Our duty and our privilege

‎"It is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed; we are to spend and to be spent, not to lay ourselves up in lavender, and nurse our flesh."
- C.H. Spurgeon, The Minister’s Fainting Fits, Lectures to My Students, Lecture XI, 1856.

What is wrong with the world today?

In response to a newspaper campaign asking What is wrong with the world today, G.K. Chesterton replied profoundly:
"Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely Yours,
G.K. Chesterton

Expect unexpected things

‎"Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect unexpected things 'above all that we ask or think.'"
- Andrew Murray

The threat of being eaten

‎"Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer." - John G. Paton, after being told not to go on the mission field because of the threat of being eaten.

"I never made a sacrifice"

"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice"

-David Livingstone

Vex the devil

"Accordingly if the devil should say, 'Do not drink,' you should reply to him, 'On this very account, because you forbid it, I shall drink, and what is more, I shall drink a generous amount. Thus one must always do the opposite of that which Satan prohibits. What do you think is my reason for drinking wine undiluted, talking freely, and eating more often, if it is not to torment and vex the devil who made up his mind to torment and vex me." -Martin Luther

Weary of my inward sickness

"Why there I hope to see living he who hung dead on the Cross; and there I hope to be rid of all those things within me that remain a constant annoyance. For to tell you the truth, I love my Lord because he released me of my burden, and I am weary of my inward sickness. I would much prefer to be where I shall die no more and my companions shall continually cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Pilgrim’s Progress - John Bunyan