Christian Advance Quotes

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 “Consume my heart with the burning fire with which Yours is aflamed. Pour down on my soul those graces which flow from Your love. Let my heart be united with Yours. Let my will be conformed to Yours in all things. May Your Will be the rule of all my desires and actions.” 

 “Christianity is not a collection of truths to be believed, of laws to be obeyed. Christianity is a person, one who loved us so much, one who calls for our love. Christianity is Christ.” 

 “Those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end.” 

 “What Paul understands by holiness or sanctification (is) the learning in the present of the habits which anticipate the ultimate future.” 

 “The greatest gift a church can receive is to have a group of families who take their responsibilities with such Christian seriousness that they are willing to completely alter their lifestyle to raise up disciples for Jesus Christ.” 

"The characteristic of holiness, which is the outcome of the indwelling of God, is blazing truthfulness with regard to God's word and an amazing tenderness in personal dealings."

"Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means!"

Romans 6:1-2

"He thought prayer to be more his business than anything else, and I have seen him come out of his closet with a serenity of face next to shining."

(written of John Wesley

"Wherever Christians make worldly customs and tainted literature their element, soul-hunger for purity is sure to die out.  A candle cannot burn in the foul air that settles in old wells and cisterns. No more can a flame of holy love exist in an atmosphere of un-Christian habits though not grossly wicked." 

 “even the most impressive and sacrificial actions are worthless if they are not empowered by love.” 

 "We have suffered from the preaching of cheap grace. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. People will take anything that is free, but they are not interested in discipleship. They will take Christ as Savior but not as Lord."

 "No matter how high the powers of reason, no matter how deep the intellect, no one can discover God's secret messages without paying the cost of true discipleship."

"Live to be forgotten, so Christ can be remembered."

"I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Galatians 2:20

"Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes.  All my own desires and hopes and accept Your will for my life.  I give myself, my life, my all, utterly to You to be Yours forever.  Fill me and seal me with Your Holy Spirit.  Use me as You will, send me where you will, work out Your whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.  To me to live is Christ.  Amen."

"Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship.  An abstract Christology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge on the subject of grace or on the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous."

"Christ is either Lord of all, or is no Lord at all."

"It is not enough to do God's work; it must be done in His way and for His credit."

“Therefore, if anyone

is in Christ, he is a new

creation; the old has

gone, the new has come“

2 Corinthians 5:17

“No truth is more

important to the believer

than an understanding of

the person and ministry

of the Holy Spirit and

how to be filled and

controlled by Him as a

way of life by faith.”

“When one has found

peace, power and

blessing through a

definite yielding to

God and reliance on

His strength alone, the

Bible clearly assigns

the cause to be a larger

manifestation of the

presence and power of

the Spirit. Such a one is

filled with the Spirit.”

A committee of ministers

in a certain city was

discussing the possibility

of having D. L. Moody

serve as the evangelist

during a citywide

campaign.

Finally, one young

minister who did not

want to invite Moody

stood up and asked,

“Why Moody? Does he

have a monopoly on the

Holy Spirit?”

There was silence. Then

an old, godly minister

spoke up: “No, he does

not have a monopoly

on the Holy Spirit: but

the Holy Spirit has a

monopoly on D. L.

Moody”.

“The Christian life isn’t

difficult, it’s impossible –

without the power of the

Holy Spirit.”

“The question for each

man to settle is not what

he would do for the Lord

if he had more money,

time or education, but

what he will do with the

things he has. It’s not

who you are or what you

have that matters – but

whether Christ controls

you.”

 “When did Jesus ever pause just a little bit before going forward in love? That isn’t written anywhere. He was zealous to the maximum degree! At no time did He do anything but give His life, give His life, give His life!” 

 “God sent His Son according to His own free will, and Jesus came to earth according to the same law of liberty. Now we also act according to that law: we can choose to do God’s will.” 

 "Nowhere can we get to know the holiness of God, and come under His influence and power, except in the inner chamber. It has been well said: "No man can expect to make progress in holiness who is not often and long alone with God." 

"We should so work as if we were to be saved by our works; and so rely on Jesus Christ, as if we did no works."

