Quotes about Commitment

Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought - that is, with discipline.

I am convinced that the human heart hungers for constancy. In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminatory making out and sleeping around, we forfeit something we cannot well do without. There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized.

Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.

Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?

She stood, as it were, with her face to God and her back to the people, waiting to receive His word for the 'chose people.' She had a vision of holy living. She would not deviate from that no matter how well-established, rational, and practical the ways of older missions seemed to be.

A wedding is a celebration of marriage, of an institution ordained by God at the creation of man, to be entered into with solemnity as well as with joy.

Faith is not a feeling. Faith is willed obedience in action.

If he had loved her he would have pursued her.

Young people sometimes say to me, I'll just die if the Lord calls me to be a missionary, or words to that effect. Wonderful! I say. That's the best possible way to start. You won't be of much use on the mission field unless you 'die' first. The conditions for discipleship begin with 'dying', and if you take the first step, very likely you will find that you have indeed been 'called'.

Marriage is a vocation. You are called to it. Accept marriage, then, as a God-given task. Throw yourself into it with joy. Do it heartily, with faith, prayer, and thanksgiving.

It was typical of Jim that, once sure of God's leading, he did not turn aside easily. The "leading" was to Ecuador, so every thought and action was bent in that direction. Jim practiced what he preached when he wrote in his diary: "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.