Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

God has willed that we should seek and find God's living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings.

It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.

The deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.

So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.