Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16). Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God. It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ.
http://www.bonhoeffer.com/

Steven Furtick

  When you can’t change your circumstances, change your concentration. Peter walked on water until his concentration broke (Matthew 14:22-33). Once he took his eyes off Jesus and saw the wind and the waves, he began to sink. Likewise, if you concentrate on your circumstances, your soul will sink. But if you can concentrate on the Creator, fixing your eyes on Jesus and all that you have to be grateful for, you can rise above any situation.

George Hodges

He is a Christian who follows Christ, who measures all things by the standard of His approbation [official approval], who would not willingly say a word which he would not like to have Christ hear, nor do an act which he would not like to have Christ see. He is a Christian who tries to be the kind of neighbour Christ would be, and the kind of citizen Christ would be, and who asks himself in all the alternatives of his business life, and his social life, and his personal life, what would the Master do in this case? The best Christian is he who most reminds the people with whom he lives of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who never reminds anybody of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a Christian at all.

Jerry Bridges

As Christians, our identity is to be found in our relationship with Christ, not in our subjective and often negative life experiences in our life.

Glen Argan

If I have the eyes of faith, I will look for the action of the Holy Spirit in every event which stirs a positive or negative reaction in me. I will ask how God is trying to move my life through this event. Perhaps the event will stir me to gratitude, perhaps even to yearn for a fuller union with God in heaven. Or perhaps it will show me my own impatience, my own willingness to judge others, my cowardice, my own twisted love of material things. Here I will find a call to repent and to detach myself from the idolatry which gives rise to such behavior. Or perhaps, I will be surprised by my own generosity in a situation when I am often not so generous. Then, I may have some consolation in knowing that not all is lost, that the Spirit does move through me.
http://www.wcr.ab.ca/

C S Lewis

Early Christians survived because stopped their ears to the opinion of the Pagan society all around them.

C.S. Lewis

If we are content to go back and become humble plain men obeying tradition, well. If we are ready to climb and struggle on till we become sages ourselves, better still. But the man who will neither obey wisdom in others nor adventure for her/himself is fatal. A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death.  

Keenan Clark

Stop arguing with the saved and start preaching to the lost.

Francis Frangipane

Most Christians only engage in spiritual warfare with the hope of either relieving present distress or attaining a normal existence. However, the purpose of all aspects of spirituality, warfare included, is to bring us into the image of Christ. Nothing, not worship nor warfare, neither love nor deliverance is truly attainable if we miss the most singular objective of our faith, christlikeness.

Author Unknown

  Humility is a paradox. The moment you think you've finally found it, you've lost it. There has yet to be written a book titled, "Humility and How I Achieved It." And yet, God expects (and rewards) an attitude of servant-like humility in His followers.