Watchman Nee
Do not be taken in or flattered by your own success or fame. Take not only as to whether or not the old creation, including everything which comes by birth, has gone through the cross.Collection: Taken
We may infer from any defeat of ours that it is due either to lack of faith or failure to obey. No other reason can suffice.Collection: Faith
So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us the Law to keep: he gave us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not keep it.Collection: Law
The idea of waste only comes into our Christianity when we underestimate the worth of our Lord.Collection: Ideas
Nothing is wrong with the inlet: It is the outlet that is obstructed. The water of life does not spring forth because the flow has no way through. Were the outlet cleared, the water of life would flow unceasingly. What a child of God needs is not more life but more flow of life.Collection: Children
Baptism is faith in action.Collection: Baptism
A spiritual Christian therefore is one whose spirit is led by God's Spirit... Perhaps their speech does convey truth, but without the quickening of the Holy Spirit even truth is of small advantage.Collection: Christian
Furthermore, through the believer's spirit the Holy Spirit is able to impart God's life to thirsty and dying men. However, this filling of the Holy Spirit differs from the baptism with the Holy Spirit, because the latter is for the purpose of service while the former solves the problem of life (naturally it will affect service too).Collection: Men
Today, even amongst Christians, there can be found much of that spirit that wants to give as little as possible to the Lord, and yet to get as much as possible from Him. The prevailing thought today is of being used, as though that were the one thing that mattered. That my little rubber band should be stretched to the very limit seems all important. But this is not the Lord's mind. The Lord wants us to be used, yes; but what He is after is that we pour all we have, ourselves, to Him, and if that be all, that is enough.Collection: Christian
To walk after the spirit a believer must inhibit his mind from revolving endlessly. If it turns too long around one topic, worries or grieves too much over matters, and ponders too intensively to know God's will, it may become unbearable and hamper its normal operation. The mind needs to be kept in a steady and secure state.Collection: Prayer
The burden imparted by God is lifted once we have prayed, but the heaviness from the enemy cannot be raised unless we fight and resist in prayer.Collection: Prayer
A characteristic of the flesh is its fickleness: it alternates between Yes and No and vice versa. But the will of God is: "Walk not according to the flesh (not even for a moment) but according to the Spirit."Collection: Vices
The gospel we preach must not be just something we hear from men or read from books or even conceived through our meditation. Unless it is delivered to us by God, it can serve no spiritual utility.Collection: Spiritual
Only those who are spiritual perceive the reality of the spiritual foe and hence engage in battle. Such warfare is not fought with arms of the flesh. Because the conflict is spiritual so must the weapons.Collection: Spiritual
It is highly dangerous to receive the truths of the Bible with human wisdom, for this is a hidden and subtle method which invariably causes a believer to perfect with his flesh the work of the Holy Spirit.Collection: Perfect
We may love to say many things, but if these are not uttered in the Holy Spirit it is better to say nothing. The flesh can conjure up many plans and methods and be full of expectations. The righteousness of the flesh is as abhorrent as its sin we must always maintain God's view of the flesh.Collection: Views
Long-lasting victory can never be separated from a long-lasting stand on the foundation of the cross.Collection: Long
If one's conscience is willing to confess whatever sins have been committed, including the sin of unbelief, it will be sorrowful in a godly way, earnestly desiring the mercy of God.Collection: Godly
Irrespective of how we physiologically are made, even possessing special weaknesses, we can overcome our sins through the Lord.Collection: Special
If we verily bear the cross we shall be neither controlled nor influenced by soulical affection but shall be fit to love in the power of the Holy Spirit. Even so did the Lord Jesus love His family while on earth.Collection: Jesus
They spend more time in analyzing, in collecting materials, and in hard thinking than on prayer, on seeking God's mind, and on waiting for the power from above.Collection: Prayer
The attitude of saints toward their possessions most assuredly signifies whether they continue to preserve their self life or whether they have consigned it to death.Collection: Attitude
