Brother Lawrence - "All things are possible to those who believe, less difficult to those who hope, more easy to those who love, and still easier to those who persevere in the practice of these three virtues."
Brother Lawrence - "Are we not rude and deserve blame, if we leave Him alone, to busy ourselves about trifles, which do not please Him and perhaps offend Him? 'Tis to be feared these trifles will one day cost us dear."
Brother Lawrence - "Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules, or particular forms of devotion; but act with a general confidence in God, with love and humility."
Brother Lawrence - "Have courage then: make a virtue of necessity: ask of God, not deliverance from your pains, but strength to bear resolutely, for the love of Him, all that He should please, and as long as He shall please."
Brother Lawrence - "If we knew how much He loves us, we should be always ready to receive equally and with indifference from His hand the sweet and the bitter; all would please that came from Him."
Brother Lawrence - "It matters not to me what I do, or what I suffer, so long as I abide loveingly united to God's will - that is my whole business."
Brother Lawrence - "Let us fear to leave Him. Let us be always with Him. Let us live and die in His presence."
Brother Lawrence - "Let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please God, that perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity."
Brother Lawrence - "Love sweetens pain; and when one loves God, one suffers for His sake with joy and courage."
Brother Lawrence - "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God."
Brother Lawrence - "We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed."
Leo Tolstoy - "A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction"
Leo Tolstoy - "There are two Gods, there is the God that people generally believe in - a God who has to serve them. This God does not exist. But the God whom people forget - the God whom we all have to serve - exists, and is the prime cause of our existence and of all that we perceive."
Leonard Ravenhill – “A man escaped from his cell is not free who still drags his chains.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “At the moment a rushing mighty wind of false religion and lukewarm Christianity is lashing the world. Warned of false fire by fireless men, we too often settle for no fire at all.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “A vision of holiness. Oh, Beloved! How this generation of believers needs the vision of God in all His holiness! A vision of hellishness – ‘I am undone… unclean!’ and a vision of hopelessness – implied by the words ‘Who will go for us?’ In this hour – when the average church knows more about promotion than prayer, has forgotten consecration by fostering competition, and has substituted propaganda for propagation – this threefold vision is imperative. ‘Where there is no vision the people perish.’ Where there is no passion the church perishes, even though it be full to the doors.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Better to die bound in body and free in spirit than free in body and bound in soul!”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Bible schools don’t teach ‘tears’. They really cannot, of course. This is Spirit-taught; and a preacher, however weighed down with degrees and doctorates has not gotten far unless he knows soul-bitterness over the sin of this day.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Brethren, is this our choice? What irks us more than to be classified with unlearned and ignorant men? – though an unlearned and ignorant man wrote ‘the Revelations’ which still baffles the learned. We are suffering today from a plague of ministers who are more concerned that their heads should be filled than that their hearts be fired.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Brethren, we are beaten by the time element. The preacher and church, too busy to pray, are busier than the Lord would have them be. If we will give God time, He will give us timeless souls.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “But what we know is one thing; whom we know is quite another.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “But where it all begins is in an Exchanged Life whereby we no longer live – but Christ lives in us. Paul lived gloriously and died triumphantly because in sacrifice and suffering he identified himself with Christ. So can we live and die, if we but will.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patient die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you DAMNED?”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Compared to a heart that has known the fire of the Lord and allowed that fire to go out, the ice-clad peaks of the Alps are warm. Metal is molten only while the fire burns; remove the fire and the metal is solid. Even so, a human heart without the heat of heaven is an iceberg.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Does God ever need more patience with His people than when they are ‘praying’? We tell Him what to do and how to do it. We pass judgments and make appreciations in our prayers. In short, we do everything except pray. No Bible School can teach us this art. What Bible School has ‘Prayer’ on its curriculum? The most important thing a man can study is the prayer part of the Book.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “God ‘sought for a man,’ not to preach, but ‘to stand in the gap.’”
Leonard Ravenhill – “He who fears God fears no man. He who kneels before God will stand in any situation.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Holiness-teaching contradicted by unholy living is the bane of this hour!”
Leonard Ravenhill – “I do not marvel so much at the patience of the Lord with the stonyhearted sinners of the day. After all, would we not be patient with a man both blind and deaf? And such are the sinners. But I do marvel at the Lord’s patience with the sleepy, sluggish, selfish Church! A prodigal Church in a prodigal world is God’s real problem.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “In ‘that great day,’ the fire of judgment is going to test the sort, not the size of the work we have done. That which is born in prayer will survive the test. Prayer does business with God. Prayer creates hunger for souls; hunger for souls creates prayer. The understanding soul prays; the praying soul gets understanding. To the soul who prays in self-owned weakness, the Lord gives His strength.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “It has been well said that there are only three classes of people in the world today; those who are afraid, those who do not know enough to be afraid, and those who know their Bibles.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “It is passing strange that we are so ‘simple’ as to believe that the Church is presenting to men the New Testament standard of Jesus by such a substandard of Christian living.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “It will not do to call sin by some other name, saying, ‘The other fellow has a devilish temper; mine is just righteous indignation! She is touchy; my irritability is just a ‘case of the nerves’. He is covetous; I am expanding my business. He is stubborn; I have convictions. She is proud; I have superior tastes.’ There is a cover-up for anything if you want it that way.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “John the Baptist did well to evade prison for six months. He and Elijah would not last six weeks in the streets of a modern city. They would be cast into a prison or mental home for judging sin and not muting their message.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Men are ever saying that in these trying days people need comfort. Agreed – many do need comfort. The sick, the sad and the suffering are in this bracket. However, let none fail to realize that to keep silent while a house is burning is criminal. He is no comforter who lets his neighbor sleep as he watches a criminal move the door with a gun.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Men build our churches but do not enter them, print our Bibles but do not read them, talk about God but do not believe Him, speak of Christ but do not trust Him for salvation, sing our hymns and then forget them.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shop window to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Our goal must be God alone. It is His honor that is sullied. His blessed Son who is ignored, His laws broken, His name profaned, His Book forgotten, His house made a circus of social efforts.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “ ‘O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ Madness? Yes, insanity – of virgin purity! He said to the bones, ‘Hear!’ though they had no ears! Ezekiel did as he was told. To save faces, we of course modify God’s commands, and so lose our faces. But Ezekiel obeyed; and God, as always, operated: ‘there was a great noise.’”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls. Away with this palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb, and nourished in a fireless, prayerless soul. We may preach and perish, but we cannot pray and perish. If God called us to the ministry, then, dear brethren, I contend that we should get unctionized. With all they getting – get unction, lest barren altars be the badge of our unctionless intellectualism.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Prayer is profoundly simple and simply profound.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Prayer is to the believer what capital is to the business man.
