We can draw no deadlines for God. He hastens or He delays as he sees fit. And his timing is all-loving toward his children. On, that we might learn to be patient in the hour of darkness. I don't mean that we make peace with darkness. We fight for joy. But we fight as those who are saved by grace and held by Christ. We say...that our night will soon- in God's good timing- turn to day.

Apathy is passionless living. It is sitting in front of the television night after night and living your life from one moment of entertainment to the next. It is the inability to be shocked into action by the steady-state lostness and suffering of the world. It is the emptiness that comes from thinking of godliness as the avoidance of doing bad things instead of the aggressive pursuit of doing good things.

No man," Wilberforce wrote, "has a right to be idle." "Where is it," he asked, "that in such a world as this, health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?

So waiting is a holy work Of faith in God. Nor does there lurk Beneath the timing of his ways Some secret malice that displays Itself in holding back the flow Of future grace. God does not go From here to there by shortest routes; He makes a place for faith and doubts. Nor does he hasten on his way, But comes when it is best, today, Or maybe twenty years from now, Or more.

If you cannot embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life.

This was Andrew Murray's judgment a hundred years ago: As we seek to find out why, with such millions of Christians, the real army of God that is fighting the hosts of darkness is so small, the only answer is—lack of heart. The enthusiasm of the kingdom is missing. And that is because there is so little enthusiasm for the King.18

The aim of the gospel is the creation of people who are passionate for doing good rather than settling for the passionless avoidance of evil.

Perseverance Here is a key to great earnestness in preaching. If you really believe that "[those who endure] to the end will be saved" (Mark 13:13), and that not only the first act of faith but all subsequent, acts of persevering faith are sustained by the Spirit through the Word of God, then virtually every sermon is a "salvation sermon," and the souls of the saints are being saved every Sunday.

February 21, 1746. "My soul was refreshed and comforted, and I could not but bless God, who had enabled me in some good measure to be faithful in the day past. Oh, how sweet it is to be spent and worn out for God!"4

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

It is my wish to fill every moment of my time with some action of the mind which may contribute to the pleasure or the improvement of my fellow creatures.

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.