Trust (in God) sees God doing things here and now. Yes, and more. It rises to a lofty eminence and, looking into the invisible and the eternal, realizes that God has done things and regards them as being already done. Trust brings eternity into the annals and happenings of time, transmutes the substance of hope into the reality of fulfillment, and changes promise into present possession. We know when we trust just as we know when we see, just as we are conscious of our sense of touch. Trust sees, receives, and holds. Trust is its own witness.
Edward McKendree Bounds

I have said it several times before and no doubt will again: devote some time Saturday night and Sunday morning to prepare your heart for hearing the Word of God. The more you take time to humble yourself and purify your heart in prayer and tune the receiver of your mind into the wavelength of Christ, the more powerfully you will hear the Word and the more deeply you will worship.
I believe that if we as a church formed the habit of conscientiously preparing our hearts for the hearing God's Word, the Lord might speak with such power that amazing changes would come into our lives for God's glory and for our joy. . .
John Piper

'Consider the lilies of the field' - they grow where they are put. Many of us refuse to grow where we are put, consequently we take root nowhere. Jesus says that if we obey the life God has given us, He will look after all the other things. Has Jesus Christ told us a lie? If we are not experiencing the 'much more,' it is because we are not obeying the life God has given us, we are taken up with confusing considerations. How much time have we taken up worrying God with questions when we should have been absolutely free to concentrate on His work? Consecration means the continual separating of myself to one particular thing. We cannot consecrate once and for all. Am I continually separating myself to consider God every day of my life?
Oswald Chambers

The second greatest miracle, next to Christ, is what happens to a person who comes to know Christ personally. When we commit our lives to Him and invite Him to live in us, our days are filled with a constant succession of surprises. He is Lord of all life, has unlimited power, and can arrange events and circumstances to bless us. Our only task is to surrender our needs to Him, and then leave the results to Him.
Christ did not use the word 'miracle.' He talked about the 'works of God.' Wherever He went, He did 'works' which defied both the expected and the anticipated. The reason was that He was the power of God, the 'fullness of the Godhead bodily' (Colossians 2:9 NKJV) . . .
Where do you need a miracle - what to you seems impossible? Persist! Don't give up. At all costs make your way to the Master. Tell Him your need, and then leave it with Him. Even greater than the miracle you seek will be the miracle you become by seeking Him, touching Him, and experiencing His matchless love.
Lloyd John Ogilvie

Oh, be persuaded to hide yourself in Christ Jesus! What greater assurance of safety can you desire? He has undertaken to defend and save you, if you will come to Him. He looks upon it as His work. He engaged in it before the world was, and he has given His faithful promise which He will not break; and if you will but make your flight there, His life shall be for yours. He will answer for you, and you shall have nothing to do but rest quietly in Him. You may stand still and see what the Lord will do for you. If there is anything to suffer, the suffering is Christ's; you will have nothing to suffer. If there be anything to be done, the doing of it is Christ's; you will have nothing to do but to stand still and behold it.
Jonathan Edwards

There is no other way to live this Christian life than by a continual death to self.
Francois Fenelon

One incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage - indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage - it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has, as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own.
Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?
Martin Luther

2 Peter 1:4 reads: 'For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.' John Piper comments on this verse:

Very practically I think this means we must day by day go to the Word of God and search for great promises. Fix one or two in your mind and hold them there before you all day. And use them to overcome temptation to sin and to incite you to daring acts of righteousness and love. Notice in the last part of this verse that corruption comes 'by passion' or 'lust' or 'desire.' This means that the battle against corruption is fought on the field of our desires or passions. Sin makes its attack by holding out promises to us for our happiness: if you lie on your income tax return, you will have more money and be happier; if you divorce your spouse, you will be happier . . . And sin will always win the battle unless we have the luscious carrot of God's promises hanging clearly in front of our noses. Unless we enter our day armed with one or two precious and very great promises we will be utterly vulnerable to temptation.
John Piper

Through the stunning mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus is present to those caught in a midlife crisis, to those suffering debilitating illness or addiction, to those in the dark woods of depression, despair, and overwhelming fear. With a compassion that knows no boundary or breaking point, he startles those caught up in the love of pleasure, trapped by fierce pride, or consumed by ravenous greed with a flash of insight, suddenly revealing that their lives are a senseless, chaotic blur of misdirected energies and flawed thoughts.

The Savior, who sets us free from fear of the Father and dislike of ourselves, stirs the defeated through the painful discovery that our efforts to extricate ourselves from the shambles of our lives are self-contradictory, because the source of the shambles is our imperious ego. Huffing and puffing, scrambling for brownie points, and thrashing about trying to fix ourselves is an exercise in futility. Jesus waits and then . . . reveals to us the staggering meaning of grace.
Brennan Manning

As a good Christian should consider every place as holy, because God is there, so he should look upon every part of his life as a matter of holiness, because it is to be offered unto God. The profession of a clergyman is a holy profession, because it is a ministration in holy things, an attendance at the altar. But worldly business is to be made holy unto the Lord, by being done as a service to Him, and in conformity to His Divine will.
For as all men, and all things in the world, as truly belong unto God, as any places, things, or persons, that are devoted to Divine service, so all things are to be used, and all persons are to act in their several states and employments, for the glory of God.
Men of worldly business, therefore, must not look upon themselves as at liberty to live to themselves, to sacrifice to their own humors and tempers, because their employment is of a worldly nature. But they must consider that, as the world and all worldly professions as truly belong to God as persons and things that are devoted to the altar, so it is much the duty of men in worldly business to live wholly unto God, as it is the duty of those who are devoted to Divine service.
William Law

