A vocation to marriage is a vocation to glorify God in a particular state with its necessary rights and duties. read more

A vocation to marriage is a vocation to glorify God in a particular state with its necessary rights and duties. It can only be combined with the vocation of a pioneer missionary of the classic type if matrimony is felt to be spiritually neutral, irrelevant to God's calling. Marriage can be irrelevant only if we believe that the body -- matter -- is neutral, irrelevant, or evil. Man can not believe that and believe the Christian faith. God made matter, and was incarnate in it: the comparison of the relation of husband and wife to that between Christ and the Church naturally follows. But this conclusion is not always drawn, for orthodox Christians are often prone to speak and behave as if the Lord... became not flesh but spirit.

Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 The first service one owes to others in the fellowship read more

Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 The first service one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love of God begins in listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him.

Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices, abstensions], ... because read more

Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices, abstensions], ... because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them: they practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves, they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of a self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self.

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavour Fellowship, 1951 How often we look upon God as our read more

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavour Fellowship, 1951 How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.

If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet read more

If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.

Justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be read more

Justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be denied to be good, but that we may not rely upon them, glory in them, or ascribe salvation to them.

It is not true that the assertion of spiritual principle is vain because we can not see at the moment read more

It is not true that the assertion of spiritual principle is vain because we can not see at the moment how to express that principle in action. It would assuredly make a difference if Christians, in their approach one to another, realized that, in spite of appearances, they were in fact one. If, in their seeking after external reunion, they realized that they were seeking not to create a unity which does not yet exist, but to find an expression for a unity which does exist, which is indeed the one elemental reality, they would approach one another in a better frame of mind. The common recognition of the principle would in itself be a unifying force of great value, and would dispose those who shared it to approach questions of difference in a spirit of unity which would immensely assist their deliberations.

One who receives this Word, and by it salvation, receives along with it the duty of passing this Word on... read more

One who receives this Word, and by it salvation, receives along with it the duty of passing this Word on... Where there is no mission, there is no Church, and where there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.

If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that "God is teaching us that we must live as read more

If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that "God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get on very well without him", then the Church has no need to say anything whatever to secularized man for that is precisely what secularized man already believes.