James says that you deceive yourself if you only hear the Word but do not do it. How many people live in this deception their whole life-hearing and hearing, but never even trying to do what they hear!

An inner life and inner enemies to conquer, battle and destroy. These enemies are the various desires that seek to distract our concentration by causing our thoughts to cling to outward things, things that will pass away.

A longsuffering person will endure where others give up. He always thinks about how God has been longsuffering toward him, and he counts God's longsuffering as salvation. Longsuffering endures where no one else can endure, and it always hopes for a happy result at the end.

God implants Spirit and zeal into our hearts in order to accomplish a work. When the work is done, a quiet rest remains. We do not have to push one another aside because God has prepared our works so that each one can keep out of one another's way. We only have to take heed that we do His works.

No one can be transferred from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God without a great battle and by the good fight of faith. No one receives full light in a single day. Great faithfulness is required for us to receive more light.

Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires, but you can't do that at the foot of the cross. Those who pierced Him also stood at the foot of the cross. Standing there does not bring any pain to the flesh; but when you are crucified together with Jesus, you will come to know the fellowship of His sufferings.

This is perdition: the things to which the heart was attached pass away while the person himself, who is an eternal being, is filled with nothing but emptiness when he should have been filled with God Himself. That is why it is so very important that we turn our focus inward to the source of life that lives forever, even as we ourselves will live forever.