Mere mental assimilation of these truths cannot withstand temptation, however. The revelation of God is positively essential. The Spirit of God must reveal how we are in Christ and how we are united with Him in one.Collection: Temptation
All we have-ourselves-to Him, and if that be all, that is enough.Collection: Enough
Were our spirits hardy we would be able to meet the most disturbing situation with peace and rest.Collection: Would Be
How dangerous a master human emotion is!Collection: Emotion
God aims first to renew man's darkened spirit by imparting life to it, because it is this spirit which God originally designed to receive His life and to commune with Him. God's intent after that is to work out from the spirit to permeate man's soul and body.Collection: Men
Every true work is not done to the poor. Every true work is done to Me.Collection: Done
Knowing the truth concerning the deep workings of the evil spirit helps the individual not only to overcome sins but to eliminate unnecessary afflictions as well.Collection: Christian
Do not be impatient for impatience is of the flesh. Do not try different methods because they are useful solely in helping the flesh. We must distrust the flesh entirely.Collection: Trying
The child of God should not be overanxious to make new gains; what he essentially requires is to keep what he already has, for not losing is itself a gain. The way to retain what he possesses is to engage it.Collection: Children
Since this life is God's and cannot die, it follows that everyone born anew into possessing this life is said to have eternal life.Collection: Life Is
If whatever men know comes through their brain without the Holy Spirit regenerating their spirit, then their knowledge will help them not one whit. If their belief rests in man's wisdom and not in God's power, they are merely excited in their soul.Collection: Men
Do we not realize that the basic condition for a spiritual walk is to fear our self and its wisdom and to rely absolutely upon the Spirit?Collection: Spiritual
Henceforth we are dead to everything pertaining to ourselves and alive to His Spirit alone. This requires our exercising faith.Collection: Exercise
Only as they cease to seek anything by themselves and only as they take the position of the teachable shall they be taught by the Spirit truth which they are able to digest.Collection: Able
We may be forced to consume considerable time before the spirit cooperates. For example, God would like to enlarge the scope of our prayer to include the nations in order to defeat all the behind-the-scene works of Satan. Or He may want us to intercede for all sinners worldwide for the entire church.Collection: Prayer
If you perform your part, God will fulfill His. And once you put off specifically, you should just as thoroughly believe that God will renew your mind, despite the fact you know not how.Collection: Believe
It is not only the proclamation of the whole truth that is needed today; it is the release of the spiritual reality which the truth expresses, and that can only be realized as we allow ourselves to be caught into the mighty on-flowing tide of the Spirit.Collection: Spiritual
Therefore, brethren, pray until God gives us revelation so that "knowing this" in our spirit we may truly confess "that our old man has been crucified with him."Collection: Prayer
Outside Christ, I am empty; in Christ, I am full.Collection: Christian
Put very simply, Satan's power in the world is everywhere. Yet wherever men and women walk in the Spirit, sensitive to the anointing they have from God, that power of his just evaporates. There is a line drawn by God, a boundary where by virtue of his own very presence Satan's writ does not run. Let God but occupy all the space himself, and what room is left for the evil one?Collection: Letting Go
God will not give me humility, or patience, or holiness, or love as separate investments of His grace. He has given only one gift to meet our need, His Son Christ Jesus.Collection: Jesus
With complete consecration comes perfect peace.Collection: Perfect
All satanic works are performed from the outside inward; all divine works from the inside outward.Collection: Inward
The devil abhors light and truth because these remove the ground of his working.Collection: Christian
As God's child advances spiritually be shall discover that the Lord's time is as important as the Lord's will. Do not rashly beget an Ishmael lest he become the greatest enemy to Isaac.Collection: Prayer
Everyone who believes in God must have His revelation in his spirit, or else what he believes is not God but mere human wisdom, ideals or words. Such faith cannot endure the test.Collection: Believe
Grace means that God does something for me; law means that I do something for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands which he places upon me: that is law. Now if law means that God requires something of me for their fulfillment, then deliverance from law means he no longer requires that from me, but himself provides it.Collection: Mean