Quotes from Watchman Nee

Actually, only God can satisfy a Christian's heart; man cannot. The failure of many is to seek from man what can be found only in God. All human affection is empty; the love of God alone is able to fully satisfy one's desire. The moment a Christian seeks a love outside God his spiritual life immediately falls.

There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His children. Therefore, we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make watertight compartments for the working out His Spirit, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We must leave God free to work as He wills and to leave what evidence He pleases of the work He does.

Bible-reading and prayer are not wrong, and God forbid that we should suggest that they are. But it is wrong to trust even in them for victory. Our help is in Him who is the object of that reading and prayer. Our trust must be in Christ alone.

The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea more (Matt. 5:21—48). But what He requires from us, He Himself carries out in us. The Law makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but He Himself fulfills in us the very demands He makes.

We think in terms of apostolic journeys. God dares to put His greatest ambassadors in chains.

We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in in that particular.

It is not a matter of how many loaves we have in our hands, but whether or not God has blessed them.

Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the blood is, but I know that the blood has satisfied Thee; so the blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea.

The author tells a story wherein a missionary friend of his was invited by unbelievers on a train ride to play cards. The friend declined, saying that he did not bring his hands with him. He explained to the astonished group that the hands attached to what they saw as his body belonged to the Lord, and he was thereby able to explain the Gospel.

God must bring us to a point--I cannot tell you how it will be, but He will do it--where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves.

We recognize already that regeneration of the spirit is the paramount need of man.

To be useful in God's hand, a man must be properly adjusted with respect to all three: his position, his life and his warfare. He falls short of God's requirements if he underestimates the importance of any one of them, for each is a sphere in which God would express "the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved" (1:6).