The first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.

O Lord, breathe on me till I am one with Thee in the temper of my mind and heart and disposition, unto Thee do I turn. How completely again I realise my lostness without Thee.

Lord, through the dimness, come with dawning and drawing light. Breathe on me till I am in a pure radiant frame of body and mind for Thy work and for Thy glory this day.

My vision of God is dependent upon the condition of my character.

talking, and living—a continual surprise of the life of God. Staleness is an indication that something in our lives is out of step with God. We say to ourselves, "I have to do this thing or it will never get done." That is the first sign of staleness. Do we feel fresh this very moment or are we stale, frantically searching our minds for something to do? Freshness is not the result of obedience; it comes from the Holy Spirit.

If my holiness is not drawing towards Him, it is not holiness of the right order, but an influence that will awaken inordinate affection and lead souls away into side-eddies.

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. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person's inner nature.

Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.

Every time you ask for forgiveness, you recognize that the biggest problems you face in life exist inside of you, not outside of you.

True restoration takes patience, subtlety, skill, and grace.

God is not willing for this broken-down world to stay in its sorry condition. As Creator, he is able to look at it and see promise, the promise of a total restoration of its beauty. And he has asked you to move in with him to be one of his tools of restoration. While it is hard to live in a house that needs to be restored in some ways it is even harder to live there while the restoration takes place.