We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time.
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If you have had no tension in your life, never been screwed up by problems, your mortality well within your own grasp, and someone tells you that God so loved you that He gave His Son to die for you, nothing but good manners will keep you from being amused.
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We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do.
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The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.
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We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us—it simply reveals what we are made of already.
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Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.
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Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.
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When it is a question of God's almighty Spirit, never say, I can't.
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Earnestness is not by any means everything; it is very often a subtle form of pious pride because it is obsessed with the method and not with the Master.
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