Christianity does not think of man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of Him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It is not that man's will is crushed, but that man's heart is broken.
William BarclayGod tested Abraham. Temptation is not meant to make us fail; it is meant to confront us with a situation out of which we emerge stronger than we were. Temptation is not the penalty of manhood; it is the glory of manhood.
William BarclayIf a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.
William BarclayThe true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.
William BarclayCertainly Christianity is an experience, but equally clearly the validity of ane experience has to be tested. There are people in lunatic asylums who have the experience of being the Emperor Napoleon or a poached egg. It is unquestionably an experience, and to them a real experience, but for all that it has no kind of universal validity. It is necessary to go far beyond simply saying that something comes from experience. Before any such thing can be evaluated at all, the source and character of the experience must clearly be investigated.
William Barclay