Leonard Ravenhill Quotes

Love is blind. Marriage is an eye-opener.

Preacher, keep your knees on the ground & your eyes on the throne.

The early church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.

Why in God's name do you expect to be accepted everywhere? How is it the world couldn't get on with the holiest man that ever lived, and it can get on with you and me?

How do you learn to pray? Well how do you learn to swim? Do you sit in a chair with your feet up drinking coke learning to swim? You get down and you struggle. That's how you learn to pray.

A wet eyed preacher will never preach dry sermons

Men build our churches but do not enter them, print our Bibles but do not read them, talk about God but do not believe Him, speak of Christ but do not trust Him for salvation, sing our hymns and then forget them.

Surely revival delays because prayer decays.

My goal is GOD HIMSELF. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing but HIMSELF ... my GOD.

The church has paid a terrible price for statistics!

Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen - degrees or no degrees.

You can't develop character by reading books. You develop it from conflict.

You won't become a saint by studying your Bible; you'll become a saint by living it.

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.

If we displease God, does it matter whom we please? If we please Him does it matter whom we displease?

It is much easier to wear a cross than to bear a cross.

God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age since Pentecost.

I believe the place of prayer is not only a place where I lose my burdens, but also a place where I get a burden. He shares my burden and I share His burden ... To know that burden, we must hear the voice of the Spirit. To hear that voice, we must be still and know that He is God.

In the New Testament church it says they were all amazed - And now in our churches everybody wants to be amused.

Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on Him. - J

If Thou canst do something with us and through us, then please, God, do something without us! Bypass us and take up a people who now know Thee not!

We live in a day of itching ears, but I have no commission from God to scratch them.

We are not Protestants any more - just 'non-Catholics'! Of what and of whom do we protest? Were we half as hot as we think we are, and a tenth as powerful as we say we are, our Christians would be baptized in blood, as well as in water and in fire.

Faith that is going to be trusted is going to be tested.

I'd rather have ten people that want God than 10,000 people who want to play church.

If you want to be popular, preach happiness. If you want to be unpopular, preach holiness.

By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh.

God never intended His Church to be a refrigerator in which to preserve perishable piety. He intended it to be an incubator in which to hatch out converts. - F. LINCICOME

Today God is bypassing men - not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient. Brethren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents our stumbling blocks!

There are only two kinds of persons: those dead in sin and those dead to sin.

If we will do God's work in God's way at God's time with God's power, we shall have God's blessing

Maybe you are the key to revival in your church.

If I don't believe the Word of God, why should you believe it? If we don't believe it, why should the world believe us?

Testimonies are wonderful. But, so often our lives don't fit our testimonies.

I doubt that more than two percent of professing Christians in the United States are truly born again.

You can't live wrong and pray right.

The Sunday morning service shows how popular your church is. The evening services show how popular your pastor is. Your private prayer time shows you how popular God is!

Maturity comes from obedience, not necessarily from age.

Men of prayer must be men of steel, for they will be assaulted by Satan even before they attempt to assault his kingdom.

The understanding soul prays; the praying soul gets understanding.

Five minutes after you die you'll know how you should have lived.

A true shepherd leads the way. He does not merely point the way.

God has to work in a man before He can work through a man.

Where,oh,where are the eternity-conscious believers? Where are the souls white-hot for God because they fear His holy name and presence and so live with eternity's values in view?

If we had more hell fire preaching in the pulpit then we would have less hell bound people in the pew.

Who or what takes priority over God in our lives?

The tragedy is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people.

The Bible definitely is infallible, how else could it survive so many years of bad preaching?

Tell me what time you spend alone with God ...
and I'll tell you how spiritual you are.

The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if, through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.

I read of the revivals of the past, great sweeping revivals where thousands of men were swept into the Kingdom of God. I read about Charles G. Finney winning his thousands and his hundreds of thousands of souls to Christ. Then I picked up a book and read the messages of Charles G. Finney and the message of Jonathan Edwards on 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' and I said, 'No wonder men trembled; no wonder they fell in the altars and cried out in repentance and sobbed their way to the throne of grace!'

One thing and one thing alone keeps us from complete decay in this hour - the church, the true Church.

Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life.

