Sound Words for Pilgrims

"Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" (Hebrews 12:9)

"A heart resigned, submissive, meek,
My great Redeemer's throne,
Where only Christ is heard to speak,
Where Jesus reigns alone."

(Footprints for Pilgrims, pp. 29-32)

Faith is a divine plant that only grows out of the soil of a broken will.

You are of no use to God until your will is broken.

The calm of a soul which reposes in the will of God is unspeakable.

When you have learned that your only home is God's presence and your only happiness is in doing God's will, there is nothing more that I can teach you.

The more subject we are to the will of God, the more we shall grow in holiness.

You cannot expect an answer from God unless your will is gone (Luke 22:42) You shut out answers to prayer because you have a will about the thing for which you are praying.

A sister used to say that the only differences she knew in places was where she realized most of the presence of God; so will it be with ourselves when we have no will of our own and when we have no home but God's presence.

If we knew the heart of God, we would never question any of His dealings with us, nor should we ever desire His hand lifted off us till we had learned all He would teach us.

Paul says, "By evil report and good report"; he did not stop to explain. A true servant of God has not time for that, and to defend yourself only leads to further charges.

We are never to seek to vindicate ourselves when it is a personal matter, but when the Lord's name is dishonored, for His glory we may speak.

You never find the Lord defending Himself.

Your character may not be vindicated down here. Jesus died under a cloud. He was never cleared in this world of the false accusations that had been made against Him.

The will of God was the only law of Christ's life. He was never governed by human considerations or affections. Are we set upon this - that the will of God should be our only law?

A soul who is in the secret of the divine mind must be content to be unappreciated and to walk alone.

If we are not in the path of God's will, we are not in the path of power.

Our true wisdom is in subjection to the will of our Lord. To human eyes no plan of taking Jericho could have been more foolish that that which Joshua adopted, but it was God's plan and hence its complete success.

"One thing have I desired...To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple" (Psalm 27:4)

--- E.D.

Quotes from H.E. Hayhoe (part 1)

Do you want a happy Christian life? Knowledge won't give it to you. What will give it to you? The enjoyment of Christ in your life. 

True religion is the manifestation of the nature of God in His children. 

If I have arthritis, it is an infirmity of the flesh; if my arthritis makes me cranky or impatient that is sin. 

It is alright to groan but not to grumble. 

Thirst, hunger and weariness are natural to the flesh, not infirmities of the flesh. 

The Lord Jesus was perfect God and perfect man as He walked here on earth. 

Christianity is the only religion in the world that gives man a pure object for his hearts affection. All other religious founders lay in the grave. 

The secret of a happy Christian life is learning to commune with the Lord as you would with a near and a dear friend.

The sin that we commit does not produce our state of soul but manifests it. Why do I sin, because I want to.

In the things of God you have to taste and walk in them to know the blessedness of them. There is no enjoyment of the truth apart from walking in it.

It is not what you know that controls your life, but it is the enjoyment of Christ in the heart that truly separates us from the world and brings a peace, contentment and happiness of which the world knows nothing.

Practice the habit of meditation when you read. You will find the precious ore is there in its richness, but you will have to do a little meditation to discover it. 

It is not what you eat that nourishes your body. It is what you digest, and it is the same with spiritual things. 

Every time you eat, God is teaching you that life springs out of death because everything you eat dies except salt. 

There is not a ray of light that can pierce the inky darkness that lies beyond the grave outside of the Word of God, the Bible. 

Every time you say, "I think," you think wrongly - on every moral and spiritual subject - unless your thoughts are formed by the Word of God. 

Anything that is not the truth [of the Word of God], is nonsense, and illogical. 

A text without a context is a pretext. Words get their meaning from the context in which they are found. 

Never take your thoughts to the Word of God - take your thoughts from the Word of God 

Conscience speaks from within - never can it tell of God's character - revelation gives this. 

Faith doesn't reason, and reason isn't faith, though faith is never unreasonable. 

The soul never imbibes truth in Living power but as it so requires. 

It is the hardest thing to get even Christians to see that the church's blessings are heavenly [and] not earthly. 

Every school book, every magazine, every newspaper that you read will make the horizon of all your thoughts the world in which you live. The Word of God is the only book that tells you to lay up treasures in heaven. 

Truth that requires faith to walk by, is resisted by the natural heart. 

Not one right thought of God ever entered the heart of man through his intellect, but through the conscience. 

The conscience is the guide to true knowledge. It never turns infidel. 

He puts sorrow and joy together on our road home; tribulation and joy together; deep poverty and joy together. 

The thickest cloud brings the heaviest showers of blessing. 

Little by little with the skill of a master's hand and the gentleness of a Father's heart He woos with His love and weans us through circumstances from earth to heaven. 

The divine nature is shown by having God as its object. 

