Powerful Quotes From Leonard Ravenhill — Leonard Ravenhill

Repentance, Prayer, and the Cost of Discipleship

Quotes from Leonard Ravenhill.

If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, you would never have been crucified. Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for? A sinning man stops praying. A praying man stops sinning.

Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. I wish in America that we were as concerned about separation from church and sin as we are about separation between church and state. Church and sin is a monstrous problem.

David had one of the most blessed experiences in the world, and the blessedness was that he was miserable about his sin. Are we sorry for grieving the heart of God? For denying God the right to own our personality?

To own our mind? To own our thoughts? To own our emotions? If not, we're robbing God. Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live. Someone asked me, do you pray for the dead?

I said, no, I preach to them. I think every pew in every church is death row. Think about that. They're dead. They sing about God. They talk about God, but they're dead. They have no living relationship with God.

The Church’s Compromise With Worldliness

God is taking his hands off of America. We've had so much light, and we've rejected it. The early church was married to poverty, prisons, and persecutions. Today the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.

How can we have a dead service with a living Christ? 50 years ago, you never heard of a divorce in the Christian church. You never even heard of marriage counseling in the church. We're putting up with sin in the church.

I believe every church is either supernatural or superficial. I don't believe there's any middle ground. You hear people say in church, Lord, you're welcome. If the Holy Ghost came to some churches, there would be a stampede to the door.

One good Baptist once said to Dr. Tozer, if God withdrew the Holy Spirit tomorrow, my church would function just the same. We wouldn't even know he was gone. I'm astounded, bewildered, confused, baffled when people tell me there are 75 million people in America that are filled with the Holy Ghost, and we're the most rotten nation on earth.

Christian Fellowship and the Absence of Glory

I want to see a fellowship where your burdens become mine, your grief over your children's becomes my grief, where we really bear each other's burdens, where we love each other and let the world come and see that we are the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus who cared only to do the will of his Father.

Young people come to our churches, and what are they seeing? I went to church not long ago. They got 30 acres. So what are their plans with it? They want their own football field and tennis courts. Dear God, do children go to church to learn to play tennis?

God help the preachers. Why can't we get them spiritual so they want prayer and revelation in the word of the living God? The young people come inside the church, but there's no glory. The best title of a professing church of God today, in my judgment, is Unbelieving Believers.

I'm embarrassed to be part of the so-called Church of Jesus Christ today because I believe it's an embarrassment to a holy God. I'm sick to death of the so-called Christianity of our day. What's supernatural about it?

When do people come out of the sanctuary awed and can't speak for an hour because God has been in glory there? Dear God, as soon as they get out, they're talking about football or sports or something, or there's going to be a big sale downtown somewhere.

Eternity, Judgment, and Accountability

We are not caught up into eternity. I've read a million words, sermons, and read books, and I'm accountable to God for everything I have, every moment of my time, every dime of my money. You can't help what you hear, but you can help what you say.

You're going to be accountable for every word you speak. This silly world outside thinks it is finished with Jesus Christ, but they haven't even started with him yet. Ten million years will not put a strain on the clock of eternity.

The surest thing in the world is not death and taxes, it's death and eternity, yet we're so unconcerned. We are not eternity conscious enough. I still believe in the majesty of that eternal court, oh, the awesomeness of it.

God will say to some, come ye blessed, and to the rest, depart from me. I can think of one thing when I get to the judgment bar and Jesus will look down and say, I had many things to tell you, but you couldn't bear them.

We're too busy running our own lives, praying when you want to pray, eating when you want to eat, going where you want to go, spending what you want to spend, reading what you want to read. Do you call that spiritual life?

Brother, it is carnal as carnality. Once inside eternity, we're going to be very embarrassed at the smallness of our faith. What are you going to do when you get to eternity if you can't stick in an hour with God down here?

In God's name, what are you going to do in a million years in God's presence? Expect some reports from earth about football or something? The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is the religion of Christ's church.

