Johann Arndt Quotes

A priest encounters temptation every day, and some of that desire is very natural.

Those who operate through the Holy Spirit are more equipped to resist temptation.

The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so.

If sin rules in me, God's life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed.

I value all things as nothing in comparison with having the spirit of God to guide me.

In the mean time I worship God, laying every wrong action under an interdict which I endeavour to respect, and I loathe the wicked without doing them any injury.

You've got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven... I have the devil in me! If I didn't have, I'd be Christian!

Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.

The lusts of this world leads us to fulfill our carnal need to be accepted, but as children of God we are already accepted by a Heavenly Father who is over and above all things.

The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'

Flesh will not stand in front of God, so all the decisions you make from your flesh will be paid for with your soul. Your flesh rejects the truth because it desires to do what it wants to do.

If you go forward in the spirit of the original apostles and followers of Jesus Christ, trusting not in man but in the living God, he will enable you to pull down the strong holds of sin and Satan, and that work by which he is pleased will prosper in your hands.

The true Christian is called to be a soldier and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death. He is not meant to live a life of religious ease, indolence and security. He must never imagine for a moment that he can sleep and doze along the way to heaven, like one traveling in an easy carriage.

Imagination is a screen onto which the evil spirits can 'project' images, temptations presented as stimulating entertainments, offering us pleasurable rewards if we give in to the temptation.

Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.

Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also secures for us the true liberty of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than out of fear - love for him that has shown us such grace that no greater can be found.

I'd like to be remembered as a man who went to Heaven and not another place.

Satan would have you believe that happiness comes only as you surrender to his enticements, but one only needs to look at the shattered lives of those who violate God's laws to know why Satan is called the Father of Lies.

I hope, by God's grace, that I am truly a Christian, not deviating from the faith, and that I would rather suffer the penalty of a terrible death than wish to affirm anything outside of the faith or transgress the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him. All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation.

O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.

'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure.

Obedience to the law of chastity will increase our happiness in mortality and make possible our progress in eternity.

Therefore, don't let sinners take courage to think they will be favoured like the thief on the cross; for we see on the other side, they may be like the hardened one, and reproach death itself.