J. C. Ryle Quotes

You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God. [….] God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial kingdom of God.

Alas! Much has been done of late to promote the production of dwarfish Christians. Poor, sickly believers turn the church into an hospital, rather than an army. Oh, to have a church built up with the deep godliness of people who know the Lord in their very hearts, and will seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes!

The goal of the Christian is to grow up into Christ.

Kids today learn a lot about getting to the moon, but very little about getting to heaven.

The suffering of this life not only can make our temperament more like the Divine Personality of Jesus, but it detaches us from this world. This Divine preparation opens our souls to the working and pruning of the Father.

Some believe we have little or no role in our own Christian maturity. God does everything, they think, and we simply have to "let go and let God." After all, if it's the "fruit of the Spirit," we should passively let him work within us as we abide in Christ.

The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians.

There is no university for a Christian, like that of sorrow and trial

Not infrequently our GOD brings His people into difficulties on purpose that they may come to know Him as they could not otherwise do.

Suffering prepares you by training you to trust God and know that He is always at work in your life.

The furnace of affliction is a good place for you, Christian; it benefits you; it helps you to become more like Christ, and it is fitting you for heaven.

Disappointments that aren't a result of our own foolishness are a testing of our faith or a correction from heaven, and it is our own fault if these disappointments don't work for our own good.

The gospel doesn't just ignite the Christian life but it keeps Christians growing and growing every day. There's no reason to move beyond the gospel. There's only movement more into it.

What we need as Christians is to be able to feed ourselves. How many there are who sit helpless and listless, with open mouths, hungry for spiritual things, and the minister has to try to feed them, while the Bible is a feast prepared, into which they never venture.

In my creature impatience I am often caused to wish that there were some way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual life painlessly by short, easy lessons; but such wishes are vain. No shortcut exists. God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: The man who would know God must give time to Him.

The purpose of God's discipline is not to punish us but to transform us.

Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the Triune God in personal experience.

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

At times God's best pupils experience the most rigorous and continuous courses. Eventually those who prove to be men of Christ will thereby become distinguished alumni of life's school of affliction, graduating with honors.

I never saw a useful Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work; but God cannot make much use of him, for there is not much for the Holy Ghost to work upon.

The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.

Whatever God wants to do through you, He will do in you first. You've got to be what you want to see.

Christian growth doesn't happen by first behaving better, but by believing better--believi ng in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners.

God has plans, not problems for our lives. The life of a Christian is an education for a higher service. God is training you for something.

He that is never on his knees on earth shall never stand upon his feet in heaven