When we learn from experience, the scars of sin can lead us to restoration and a renewed intimacy with God.
If we rationalize our problems when He points them out, we will spend less and less time meditating because we won't want to face God in that area of our lives.
To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God's responses.
The amount of time we spend with Jesus - meditating on His Word and His majesty, seeking His face - establishes our fruitfulness in the kingdom.
Nations fight against nations, in marriages people fight against each other, children fight against each other. We are in warfare, in a national warfare, and in warfare with each other and with ourselves.
An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the highest education who does not know how to meditate.
I'm convinced that the man who has learned to meditate upon the Lord will be able to run on his feet and walk in his spirit. Although he may be hurried by his vocation, that's not the issue. The issue is how fast his spirit is going. To slow it down takes a period of time.
We are either in the process of resisting God's truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth.
You have to have courage to be obedient to God.
When God speaks, oftentimes His voice will call for an act of courage on our part.
If you tell God no because He won't explain the reason He wants you to do something, you are actually hindering His blessing. But when you say yes to Him, all of heaven opens to pour out His goodness and reward your obedience. What matters more than material blessings are the things He is teaching us in our spirit.
The difficulties we face originate from one of three sources. Some are sent to us by the Lord to test our faith, others are the result of Satan's attacks, and still others are due to our own sinful choices.
I certainly respect other people's opinions, but I would not vote for a woman to be the pastor of a church.
You can't tell a woman who is called by God to teach that she cannot teach the Word of God... So I think the distinction is that there's a difference between the authority of a pastor and a Bible teacher.
Basically, there are two paths you can walk: faith or fear. It's impossible to simultaneously trust God and not trust God.
Since God knows our future, our personalities, and our capacity to listen, He isn't ever going to say more to us than we can deal with at the moment.
A man can preach no better than he prays.
God has ways of shaking the world when He is at work. He literally caused the ground to quake when Jesus died on the cross.
On Sunday morning, I'm not nervous... I can't wait to tell what God wants me to say.
His voice leads us not into timid discipleship but into bold witness.