 "Many Christians have what we might call a "cultural holiness". They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God." 

 “Those who fall in sin don’t do so by chance. That would be completely unrighteous of God. They fall because the armor of God has fallen away.” 

"In 1729 my brother Charles and I, reading the Bible, and seeing we could not be saved without holiness, followed after it, and incited others to do so.  In 1737 we saw that holiness comes by faith.  In 1738 we saw that men are justified before they are sanctified; but still holiness was our pursuit - inward and outward holiness.  God then thrust us out to raise up a holy people."

  "May God so fill us today with the heart of Christ that we may glow with the divine fire of holy desire." 

"For the past ten years God has enabled me to keep a perfect, unbroken purpose to serve Him with my whole heart.  No temptation has swerved that steadfast purpose.  'HOLINESS TO THE LORD' (Exodus 28:36, KJV) has been my motto.

My heart pants after Him and, as I seek Him in fervent, patient, believing prayer and in diligent searching of His Word, He is deepening the work of grace in my soul."

For the Christian, "Holiness is nothing less than self-giving love.  More than conceptual, this love is tangibly self-offering, self-dispensing, and self-emptying.  It is the essence of biblical discipleship."

 " To be a Christian is defined by your relationship toward God as revealed in your conformity to God's character ... God is saying to you and to me, 'Come, come walk with me. Come share my goals, share my pace, share my direction, share my walk.' ... Are you a Christian? ... God says, 'Let me see your walk." 

"Today's rising interest in discipleship grows out of the experience of the evangelical church as it discovers it can no longer exist just to do evangelism and provide worship for believers."

 The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender. 

 The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. 

 A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing. 

 Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. 

 The "show business," which is so incorporated into our view of Christian work today, has caused us to drift far from Our Lord's conception of discipleship. It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we have not. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That is not learned in five minutes. 

 If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead. 

"As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY."

1 Peter 1:14-16

"I was a free man in a good position, and I bargained away my noble status - and I am not ashamed of this or regretful about it - for the sake of others.  In short, I am a slave of Christ in a remote country because of the unspeakable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

"We are not engaged in an enterprise of our own choosing or devising.  We are invited to participate in an activity of God which is the central meaning of creation itself.  We are invited to become, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, participants in the Son's loving obedience to the Father."

"The Commission of the Holiness People is clearly defined.  They have been raised up to spread Scriptural Holiness."

"If the love of God dwells within you, it is necessary that such love bring forth other fruit, such as fraternal love, meekness, sincerity, perseverance in prayer, and zeal and all vitues.  But since the treasure is precious, so also great are the labors, necessary to obtain it."

"If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us.  He will certainly give us the grace we need."

"Holiness of heart and life.  This is not the perfection of the human nature, but the holiness of the divine nature dwelling within."

 "Holiness has never been the driving force of the majority. It is, however, mandatory for anyone who wants to enter the kingdom."

"We dare not go on awakening interest in the gospel unless somehow we can nourish and preserve the results."

 “My brother Wesley acted wisely,” Whitefield said. “The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in societies, and  thus preserved the fruit of his labor. This I neglected, and my people are a rope of sand.”

"The meaning of being a Christian is that in response for the gift of a whole Christ, I give my whole self to Him."

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Galatians 2:20

"I understand peoples search for significance.  The need is very powerful. We spend most of our waking hours trying to fulfill that need.  But I am not to orchestrate my own significance, I only need the significance God wants my life to have.  He gets to decide.  That's giving your life away."

"For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life."

"Holiness unto the Lord" is our watchword and song, "Holiness unto the Lord" as we're marching along;
Sing it, shout it, loud and long, "Holiness unto the Lord", now and forever."

"I am willing to fail. Risks are not to be evaluated in terms of the probability of their success, but in the value of the goal."

"Life is pitiful, death so familiar, suffering and pain so common, yet I would not be anywhere else. Do not wish me out of this or in any way seek to get me out, for I will not be got out while  this trial is on.  These are my people, God has given them to me, and I will live or die with them for Him and His glory."

"The ultimate goal of Jesus for his disciples was that his life be reproduced in them, and through them into the lives of others."

