Series Quotations

Q-34
All other greatness has been marred by littleness. All other wisdom has been weakened by folly. All other goodness has been tainted by imperfection. Jesus alone is the one man who ever lived of whom it can be said: "He is altogether lovely." Jesus was the one, perfect, ideal, complete man. "If we would look for the highest example of meekness, we would not look to Moses, but to Jesus, who was indescribably meek and lowly in heart. For the highest level of patience, we would not look to Job, but to Jesus, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again.
For the highest example of wisdom, we would not look to Solomon, but to Jesus, who spoke as never a man spake.
For the highest example of consuming pity, we would not look to weeping Jeremiah, but to Jesus, as He weeps over the city of Jerusalem saying, 'Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but ye would not; behold, now is your house forsaken.'
For the highest example of soul-absorbing zeal, we would not look to Paul, but to Jesus, of whom it was said: 'The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.'
For the highest example of love, we would not look to John, but to Jesus, who, while we were yet sinners loved us and gave Himself for us.
All other men have but a fragmentary goodness and greatness, but that of Jesus Christ is complete. It is perfect. It is undefiled."
The search light of criticism has been focused upon Jesus for nearly 20 centuries, and yet not once has it found in Him one suggestion of sin, one idle word, one selfish deed.
People talk of not believing in miracles. I say then, what do you do with the carpenter - preacher of Golgotha? He is the preeminent miracle of all the ages. Who was this one and only perfect man? Was He not more than man? We can only reply, "Yes. This was the Son of God."
>From "The Preacher"
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Q-35
Almost the first thing the angel said to Mary about the son she was to bear is this:
"Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins."

The God-man then is the gateway between God and man.
"Through Him, God has found His way to man. Through Him, man has found his way to God. God finds Himself in this person and is with man. Man finds himself in this person and is with God. Through the God-man, deity takes hold of humanity. Through the God-man, humanity takes hold of deity." Anon.
>From "The Preacher"
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Q-36
Countless sermons have been preached and numerous books have been written about the spectators who comprised the crowd about the cross. One of the most inspiring to me was by a chap from Belfast, Ireland, Kenneth D. Harvey. To him, I am indebted for the seed thought which inspired this particular sermon.

Dr. Harvey points out that we often impatiently brush aside the question asked by that plaintiff negro spiritual: "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" We try to literalize it and we hotly protest that we weren't alive 2000 years ago when the cross was raised against a darkened sky. How could we have been there?

As Bishop Gerald Kennedy said so beautifully,
"And yet...the strange thing is that, as we look into our hearts, we know we have all been there."
Every time we have given way to cowardice and self-seeking, we have helped drive the nails into His hands and feet. Every time we have fallen prey to hatred and disloyalty, we have helped cast the spear into His side.

"Every time we have felt a wave of sickening shame for wrong doing, we have heard His voice whisper:
'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.' Every time we have had a deep longing to commit out lives to truth and righteousness, we have seen on that cross the example of His love and it has been a challenge to the noblest and the best which is in us. Yes...when they crucified our Lord...we were there."
>From "The People"
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Q-45
Dr. Edward L. R. Elson says so pointedly:
"We are brilliant but unhappy.
Clever but unstable.
Comfortable but comfortless.
We own so much and possess so little.
We are forlorn souls, groping and
hungering and lost.
For once again, as in the garden of Eden, we are
fugitives from God...bereft of spiritual
certitude.

"As a generation we dope ourselves in our amateur
psychology. We buy up all the books of the peace of mind cult,
pitifully confident that it is possible to have
peace of mind in our kind of world.

"We follow the preachers who hawk formulas for banishing worry and fear and tension, while the
prophets of God, with their painful judgements requiring repentance, go unheeded.

"We turn wistfully to 'inspirational' speakers and are left with a terrible emptiness;
(And then) every once in a while we come to our senses with a sudden jolt as we realize that our whole problem lies in the fact that we are renegades from our true nature. We do not know God."
>From "I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
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Q-46
According to Dr. John McKay of Princeton,
"The lamentable scandal of our day is the hollow pretense of multitudes who name the name of Christ with smug complacency, but who utterly fail, either through ignorance or disobedience to accept the lofty standards of Our Holy Faith."

If Jesus is the truth by which we know all things--and He is--then He is the test by which we are tried, the standard by which our behavior is measured. As Christians, our task is to be Christ-like. To radiate through our lives the same values which are His.

