The Way to God and How to Find It quotes

If I could only make men understand the real meaning of the words of the apostle John—“God is love,” I would take that single text, and would go up and down the world proclaiming this glorious truth.

If you can convince a man that you love him you have won his heart.

If we really make people believe that God loves them, how we should find them crowding into the kingdom of heaven! The trouble is that men think God hates them; and so they are all the time running away from Him.

If you can convince a man that you love him you have won his heart. If we really make people believe that God loves them, how we should find them crowding into the kingdom of heaven!

The trouble is that men think God hates them; and so they are all the time running away from Him.

We built a church in Chicago some years ago; and were very anxious to teach the people the love of God. We thought if we could not preach it into their hearts we would try and burn it in;

There is nothing in this world that men prize so much us they do Love.

Show me a person who has no one to care for or love him, and I will show you one of the most wretched beings on the face of the earth.

Why do people commit suicide? Very often it is because this thought steals in upon them—that no one loves them; and they would rather die than live.

She remembers the infant smiles, the merry laugh of childhood, the promise of youth; and she can never be brought to think him unworthy.

Death cannot quench a mother’s love; it is stronger than death.

You have seen a mother watching over her sick child. How willingly she would take the disease into her own body if she could thus relieve her child! Week after week she will keep watch;

She took the first train, and started for her boy, although the order had gone forth from the War Department that no more women should be admitted within the lines.

But a mother’s love knows nothing about orders

so she managed by tears and entreaties to get through the lines to the Wilderness. At last she found the hospital where her boy was. Then she went to the doctor and she said:

There is no doubt that salvation is worth all that effort; but we do not obtain it by our works. It is “to him that worketh not, but believeth” (Romans 4:5).

We work because we are saved; we do not work to be saved. We work from the cross; but not towards it.

It is written, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). Why, you must have your salvation before you can work it out. Suppose I say to my little boy, “I want you to spend that hundred dollars carefully.”

and he would not want to stay there. Certainly, if we are to be happy in heaven we must begin to make a heaven here on earth.

Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.

If a gambler or a blasphemer were taken out of the streets of New York and placed on the crystal pavement of heaven and under the shadow of the tree of life, he would say, “I do not want to stay here.”

It does no good to look at the wound. If we had been in the Israelitish camp and had been bitten by one of the fiery serpents, it would have done us no good to look at the wound.

Looking at the wound will never save anyone.

What you must do is to look at the Remedy—look away to Him who hath power to save you from your sin.

A man must be made meet before he will want to go into the kingdom of God. I would rather go into the kingdom with the younger brother than stay outside with the elder.

Heaven would be hell to such an one.

An elder brother who could not rejoice at his younger brother’s return would not be “fit” for the kingdom of God. It is a solemn thing to contemplate; but the curtain drops and leaves him outside, and the younger brother within.

But, when the sentence was pronounced, he pulled out the pardon, presented it, and walked out a free man. He has been pardoned; and so have we. Then let death come, we have nought to fear.

All the gravediggers in the world cannot dig a grave large enough and deep enough to hold eternal life; all the coffin makers in the world cannot make a coffin large enough and tight enough to hold eternal life.

Death has had his hand on Christ once, but never again.

Some people are all the time looking at their faith.

Faith is the hand that takes the blessing.

I heard this illustration of a beggar. Suppose you were to meet a man in the street whom you had known for years as being accustomed to beg; and you offered him some money, and he were to say to you: “I thank you;

so that I have got the money.” Many people are always thinking whether the faith by which they lay hold of Christ is the right kind—but what is far more essential is to see that we have the right kind of Christ.

Faith is the eye of the soul; and who would ever think of taking out an eye to see if it were the right kind so long as the sight was perfect?

It is not my taste, but it is what I taste, that satisfies my appetite. So, dear friends, it is taking God at His Word that is the means of our salvation. The truth cannot be made too simple.

