Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are.

No man has any right to speak to men about God who has not first spoken to God about men.

If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.

As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol.

Brother Lawrence expressed the highest moral wisdom when he testified that if he stumbled and fell he turned at once to God and said, 'O Lord, this is what you may expect of me if You leave me to myself.' He then accepted forgiveness, thanked God, and gave himself no further concerns about the matter.

We get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when, and only when, we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.

There is a better way. It is to repudiate our own wisdom and take instead the infinite wisdom of God.