To be troubled for grosser sins and have no trouble for ordinary sins daily incurred is an ill sign of a bad heart.
—John Flavel
There is nothing that reveals what is in the human heart so clearly as what a man does with Christ.
—R. A. Torrey
Your heart may be kept from shrinking back at [death] by considering the necessity of death, in order to the full fruition of God. Whether you are willing to die or not, I assure you there is no other way to obtain the full satisfaction of your soul and complete its happiness.
—John Flavel
The soul is not at all times fit to pass judgment upon its own condition…Examine your hearts upon your beds, and be still (Ps. 4:4). This is rather a season for watching and resisting than for judging and determining.
—John Flavel
If yet your heart hangs back (from thoughts of death), consider the great advantage you will have by death above all that ever you enjoyed on earth. For your communion with God, the time of perfecting that is now come.
—John Flavel
The sincerity of our profession much depends upon the care we exercise in keeping our hearts. Most certainly, that man who is careless of the frame of his heart, is but a hypocrite in his profession, however eminent he be in the externals of religion.
—John Flavel
There are some people who have lived forty or fifty years in the world, and have had scarcely one hour’s discourse with their own hearts.
—John Flavel
I don’t know how others find it, but I am sure I find sin in my very bosom, in my very bowels; it is present with me. O wretched man that I am! A gracious soul can mourn to see in others, but to find it in himself pierces him to the very heart.
—John Flavel
God will shortly put a blessed end to all your troubles, cares, and watchings. The time is coming when your heart will be as you would have it, when you will be discharged of these cares, fears & sorrows and never cry out, Oh my hard, proud, vain & earthly heart anymore.
—John Flavel
Experience of the bitterness of sin is a restraint to a gracious heart.
—John Flavel
A graceless heart may be troubled for the rod that sin draws after it, but not for sin itself.
—John Flavel
One can pray while walking the street, or riding in the car, and one should lift the heart to God right in the busiest moments of life, but we need set set times of prayer, times when we go alone with God, shut the door and talk to our Father in the secret place.
—R. A. Torrey
Keeping the heart is the most important business of a Christian’s life. Without this we are but formalists in religion: all our professions, gifts and duties signify nothing.
—John Flavel
A Christian may be drawn to sin, yet he would be glad with all his heart to be rid of sin. It would be more to him than thousands of gold and silver, that he might grieve and offend God no more; He that is under the dominion of sin is loath to leave his lusts….
—John Flavel
Our studied speeches do not reveal what we are, but what we would like to be; but our idle words, that we drop accidentally, they are the best revelation of what is there in our hearts.
—R. A. Torrey
It is not needful to be on your knees all the time, but the heart should be on its knees all the time.
—R. A. Torrey
Christ’s words must abide or continue in us. We must study His words, fairly devour His words, let them sink deep into our thought and into our heart, keep them in our memory, obey them constantly in our life, let them shape and mold our daily life and our every act.
—R. A. Torrey
There is something down in the human heart that is so under the power of the devil that men begin to resist you when you preach Christ; but you may preach everything else but that, and there is no opposition.
—D. L. Moody
If our sermons are going to reach the hearts and consciences of the people, we must be in much prayer to God, that there may be power with the Word.
—D. L. Moody
We could no more earn a place in the heart of the Father than we could satisfy the claims of the righteous Judge. All is of free grace.
—D. L. Moody
Don’t you see that if you get your heart set on earthly things, you will be disappointed; but if your heart is set on heavenly things, you will have peace all the while.
—D. L. Moody
We are not so far from Him but that He can see our tears, and hear the faintest whisper when we lift our hearts to Him in prayer.
—D. L. Moody
The lesser we discern pride in ourselves — the more it reigns in our hearts.
William Perkins
God’s regenerating power is greater than the strength of the world, Hell, or man’s wicked heart. He can draw the worst sinners to Christ.
Simeon Ashe
O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.
Augustine
It requires a serious mind & a determined heart to pray past the ordinary into the unusual. Most Christians never do.
—AW Tozer
Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.
—Thomas Aquinas
In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.
—Sigmund Freud
A sincere heart dares not sin because of the eye and fear of God that is on him; so you find it in Job 31:1 & 4. He dared not allow his thoughts to sin because he lived under the awe of God’s eye.
—John Flavel
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson