What are you afraid of? Let God act. Abandon yourself to Him. You will suffer, but you will suffer with love, peace and consolation. You will fight, but you can carry off the victory, and God Himself, after having fought with you, will crown you with His own hand. You will weep, but your tears will be sweet, and God Himself will come with satisfaction to dry them. You will not be free any longer to give yourself up to your tyrannic passions, but you will sacrifice your liberty freely, and you will enter into a new liberty unknown to the world, in which you will do nothing except for love.
Obedience
Elisabeth Elliot
Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person’s seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.
Watchman Nee
Satan has in fact a plan against the saints of the Most High which is to wear them out. What is meant by this phrase, “wear out”? It has in it the idea of reducing a little this minute, then reducing a little further the next minute. Reduce a little today, reduce a little tomorrow. Thus the wearing out is almost imperceptible; nevertheless, it is a reducing. The wearing down is scarcely an activity of which one is conscious, yet the end result is that there is nothing left. He will take away your prayer life little by little, and cause you to trust God less and less and yourself more and more, a little at a time. He will make you feel somewhat cleverer than before. Step by step, you are misled to rely more on your own gift, and step by step your heart is enticed away from the Lord. Now, were Satan to strike the children of God with great force at one time, they would know exactly how to resist the enemy since they would immediately recognize his work. He uses the method of gradualism to wear down the people of God.
Elizabeth Rice Handford
Look at it this way. If you choose which commands you will obey and which you don’t obey, you aren’t obeying at all. You are doing all the time what you decided to do.
David Platt
What if Christ’s call in our lives is not to find comfort in our culture? What if Christ in us actually compels us to counter our culture?
Reinhard Bonnke
God says, “Do not plan with that which is in your pocket, but with that which is in my pocket.”
Garris Elkins
God will fulfill His ultimate plan, even when we respond in unbelief. When the children of Israel received a word about a Promised Land, it was their disbelief that moved the finish line of fulfillment 40 years into the future. Unbelief caused the people to take a longer path toward the fulfillment of God’s promise. A generation of unbelief needed to die off so that a new generation of faith could rise. Be encouraged when you recognize your unbelief. Sight is the beginning of healing. If you discovered you have been riding the back of the elephant of disbelief, dismount and call it what it is. You will influence others who are watching your renewed stance of faith. They, in turn, will have the courage to join their faith with yours, and together you will see the glory of God.
A W Tozer
The presence and the manifestation of the presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His presence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.
Harold Eberle
Abraham was not being blindly obedient. The most obvious message of the Abrahamic story is that he knew God. Abraham had walked with God for many years. Before preparing his son Isaac for the sacrifice, Abraham confidently stated, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering….” (Gen. 22:8). Abraham knew that God would intervene. He knew that God would somehow provide a sacrifice or even raise Isaac from the dead if necessary. Therefore, he was not taking a blind leap of faith. Abraham was acting based on his knowledge of God.
Christine Caine
Life as a follower of Jesus it’s an adventure of faith, and the fuel to keep you going is passion – and unapologetic willingness plus enthusiasm to do what God has called you to do and be who he has called you to be.