“Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender.”
A.W. Tozer
“We have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition: that our life express Christ, the bond of our adoption. Accordingly, unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy, but we also abjure our Savior Himself.”
John Calvin
“Like many of the leaders and teachers [in the church], perhaps I failed to prepare people for the way of suffering. I had not suffered much myself and did not help people to be ready for it. But the fact is: when you follow Jesus, what happened to Him happens to you.”
Todd H. Wetzel
“If all you have found [in Christianity] is advantage, whether it is fun or profit or security, then you haven’t started following Him yet. His way is the way of the Cross. The world can be very hard on those it hates. If it is not hard on you, perhaps it sees nothing in you to hate. But then it doesn’t see Jesus in you, for it hates Jesus with an undying hatred. While your way is still all fun, all easy, all jolly, it is only your way: when you turn from it to follow His way, it will cost. It may cost you everything you have. That is what it cost Him.”
Robert MacColl Adams
“Jesus hath many lovers of His heavenly Kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross. He hath many desirous of consolation, but few of tribulation. Many love Jesus so long as no adversities befall them.”
Thomas a Kempis
“It is not God’s way that great blessings should descend without the sacrifice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be spread to any wide extent among the people, how can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and trouble shall not accompany its going forth.”
John Henry Newman
“An instrument of life would not serve its purpose if it did not minister life. An instrument of death would be falsely named if it kept people alive rather than killing them….The point is not to know how you are to be kept alive, but how you are to lose everything and die.”
Francois Fenelon
“It is more profitable for you and safer to conceal the grace of devotion; not to lift yourself on high, nor to speak much thereof, or to dwell much thereon; but rather to despise yourself, and to fear this grace, as given to one unworthy of it.”
Thomas a Kempis
“Did not Jesus say, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate … even his own life” – and by that He means our ego, our sinful self – “he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)? I was deceiving myself! I thought I was a disciple of Jesus, but I really was not, because I did not have a hatred towards sin. At this time, more than thirty years ago, God suddenly opened my eyes and let me see what sin was all about. It has to be hated so much that Jesus says it is better to pluck out our eyes rather than give room to sin and tolerate it in ourselves. It would be better to cut off our hands than to tolerate what is evil and sinful.”
Basilea Schlink
“If you here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor through inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.”
William Law