Watchman Nee > Quotes

“Good is not always God's will, but God's will is always good.”
― Watchman Nee

“A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“When one tries to increase his knowledge by doing mental gymnastics over books without waiting upon God and looking to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, his soul is plainly in full swing. This will deplete his spiritual life. Because the fall of man was occasioned by seeking knowledge, God uses the foolishness of the cross to "destroy the wisdom of the wise.”
― Watchman Nee

“Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“I do not consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher. I consecrate myself to God to do His will where I am, be it in school, office, or kitchen, or wherever He may, in His wisdom, send me.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“How true it is that without the guidance of the Holy Spirit intellect not only is undependable but also extremely dangerous, because it often confuses the issue of right and wrong.”
― Watchman Nee

“How dangerous a master human emotion is!”
― Watchman Nee

“Man's thought is always of the punishment that will come to him if he sins. God's thought is always of the glory man will miss if he sins. God's purpose for redemption is glory, glory, glory.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“Lord, I am willing to break MY heart that I might satisfy THY heart.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“The Spirit is both a builder and a dweller. He cannot dwell where he has not built; He builds to dwell and dwells in only what he has built.”
― Watchman Nee, The Spiritual Man

“All satanic works are performed from the outside inward; all divine works from the inside outward.”
― Watchman Nee

“God will not give me humility, or patience, or holiness, or love as separate investments of His grace. He has given only one gift to meet our need, His Son Christ Jesus.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“Do you know, my friends, that the Spirit within you is very God? Oh that our eyes were opened to see the greatness of God’s gift! Oh that we might realize the vastness of the resources secreted in our own hearts! I could shout with joy as I think, “The Spirit who dwells within me is no mere influence, but a living Person; He is very God. The infinite God is within my heart!” I am at a loss to convey to you the blessedness of this discovery, that the Holy Spirit dwelling within my heart is a Person.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“Genuine spiritual knowledge lies not in wonderful and mysterious thoughts but in actual spiritual experience through union of the believer's life with truth.”
― Watchman Nee

“It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust, then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real Christian life begins with knowing this.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“He who is able to accept everything gladly from the Lord - including darkness, dryness, flatness - and completely disregard self is he who lives for Him." -”
― Watchman Nee

“I must first have the sense of God's possession of me before I can have the sense of His presence with me.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“We must not pay attention just to reading and studying; rather, we should ask if we are open before the Lord. If we do not have an unveiled face, the glory of the Lord will not shine on us. If our heart is not open to God, God cannot give us any light.”
― Watchman Nee, How to Study the Bible & The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit

“God does not blame me for being an individual, but for my individualism. His greatest problem is not the outward divisions and denominations that divide His church, but our own individualistic hearts.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“If we throw ourselves open to God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas, locked and barred places in our hearts, where we think, with pride, that we are right.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“We must be brought to a place where, naturally gifted though we may be, we dare not speak except in conscious and continual dependence on Him.”
― Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand

“Why does God not declare himself as the God of Adam? For we know that Abraham sinned even as Adam did. Why then did He not call himself the God of Adam? Why did He not say the God of Abel, the seed of Adam? Why instead did He call himself the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob? Why according to the flesh was our Lord Jesus presented in the New Testament as having been born of the seed of Abraham? Why from among all men should God have called himself the God of these three particular persons? Wherein lies the difference between these three and other people? Well, apart from the fact that God had covenanted with these three men, He takes them up as representative personages. He chooses them to represent three types of men in the world. What type of man is Abraham? He is a giant of faith. He is rather uncommon; in fact, he is quite special. As the God of Abraham, God declares himself to be the God of excellent people. Yet, thanks be to God, He is not only the God of the excellent. Were He merely this kind of God, we would sink into despair because we are not persons of excellence. But God is also the God of Isaac. What type of person is Isaac? He is very ordinary. He eats whenever he can, and sleeps as he has opportunity. He is neither a wonder man nor a wicked person. How this fact has comforted many of us! Yet God is not only the God of the ordinary men, He is also the God of the bad men: He is the God of Jacob too, for in the Scriptures Jacob is pictured as one of the worst persons to be found in the Old Testament. Hence through these three persons, God is telling us that He is the God of Abraham the best, the God of Isaac the ordinary, and the God of Jacob the worst. He is the God of those with great faith, He is the God of the common people, and He is also the God of the lowest of men such as thieves and prostitutes. Suppose I am special like Abraham; then He is my God. Suppose I am ordinary like Isaac; then He is also my God. And suppose from my mother’s womb I have been bad like Jacob was in that I have striven with my brother; then He is still my God. He has a way with the excellent, with the common, and with the worst of humanity.”
― Watchman Nee, The Finest of the Wheat, volume 1

“Every true work is not done to the poor. Every true work is done to Me.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“Do we impress people with ourselves, or with the Lord? Do we draw people to our teaching, or to the Lord? This is genuinely vital. It determines the value of all our work and labor.”
― Watchman Nee, The Release of the Spirit

“Man may think human intellect and reasoning are almighty, that the brain is able to comprehend all truths of the world; but the verdict of God's Word is, "vanity of vanities.”
― Watchman Nee

“It is so easy to become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver—and even, I should add, to the work of God than to God Himself.”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“Attempting to follow Him without denying the self is the root of all failures.”
― Watchman Nee, The Spiritual Man

“The author nicely encapsulates Paul's overarching intent in his letter to Corinth, to impress upon those in the church infatuated with the gifts of the Spirit a greater awestruck awareness of His presence in and among them. The author then illustrates thusly: if we have but a few coins, we may carry them lightly with little concern as to whether we lose them. But if we are aware that we carry a great sum, we will carry it with great care. How much more the Treasure of the Holy Spirit within the earthen vessel of our bodies?”
― Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life

“To be penitent, to feel sorry for sin, to shed tears, to even make decisions does not bring in salvation. Confession, decision, and many other religious acts can never be and are not to be construed as new birth. Rational judgment, intelligent understanding, mental acceptance, or the pursuit of the good, the beautiful, and the true are merely soulical activities if the spirit is not reached and stirred.”
― Watchman Nee, The Spiritual Man

“The Christian life from start to finish is based upon this principle of utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus.”
― Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand: The Process of Christian Maturity