The Green Letters Book

Time
p 13 "We must get to know ourselves and that we have no strength. Thus we must learn, and then leaning on the Lord we can with more maturity, and more experientially, deal with souls."

p 14 "To taste of the grace of God is one thing; to be established in it and manifest it in character, habit, and regular life, is another."

p 15 "Fruit ripens slowly; days of sunshine and days of storm each add their share. Blessing will succeed blessing, and storm follow storm before the fruit is full grown or comes to maturity."

p 15 "in simple trust rest in HIS hands."

p 15 "All growth is progressive, and the finer the organism, the longer the process."

p 16 "allow Him to be your all in all."

p 16 "may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death" (Phil 3:10)

Acceptance
p 18 "Two questions every believer must settle as soon as possible. The one is, Does God fully accept me? and, If so, upon what basis does He do so?"
p 18 "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom 5:1)

p 20 "Our satisfaction can only spring from and rest in HIS satisfaction."

p 20 "He has accepted us in His Son, and upon this FACT we must rest our faith."

p 21 "To believe, and to be consent to be loved while unworthy, is the great secret."

p 21 "To 'hope to be better' (sense acceptable) is to FAIL to see yourself IN CHRIST ONLY."
"To be disappointed with yourself is to have believed in yourself."

p 22 "Often fear after a while produces only numbness, but love thrives on love."

p 22 "Until the Christian is absolutely and scripturally sure of his standing, he is not going to do much standing. "stand therefore" (Eph 6:14a)

Purpose
p25 "One of God's most effective means in the process is failure. So many believers are simply frantic over the fact of failure in their lives, and they will go to all lengths in trying to hide it, ignore it, or rationalize about it. And all the time they are resisting the main instrument in the Father's hand for conforming us to the likeness of His Son!"

pg 25 "Failure where self is concerned in our Christian life and service, is allowed and often engineered by God in order to turn us completely from ourselves unto His Source for our life - Christ Jesus, who never fails. Rejoice, dear friend, in your need and hunger of heart, for God says, "Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matt. 5:6). As we, in our abject need, consistency and lovingly look upon our Lord Jesus revealed to us in the Word, the Holy Spirit will quietly and effortlessly change the center and source of our lives from self to Christ - hence for each of us it will be, "Not I, but Christ."

pg 26 "If we are attracted to this present evil world, we become increasingly worldly; if we pamper and live for self, we become more and more self-centered; but when we look unto Jesus Christ, we become more and more like Him."

pg 26 "Don't try to be like Him, just look at Him. Just be occupied with Him. Forget about trying to be like Him. Instead of letting that fill your mind and heart, let Him fill it."

Preparation
pg 28 "Now it so happens that God's basic ingredient for growth is need."

pg 28 "The true value of anything is known only when it is wanted." "Wisdom and philosophy never found out God; He makes Himself known to us through our needs; necessity finds Him out."

pg 29 "In this light, our needs are invaluable! We must face up to the fact that without spiritual hunger, we cannot feed upon the Lord Jesus Christ."

pg 29 "There is a tearing down before there can be a building up. "Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up" (Hosea 6:1). This applies to both growth and service.

pg 30 "It takes a man who has discovered something of the measures of his own weakness to be patient with the foibles of others. Such a man also has a first-hand knowledge of the loving care of the Chief Shepherd, and HIs ability to heal one who has come humbly to trust in Him and Him alone."

pg 31 "Our personal, heart-breaking failure in every phase of our Christian life is our Father's preparation for HIs success on our behalf."

p 31 "To receive victory from Him is to believe His Word that solely by His grace He is, this moment, freeing us from the dominion of sin. And to believe on Him in this way is to recognize that He is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves."

Complete in Him
pg 35 "No believer ever fell into maturity, even though he is complete in Christ. Spiritual growth necessitates heart-hunger for the Lord Jesus; determination, based upon assurance, to have that which is our in Him, plus meditation and thought."

pg 37 "Your first instinct is to prepare yourself for a big battle and then pray to God to give you the victory in it. But if you do so defeat is sure, for you have given up the ground that is yours in Christ." "'Lord, I am faced with a situation I cannot possibly meet. Thine Enemy the Devil has brought it about to compass my downfall, but I praise Thee that Thy victory is an all-inclusive victory. It covers this situation, too. I praise Thee that I have already full victory in this matter."

Appropriation
pg 39 "Life is meant to bring a succession of discoveries of our need of Christ, and with every such discovery the way is opened for a new inflow of the supply. This is the explanation of so much that we cannot otherwise understand - this plunging of us into new tests where only a fresh supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ will meet our need. And as our need is met, as we prove the sufficiency of Christ to meet our inward need, so there can be a new showing forth of His glory through us."

Identification
pg 45 "We died with Christ. He dies for us, and we died with Him...Not merely that Christ died for us, but that we died with Him."

pg 46"Because He died 'death hath no more dominion over Him,' and because of our union with Him 'sin shall not have dominion over you,' even though it is present in you. Our 'reckoning' ourselves dead to sin in Jesus Christ does not make it a fact - it is already a fact through our union with Him. Our reckoning it to be true only makes us begin to realize the fact in experience."

Consecration
pg 48 "Healthy progress is based upon the apprehension, understanding and appropriation of the truths in Christ that make for real growth. "

pg 50 "He has already taken the old life to the cross and crucified it! (Rom 6:6; Gal 2:20, 2 Tim 2:11, 1 Peter 2:24)

pg 51 "When, however, yo and I are prepared, in simple humility, to make the FACT of our death with Christ our daily basis of life and service, there is nothing that can prevent the uprising and outflow of new life, and meet the need of thirsty souls around us."

pg 51"present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead' (Rom 6:13) This is the true place of consecration." "only those "ALIVE FROM THE DEAD" - that is, having appropriated fully their likeness with Him in death - are bidden to present their members as instruments unto God."