His presence gives moral courage for Christian obedience. 

Faith and salvation go together. Obedience and happiness go together.

--- H.E.H.

"One thing have I desired ... to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple." (Psalm 27:4)

"Jesus, Thou art enough
the mind and heart to fill;
Thy patient life - to calm the soul,
Thy love its fear dispel.

Oh fix our earnest gaze
So wholly, Lord, on Thee
That, with Thy beauty occupied,
We elsewhere none may see." (LF #174)

(Footprints for Pilgrims, pp. 53-56) 

The perfection of the Christian life is to lose sight of oneself completely and to make everything of Christ.

The sign of a good state of soul is enjoyment of the presence of Christ. Everything that takes your eye off Christ is a snare of the devil.

The one object of the Christian life is to learn more of Himself, and Satan cannot find entrance into a heart that is full of Christ.

We are not to rejoice so much in the deliverances when they come as in the One who delivers us.

The deeper the sense of the state from which we have been delivered, the more absorbingly intense will be our affection for the Deliverer.

Intellectual conviction is always powerless. It occupies itself with the truth and never leads to Christ Himself.

The Israelites were to gather the manna, every man according to his eating (Exodus 16:16). The appetite governed the amount collected. How strikingly true this is of the believer! We all have as much of Christ as we desire - no more, and no less. If our desires are large - if we open our mouth wide - He will fill it...On the other hand, if we are but feebly conscious of our need, a little only of Christ will be supplied.

There are seasons when many believers feel as if they could not get into the presence or obtain the ear of God...Surely it would prove an antidote to Satan's temptations at such periods to remember that if we cannot pray ourselves, Christ never fails to bear us up in His prevailing intercession...It would soon dispel our gloom and coldness of heart, because it would lead us to look away from ourselves and to expect all from Him and from His continual ministry for us in the presence of God.

A heart possessed of Christ is fortified against the most seductive allurements of the world.

The state of our souls may be discerned by the effect produced upon us by the name of Jesus.

Christ Himself is to be our great example of faith - of a life of dependence upon God. If the holiest man that ever lived were to fill our vision, it would only hinder and not help us.

Whenever we speak to one another of Christ, He will always be one of the company. (See Malachi 3:16). Do our hearts long for His presence? Then let us speak together of Him more.

We feed on Christ by the appropriation of Him in every character that He is presented to us.

The whole life of our blessed Lord as man is compressed into the worlds, "He humbled Himself"

"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." Christ is the sole authority in the kingdom.

--- E.D.

"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.... Moreover by them is thy servant warned." (Psalm 19: 9, 11)

Saviour ! may we never cherish  That which nailed Thee to the cross,

All of earth, oh, let it perish,  Be it counted worse than loss.

Let no siren's song seducing,  Turn us from our joys divine,

Idols in the heart producing,  Hearts which would be wholly Thine.

(pp. 181-184, Footprints for Pilgrims)

"Do all things without murmurings and disputings." We murmur at a thousand things in our lot,  just as the Israelites did in the wilderness, and thereby question the care, the love, and the wisdom of Him who orders all our path, and lose the blessed sense of His presence with us.

When people become slaves to a fad they soon become tyrants.

When knowledge enters the head it exalts me.  When knowledge enters the heart it humbles me.

Nothing has so corrupted Christianity as the acceptance of worldly help for the furtherance of its objects.

May we never bridge over the chasm between the worlds and us, and we shall never seek to do so if we can adopt the language of the apostle, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world."

All error has a particle of truth in it, and that is why it is so dangerous.

"Wisdom and might are his." (Daniel 2:20)  A simple utterance, but how profound !  For if wisdom and might are God's, they are nowhere else to be found, and it is in vain to turn for them to any but God.

Philanthropy has man for its object, religion has God for its object.

Wherever there is a claim to great spirituality there is a danger.

A meeting ought to close when it is over.  The Lord often leaves a meeting long before the people do.

If you make health an object, you never get it.

Nothing so injures the soul as controversy.

In this day of grace God would have all men to be saved, and hence we have to beseech (2 Cor. 5:20) -- not denounce -- all men.  You cannot feed souls with denunciations -- even though the things denounced are errors.

Even a German poet said, "Refute error by the statement of the truth," so the presentation of Christ will expose evil and build up the hearers.

How easily we stray whenever we get on the line of expediency.  The Lord must have the first place, or we shall soon drift on the rocks.

Two lessons we need to learn -- first to be brought to an end of ourselves and also to be brought to the end of man, and we then expect nothing from self, and nothing from man.

If our hearts are set on one single thing on which the heart of God is not set, in so far we are out of communion.

There are only two channels of testimony -- the lip and the life, and the lip should be but the expression of what has been first produced in the life.  What we should all desire is intense reality, to be possessed and controlled by the truth we profess to hold, and thus to shun the use of phrases and sentences which we have never eaten, digested and found true in our souls.