"It is not enough", cries Dr. McKay, "that I hear the word of God. It is necessary that the word of God become incarnate in my flesh in a spiritual sense...that Christ be formed in me...revealed in me and not simply to me. What we need, in a word, within the Church if the Church is to match this hour, is Christians who are utterly Christian!"

It has never been better said: The need of this hour is for "Christians who are utterly Christian." Who, regardless of the implications and changes required, will embody Christ's way in every area of life. Christians who will be like fire. Fire does not care whether someone puts a kettle on it...it merely burns. That is the limit of its duty. And our duty as Christians is to burn with self-abandonment as living torches casting light upon the darkness of the world about us.
>From "I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
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Q-47
I am indebted to Roy and Revel Hession, co-authors of a potent little book entitled We Would See Jesus, for some of the thoughts I want to share with you this morning. They point out that:
"The very fact the Lord Jesus said 'I am the door' presupposes the presence of a wall, or barrier, which excludes us from God." And, as each of us has learned from painful experience, such a wall does, in fact, exist.
>From "I Am the Door"
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Q-48
We must also understand that Jesus is a narrow door. He, Himself, said it: "Narrow is the gate that leads to life" (Matt. 7:14). As the Hessons point out, "At first the road to the cross seems broad, and we can all go together. But as we get nearer to the place of repentance, the path gets narrower. There is not room for us to get lost in the crowd. And when, at last, we come to the One who is the door Himself, there is not room even for two. If (we) are going to enter (we) will have to stand before Jesus alone."

We don't like to do that! We don't like to be the only one to repent. The devil tells us the folks all about us--especially some of those Christian folk--are just as bad as we. Maybe worse. He tries to make us unwilling to repent unless others repent first. But we'll never get through the door that way.

You must face Jesus alone, my friend. As if you were the only sinner on earth. For Jesus is a personal Savior for a personal sinner and the only way to God is through that low and narrow door, The Door Named Jesus. You must come to Him as you are, and you must face your need alone.
>From "I Am the Door"
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Q-49
The purpose of the fruit we are privileged to bear is to bless others. A vine in a vineyard does not bear its grapes for its own refreshment, but for the refreshment of others. So, too, Jesus--the True Vine--acts only and always for others.

This is one of the truths which became clear to me again this week while reading Roy Hesson's little book We Would See Jesus. And, I must say right now, I am indebted to Mr. Hesson for a number of the thoughts I want to share with you.

He points out that everything Jesus has ever done has been for others. When Jesus came from earth to heaven, it was for others. When Jesus laid down His life upon the cross, it was for others.

When Jesus was raised from the dead, it was to justify others as well as validate Himself and His claims. "He was raised again for our justification", Paul says in Romans 4:25. Even the position Jesus occupies today as the Great High Priest in heaven is for the benefit of others (Heb. 9:24).

The focus of Christ's entire life and ministry, from start to finish, was and is others. Others. Always others. And who are the undeserving others He seeks to serve? You and me! We are the others to whom He would minister.

But He not only wants to minister to us, He also wants to minister through us. He wants to get us connected up with Himself so that His life is flowing to us, and then He wants to involve us as extensions of Himself by having His life flow through us to others of the others He so longs to help and heal. That's the picture of Himself, and us, Jesus draws here in John 15:5: "I am the vine, ye are the branches."

That means that as Christians, you and I have been made a part of the One who lives and acts for the salvation and blessing of others. It also means, therefore, that we exist for others. As branches our purpose is to bear the fruit which comes from the Vine, is characteristic of the Vine, and is produced by the Vine through us, for the blessing and benefit of others.
>From "I Am the True Vine"
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Q-50
To abide means to dwell, or remain, or continue. So Jesus is saying to us today:
Dwell in Me!...remain in Me...continue in Me...stay where my Father put you. In Me! Abide in Me so I can dwell, remain and continue to abide in you.

If you will dwell in Me, I can dwell in you. And the Life which is in Me, I will release to you and through you. As a result your life, like mine, will be fruitful and joyful. Abide in Me and I in you. It's a two way street.
>From "I Am the True Vine"
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Q-51
Behind that hunger which physical food and material stuff can temporarily relieve, lies a higher hunger. A hunger which is spiritual. A hunger only Christ can satisfy.

