forming the deepest parts of who we are, forging us for hope or disappointment, health, or pain in years ahead.
Ophelia Adams
Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted; Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done; The work began when first your prayer was uttered, And God will finish what He has begun. Though years have passed since then, do not despair; His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.