“It is important to realise that if you do not glorify God when you are involved in a conflict, you will inevitably glorify someone or something else. By your actions you will show either that you have a big God or that you have a big self and big problems. To put it another way, if you do not focus on God, you will inevitably focus on yourself and your will, or on other people and the threat of their wills.”

-Ken Sande, The Peace Maker

“A handicap is a responsibility! It is an exclamation point in a person’s life message. Whatever we’re saying with our lives, we say more emphatically if we are disabled.”

—

“Becky was trying to look through a picture book. For about ten minutes she had been trying to turn the page with her little, fingerless hands. Debbie was playing the piano. As Brenda worked in the kitchen, Becky asked, ‘Mommy, when I grow up, will I have hands like Debbie?’

As I read quietly in the next room, I listened to hear her response.

Brenda stopped her work and said softly, ‘Becky, Debbie has the hands that God has given her to do her job, and you have the hands that God has allowed you to have to do your job.’

Out of that simple statement has grown the ‘Hidden Treasure’ principle, a central theme of our ministry, especially our ministry with disabled children: ‘We have everything we need to do the will of God for our lives.’”

—

“The afflicted have a responsibility to take the initiative, to use their disability to glorify the Lord. … The disabled have no right to take advantage of their handicap for selfish purposes; it is a trust from God.”

-Taken from More Precious Than Gold, pp. 205, 207, 212.

“The young man of leadership caliber will work while others waste time, study while others snooze, pray while others daydream. Slothful habits are overcome, whether in thought, deed, or dress. The emerging leader eats right, stands tall, and prepares himself to wage a good warfare. He will without reluctance undertake the unpleasant task that others avoid or the hidden duty that others evade because it wins no public applause. As the Spirit fills his life, he learns not to shrink from difficult situations or retreat from hard-edged people. He will kindly and courageously administer rebuke when that is called for, or he will exercise the necessary discipline when the interests of the Lord’s work demand it. He will not procrastinate, but will prefer to dispatch with the hardest tasks first.”

Taken from Spiritual Leadership, p. 53

“It is the purpose of the passage that must be uppermost. This is true just as well for delivery as for anything else: God’s purpose must control all. All error in preaching, in one way or another, stems from placing our own purposes or personalities above God’s.

The Bible exalts Christ, not men. He should be seen in a sermon, not the preacher who becomes more visible than Christ because of his unbecoming delivery. In every respect, including his use of delivery, the preacher must put Christ first.

This point becomes clear in the interplay between content and delivery at every stage. If God’s purpose in a passage is solemn and grim, your delivery must not make light of it, either intentionally or unintentionally. If God’s purpose is a joyful one, you dare not grind that through a personality grid that is so inflexible and insensitive that the message comes out drab or even solemn. In short, you must allow even your personality to be changed , if and when necessary, by God’s truth. A minister of the Word, when faithful to his calling, in every becomes just that—one in whom the Word has absolute sway, even to the point of great personality change in him. The delivery you should seek, then, is a delivery that is formed, informed, and influenced by God’s truth. The best preacher is one who allows his voice and body to become a well-tuned instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit. He is willing, therefore, to be stretched, squeezed, and otherwise altered to meet every demand necessary to preaching the whole counsel of God.”

Taken from Preaching with Purpose, p. 155.

“A Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.

I feel a strong desire to tell you–and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me–which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors in pairs–pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”

Taken from Mere Christianity, p. 156.

“A country minister in Australia known to this writer was a great book lover. Early in his ministry he determined to develop a biblically and theologically literate congregation. He helped his people learn to love books and led them into progressively deeper and weightier spiritual literature. The result is that a number of farmers in that district have significant libraries and thoughtful faith.

More ministers should try to lead in this way, guiding the church toward intelligent reading and larger, more committed, more resilient faith.”

Taken from Spiritual Leadership, p. 107.

“There around you are immortal souls perishing in their sins, each one of more value than the whole material universe, each capable of being saved by your ministrations, and sure to acquire, by neglecting them, a deeper guilt and a heavier condemnation: there, in sight of your faith, is the Son of God, bleeding upon the cross for their redemption; there beneath you is the pit of hell, opening wide its mouth to receive them if they die in unbelief; there above you is heaven, throwing back its everlasting portals to receive them, if they are saved; there before you is the bar of judgment, at which you must soon meet them, to account for your ministry in reference to them; and there, beyond all, is eternity with its ever rolling ages, which are to be spent by them and you in rapture or in woe. Is this true? Is it fiction, or is it fact? If these things are not so, you are found false witnesses for Christ, for they are the common topics and the first principles of your discourses; but if they are all realities, then with what state of mind and heart should they be handled?”

Taken from An Earnest Ministry, p. 268.

“God never wastes pain. He always uses it to accomplish His purpose. And His purpose is for His glory and our good. Therefore, we can trust him when our hearts are aching or our bodies are racked with pain.”

Taken from Trusting God, p. 102.

“Sense a need for a voice and vocabulary that will not only reach the saints—the brethren and the fundamentalists—it must be that I can learn to speak fresh words startlingly enough to rouse them. But for the modernist, I must have terms so well defined and blunt as to maintain the similitude of absolute truth (not mere orthodoxy). While for the world, I must have words common enough, simple enough, yet profound enough, to couch divine things. So that my vocabulary must become complex; primarily it must be startling (alive and explosive), exact and simple.”

Taken from The Journals of Jim Elliot, p. 166. Emphasis in original.

Henceforth we should not serve sin. Romans 6:6

“Christian, what do you have to do with sin? Has it not cost you enough already? Burned child, will you play with fire? When you have already been between the jaws of the lion, will you step into his den a second time? Have you not had enough of the old serpent? Did he not poison all your veins once, and will you play upon the hole of the asp and put your hand on the serpent’s den a second time? Oh, do not be so foolish!

Did sin ever bring you real pleasure? Did you find solid satisfaction in it? If so, go back to your old drudgery and wear the chain again, if it pleases you. But inasmuch as sin never gave you what it promised to bestow, but deluded you with lies, do not be snared a second time by the old fowler. Be free, and let the remembrance of your ancient bondage forbid you to enter the net again!”

*Taken from Charles Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, devotional for May 30.