A new class of article added to Truth Informed, Truth In Quotes aims to impart truths through pithy but substantial sayings or quotes from various authors. We will endeavor to find and select the best quotes, from across the theological spectrum, that will surely deepen your spiritual walk with the Lord.
Below are a few selected quotes from the late English Methodist preacher, evangelist, and author Leonard Ravenhill (1907-1994). Although some of his beliefs were not completely orthodox, he nonetheless was an effective preacher, able to stir the soul and mind of anyone willing to hear. Some of his sayings are hard to listen to, but heard they must be. Ravenhill focused primarily on the subjects of revival and prayer. The quotes below are from his most famous and influential book Why Revival Tarries, published in 1959. I would recommend this book to anyone.
"What we know about God these days is giving us a deep stream of shallow books and is filling our libraries...But what we know is one thing; whom we know is quite another."
"Who a man is is not important; what he knows does not matter; but what he is to the inscrutable God is what matters. If we displease God, does it matter whom we please? If we please Him, does it matter whom we displease?"
"Prayer is no substitute for work; equally true is it that work is no substitute for prayer."
"Prayer makes the soul tender. Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray!"
"This is the hour when we are asked over and over again, 'Is everybody happy?' God's purpose for us is not happiness, but holiness!"
"The Holy Book of the living God suffers more from its exponents today than from its opponents! We are loose in the use of Scriptural phrases, lopsided in interpreting them, and lazy to the point of impotence in appropriating their measureless wealth."
"Satan would have us increase even in Bible knowledge, I believe, as long as we keep from prayer, which is the exercise of the instruction we have received through the Word. What use is deeper knowledge if we have shallower hearts? What use is greater standing with men if we have less standing with God?"
"Today we seem much more interested in having churches air-conditioned than prayer-conditioned."
"Preachers make pulpits famous; prophets make prisons famous."
"It takes broken men to break men."
"This generation of preachers is responsible for this generation of sinners. At the very doors of our churches are the masses—unwon because they are unreached, unreached because they are unloved."
"Repentance is not a few hot tears at the penitent form. It is not emotion nor remorse nor reformation. Repentance is a change of mind about God, about sin, and about hell!"
"There are two kinds of people in the world—only two kinds. Not black or white, rich or poor, but those either dead in sin or dead to sin."
"Prayer is conditioned by one thing alone...and that is spirituality."
"The tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving too many dead sermons to too many dead people."
"A sermon born in the head reaches the head; a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart."
"The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh."
"No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying."
"He who fears God fears no man. He who kneels before God will stand in any situation."
"There are three persons living in each of us: the one we think we are, the one other people think we are, and the one God knows we are."
"Though it is wonderful indeed when God lays a hold of a man, earth can know one greater wonder—when a man lays hold of God."
"The price is high. God does not want partnership with us, but ownership of us."
"The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning."
"Dear believers, listen. The world is not waiting for a new definition of the Gospel, but for a new demonstration of the power of the Gospel. In these days of acute political helplessness, moral lawlessness, and spiritual helplessness, where are the men not of doctrine, but of faith?"
"It has been well said that there are only three classes of people in the world today: those who are afraid, those who do not know enough to be afraid, and those who know their Bibles."
"The evangelists today are very often prepared to do anything to anybody as long as they can get somebody to the altar for something."
"We may have an all-time high in church attendance with a corresponding all-time low in spirituality."
"One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to believed (and after that to be obeyed)."
