African Pastor's Conferences 2010

I am leading a team from Berean Baptist to South Africa in January. Please check the Pastor's Blog for updates and pics on our trip. Ben Dickie and Eric Stewart plan to post some photos and updates from time to time.

The topics that I will be sharing with our dear friends in South Africa include worship, prayer, and the subject of brokenness before the Lord. I thought that you might find some of these thoughts and quotes on brokenness and spirituality a blessing to your soul. Read and may the Lord bless each of you!

* In a world where self confidence and self reliance are celebrated it is important to remember that broken people who are have humbled themselves before God and find their strength in Christ are those who have been greatly used by the Lord.

* "Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit...the decline of the knowledge of the Holy has brought on our troubles." A. W. Tozer

* "A glimpse of Jesus will save you, but to gaze on Him will sanctify you." Manley Beasley

* "If you lay yourself at Christ's feet he will take you up in his arms." William Bridge

* Every great man of God or woman of God has passed through times of trial, brokenness, and what is often called the wilderness experience.

* The crushing sorrows and burdens of life may be overwhelming at times but they produce in our lives the things that make us truly useful to God--brokenness, desperation, humility, repentance, tears, tenderness, and patience.

* "God will never come to his right unless we are totally reduced to nothing, so that it may be clearly seen that all that is laudable in us comes from elsewhere." John Calvin

* "Unbelief makes the world a spiritual desert, where no divine footsteps are heard, where no angels ascend and descend, where no living hand adorns the fields, feeds the birds of heaven, or regulates events." F. W. Krummacher

* "Suffering so unbolts the door to the heart that the Word has an easier entrance." Richard Baxter

* What the church of Jesus Christ so desperately needs today are men and women who walk with God in the power and gentleness of the Holy Spirit.

Trials and tribulations are often used by the Lord to mold our hearts into His image. These hard Providences that we often pass through will teach us the importance of brokenness before the Lord. Never forget that broken people are precious to the Lord. A broken and contrite heart He will not despise.

God bless all of you!

Pastor Dickie