The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord.
Interpretation
Finding joy in one's spiritual life is essential for overall happiness.
This quote emphasizes the importance of spiritual contentment and happiness as a priority in daily life. George Muller encourages individuals to nurture their inner joy and connection with the divine, suggesting that this spiritual happiness forms the foundation of a fulfilling life.
In practice
In a sermon about finding peace in difficult times, this quote can be used to remind the congregation to seek joy in their faith.
A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.
The longer I live, the more I am enabled to realize that I have but one life to live on Earth, and that this one life is but a brief life, for sowing, in comparison with eternity, for reaping.
The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.
The Lord never lays more on us, in the way of chastisement, than our state of heart makes needful; so that whilst He smites with the one hand, He supports with the other.
I desire many things concerning myself; but I desire nothing so much, as to have a heart filled with love to the Lord. I long for a warm personal attachment to Him.
The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts.
It has come to be a dreadfully common belief in the Christian Church that the only man who has a βcallβ is the man who devotes all his time to what is called βthe ministry,β whereas all Christian service is ministry, and every Christian has a call to some kind of ministry or another.
When you read the New Testament, you see the Holy Spirit was supposed to change everything so that this gathering of people who call themselves Christians had this supernatural element about them.
We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others which would enable them to perform this duty.
That the entire People of God, to whom Christ entrusted the mandate to go and preach the Gospel to every creature, may eagerly assume their own missionary responsibility and consider it the highest service they can offer humanity.
All Catholics must ask themselves what they personally have done lately to build up the holiness of the church and ensure people feel welcomed and loved in it.
Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.