Weekend Words

Quotes from Ordering Your Private World – Gordon MacDonald

“The battle is lost or won in the secret places of the will before God, never first in the external world… Nothing has any power over the [person] who has fought out the battle before God and won there… I must get the thing settled between myself and God in the secret places of my soul where no stranger inter-meddles, and then I can go forth with the certainty that the battle is won.”

Oswald Chambers

“We need to find God, and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grow in silence; see the stars, the moon and sun, how they move in silence...the more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. All our words will be useless unless they come from within - words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.”

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

“Almighty God, in this quiet hour I seek communion with thee. From the fret and fever of the day’s business, from the world’s discordant noises, from the praise and blame of men, from the confused thoughts and vain imaginations of my own heart, I would now turn aside and seek the quietness of thy presence. All day long have I toiled and striven; but now in the stillness of heart and the clear light of thy eternity, I would ponder the pattern my life is weaving.”

John Baillie

“We must examine with care what are the virtues of which we stand most in need, what are those which are most difficult to win, the sins to which we most often fall, and the most frequent and inevitable occasions of our falling. We must turn to God in complete confidence in our hour of battle, abide strongly in the presence of His divine majesty, worship Him humbly, and set before him our woes and our weaknesses. And thus we shall find in Him all virtues though we may lack them all.”

Brother Lawrence

“I turn my little omelet in the pan for the love of God. When it is finished, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on the ground and worship my God, who gave me this grace to make it, after which I arise happier than a king. When I can do nothing else, it is enough to have picked up a straw for the love of God. People look for ways of learning how to love God. They hope to attain it by I know not how many different practices. They take much trouble to abide in His presence by varied means. Is it not a shorter and more direct way to do everything for the love of God, to make use of all the tasks one’s lot in life demands to show Him that love, and to maintain His presence within by the communion of our hearts with His? There is nothing complicated about it. One has only to turn to it honestly and simply.”

Brother Lawrence

I like a book with quotes! :)