We Christians should know that our unchristian conduct cannot be kept in our own back yard. The evil birds of sin fly far and influence many to their everlasting loss. The sin committed in the privacy of the home will have its effect in the assembly of the saints. The minister, the deacon, the teacher who yields to temptation in secret becomes a carrier of moral disease whether he knows it or not. The church will be worse because one member sins. The polluted stream flows out and on, growing wider and darker as it affects more and more persons day after day and year after year.
Compromise
John Bevere
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.
Dana Candler
The truth is that we were made to abandon ourselves, made to give all in love without compromise. Innate in our makeup is dissatisfaction with half-heartedness and a yearning to love and be loved to the uttermost. It is the highest way to live, the most pleasurable and freeing existence for the human heart. The frustration we experience in apathy and the discontent we face in partiality it’s not something within us gone awry but rather a cry lifting its voice that is holy and God-given. We were created with this groan for wholeheartedness because God himself is wholehearted.
Reinhard Bonkke
Teachings on faith have become like coat after coat of varnish on old master paintings, darkening their color. We have been swindled by theologies and theories from the simplicity which is in Christ. They have pushed faith out of reach, as something remote, a rare mystery granted only by the sovereign will of God. Yes, God does give faith. Faith is the gift of God. But it is God’s gift to everybody, for every child sitting at His table. “God has dealt to every man the measure of faith”. We can choose to use it or not. Ephesians 2:8 declares “Ye are saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God”. Misreading this verse some people wait for faith to come, or say “I am not a faith person, I don’t have that gift”. Faith IS the gift of God, and so is sight and hearing and every faculty. They are powers we all possess and use, and faith is a similar faculty. So, “fear not, only believe.”
Earnest Worker
Donald Bitsberger
Bill Johnson
Clint Pascal
You can be a “Thermometer” Christian or a “Thermostat” Christian. The thermometer registers and reflects the spiritual status around it – in other words, “He’s not acting holy, so I’m not going to”. But the thermostat sets the temperature for the spiritual status around it. Thermostats walk into a room and go, “It’s a little cold in here, Lord – let’s heat it up.” Thermostats are change agents and affect others around them. Don’t go with the flow – be a thermostat.
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.