If we obey God it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the sting comes in. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything, it is a delight, but it costs those who do not love Him a good deal.

To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me and then I change things.' God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things.

Watch human nature; we are so built that if we do not get thrilled in the right way, we will get thrilled in the wrong. If we are without the thrill of communion with God, we will try to get thrilled by the devil, or by some concoction of human ingenuity.

One of the greatest snares is the number of good things we might do. Jesus Christ never did the good things He might have done, He did everything He ought to do because He had His eye fixed on His Father's will and He sacrificed Himself for His Father.

Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God.

God's will is hard only when it comes up against our stubbornness, then it is as cruel as a ploughshare and as devastating as an earthquake.

Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.