  "Do you want to know what holiness is?  It is pure love.  Do you want to know what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is?  It is not a mere sentiment.  It is not a happy sensation that passes away in a night.  It is a baptism of love that brings every thought into captivity to the Lord Jesus (see 2 Cor. 10:5); casts out all fear (see 1 John 4:18); burns up doubt and unbelief as fire burns flax; makes you 'meek and lowly in heart' (Matt. 11:29); makes you hate uncleanness, lying and deceit, a flattering tongue, and every evil way with a perfect hatred;  makes heaven and hell eternal realities; makes you patient and gentle with the disobedient and sinful; makes you 'pure ... peaceable ... open to reason, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere' (James 3:17), and brings you into perfect and unbroken sympathy with the Lord Jesus Christ in His toil and travail to bring a lost and rebellious world back to God" 

"Love is the highest gift of God; humble, gentle, patient love; that all visions, revelations, or manifestations whatever, are little things compared to love; and that all other gifts . . . are either the same with or infinitely inferior to love. Therefore, you should be thoroughly aware of this – the heaven of heavens is love. There is nothing higher in religion; there is, in effect, nothing else; if you look for anything but more love, you are looking wide of the mark, you are getting out of the royal way. And when you are asking others, "Have you received this or that blessing?" if you mean anything but more love, you mean wrong; you are leading them out of the way, and putting them on a false scent. Settle it then in your heart, that from the moment God has saved you from all sin, you are to aim at nothing more but more of that love describe in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. You can go no higher than this, till you are carried into Abraham's bosom."

"To be a Christian, said theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is "to have the precise space once occupied by the old man now to be occupied by Jesus Christ."  This is to be holy; for to be truly Christian is one and the same thing as to be holy.  Christ living and reigning in me through the power of the indwelling Spirit is the essence of holiness.  The victory that overcomes the world is the faith that "greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4, KJV). "If we live by the Spirit," Paul urges, "let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25, RSV).  Walking by the Spirit is remembering that apart from Christ we "can do nothing" (John 15:5).  It is maintaining a moment-by-moment dependence upon Him as our Life.  At the deepest, holiness is not a matter of holy habit patterns; these are simply cut-flower arrangement if we do not sustain an intimate relationship with Christ.  But if we abide in Him, His life becomes our life, His love our love, and His joy our joy.  The secret of holy living is to permit Christ to live His life of holy love in us!"

  “May we all thus experience what it is to be, not almost only; but altogether Christians.”  

"A highway will be there, a roadway,
And it will be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean will not travel on it,
But it will be for him who walks that way,

And fools will not wander on it."

Isaiah 35:8

"Give me the love that leads the way,

The faith that nothing can dismay,

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire;

Let me not sink to be a clod:

Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!"

 "There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him."

 "I cannot see how any man deserves to be called "holy," who willfully allows himself in sins, and is not humbled and ashamed because of them."

 “Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.” 

 “There is no ceiling to love.”  

 “may I never rest till I have the witness of the Spirit, that my heart is the temple of an indwelling God,” 

 "To say that Romans 7 describes the Christian is to slight the grace of God and to foster wanton behavior." 

Oh that God would give me the thing which I long for!  That before I go hence and am no more seen, I may see a people wholly devoted to God, crucified to the world, and the world crucified to them.  A people truly given up to God in body, soul and substance!  How cheerfully would I then say, 'Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.

 “God brings his presence ‘into the house’, and we are called to release it back out into the world or the blessing will die.” 

 “Wesleyanism was at its most influential when it was a people movement that was reproducing like mad."

 “We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” 

 A just person is one who is conformed and transformed into justice.

 "Let me die rather than live to sin against thee!"  

As we disciple others it should not suprise us that biblical principles work in practical experience.  But, remember, just because it works in practical experience doesn't mean it's biblical.

All those who would be like Him (Jesus) and serve Him fully need the experience of the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

 “Fulfilling Jesus’s command to make disciples is about more than having the right theology or well-developed teaching points. Remember that if you “understand all mysteries and all knowledge” yet don’t have love, you are nothing.” 