And why is that? Why is Christ the only answer? He Himself supplies the answer:
"Labor not for meat which perishes, but for that meat (or soul food) which endures unto everlasting life which the Son of man shall give to you: for him hath God the Father sealed" (John 6:27).

There is profound meaning in that phrase: "for him hath God the Father sealed." In a fine book called Eastern Customs In Bible Lands, the author explains: "In the east, it was not the signature on a document which authenticated it, but the seal. This was true in commercial as well as political documents. The seal, imprinted with the signet ring, made the document valid.

"In Greek culture, it was the seal which authenticated a will. It was the seal on the mouth of a sack or crate which guaranteed the contents. From the highest to the humblest level of society, the seal was the sign of an object's true worth or authenticity."

The reason Jesus can satisfy the true hunger of the human heart is that he is sealed by God. He is the truth about God incarnate in human flesh. To see Jesus is to see God. To receive Jesus is to receive God. To obey Jesus is to obey God.
>From "I Am the Bread of Life"
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Q-92
As A. W. Toser says,
"We who call ourselves Christians are supposed to be a people set apart, people who have repudiated the wisdom of this world and have adopted the wisdom of the cross as our guide to living. We have cast our lot with the One who, while He lived on earth, was the most unadjusted of the sons of men. He simply would not be integrated into society. He stood above it and condemned it by withdrawing from it. Die for it He would. But surrender to it, He would not!"

If we would know the supreme happiness of abundant living, then we must repudiate the values we held during the days of our spiritual bachelorhood. To quote Toser again, "Christ, and not society, must become our pattern. We must seek adjustment, not to the world, but to the will of God. We must recognize the world for what it is, a sinking ship from which we can escape, not by integration, but by abandonment."
>From "An Adventure in Spiritual Pioneering"
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Q-93
As Ralph Laubach says, "They were captivated by a magnetic personality and by faith decided to walk with Him and see what He would do. After they had followed Him for a few months, their hearts felt a tremendous love and their minds found a tremendous truth."
>From "Fact, Faith and Feeling"
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Q-94
A man named C. E. Montague put it this way:
"One of the great delights of life is the discovery that certain trite pieces of observation are shiningly and exhilaratingly true."
>From "Fact, Faith and Feeling"
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Q-95
Faith is not a stain-glassed word. It is not limited to church windows. As Dr. V. Carney Hargroves points out: "Faith is a word which gets out into the streets, rides the trolley cars, does business in banks, cooks food and mends clothes for the family. Faith goes to school and college, sustains marriage, creates friendships. Faith is the element in life which enables people to keep on choosing the right when there are countless expedient, profitable reasons for choosing the wrong."

No, Faith is not a stained-glass word. It is not an easy escape from responsibility. It is not a lazy man's retreat from reality. Rather, Faith is a means by which we know and a method by which we live.
>From "Fact, Faith and Feeling"
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Q-96
Martha Packard, a nineteen year old girl in Topeka, Kansas, discovered the power of Faith two years ago when face to face with a broken teenage marriage and the responsibility of supporting a tiny daughter, she turned to God for help and found in the words of Christ, "Lo, I am with you always",
new evidence of the Fact of God's unfailing love for her.

She writes, "Those words, 'Lo, I am with you always', made a terrific impression upon me and I began letting God be more than just a part of life. Since then I have tried saying them to myself every time I am faced with a problem. They have given me strength to make decisions, courage when I was afraid.

"Oh, mistakes are inevitable. But I have found that mistakes are much easier to face now and I have the strength and courage it takes to correct them in the best possible way. Nothing seems to be too great to conquer and nothing seems too complicated to solve. Until two years ago God was just a part of my life…now He is with me in everything I do." Here is a teenager who began with Fact and moved through Faith to a Feeling of security, peace and at-one-ment with God.
>From "Fact, Faith and Feeling"
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Q-97
Mrs. Albert M. Potter, of Clinton, Iowa, had a similar experience. For ten years her creed had been "God helps those who help themselves" and she found that under that code life was extremely hard. Then, through the medium of a little book, she rediscovered the Fact of God's unfailing love and the Feelings of joy, power and security which came into her life when she built her Faith upon that Fact.

She came across a spiritual exercise prescribed by Dr. Emmett Fox in which he said:
"if a person wishes to really grow in faith, he should for one week, seven days and seven nights, twenty-four hours a day, consciously endeavor to think nothing but positive thoughts."

