Inspirational Quotes by Brother Andrew

“While we were finishing our coffee, one of these men stood up and called out the name of a song. Everyone joined in, loud, lusty and wonderful, as I'd heard it before among Pentecostals. By the middle of the second song a woman at the next table was weeping. There was nothing especially emotional about the song itself; it was one of the standard old Gospel hymns, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." But crying seems to be as infectious as laughter. Soon some of the men on the platform were unabashedly bringing out their handkerchiefs. What was it that swept a room this way? I felt it too; so did Tib sitting next to me. Both of us were studiously avoiding looking the other one in the eye. As the music continued, several people at the tables began to sing "in the Spirit." Soon the whole room was singing a complicated harmony-without-score, created spontaneously. It was eerie but extraordinarily beautiful. The song leader was no longer trying to direct the music but let the melodies create themselves: Without prompting, one quarter of the room would suddenly start to sing very loudly while other subsided. Harmonies and counter-harmonies wove in and out of each other.”

“And yet leaving the room, she did not leave me, for we were mysteriously linked together during the next hours. When Tib left 405 she'd gone outside to walk on the boardwalk. After a while she stepped down onto the sand where she could walk right at the water's edge. She walked for a long, long time. The sun sank lower in the winter sky. Facing south as she was, her eyes began to be bothered by it. Tib has always been extremely light-sensitive, choosing chairs that looked away from windows and so forth. She started to turn around and head north with her back to the sun when a sentence popped into her mind with the force of a command. "Look neither to the right nor to the left, but only straight ahead." But straight ahead was the dazzling sun. She walked on a little farther, squinting her eyes. It was getting late. She was a long way from the hotel by now. The meeting in Room 405 must be over, she thought: I would be looking for her. But each time she started to turn around and retrace her steps, the extraordinary words reappeared in her mind. "Neither right or left. Only straight ahead." The sun was lower still. Glittering on the waves, glaring straight into her eyes. And still Tib walked on, into the blinding light...”

“The point is that there is a very old idea that the Holy Spirit is functioning in our lives not only to give us power as Christians but also to clean up our lives, lead us toward holiness. I will have to admit that certain kinds of holy Christians have always repelled me. I have never been able to tell whether it is because they make me uncomfortable, knowing that I am far from holy, or whether they are in fact making a serious error in supposing themselves to be holy when in fact all they are is sanctimonious. I will have to admit also, however, that I have met a few Christians who make no show of holiness yet whom I sense to be living on a different plane from my own. These people have a quality that strikes me as being at the heart of real holiness; they do not make me aware of their goodness so much as of their hope. They do not point up my shortcomings in contrast to their saintliness; they point up my potential. I think Christ must have had this kind of holiness. He would never have attracted men like rough Peter and worldly Matthew otherwise. The secret ingredient in this kind of transforming holiness, I came to think, was love. When I came into contact with love as an overwhelming experience in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I found that I had been cleaned, built up, healed. I knew a kind of wholeness I'd never dreamed of; and the words whole, holy, and health are all derivatives of the same Anglo-Saxon word haml, meaning "complete." This is the type of sanctification that comes from contact with the Christ-love of the Holy Spirit.”

“We have a friend who used to commute by ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan, in New York City. The trip took nearly half an hour and could have been a frustration in a busy day. But this man, David Wilkerson, used the time on the boat for prayer in tongues. He would start off by thinking of all the things he had to be thankful for. In a reversal of Bob Morris's sequence, he would review them one by one in his mind, in English, praising God for each one. Bit by bit, inside him, he would feel a mounting sense of joy. He was conscious of being loved, being taken care of. He began to glimpse pattern and design in all that was happening to him. And suddenly, in trying to express his gratitude, he would reach a language barrier. English could no longer express what he felt. It was simply inadequate for the Being that he perceived. It was at this point that he would burst through into communication that was not limited by vocabulary. His spirit as well as his mind would start to praise God. Inevitably, by the time David reached the Manhattan pier, a transformation had taken place. He was built up in body and in spirit. He felt emboldened, ready to tackle impossible tasks, invigorated and refreshed, ready to meet whatever the day had to offer. And this was often important, for David Wilkerson is a youth worker among street gangs in the New York slums--a job that brings him into contact with teenage dope addicts, child prostitutes, young killers and some of the most discouraging and intractable problems in the world today.”

“Another use of tongues suggested in the Bible is to let us pray even when with our own minds we have no idea what to ask for in a given situation (see Romans 8:26-27).”

“In Paul's view, there seemed to be three principal ways in which tongues were of value: 1. In private prayer, tongues aided the speaker to praise God. 2. They let the speaker pray even at those times when he or she was not sure what to ask for. 3. And in public worship, when accompanied by another of the nine gifts, "interpretation," tongues provided a vehicle of direct communication between God and His people.”

“the “gift of interpretation” is considered on a par with the “gift of tongues,” and indeed is thought of as the companion gift that must be sought along with tongues. An “interpretation” purports to give the content of the message just delivered in an unknown tongue, differing from a translation in that the interpreter no more understands the tongue than the speaker does.”