...never go to look on man till you have first looked on your God.
Interpretation
Focus on divine guidance before seeking human advice.
This quote emphasizes the importance of seeking spiritual wisdom and understanding from God before turning to human opinions or perspectives. It suggests that divine insight can provide clarity and direction that human advice may not offer, and that our relationship with the divine should be prioritized in decision-making and understanding life's challenges.
In practice
Using the quote in a sermon about prioritizing faith in life's decisions.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Instead of weeping when a tragedy occurs in a songbird's life, it sings away its grief. I believe we could well follow the pattern of our feathered friends.
I don't care what consequence it brings, I have been a fool for lesser things.
Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
Most people are so distracted by their thoughts, so identified with the voices in their heads, they no longer feel the aliveness within them. To be unable to feel the life that animates the physical body, the very life that you are, is the greatest deprivation that can happen to you.
We don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?
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