Mrs. Potter decided to do it. She writes that she had never under-taken anything so difficult.
"Not once could I raise my voice to my children. Not once could I take offense at a questionable implication. Not once could I fear depressing headlines. Not once could I feel sad when circumstances indicated disappointment. Every separate negative thought had to be replaced with a positive idea and assertion. The effort this took was unbelievable.

"By the sixth day my mind was so spent I could do nothing but sleep out the last two days in a benumbed condition. But at least I had fulfilled the conditions of my assignment and, because I undertook it, I sincerely feel I will never be the same person again."

After the conclusion of the experiment she began to realize that for the first time in more than fifteen years she was living each moment in the present. For years she had been living only for tomorrow. It was a terrible habit which had started while she was in school with such thoughts as
"when I graduate",
"when I get a job",
"when we get married",
"when the war is over", or
"when we build our house".
It had seeped into everything she did.

But now the habit is cleanly broken and she concludes:
"I find myself enjoying every moment with all possible pleasure and peace and happiness. If I awaken in the night a cozy, warm feeling envelopes me. If I walk out into the early morning, I am delighted with the leaves and grass instead of being caught with worry for the day's activities. How wonderful it is to feel peace and contentment."

Do you call that living with your eyes closed? Of course not! It is living with your eyes wide open. It is a practical exercise of Faith based upon the Fact of God's unfailing love.
>From "Fact, Faith and Feeling"
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Q-98
Victor Hugo once said, "The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved."
And after earning my degree in psychology and spending nine years counseling many people, I can say I have yet to meet a truly unhappy person who down deep inside himself was sure he was loved.
>From "Let's Try the Thing We Haven't Tried"
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Q-99
Dr. Warner Cole, of the Covenant Baptist Church of Detroit, puts it this way:
"Love is always directional. It is always on the move. It is going somewhere, towards somebody, or something. Love is ever functional. It is continually accomplishing something, engaged in some good undertaking, dedicated to some helpful ministry or work. Love is always objective. It is no wandering star of the universe of confusion. It is God's great guided missile, making its way toward some person, some nation, some goal, unerringly hurrying on toward the object of its errand."
>From "Let's Try the Thing We Haven't Tried"
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Q-100
As someone has said,
"Our world heeds no new weapons of mass destruction to frighten people into living at peace. We need no new scientific gadgets to remove the drudgery of everyday tasks. We need no new philosophers to bring us meaning out of what seems sometimes to be a meaningless existence. What we really need is love." As Smiley Blanton says in his book by the same name, we must
"Love Or Perish".
>From "Let's Try the Thing We Haven't Tried"
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Q-101
Paul Davies, one of the great Episcopalian preachers, says:
"We are all alone under the stars…all strangers and sojourners here on Earth".
And he is right. All of us are just a little bewildered by the complexity of life. A little burdened by the weight of the load we are asked to carry. A little weary of life's taxations. And what we often need is just the love and understanding of an honest friend.
>From "Let's Try the Thing We Haven't Tried"
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Q-102
As someone has said,
"We must never permit love to be cheapened by popular songs and movie scripts which would reduce it to little more than erotic emotion, a kind of amorous passion on a moonlight night".
Real love is not gushy emotionalism. It is not saying what we do not mean. Real love, like the cross, is
self-giving,
self-denying,
self-disciplining,
self-sacrificing.
>From "Let's Try the Thing We Haven't Tried"
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Q-103
I think that's why George Buttrick said if we had but one prayer to offer in our lifetime, that one prayer should be "not my will, but thine be done".
>From "What More Could You Ask"
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Q-104
like what Paul Gallico says in his forthcoming book "Ludmila":

"A prayer need not be a rhetorical address,
or an itemized petition,
or lips moved soundlessly inside a cathedral,
or even words spoken into the air.

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing,
a sudden outpouring of love,
a yearning within the heart to be for a moment
united with the infinite and the good,
a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech
to express it,
a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost,
a song,
a poem,
a kind deed,
a reaching for beauty,
or the strong, quiet, inner reaffirmation of faith."
>From "What More Could You Ask"
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Q-105
"Slow me down, Lord:

Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting
of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the
eternal reach of time.

Give me, amidst the confusion of my day, the
calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tension of my nerves and muscles
with the soothing music of the singing streams
that live in my memory.

Help me to know the magical, restoring power of sleep.

