Please read the conditions for use before
using any quotes from this site.
Christian Quotes by George MacDonald
September 18, 2001
As no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in a human heart which exists in that heart alone -- which is not, in some form or degree, in every human heart....
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
Nov 28, 2001
There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer the kingdom of Heaven than many who have for years believed themselves to be of it. In the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when He calls them they recognize Him at once and go after Him; while the others examine Him from head to foot and, finding Him not sufficiently like the Jesus of their conception, turn their backs and go to church or chapel or chamber to kneel before a vague form mingled of tradition and fancy.
Dec 18, 2001
There is more hid in Christ than we shall ever learn, here or there either; but they that begin first to inquire will soonest be gladdened with revelation; and with them He will be best pleased, for the slowness of His disciples troubled Him of old. To say that we must wait for the other world, to know the mind of Him who came to this world to give Himself to us, seems to me the foolishness of a worldly and lazy spirit. The Son of God is the teacher of men, giving to them of His Spirit -- that Spirit which manifests the deep things of God, being to a man the mind of Christ.
May 5, 2002
In God, we live every commonplace as well as the most exalted moment of our being. To trust in Him when no need is pressing, when things seem going right of themselves, may be harder than when things seem going wrong.
August 25, 2002
We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.
December 6, 2002
Few delights can equal the mere presence of One whom we fully trust.
March 15, 2003
He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.
July 12, 2003
Instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
October 22, 2003
We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength... waiting for the endless good which God is always giving as fast as He can get us to take it in.
January 6, 2004
Lord, to Thy call of me I bow, obey like Abraham; Thou lov'st me because Thou art Thou, And I am what I am. Doubt whispers, "Thou art such a blot He cannot love poor thee." If what I am He loveth not, He loves what I shall be.
June 6, 2004
Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.
September 12, 2004
There are things that must be done in faith, else they never have being.
October 11, 2004
The careless soul receives the Father's gifts as if it were a way things had of dropping into his hand...yet he is ever complaining, as if someone were accountable for the problems which meet him at every turn. For the good that comes to him, he gives no thanks - who is there to thank? At the disappointments that befall him he grumbles - there must be someone to blame!
August 28, 2005
Don't measure God's mind by your own. It would be a poor love that depended not on itself, but on the feelings of the person loved. A crying baby turns away from its mother's breast, but she does not put it away till it stops crying. She holds it closer. For my part, in the worst mood I am ever in, when I don't feel I love God at all, I just look up to His love. I say to Him, "Look at me. See what state I am in. Help me!" Ah! you would wonder how that makes peace. And the love comes of itself; sometimes so strong, it nearly breaks my heart.
December 14, 2005
Truth is truth, whether it's spoken by the lips of Jesus or Balaam's donkey.
May 17, 2006
Instead of so knowing Christ that they have Him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the Atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins - - the way to madness of the brain and despair of the heart...Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have, this day, done one thing because He said, Do it! Or once abstained because He said, Do not do it! It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.
October 13, 2006
It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present.
November 24, 2006
[God desires] not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship," for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way."
February 17-18, 2007
God is ever seeking to get down to us - to be the divine man in us. And we are ever saying, "That be far from Thee, Lord!" We are careful, in our unbelief, over the divine dignity, of which He is too grand to think. Better pleasing to God...is the audacity of Job, who, rushing into His presence, and flinging the door of His presence-chamber to the wall, like a troubled - it may be angry - but yet faithful child, calls aloud in the ear of Him whose perfect Fatherhood be has yet to learn, "Am I a sea or a whale, that Thou settest a watch over me?"... The devotion of God to His creatures is perfect; He does not think about Himself, but about them; He wants nothing for Himself, but finds His blessedness in the outgoing of blessedness. Ah! it is a terrible - shall it be a lonely glory, this? We will draw near with our human response, our abandonment of self in the faith of Jesus. He Lives Himself to us - shall we not give ourselves to Him? Shall we not give ourselves to each other whom He loves?
September 22, 2007
How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.
October 24, 2007
If thou wouldest be a good neighbour, take heed of thy tongue...That thou with it give no offensive language to thy neighbour, to the provoking of him to anger. Bear much, put up wrongs, and say little...And as thou shouldest take heed that thou be not the original of contention and anger, so also take heed that thou be not an instrument to beget it between parties, by tale-bearing and a gossiping spirit: "He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears."
John Bunyan
March 3, 2008
He feared nothing for Himself; and never once employed His divine power to save Himself from His human fate. Let God do that for Him if He saw fit. He did not come into the world to take care of Himself...His life was of no value to Him but as His Father cared for it. God would mind all that was necessary for Him, and He would mind the work His Father had given Him to do. And, my friends, this is just the one secret of a blessed life, the one thing every man comes into this world to learn.
April 8, 2008
Do you think the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says His yoke is easy, His burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do God's work just because it is easy. This is sometimes because they cannot believe that easy work is His work; but there may be a very bad pride in it...Some, again, accept it with half a heart and do it with half a hand. But however easy any work may be, it can not be well done without taking thought about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than in yesterday.
June 8, 2008
[God desires] not that He may say to them, "Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship", for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: "Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way.
July 30, 2008
A man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood...Doubt must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.
George Macdonald
September 13, 2008
It is folly to conclude that a thing ought not to be done because it hurts. There are powers to be born, creations to be perfected, sinners to be redeemed all through the ministry of pain, that could be born, perfected and redeemed in no other way.
George Macdonald
November 12, 2008
No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
George Macdonald
April 13, 2009
Don't measure God's mind by your own. It would be a poor love that depended not on itself, but on the feelings of the person loved. A crying baby turns away from its mother's breast, but she does not put it away till it stops crying. She holds it closer. For my part, in the worst mood I am ever in, when I don't feel I love God at all, I just look up to His love. I say to Him, "Look at me. See what state I am in. Help me!" Ah! you would wonder how that makes peace. And the love comes of itself; sometimes so strong, it nearly breaks my heart.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
September 6, 2009
Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself -- an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humbled?...Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?...We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit that we should be ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be . Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things...To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
November 15, 2009
Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at home; but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer...So begins a communion, a talking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive; but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God's end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to His knee, God withholds that man may ask.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
January 31, 2010
What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need - the need of himself?
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
January 6, 2011
Right gladly would He free them from their misery, but He knows only one way: He will teach them to be like Himself, meek and lowly, bearing with gladness the yoke of His Father's will. This is the one, the only right, the only possible way of freeing them from their sin, the cause of their unrest.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
January 23, 2011
What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
March 1, 2011
All growth that is not towards God is growing towards decay.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
September 10, 2011
The more we trust, the more reasonable we find it to trust.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
September 14, 2011
The shadows of the evening that precedes a lovelier morning are drawing down around us both. But our God is in the shadow as in the shine, and all is and will be well: have we not seen his glory in the face of Jesus? and do we not know him a little?...This life is a lovely time, but I never was content with it. I look for better --- oh, so far better! I think we do not yet know the joy of mere existence.... May the loving Father be near you and may you know it, and be perfectly at peace all the way into the home country, and to the palace home of the living one -- the life of our life.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
November 2, 2011
That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an inspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, "Thou art my refuge"
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
|Use our Search Engine to search via keyword or author|