 You know, people say that today. "I am a saved sinner." That is like saying you are a married bachelor. That is like saying you are an honest thief, or a pure harlot. You can't be a saved sinner. You are either saved or you are a sinner. He came. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall save his people from their sins." 

 You know, we live in a day when we are more afraid of holiness than we are of sinfulness. 

 Revival will come only to a desperate church, not a contented one. He is ever the Rewarder of those who "diligently seek Him," not the mere casual inquirer. 

"Your life is far too costly to squander it  through confidence in your own plans and thinking.  God's mind is perfect.  He knows your future.  You are in superior hands when you surrender to Him and His leading."

"...the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes."

Ezekiel 36:23

"Am I willing to be of no value to this age or this life except for one purpose and one alone - to be used to disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ?"

"Those who have followed Jesus have led the way to bring moral, ethical and cultural change not by external force, political power or military might but through internal transformation."

"I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell."

"In no other way can the believer become as fully involved with God's work, especially the work of world evangelism, as in intercessory prayer."

"Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did - with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses."

2 Kings 23:25

 "The last person in the Trinity has come, been trifled with, rejected, grieved, and has finally taken His departure from those who would not receive Him in His sanctifying and indwelling power."

 "A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so."

"God's holiness is not an unloving holiness, and God's love is not an unholy love. It is only by keeping these two primary moral qualities of the divine being closely related that we may rightly behold the character of God."

"It’s impossible to be a disciple or a follower of someone and not end up like that person. Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). That’s the whole point of being a disciple of Jesus: we imitate Him, carry on His ministry, and become like Him in the process."

"The fact that I’m a woman doesn’t make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I’m a Christian does make me a different kind of woman."

" Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass."

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

 "Christianity without discipleship
is always Christianity without Christ." 
                 

 “How dare lead someone to Jesus Christ without adequate follow-up. To do anything less is simply to beget children for the murderer.” 

 "We are coming into a time when many churches and Christians who are in leadership positions will be able to say, 'It’s all about discipleship and transformation into Christlikeness.' " 

 “Discipleship is at the same time a character revolution and a worldwide strategy. 
It is a strategy that requires depth as a perquisite for reproduction and multiplication.” 

 “God has not promised to bless our good motives, dreams and innovation. He has promised to bless His plan, that plan is that disciples make other disciples—everything else is a sideshow.”   

...be holy, because I am holy!

"There is no holiness without humility, and indeed, some spiritual masters are convinced that in the end there is only one threat to holiness: pride - specifically the pride of self-autonomy and self-dependence."

"If love is defined by self-giving then divorce is not an option. Marriage is sacred and what God has joined together selfishness should not separate."

"The salvation of Christ is a salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is deliverance into the pure air of God's ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure with the will and the choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting."

For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

 “we reduce discipleship to a canned program, and so many in the church end up sidelined in a spectator mentality that delegates disciple making to pastors and professionals, ministers and missionaries. But this is not the way it’s supposed to be.”  

"A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher."

Jesus - Luke 6:40

 “The devil himself desires nothing more than this, that the people of any place should be half-awakened and then left to themselves to fall asleep again.
“Therefore, I determined by the grace of God not to strike one stroke in any place where I cannot follow the blow!”  

 "The whole lives of Christians ought to be a kind of aspiration after piety, seeing they are called unto holiness."

 "Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death to your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." 

 “The world provides no cheerleaders on the pathway to godliness.” 

"Jesus is looking for disciples filled with the Spirit of Christ, burning with Calvary love, who set their course by the priorities of heaven."

"The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."

2 Timothy 2:2

"Spangenberg ... commented on a pamphlet of Spener's.  A sentence expressive of the Savior's power to free from all sin caught the ear of Bohler.  The effect was instantaneous."

"I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."

3 John :4

"Through the filling of the Holy Spirit, inadequate disciples have a more than adequate Jesus within them.  This is where you begin to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ.  This is where the walk of holiness begins."

"If the presidency of the United States would suit you as well as the inheritance of sanctification, you are not a qualified candidate for holiness.  The poet had the scriptural idea when he said, 

'Tis worse than death my Lord to love,
And not my Lord alone."