Teach me the art of taking minute vacations, of slowing
down to look at a flower, to chat with
a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from
a good book.

Remind me each day of the fable of the hare
and the tortoise, that I may know the race is
not always to the swift; that there is more to
life than increasing its speed." Anon.
>From "What More Could You Ask"
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Q-106
Dr. Ron Meredith, pastor of The First Methodist Church of Wichita, Kansas, tells how, as a small boy, he lived in Minnesota where the weather gets mighty cold at times. To help keep warm, he had one of those old-fashioned buttoned sweaters. It had a lot of buttons on one side and a lot of button holes on the other. As a kid, he learned something about obedience from that old sweater.
"I discovered something", he says, "and it has worked every time. If, when I buttoned it, and I had an extra button at the top, I always had an extra button hole at the bottom. It never failed. Never. And I learned there is only one law regarding the buttoning of a sweater. If you want to come out right at the top, you have to start right at the bottom and keep right all the way up."

Now, that's a pretty homely illustration, but that's why I like it! It's so simple and obvious. It shows us there's only one way we're ever going to make it in this business of being a Christian. We've got to start right and keep right all the way.
>From "On the Street Where You Live"
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Q-107
A short time ago, I came across a quotation from the magazine "Highway of Happiness" which I think is striking.
"You cannot control the length of your life
But you can control its height or depth.
You cannot control the contour of your countenance
But you can control its expression.

"You cannot control the other fellow's opportunities
But you can control your own.
You cannot control the weather
But you can control the moral atmosphere which surrounds you.

"You cannot control the distance your head shall be above the ground
But you can control the height of the contents of your head.
You cannot control the other fellow's thoughts
But you can see that you, yourself, do not develop
or harbor provoking propensities.
So, why worry about the things you cannot control?
Why not get busy controlling the things which depend upon you."

There is a tremendous amount of wisdom in those lines, for each of us who is taking seriously this task of living and is earnestly trying to get from life as much as it has to offer, recognizes that self-discipline is a major key to success in that venture. We can never know true happiness apart from obedience to the things which matter most.
>From "On the Street Where You Live"
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Q-108
Someone once asked Daniel Webster, "What is the most solemn thought which has ever entered your mind?" He replied without hesitation, "The most solemn thought I have ever had--and I have had it often--is my personal accountability to Almighty God."
>From "On the Street Where You Live"
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Q-162
A. W. Tozer has said: "The Lord Jesus Christ did not die for cut worms and plant lice. He died for those who have sinned, but still bear the image of the creator upon their soul."
>From "Get Rid of that Inferiority Complex"
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Q-163
When we consider the magnitude and grandeur of the universe, it is easy to see why H. L. Mencken concluded that man is "a sick fly on a dizzy wheel."
>From "Get Rid of that Inferiority Complex"
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Q-164
Harry Emerson Fosdick, who could hardly be called a conservative, is one of these. In a recent sermon entitled "The Rediscovery of Sin" he says, "Today, we and our hopes and all our efforts after goodness are up against a powerful antagonism, something tragic and terrific in human nature that turns our loveliest qualities to evil and our finest endeavors into failure. Our fathers called that sin. If you have a better name for it, use it, but recognize that realistic fact!"

The poet, Auden, tells us, "This is an age that has known the distance of God more than any other." I don't think I've heard of more orthodox definition of sin than that: "distance from God."

Writers like T. S. Elliott... educators like President Pusey of Harvard...scientists, engineers, economists, businessman, politicians... are all asking us in one-way or another to face up to the problem of sin.

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer frankly admits that as he watched the first atomic explosion he had "something like a sense of sin." Someone has suggested that perhaps that's one reason why he was demoted. It must have been annoying to have at the head of our munitions race a man who had too much of a sense of sin.
>From "Eve Knew Her Apples"
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Q-165
Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, the president of our American Baptist Convention, recently completed his 25th year in the ministry. In a sermon he preached on that occasion, he confessed that 25 years ago he was rather optimistic about the future. He says, "I under estimated the power of sin and over estimated the intellectual ability of mankind. I thought surely that before we got this far along in my ministry, we would have made this a much more decent world in which to live. But I didn't realize how utterly awful sin is. Sin isn't just an act; it's an attitude. And that sin is putting yourself ahead of God and making yourself a kind of God instead of letting him run your life."
>From "Eve Knew Her Apples"
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