If honest of heart and uprightness before God were lacking or if I did not patiently wait on God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow-men to the declarations of the Word of God, I made great mistakes.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of integrity, seeking divine guidance, and prioritizing spiritual truth over human opinion to avoid mistakes.
George Muller highlights the crucial alignment of honesty and uprightness in one's heart with the direction from God. He warns that neglecting these virtues and choosing human advice over divine instruction can lead to significant errors in judgment. This statement reflects the broader principle that true wisdom comes from a sincere relationship with the divine and a commitment to moral integrity over societal pressures.
In practice
During a church sermon about trusting divine guidance over human advice.
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.
Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
Meditation has to spread all over your life. Whatsoever you do, do meditatively. Walk meditatively, eat meditatively. If you are making love, make love meditatively. Meditation has to become your life twenty-four hours a day; then only the transformation. Then you go beyond sex, you go beyond body, you go beyond mind. And for the first time you become aware of godliness, of ecstasy, of bliss, of truth, of liberation.
You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.
The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.
A wise player ought to accept his throws and score them, not bewail his luck.
Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality.
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