Scripture, Sin, and True Conversion

The devil's aim today is to keep one away from the Bible. Sin will keep you from this book or this book will keep you from sin. Most people are bothered by those passages which they cannot understand.

The scriptures which trouble me the most is the scripture I do understand. The sinner's prayer has sent more people to hell than all the taverns in America. We've gone into other countries. Have we taken the gospel?

No. We have not taken the gospel. We're giving them American Christianity or English Christianity, Bible Christianity. It's the most costly thing in the world. It's the most beautiful thing in the world.

It's the most glorious thing in the world. The only vision many of you have is television. America is not dying because of the strength of humanism. It's dying because of the weakness of evangelism. We take people to the cross, but we don't put them on the cross.

I doubt if 5 of professing Christians in America are born again. And that's true of England. I think one of the serious breakdowns in modern evangelism is this. It has offered too much for too little.

What we do mostly is offer forgiveness. We need cleansing. There is no true conversion until a man takes up his cross. Wet-eyed preachers never produce dry sermons. We have too many preacherettes preaching too many sermonettes to too many Christianettes smoking cigarettes.

The Spiritual Calling of Preachers

I'm convinced that the greatest thing about those Puritan preachers is that they lived in eternity six days a week and came down to earth on the seventh. Our preachers today are golfing on Saturday and goofing around the other five days.

It's a profession to most of them when it should be an obsession with them. We put men into pulpits because they have degrees. But you can have 32 of them and still be frozen. Oh, you say, we got a new pastor.

He's got a B .A. I've got a B .A. too. I'm born again. Today there is such an emphasis on education, isn't there? We're so far removed from God's way of doing things. We think a man is a good man if he can draw a crowd these days.

I only preach for two reasons these days. Either to send people out that door blazing mad at me or blazing with the peace of the Holy Ghost. That's all. If there's no brokenness in the pulpit, why should there be any brokenness in the pew?

Grace, Faith, and Holiness

The wonder of the grace of God is that God can take an unholy man out of an unholy world and make that man holy and put him back into an unholy world and keep him holy. The world is waiting for a practical demonstration of the gospel of the grace of God.

Faith is taking God at His word. Faith that's going to be trusted is going to be tested. We try to get people saved who don't even believe they are lost. There are two kinds of people in the world, only two kinds.

Not black or white, rich or poor, but those either dead in sin or dead to sin. I don't ask people if they're saved anymore. I look them straight in the eye and say, Does Christ live inside you? Listen, if a man is really born again of the Spirit of God, it is the most radical thing this side of eternity.

He becomes a new creature. He has a new heart. He has a new mind. I heard a famous preacher say, You came here tonight and the Lord is merciful. He will forgive your sins tonight. He will forgive your past sins, your sins of today, and your sins for tomorrow.

I thought, Isn't that nice? Can you imagine going up to a judge and the judge says, You've been charged with stealing a lady's purse. Did you steal it? Yes, replies the man, it had $100 in it. Are you sorry, the judge asks.

Yes, I am sorry, answers the man. Well, the judge says, You're forgiven. I forgive you for all the purses you've stolen in the past, all you've stolen today, and all the purses you'll steal the rest of your life.

Wouldn't that be insane? I don't want to be saved just to make it into heaven. I want to be saved from sin. I want to be a God-directed man, that in the life I have, I may live for the glory of God. Sin is abnormal in the Christian life.

Christianity as the Life of God in the Soul

What is Christianity? It's not giving up lousy sins. It's not just confessing my sins. Sure, I have to be cleansed before he comes, but Christianity is inviting Jesus to be the master and Lord of my personality.

It's the life of God in the soul of man. That is the greatest definition of Christianity outside of the Bible. If you're going to be a true Christian, I'll tell you one thing amongst others. It'll be a lonely life.

It's a narrow way, and it becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. All you have to do is get in a closer walk with God, and you'll find your enemies are in your own church. Let me tell you, as an old geezer that I am, there's not one thing in life worth having outside Jesus Christ.

People say, I read my Bible every day. But when was the last time they studied it? God has only one standard for his people. He wants a holy people. We're kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.