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“One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).
The fact beats ceaselessly into my brain these days that there is a world of difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word. Is it not true that with the coming round of Bible conferences we hear only old things repeated, and most likely come away without any increase in faith? Perhaps God never had such a set of unbelieving believers as this present crop of Christians. How humiliating!”
“What we know about God these days is giving us a deep stream of shallow books and is filling our libraries. (We are not despising true learning, and certainly not that wisdom which comes from above.) But what we know is one thing; whom we know is quite another. Paul had nothing, but yet “possessed all things.” Sublime paradox! Blessed poverty! This blessed man was loaded spiritually. Building Christ’s empire and writing the oracles of the Lord never unbalanced him. Yet despite Paul’s incomparable record, we find him toward the end of the journey still longing for more: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.””
-Leonard Ravenhill, “Why Revival Tarries”