J. C. Ryle Quotes

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

Somehow many have fallen into the belief that being a Christian is supposed to be a cake-walk. It's not.

The land of Beulah lies beyond the valley of the shadow of death. Many Christians spend all their days in a continual bustle, doing good. They are too busy to find either the valley or Beulah. Virtues they have, but are full of the life and attractions of nature, and unacquainted with the paths of mortification and death.

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

Why the Christian life is so difficult to many is because they have a divided heart. They are double-minded, which makes them unstable in all their ways.

I've been studying the Bible for a long time. I remember that after the first five years or so of diligently studying the Word, I didn't feel like I had made any progress. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of order, and I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.

My 12th was my most Christian and most boring year of my life. Try as I did, day after day, to cling to righteousness, I was washed down in suds of sinful surroundings.

My life is such a contradiction. My soul yearns for holiness and then runs from the mortification necessary to attain it.

If you're not plugged into something like Athletes in Action or Campus Crusade, it's difficult to keep your eyes focused on Jesus Christ because the world is telling you differently, and your sin-nature is telling you differently.

There is no such thing as a continuously carnal Christian.

One misconception is that if we follow God in the life of faith, and that means obedience - that we read His Word, we're obedient, we pray, we go to church, we do the right things - that somehow His blessing means we're going to be okay.

There are no soft or slothful ways to become sanctified to the point that we are prepared to live in the presence of the Savior. And there can be blessings in the burdens we bear. As a result of these struggles, our souls are stretched and our spirits are strengthened. Our character becomes more Christlike as we are tried and tested.

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 mystery of the Christian life is that Christ expects us to flee sin and the devil, but does not expect us to rid ourselves of either on this side of glory. Repentance is a way of life, and so is the pursuit of godliness. I wish every Christian could be reminded of these two things.

I always intended the title, 'WARRIOR,' to be about spiritual warfare and warrior lives outside of the cage.

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.

Being a Christian has not and does not come naturally or easy for me. I take that to be a good thing because I am sure that to be a Christian requires training that lasts a lifetime.

The soldier is summoned to a life of active duty and so is the Christian.

Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians.

In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy.

Whether this was explicitly taught or implicitly caught, I grew up with the impression that when it comes to the Christian life, justification was step one and sanctification was step two and that once we get to step two there's no reason to revisit step one.

If you want to become fully mature in the Lord, you must learn to love truth. Otherwise, you will always leave open a door of deception for the enemy to take what is meant to be yours.

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

You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.