Leonard Ravenhill (1907 – 1994) was a famous English evangelist who spent his life focusing on the subjects of prayer and revival. He is best known for his fiery preaching style and challenging the western church to live like the church found in the Book of Acts. Below are quotes by Ravenhill that I pray will challenge you to live a more holy life.1
“You can’t live wrong and pray right.”
“The Church right now has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, is more superficial than supernatural.”
“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).”
“There is a world of difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word.”
“The man who can get believers to praying would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known.”
“Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.”
“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!”
“The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology.”
“Prayer does not condition God; prayer conditions us. Prayer does not win God to our view; it reveals God’s view to us.”
“The tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people.”
“It has been well said that there are only three classes of people in the world today: those who are afraid, those who do not know enough to be afraid, and those who know their Bibles.”
“Jesus said, ‘Go ye!’ but He also said, ‘Tarry until!’ Let any man shut himself up for a week with only bread and water, with no books except the Bible, with no visitor except the Holy Ghost, and I guarantee, my preacher brethren, that that man will either break up or break through and out. After that, like Paul, he will be known in hell!”
“No man is greater than his prayer life.”
“At this grim hour, the world sleeps in the darkness, and the Church sleeps in the light.”
“For this sin-hungry age we need a prayer-hungry Church.”
“The Spirit-filled believer will hate iniquity, injustice, and impurity; and he will militate against all of them. Because Paul hated the world, the world hated Paul. We, too, need this disposition of opposition.”
“Most Christians pray to be blessed. Few pray to be broken.”
“If you want to be popular, preach happiness. If you want to be unpopular, preach holiness.”
“The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning.”
“Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live!”
“If you have the smile of God what does it matter if you have the frown of men?”
“The world out there is not waiting for a new definition of Christianity; it’s waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity.”
“Why do we expect to be better treated in this world than Jesus was?”
“Maturity comes from obedience, not necessarily from age.”
“You won’t become a saint by studying your Bible; you’ll become a saint by living it.”
“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!”
“Christianity is Christ plus nothing!”
“We’re living in an unprecedented day when evil is no longer evil. We’ve changed the terminology–iniquity is now infirmity; wickedness is now weakness; devilry is now deficiency.”
“A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.”
1 All of the quotes in this devotion are from the following two websites:
Inspirational Quotes by Leonard Ravenhill (bibleportal.com)
TOP 25 QUOTES BY LEONARD RAVENHILL (of 269) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)