Kept for the Master's Use

“Yes, ‘kept!’ There is the promise on which we ground our prayer; or, rather, one of the promises. For, search and look for your own strengthening and comfort, and you will find it repeated in every part of the Bible, from ‘I am with thee, and will keep thee,’ in Genesis, to ‘I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation,’ in Revelation.””

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“Is it thought anything so very extraordinary and high-flown, when a bride deliberately prefers wearing a colour which was not her own taste or choice, because her husband likes to see her in it? Is it very unnatural that it is no distress to her to do what he asks her to do, or to go with him where he asks her to come, even without question or explanation, instead of doing what or going where she would undoubtedly have preferred if she did not know and love him? Is it very surprising if this lasts beyond the wedding day, and if year after year she still finds it her greatest pleasure to please him, quite irrespective of what used to be her own ways and likings? Yet in this case she is not helped by any promise or power on his part to make her wish what he wishes. But He who so wonderfully condescends to call Himself the Bridegroom of His church, and who claims our fullest love and trust, has promised and has power to work in us to will.””

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“Ah! if we had stood at the foot of the Cross, and watched the tremendous payment of our redemption with the precious blood of Christ”

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“What about self-denial?’ some reader will say. Consecration does not supersede this, but transfigures it. Literally, a consecrated life is and must be a life of denial of self.””

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“It is a great mistake to suppose that the law of giving the tenth to God is merely Levitical. ‘Search and look’ for yourselves, and you will find that it is, like the Sabbath, a far older rule, running all through the Bible,[1] and endorsed, not abrogated, by Christ Himself. For, speaking of tithes, He said, ‘These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.’ To dedicate the tenth of whatever we have is mere duty; charity begins beyond it; free-will offerings and thank-offerings beyond that again.””

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“Another fact must be considered”

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“People are not converted by this sort of work; at any rate, I never met or heard of any one. ‘He thinks it better for his quiet influence to tell!’ said an affectionately excusing relative of one who had plenty of special opportunities of soul-winning, if he had only used his lips as well as his life for his Master. ‘And how many souls have been converted to God by his “quiet influence” all these years?’ was my reply. And to that there was no answer!””

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“Once I heard a beautiful prayer which I can never forget; it was this: ‘Lord, take my lips, and speak through them; take my mind, and think through it; take my heart, and set it on fire.’ And this is the way the Master keeps the lips of His servants, by so filling their hearts with His love that the outflow cannot be unloving, by so filling their thoughts that the utterance cannot be un-Christ-like. There must be filling before there can be pouring out; and if there is filling, there must be pouring out, for He hath said, ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.””

— Frances Ridley Havergal

“But if He is able”

— Frances Ridley Havergal