--- E.D.

"Master ... at Thy word I will let down the net." (Luke 5:5)

Oh, use me, Lord, use even me,

Just as Thou wilt, and how, and where,

Until Thy blessed face I see,

Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share.

(pp. 57-60, Footprints for Pilgrims)

"And they were all amazed at the mighty power of God." (Luke 9:43)  It is very humbling to see how amazed they were about this power.  They did not wonder at the power of evil.  But they ought so to have counted on His power as to have been amazed if the power were not exerted.

The faith of the labourer is the means of blessing to souls.

(Luke 10:38-42)  Martha, though preparing for the Lord, which was right surely, yet shows how much self is inherent in this kind of care, for she did not like to have all the trouble of it.

What perseverance there is on the part of God !  and we are called to go on in the same spirit.  It does cost a great deal to go on and on, in spite of everybody and everything; and for us to do so marks the presence of divine power in us, for God's grace is unwearied.

When no circumstances lead you to have any hope, is your hope then in Him ?

My service will be rewarded whatever may have been produced by the Holy Ghost answering the desire of Christ in working in me, for it is service of which I could not do an atom without His power.

Our place is to meet everything in service in the patience and power of Christ.

I always dread my work not being solid.

We should pray for more of the working of the Spirit in us and desire to be filled with the Spirit -- poor little hearts indeed, but they may be filled.

(Luke 14:10) When God gives me a place it is one of power and nighness to Himself; but when a man takes a place for himself it is one of weakness and alienation from God, because self is the object.

"Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves." You cannot turn a lamb into a wolf to defend itself. ... The testimony is brighter ... when I take things quietly and submit, not desiring to be a wolf among wolves.  It is exceedingly difficult for one's heart to bow and say, "I will be nothing but a lamb," but that is our place, for the Lord says, "Vengeance is mine".

John said, "We forbad him, because he followeth not with us."  That tells the whole tale.  They were thinking of themselves, not of Christ; of their own importance, and not His honour.  If it had been His importance they would have thought how blessed it was to find the effect of His name and rejoiced to know His power was being exercised by man.  But no; they were looking at themselves as well as at the Messiah.  ...  And is there not something in us of the same thing -- a satisfaction at that which aggrandizes self as well as Christ, instead of seeking the honour of Christ alone.

--- J.N.D.

"Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." (Hebrews 10:37)

"A little while" -- 'twill soon be past,

Why should we shun the promised cross ?

O let us in His footsteps haste.

Counting for Him all else but loss !

For how will recompense His smile,

The sufferings of this "little while".

(pp. 13-16, Footprints for Pilgrims)

The bitter waters of Marah must be tasted when the salt waters of the Red Sea have delivered us from Egypt for ever and ever.  Put the wood of the tree, the cross of Christ, into our cross and all will be sweet.  "Crucified" is terrible work -- crucified with Christ, joy and deliverance; reproach is cruel, the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Eqypt.

If we have once really tasted the loving-kindness of God we never enjoy it so much as when we have nothing else to enjoy.

We must all learn God ... in the midst of His blessings ... perhaps first, and some time or other have our hearts settled by being cast over on Himself and nothing else; being brought into a position where nothing helps God to make us happy ... and where we must find in Him alone our all.

(Luke 9:28-43) Jesus was as much with His disciples when they came down as while they were on the mount, and that is our comfort.  Do not let us suppose we have lost Christ ... The Lord give us to know, while passing through this world, what a Christ we have, taking our hearts clean out of the defiling circumstances around, so that whether we get a taste of the glory or are passing through the crowd of this world.  He may be everything to us, as He is everything for us.

It is wonderfully sweet to feel that we near home; long often difficult and painful work (although it is a wonderful privilege to do it), and then eternal rest with the Lord.

As long as Christ's grace is at work, if there is only one saint on the earth and everything else failed around, he would find the power of Christ ready to be exercised on his behalf ... However dark the dispensation may be, there is exactly the grace that is needed for the position.

Never fear persecution; it will make your face shine like an angel's.

Self-sacrifice is always joy where there is grace in it.  There is no such joy as self-devotedness.

The soul is tested by afflictions as to how far self-will is active. ... God searches us.  By this means we learn on the one hand what we are, and on the other what God is for us in His faithfulness and daily care.  We are weaned from the world, and our eyes become better able to discern and appreciate what is heavenly.

All that makes heaven a home to Christ will make it a home to me.  O come, Lord Jesus !

Christ's perfection was not to act, but to suffer; in suffering there was a more entire surrender of Himself.

In His eternal presence, how shall we feel that all our little sorrows and separations were but little drops by the way, to make us feel that we were not with Him, and when with Him what it is to be there.

--- J.N.D.