“Wisdom is the skill in making moral, ethical and spiritual decisions consistent with God’s Word and will.” ( p.775 of The Daily Walk Bible NIV Bruce H. Wilkinson Executive Editor Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton, Illinois 1997).
“And if a man or a woman, boy or girl, can take the raw materials of life and shape them skillfully according to the blueprint God has provided in his Word, we say that that person is wise. It has nothing to do with IQ and everything to do with obedience. You can be wise with an IQ of 70; you can be a fool with an IQ of 170. The choice is up to you.” ( p.779 of The Daily Walk Bible NIV Bruce H. Wilkinson Executive Editor Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton, Illinois 1997)

“If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost… However urgently Jesus may call us, His call fails to find access to our hearts. Our hearts are closed, for they have already been given to another.”

…Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

We cannot understand the depth of the Christian doctrine of sin if we give it only a moral connotation. To break the basic laws of justice and decency is sin indeed. Man’s freedom to honor principles is the moral dimension in his nature, and sin often appears as lawlessness. But sin has its root in something which is more than the will to break the law. The core of sin is our making ourselves the center of life, rather than accepting the holy God as the center. Lack of trust, self-love, pride, these are three ways in which Christians have expressed the real meaning of sin. But what sin does is to make the struggle with evil meaningless. When we refuse to hold our freedom in trust and reverence for God’s will, there is nothing which can make the risk of life worth the pain of it.

…D. D. Williams (1910-1973), Interpreting Theology 1918-1952 [1953]

If the church wants a better pastor, it only needs to pray for the one it has.

He who angers you, controls you!

The religious desire and effort of the soul to relate itself and all its interest to God and his will, is prayer in the deepest sense. This is essential prayer: uttered or unexpressed, it is equally prayer. It is the soul’s desire after God going forth in a manifestation, … the soul striving after God. This is a prayer that may exist without ceasing, consisting, as it does, not in doing or saying this or that, but in temper and attitude of the spirit.

…P. B. Brown

Passion for God often comes out of pain.

“The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.”

… Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Seeds of Contemplation [1949]

“God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.”

…A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

True progress is not found in breaking away from the old ways, but in abiding in the teaching of Christ and His Spirit in the Church. There is an apparent contradiction here, for how can we abide, and yet advance? It is a paradox, like much else in scripture; but Christian experience proves it true. Those make the best progress in religion who hold fast by the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and not those who drift away from their moorings, rudderless upon a sea of doubt.

…Henry Barclay Swete (1835-1917)