But some say,

Faith is the gift of God. So is the air; but you have to breathe it. So is bread; but you have to eat it. So is water; but you have to drink it.

Some are wanting a miraculous kind of feeling. That is not faith. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17). That is whence faith comes.

and enabled Elijah to stand before Ahab in that dark day. And I am so thankful that these I have mentioned were men of like passions with ourselves. It was God who made them so great. What man wants is to look to God.

Real true faith is man’s weakness leaning on God’s strength.

When man has no strength, if he leans on God he becomes powerful. The trouble is that we have too much strength and confidence in ourselves.

Another thing: it is not breaking off some one sin. A great many people make that mistake. A man who has been a drunkard signs the pledge, and stops drinking. Breaking off one sin is not Repentance.

Forsaking one vice is like breaking off one limb of a tree, when the whole tree has to come down.

A profane man stops swearing; very good: but if he does not break off from every sin it is not Repentance—it is not the work of God in the soul. When God works He hews down the whole tree.

He wants you to repent and come to Him.” “Yes, I know that; but—it has not struck me yet.” He always fell back on that. Poor man! he went down to his grave in a state of indecision.

Sixty long years God gave him to repent; and all he had to say at the end of those years was that it “had not struck him yet.”

Is any reader waiting for some strange feeling—you do not know what? Nowhere in the Bible is a man told to wait; God is commanding you now to repent.

and it is a grievous dishonor to His heart of love if you think that your tears and anguish will move Him, not knowing that ‘the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.’

It is not your badness, therefore, but His goodness that leads to repentance

; hence the true way to repent is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.’ ”

He was my son; although it did not appear what he would be when he attained manhood. He is mine; although he may have to undergo probation under tutors and governors.

The children of God are not perfect; but we are perfectly His children.

Another origin of doubts is looking at ourselves. If you want to be wretched and miserable, filled with doubts from morning till night, look at yourselves. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” (Isaiah 26:3).

Someone has said: “

There are three ways to look. If you want to be wretched, look within; if you wish to be distracted, look around; but if you would have peace, look up.

” Peter looked away from Christ, and he immediately began to sink. The Master said to him: “O thou of little faith! Wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). He had God’s eternal word, which was sure footing, and better than either marble, granite or iron;

Bishop Ryle has strikingly said: “

Faith is the root, and Assurance the flower.

” Doubtless you can never have the flower without the root; but it is no less certain you may have the root, and not the flower.

A minister once pronounced the benediction in this way: “

The heart of God to make us welcome; the blood of Christ to make us clean, and the Holy Spirit to make us certain.

” The security of the believer is the result of the operation of the Spirit of God.

but because I hang upon the nail.” If the nail gives way we all come down, gold cups, china cups, pewter cups, and all; but as long as the nail keeps up, all that hang on Him hang safely.

I once read these words on a tombstone: “Born, died, kept.”

Let us pray God to keep us in perfect peace, and assured of salvation.

But Christ is not only a Saviour. I might save a man from drowning and rescue him from an untimely grave; but I might probably not be able to do any more for him.

Christ is something more than a Saviour.

When the children of Israel were placed behind the blood, that blood was their salvation; but they would still have heard the crack of the slave-driver’s whip if they had not been delivered from the Egyptian yoke of bondage:

and it was one of the gloomiest meetings I ever attended. Finally an old man with beautiful white hair got up to speak, and his face literally shone. “Young men,” he said, “you do not talk like sons of the King.

Though it is dark just here, remember it is light somewhere else.

” Then he went on to say that if it were dark all over the world, it was light up around the Throne.

Thy yoke is not easy, nor Thy burden light; so I am going back to the world, to the fleshpots of Egypt. Goodbye, Lord Jesus! Farewell”? Did you ever hear that? No; you never did, and you never will.

I tell you, if you get into the closet and shut out the world and hold communion with the Master you cannot leave Him.

The language of your heart will be, “To whom shall we go,” but unto Thee? “Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). You could not go back to the world if you treated Him in that way.