D.A. Carson

"I know pagans who find satisfaction and fulfillment by teaching nuclear physics.  In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue.  The issue is service, the service of real people.  The question is, How can I be most useful?, not, How can I feel most useful?  The goal is, How can I best glorify God by serving his people?, not, How can I feel most comfortable and appreciated while engaging in some acceptable form of Christian ministry?  The assumption is, How shall the Christian service to which God calls me be enhanced by my daily breath, by my principled commitment to take up my cross daily and die?, not, How shall the form of service I am considering enhance my career?  This is not to deny that Christians may derive joy from work honestly offered to God, whether that work is vocational ministry or research into the properties of quarks.  But it is one thing to find joy in the work to which we are called, and another to make joy the goal of life, the fundamental criterion that controls our choices.  It is one thing to weigh a Christian leader's evaluation of our gifts, and another so to focus on our perception of our gifts that self-worship has crept in through the back door.  It is one thing to think of people as a live audience that will appreciate our displays of homiletical prowess, and another that passionately shapes each sermon to convey the truth to God's people for their good."

D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, p.83

Samuel Chadwick

"If successful, don't crow; if defeated don't croak."

E.M. Bounds

"They [Great leaders of the Bible] were not leaders because of brilliancy of thought, because they were exhaustless in resources, because of their magnificent culture or native endowment, but because, by the power of prayer, they could command the power of God."

J. Oswald Sanders

"It is not the prayer that moves people, but the God to whom we pray."

Hudson Taylor

"It is possible to move men, through God, by prayer alone."

J. Oswald Sanders

Both our Lord and His bondslave Paul made it clear that true prayer is not a dreamy reverie. "All vital praying makes a drain on a man's vitality.  True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice," wrote J. H. Jowett.  Jesus performed miracles without a sign of outward strain, but "he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears" (Hebrews 5:7)

J. Oswald Sanders

"Try to explain exactly how prayer works and you will find quickly run against some very difficult puzzles.  But people who are skeptical of prayer's validity and power are usually those who do not practice it seriously or fail to obey when God reveals His will.  We cannot learn about prayer except by praying.  No philosophy has ever taught a soul to pray.  The intellectual problems associated with prayer are met in the joy of answered prayer and closer fellowship with God."

C.J. Vaughan

"If I wished to humble anyone, I should question him about his prayers.  I know nothing to compare with this topic for its sorrowful self-confessions."

Samuel Brengle

"If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him, and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I am so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it. The moment he throws it aside; it becomes only old iron. O that I may never lose sight of this."

Unknown Author

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection.  Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men:
Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
Wisdom is humble, that he knows no more.

Annie Johnson Flint

Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,
Where in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back,
There is no other way but through?
Then wait on the Lord with a trust serene
Till the night of your fear is gone;
He will send the wind, He will heap the floods,
When He says to your soul, "Go on."...

In the morning watch, 'neath the lifted cloud,
You shall see but the Lord alone,
When He leads you on from the place of the sea
To a land that you have not known;
And your fears shall pass as your foes have passed,
You shall no more be afraid;
You shall sing His praise in a better place,
A place that His hand has made.

Amy Carmichael

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star:
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet, I was wounded by the archers, spent.
Leaned me against the tree to die, and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed me, I swooned:
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yes, as the master shall the servant be,
And pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole. Can he have followed far
Who has no wound? No scar?

A.W. Tozer

"A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but is forced into a position by the inward pressure of the Holy Spirit and the press of [circumstances]....There was hardly a great leader from Paul to the present day but was drafted by the Holy Spirit for the task, and commissioned by the Lord to fill a position he had little heart for....The man who is ambitious to lead is disqualified as a leader.  The true leader will have no desire to lord it over God's heritage, but will be humble, gentle, self-sacrificing and altogether ready to follow when the Spirit chooses another to lead."

Li Hung Chang

"There are only three kinds of people - those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move them!"

Samuel Brengle

"It is not won by promotion, but by many prayers and tears.  It is attained by confession of sin, and much heart searching and humbling before God; by self-surrender, a courageous sacrifice of every idol, a bold uncomplaining embrace of the cross, and by an eternal, unfaltering looking unto Jesus crucified.  It is not gained by seeking great things for ourselves, but like Paul, by counting those things that are gain to us as loss for Christ. This is a great price, but it must be paid by the leader who would not be merely a nominal but a real spiritual leader of men, a leader whose power is recognized and felt in heaven, on earth, and in hell."

Samuel Brengle

"One of the outstanding ironies of history is the utter disregard of ranks and titles in the final judgments men pass on each other.  The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart."

Bishop Stephen Neill

"I am inclined to think that ambition in any ordinary sense of the term is nearly always sinful in ordinary men.  I am certain that in the Christian it is always sinful, and that it is most inexcusable of all in the ordained minister."

Unknown Author

"No man is ever fully accepted until he has, first of all, been utterly rejected."

J. Oswald Sanders

"Because the leader must always be ahead of his followers, he lives with loneliness.  Though he may be friendly, there are areas of life where he must walk alone."