The best title of the [professing] church of God today, in my judgment, is 'Unbelieving Believers.'

Preaching is not a profession, it's a passion! If a man can't preach with passion he shouldn't preach at all.

What good does it do to speak in tongues on Sunday if you have been using your tongue during the week to curse and gossip?

The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it.

The true Church is born from above. In it there are no sinners, and outside of it no saints. No man can put another's name on its member's roll; and no man can cross another's name off that roll.

Some preachers master thier subjects; some subjects master the preacher; once in awhile one meets a preacher who is both master of, and also mastered by his subject. The apostle Paul, I am sure, was in that category.

When you're born in fire, smoke will never do.

Our God is a consuming fire. He consumes pride, lust, materialism, and other sin.

Life begets life by its very nature. By the same token, inspired men inspire.

This life is a dressing room for eternity - THAT'S ALL IT IS!

The Holy Book of the living God suffers more from its exponents today than from its opponents.

We need more prophets in our pulpits and less puppets

If weak in prayer we are weak everywhere.

Better for you to have one sleepless night on earth than millions in hell.

We have too many preacherettes preaching too many sermonettes to too many Christianettes smoking cigarettes.

My main ambition in life is to be on the Devil's most wanted list.

Christ has not conquered my affections if He has to compete for my attention.

If the whole church goes off into deception, that will in no way excuse us for not following Christ.

Quit playing, start praying. Quit feasting, start fasting. Talk less with men, talk more with God. Listen less to men, listen to the words of God. Skip travel, start travail.

The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.

Great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone-alone with God. Such loneliness is hard to endure, and impossible to enjoy unless God accompanied. Prophets are lone men; they walk alone, pray alone and God makes them alone.

A Christian who isn't praying, is only playing!

Your doctrine can be as straight as a gun barrel and just as empty!

Our spiritual immutarity never shows up more than in our lack of praying, be it alone or in a church prayer meeting. Let 20% of the chior members fail to turn up for rehearsal and the chior master is offended. Let 20% of the church members turn up for a prayer meeting, and the pastor is elated.

If there are a million roads into hell, there's not one road out.

Prayer is no substitute for work; equally true is it that work is no substitute for prayer.

Prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with GOD Himself.

I want to see the glory of God invade this generation.

You can have all of your doctrines right - yet still not have the presence of God.

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.

The less power a church has, the more entertainment it has.

God asks the best we have Because He gave the Best He had.

Nobody stood by Jesus. Maybe nobody will stand by you. It's a lonely life, but it's a glorious life.

Christianity today is so subnormal that if any Christian began to act like a normal New Testament Christian, he would be considered abnormal

If Christ waited to be anointed before He went to preach, no young man ought to preach until he, too, has been anointed by the Holy Ghost. - F. B. MEYER

Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.

The evangelists today are very often prepared to be anything to anybody as long as they can get somebody to the altar for something. They glibly call out: 'Who wants help? Who wants more power? Who wants a closer walk with God?' Such a sinning, repenting 'easy believeism' dishonors the blood and prostitutes the altar. We must alter the altar, for the altar is a place to die on. Let those who will not pay this price leave it alone!

When are people finally going to get serious about being serious?

The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Power helpeth our infirmity in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Life ends our deadness in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Wisdom delivers us from ignorance in this holy art ofprayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Fire delivers us from coldness in prayer. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Might comes to our aid in our weakness as we pray.

We don't preach salvation. We preach forgiveness.

Prayer is not a preparation for the battle; it is the battle!

The tragedy in our colleges and seminaries right now is that we turn men out who know the word of God. That is never going to turn the world.
The question is not whether they know the Word of God ...
The question is ... Do they know the God of the Word?

Everyone wants to be clothed but no one wants to be stripped.

At any point in all of Eternity, we can say, 'This is just the
beginning.' How wonderful for those who are with Christ. How
unimaginably dreadful for those who are not.

There's only one proof of the Holy Ghost in your life and that's a holy life.

The church as we know it today seems a million miles from the New Testament church. That may be a great generalization, but I will stand on it. There is a gulf between our average Christianity and the church of New Testament that makes the Grand Canyon look like a cavity in someone's tooth.

Any true revival can be proven by the fact that it changed the moral climate of an area or nation.