Leonard Ravenhill – “Someone now warns us lest we become so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly use. Brother, this generation of believers is not, by and large, suffering from such a complex! The brutal, soul-shaking truth is that we are so earthly minded that we are of no heavenly use.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Sound doctrine has put most believers sound asleep, for the letter is not enough. It must be kindled! It is the letter plus the Spirit which ‘giveth life.’”
Leonard Ravenhill – “The aspirant for spiritual wealth and for the ear of God will know much loneliness and will eat much of ‘the bread of affliction.’ He may not know too much about family or social opposition; on the other hand, he may. But this is sure, he will know much of soul conflict, and of silences (which may create misunderstandings), and of withdrawal from even the best of company. For lovers love to be alone, and the high peaks of the soul are reached in solitude.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “The Church has advisers by the carload. But where are her agonizers? Churches, boasting an all-time high in attendance might have to admit an all-time low in spiritual births. We can increase our churches without increasing the kingdom. The enemy of multiplication is stagnation.”
Leonard Ravenhill - “The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “The Lord said to Elijah, ‘Hide thyself,’ and again, ‘Show thyself.’ It would be wrong to hide when we should be rebuking kings for His sake; it would be wrong to preach if the Spirit is calling us to wait upon the Lord. We must learn with David, ‘My soul, wait thou only upon God.’”
Leonard Ravenhill – “The ministry of preaching is open to few; the ministry of prayer – the highest ministry of all human offices – is open to all.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “There are three persons living in each of us: the one we think we are, the one other people think we are, and the one God knows we are.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “There are two indispensable factors to successful Christian living. They are vision and passion. Men battle mountainous seas of human, carnal criticism and storm the flinty heights of devilish opposition to plant the cross of Christ amidst the habitations of cruelty. Why? Because they have caught a vision and contracted a passion.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “The schoolmen of the Church have classified ‘seven deadly sins.’ We know, of course, that they are wrong, for all sin is deadly.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning. We are beggared and bankrupt, but not broken, nor even bent.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet; it is won or lost before the preacher’s foot enters the pulpit.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “‘We apostles,’ Paul says, ‘are the filth of this world.’ Then he adds insult to injury, heightens the infamy, and deepens the humiliation by adding ‘the offscouring of all things.’(1 Corinthians 4:13) Any man who assessed himself ‘filth of the world’ has no ambitions – and so has nothing to be jealous about. He has no reputation – and so has nothing to fight about. He has no possessions – and therefore nothing to worry about. He has no ‘rights’ – so therefore he cannot suffer any wrongs. Blessed state! He is already dead – so no one can kill him. In such a state of mind and spirit, can we wonder that the apostles ‘turned the world upside down’?”
Leonard Ravenhill – “We appease sin – but do not oppose it. To such a cold, carnal, critical, care-cowed Church, this lax, loose, lustful, licentious age will never capitulate.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “We do not conquer Satan by prayer; Christ conquered him two thousand years ago. Satan fools and feints, blows and bluffs, and we so often take his threats to heart and forget ‘the exceeding greatness of God’s power to usward.’”
Leonard Ravenhill – “What should be a stepping stone can become a stumbling block. What should be a gateway can become a goal. What could be a thoroughfare can become a terminal. ‘Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan God’s works in vain.’ Have we come out of poverty of the world, but not yet entered into the Canaan of His riches?”
Leonard Ravenhill – “When God opens the windows of heaven to bless us, the devil will open the door of hell to blast us. God’s smile means the devil’s frown! Mere preachers may help anybody and hurt nobody; but prophets will stir everybody and madden somebody. The preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it. A man freed, fired, and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation’s sins; unkind because his tongue is a two-edged sword; unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him. The preacher will be heralded; the prophet hounded.”
Leonard Ravenhill – “Yet that which tries the modern church the most troubled the New Testament Church the least. Our accent is on paying, theirs was on praying. When we have paid, the place is taken; when they had prayed, the place was shaken!”
Lewis Carroll - "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'"
Louis Bounoure - "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."
Louis Pasteur - "Science brings man nearer to God."
Lyndon B. Johnson - “The separation of Church and State is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.”
