“A whole lot of what we call ‘struggling’ is simply delayed obedience.”

We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.

If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look ‘little’ or ‘big’.

Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ”in spirit and in truth.” Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.

When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).

I believe with all my heart God’s Story has a happy ending. . . But not yet, not necessarily yet. It takes faith to hold on to that in the face of the great burden of experience, which seems to prove otherwise.

Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.

The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and have, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else, would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler life, the greater peace.

No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.

Remind me that not everything needs to be said, and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.

I have one desire now – to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.

It is impossible to love deeply without sacrifice.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.

Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for

What God gives in answer to our prayers will always be the thing we most urgently need, and it will always be sufficient.

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

To be man’s tender mate was woman born, and in obeying nature she best serves the purposes of heaven.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Obedience decks the Christian most.

Obedience is the Christian’s crown.

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.

It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.

Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obey them.