Self
pg 53 "In service: first, "death worth in us," then, "but life in you" (2 For 4:12) All resurrection life springs out of death, else it would not be resurrection life - His risen life (Rom 6:5, 6). "

pg 56 "God works by paradox. Success comes via failure; life springs out of death, etc....He has to be led into it by the mercy the Holy Spirit - into failure; abject and total."

pg 56 "Our poor health, yes, and good health too! A thousand and one things are used by Him - in fact, everything (Rom 8:28,29), to bring out the worst in us, ultimately enabling us to see that the Christian life has to be, "not I, but Christ." People, circumstances, etc. are never the cause of failure. Self's reaction to them is the cause, and the one problem to be dealt with. "it's me, it's me, O Lord.""

Self-Denial
"The powerful effect of the cross with God, in heaven, in the blotting out of guilt, and our renewed union with Go, is inseparable from the other effect - the breaking down of the authority of sin over man, by the crucifixion of self."

The Cross
pg 63-64 "Calvary is the secret of it all. It is what He did there that counts, and what He did becomes a source in the life of a Christian when it is appropriated by faith. This is the starting point from which all Godly living must take its rise. We shall never know the experience of Christ's victory in our lives until we are prepared to count (reckon) upon HIs victory at the cross as the secret of our personal victory today. There is no victory for us which was not first His."

p65 "Two basics: freed from the penalty of sin by His finished work; freed from the power of sin by His finished work... justified by faith..we are not left to deal with the old life ourselves; it has been dealt with by Christ on the cross."

pg 66 "We applicate God's forgiveness, but we want something more than that, we want deliverance. We need forgiveness for what we have done, but we need deliverance from what we are."

pg 67 ...."I must realize that now my life is hid with Christ in God; that He is my life." - Ian Thomas

Discipleship
"A disciple is one who first maintains the fellowship of the cross, which results in fellowship with his Lord: discipleship. "The atonement of the cross and the fellowship of the cross must be equally preached as the condition for true discipleship." "Christ is the answer, but the cross is needed to clear the way for Him.""

p 70 "We will be ready to take up our cross (see the cross for what it is - a place of death) when self becomes intolerable to us, when we begin to hate our life - "and hate not...his own life...cannot be my disciple." ( Luke 14:26). The deep burden of self and hunger to be like Him cause the function of the cross - crucifixion - to become attractive. "

pg 71 "And here is how e take up and bear our cross: Finally prepared by our needs, aware that our bondage was broken in Christ on Calvary, we definitely begin to rely upon that finished work - we appropriate. Our attitude becomes: I gladly and willingly take, by faith in the facts, my finished work of emancipation that was established at Calvary; I reckon myself to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ. This is taking up one's cross. As we learn to do this, we begin to find these facts true in experience." ..... Through this process we are patiently taught to walk by faith, to maintain our attitude of reliance upon the finished work of the cross. "I have been crucified with Christ"

Process of Discipleship
pg 73 "But if they are of the real elect, God has a winepress prepared for them, through which they will some day pass, which will turn the metallic hardness of their nature into gentle love, which Christ always brings forth at the last of the feast."

Rest
pg 76 "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30:15)

"We are to quietly and steadily look to our Father in confident trust, and thankfully receive that which He has given to us in His Son."

pg 80 "True activity is that which springs out of, and is ever accompanied by, rest. It is only as we know what it is to be 'still', that we are ready to 'go forward'. We rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go" - E.H.
...."Let us take Him at His Word, and leave the fulfillment of it to Him."

Help
pg 81 "Immaturity considers the Lord Jesus a Helper. Maturity knows Him to be Life itself."

pg 82-83 "S.D. Gordon admonished: "When you are in the thick of the fight, when you are the object of attack, plead less and claim more, of the ground of the blood of the Lord Jesus. I do not mean, ask God to give you victory, but claim His victory, to overshadow you."

Cultivation
pg 87 "We must be cultivated to be cultivators."

pg 87 "The greatest proof of our love for Christ is that we care for those who belong to Him; ... if you love me, feed my sheep."

Continuance
pg 88 "As our Lord takes us along through the years it slowly dawns upon us that there are vast, almost infinite, areas of development through which He must still lead us."

pg 88 "Our Father strips everything away from time to time to give us the opportunity of loving and trusting and responding to Him just because He is our Father. He knows what the cross is going to mean in our lives; He knows the death-march that lies ahead of us in order that there may be resurrection life; He knows the barren, bleeding hearts beyond whom He must minister through us- hence He is going to bring us to the place where we don't care what happens: He is all that matters!"

Growth to maturity!

pg 90 " For in Christian experience the spiritual things of God are less and less outward, that is, of gift, and more and more inward, of life. In the long run it is the depth and inwardness of a work that counts."

pg 90 "His relentless processing will discourage and baffle us if we simply want heaven when we die. But if we want what He wants, all that we are taken through, including the desert, will encourage us. Thus we will continue because we know that He ever continues to work in and through us that which He began and finished on our behalf in our Lord Jesus Christ."

...."If our hearts are really true to Him we may be assured He will lead us on in the knowledge of Himself just as we are able to advance. He knows how much we can take in, and He does not fail to minister to us the very food that is suitable to our present need. We may sometimes feel inclined to be impatient with ourselves because we do not make more rapid progress, but we have to learn to trust the Lord with our spiritual education. If our eyes are upon Him, and we follow with simple hearts as He leads us, we shall find that He leads us by a right way and brings us through all the exercises we need to form our souls in the appreciation of Himself, and of all those blessed things which are brought to pass in Him. We have to trust His love all through, and to learn increasingly to distrust ourselves." - C. A. Coates