To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoiding all entanglements; lock it up safe in the coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket; safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
Selfishness
Floyd McClung
In the final analysis our great problem with holiness is not that our concepts of holiness are feeble, but that our hearts are rebellious. We are selfish, that’s our problem. And the fact that we often won’t admit our selfishness shows how deep the pride goes.
Oswald Chambers
Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way!
Amy Carmichael
If the praise of man elates me and his blame depresses me; if I cannot rest under misunderstanding without defending myself; if I love to be loved more than to love, to be served more than to serve, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
Geoff Thomas
“What’s in it for me?” man says about obeying God. In this context how selfish and sinful that question is. The living God has spoken, and that is enough. The Saviour who shed his blood to save us from hell has told us how we should live, and that is enough. The loving Holy Spirit who made us alive has moved holy men to speak a word to us, and that is enough. We obey God because that glorifies God and there is nothing more than that.
Horatius Bonar
When my body is pained, it is not wrong to wish for relief. When overtaken by sickness, it is not wrong to send for the physician. You may call this selfishness, which He who made us what we are, and who gave us these instincts, expects us to act upon; and in acting on which, we may count upon his blessing, not his rebuke. It is not wrong to dread hell, to desire heaven, to flee from torments, to long for blessedness, to shun condemnation, and to desire pardon.
George Macdonald
No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
Erwin Raphael McManus
Many of us, though, face a new poverty. We are not living on the streets, but we are stuck in a rut. We are in danger of gaining the whole world and losing our souls. What we have received from God has taken preeminence over the God who has received us. His gifts are for us to enjoy, but not for us to worship. If what He has given us now stands between us, we must once again lay it at His feet. No matter how rich we become, we must always remain poor. We must ensure that while we celebrate the goodness of God, we do not neglect the purpose of God.