I think we finally have to say that Jesus' enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity. He comes where we are, and he brings us the life we hunger for. An early report reads, 'Life was in him, life that made sense of human existence' (John 1:4). To be the light of life, and to deliver God's life to women and men where they are and as they are, is the secret of the enduring relevance of Jesus. Suddenly they are flying right-side up, in a world that makes sense.
Dallas Willard

A gracious heart must first delight in God's precepts and promises, before it can turn them into prayers; for prayer is nothing else but a presenting God with his own promise, desiring to work that in us and for us which he hath promised to us.
Stephen Charnock

Addressing a counsel-lee's needs:

We need to understand what kind of people we really are while waiting for God to change us. We need to become humble under His all-powerful hand. We need to become submissive and manageable as soon as we sense any resistance in our will. Be silent as much as you can. Be in no hurry to judge, but think through your decisions, your likes and dislikes. In your daily living, stop at once when you are aware that you are getting in too much of a hurry. And do not be too eager even for good things. Take your time.

Francois Fenelon

Addressing a counsel-lee's needs, Fenelon writes:

There is something about your suffering which is very subtle and perhaps hard for you to understand. For even though you are convinced that your first concern is the glory of God, yet in your inmost soul it is the old self which keeps causing you so much trouble. The way I see the problem is this: I think that you really do want God to be glorified in your life, but you think that this is going to be accomplished by becoming more and more perfect. And in doing this you still are thinking of your own personal worth. So if you would truly derive profit from the discovery of your imperfections, I would suggest two things. First of all, never try to justify yourself before God. And second, do not condemn yourself. Instead, why not quietly lay your imperfections before God? And if, at that moment, there are some things you cannot understand about His will, simply tell Him that you are willing to conform your will to His in all things. And then go on in peace. For you must understand that peace is the will of God for you in every situation.

Francois Fenelon

Jesus is the Yes to all the promises of God made everywhere. There are thirty-three thousand promises in the Scriptures, and Jesus is the Yes to everyone of them. He writes 'Yes' in His own blood on every promise. If you come in His name, you can have them cashed in experience.
E. Stanley Jones

What does the Church think of Christ? The Church's answer is categorical and uncompromising, and it is this: That Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God 'by whom all things were made' . . . Now, this is not just a pious commonplace; it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - he (God) had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.
Dorothy Sayers

No matter what changes God has wrought in you, never rely upon them, build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives.
Oswald Chambers

Martin Luther reminds us 'not in works, not in any other thing, but purely in hope the heart of man rejoices. The one who seeks to find joy apart from this hope will labor much but will labor in vain.' Then Luther goes on to remind us of the Bible story of the woman who went from doctor to doctor for twelve years, spending all she had until she met Jesus . . . Our hope is not to be found in running from place to place or in smug resignation to the evils of life, but rather in belief and trust in God's word.

Jesus said, 'The words that I speak unto you,' not the words I have spoken, 'they are spirit, and they are life.' The Bible has been so many words to us - clouds and darkness - then all of a sudden the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us in a particular condition (situation). That is the way God speaks to us, not by visions and dreams, but by words (from His Word).
Oswald Chambers

Jesus humbled himself, coming down to the lowest human level. Those who will join him there - denying themselves, taking the low place - will be raised up with him to the heights of heaven. It is not easy for man to stoop so low, or to abandon his self-confidence. But when he sees the divine Son lying, as it were, at his feet, wrapped in the clothes of human poverty, then his heart may be moved and his pride cured. And when we grow weary of trying to prove ourselves, we may be ready to cast ourselves upon him. When we do, he who came down to where we are raises us to where he is.
St. Augustine

What our Lord claims of us first is service - the service of ready wills, then developing faith, and lives gradually sanctified by correspondence with Him. On these points we must rigorously examine ourselves, but the sense of the service of Another, of cooperation with Another, is meant to become so absorbing a consciousness as to swallow up in us the consideration of personal feeling, and at least to overshadow even the anxiety for our own separate salvation. By losing our lives in Christ and His cause, we are meant to save them; to serve Christ, not to feel Christ, is the mark of His true servants. They become Christians in proportion as they cease to be interested in themselves, and become absorbed in their Lord.

Charles Gore

The one great work of God's love for us is, He gives us His Son. In Him we have all. Hence the one great work of our heart must be to receive this Jesus who has been given to us, to consider Him and use Him as ours. I must begin every day anew with the thought, I have Jesus to do all for me . . . In all weakness or darkness or danger, in the case of every desire or need, let your first thought always be, I have Jesus to make everything right for me, for God has given Him to me. Whether your need be forgiveness or consolation or confirmation, whether you have fallen, or are tempted to fall, into danger, whether you know not what the will of God is in one or another matter, or know that you have not the courage and the strength to do this will, let this always be your first thought, the Father has given me Jesus to care for me . . . For this purpose, reckon upon this gift of God every day as yours . . . Take Him, and hold Him fast in the love of your heart.

Andrew Murray