One cannot save and then pitchfork souls into heaven…Souls are more or less securely fastened to bodies…and as you cannot get the souls out and deal with them separately, you have to take them both together.
Discipleship
Henri J. M. Nouwen
If you are seriously interested in the spiritual life, finding a spiritual director is no problem. Many are standing around waiting to be asked. However, sometimes we don’t really want to get rid of our loneliness. There is something in us that wants to do it by ourselves. I constantly see this in my own life. A spiritual director is not a great guru who has it all together; it’s just someone who shares his or her sinful struggles, and by doing so, reveals there is a Presence who is forgiving.
Dixon D. E. Hoste
Should it not be recognized that the practice of prayer and intercession needs to be taught to young believers, or rather developed in young believers, quite as much, if not more so than other branches of the curriculum? Unless, however, we ourselves are, through constant persevering practice, truly alive unto God in this holy warfare, we shall be ineffective in influencing others. I am quite sure the rule holds that the more we pray the more we want to pray; the converse also being true.
Billy Graham
God does not discipline us to subdue us, but to condition us for a life of usefulness and blessedness.
James O. Abrahamson
We take a convert and immediately make a worker out of that person. God never meant it to be so. God meant that a convert should learn to be a worshiper, and after that he or she can learn to be a worker. The work done by a worshiper will have eternity in it.
Thomas Merton
The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.
John Wimber
Jesus used a show, tell, deploy, and supervise method of training. After calling the disciples he took them along with him, teaching and healing the sick as he went. Then, after he thought the disciples had seen and learned enough to try for themselves, he then commissioned, empowered, instructed, and sent them out to do the same things.