“To put it starkly, the prayers of God’s people apart from the Spirit would be no more efficacious than the prayers of pagans” (Joel R. Beeke & Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology, 440).

“God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we, as well as he, can, in divine communion, enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile. But we have been guilty of that ‘foul revolt’ of which Milton speaks when describing the rebellion of Satan and his hosts. We have broken with God. We have ceased to obey Him or love Him, and in guilt and fear have fled as far as possible from His presence. . . . The whole work of God in redemption is to undo the tragic effects of that foul revolt, and to bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 32-33).

“Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to him. They should be recognized for what they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. ‘For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?’ (1 Corinthians 4:7)” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 28).

“The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the ‘poor in spirit.’ They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem. That is what the word poor as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven'” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 23).

“We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 11).

“At church, the liturgy was recited in Latin, and in the marketplace, many of the merchants spoke French. But together, arm in arm, avoiding puddles, Julian and her mother spoke English. English was a more carnal language than French or Latin, a language of the earth and of the body. Because it came from the countryside and from the people, some thought it impoverished and inadequate for expressing abstract thought. . . . For Julian, English was primarily the language of home. With the currents of Danish, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, French, and Latin, this homespun English had never been formalized into a language of power. It had no set spellings or grammatical certainties. It was a language in use for practical purposes, constantly adapted to individual needs and contexts. . . . In other words, English was the language of the ‘lowly and simple things.’ For Julian, these limits eventually became a gift; in English she found a language that could exude both intimacy and power, a language in which the rules were not so well established that they couldn’t be broken” (Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, 12-13).

“Until recently most western nations saw themselves as a continuation of medieval Christendom — that is as social and political entities with corporate Christian commitments and ideals for living that, at least in intention, were controlled and shaped by Scripture. But now this ideal is being displaced by that of the secular state — a community that is officially without any religion or ideology save that of maximizing freedom for citizens to pursue as individuals whatever interests, religious or otherwise, they happen to have. . . . When God’s values are ignored, and the only community ideal is permissiveness, where will moral capital come from once the Christian legacy is spent?” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 120 & 121).

“God made us to live in societies — family, church, body politic, the communities of business and culture — and the Commandments show God’s social ideal as well as his purpose for individuals” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 117-118).

“Scripture presents contentment as a spiritual secret. It is one dimension of happiness, which is itself the fruit of a relationship. . . . Knowing the love of Christ is the one and only source from which true contentment ever flows. . . . The God whose fatherhood is perfect can be trusted absolutely to care for us on a day-to-day basis. So to realize that while planning is a duty and worry is a sin, because God is in charge, and to face all circumstances with an attitude of ‘praise God anyway’ is a second secret of the contended life” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 103 & 104

“In the tenth commandment, ‘you shall not covet,’ God’s searchlight moves from actions to attitudes, from motions to motives, from forbidden deeds to forbidden desire. . . . In Colossians 3:5 Paul calls coveting ‘idolatry’ because the things coveted become your god, controlling your life” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 101).