Top 180 Watchman Nee Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “May we always be possessed by the consciousness that we are not our own.”

— Watchman Nee

52. “Victory is the normal experience of a Christian; defeat should be the abnormal experience.”

— Watchman Nee

53. “An affection which is not inspired by the Lord will soon be transformed into lust. Samson is not alone in the history of man in failing in this regard. Delilah is still cutting the hair of man today!”

— Watchman Nee

54. “God has supplied all my needs and has not failed me once.”

— Watchman Nee

55. “Long-lasting victory can never be separated from a long-lasting stand on the foundation of the cross.”

— Watchman Nee

56. “Prayer is work. The experiences of many children of God demonstrate that it accomplishes far more than does any other form of work. It is also warfare, for it is one of the weapons in fighting the enemy. However, only prayer in the spirit is genuinely effectual.”

— Watchman Nee

57. “Overcoming sin, blessed though it surely is, is but the bare minimum of a believers experience. There is nothing astonishing in it. Not to overcome sin is what ought to astonish us.”

— Watchman Nee

58. “Nowadays Christians appear to treat prayer as a means to accomplish their aims and ideas. If they possessed just a little deeper understanding, they would recognize that prayer is but man uttering to God what is God’s will.”

— Watchman Nee

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

— Watchman Nee

60. “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

61. “Towards himself a Christian should have a broken spirit, but towards God it should be one of rejoicing always in Him. He rejoices not for its own sake nor because of any joyful experience, work, blessing or circumstance, but exclusively because God is his center.”

— Watchman Nee

62. “Now is the hour we should humbly prostrate ourselves before God, willing to be convicted afresh of our sins by the Holy Spirit.”

— Watchman Nee

63. “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

64. “Do not be impatient for impatience is of the flesh. Do not try different methods because they are useful solely in helping the flesh. We must distrust the flesh entirely.”

— Watchman Nee

65. “The greatest negative in the universe is the Cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of Himself: the greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, for through it God brought into being all.”

— Watchman Nee

66. “There is nothing more tragic than to come to the end of life and know we have been on the wrong course.”

— Watchman Nee

67. “The burden imparted by God is lifted once we have prayed, but the heaviness from the enemy cannot be raised unless we fight and resist in prayer.”

— Watchman Nee

68. “All spiritual prayers have their source in God. God makes known to us what we ought to pray by unfolding to us the need and by giving that need as a burden in our intuitive spirit. Only an intuitive burden can constitute our call to pray.”

— Watchman Nee

69. “It is a fact that God wants to destroy every work of our flesh, but He never desires to destroy our personality. He takes no pleasure in transforming us into automata; rather He delights in having us cooperate with Him.”

— Watchman Nee

70. “If Christ lives in us, we will rejoice in everything, and we will thank and praise the Lord. We will say, ‘Hallelujah! Praise the Lord’ forever.”

— Watchman Nee

71. “The gospel we preach must not be just something we hear from men or read from books or even conceived through our meditation. Unless it is delivered to us by God, it can serve no spiritual utility.”

— Watchman Nee

72. “Do not grow overconfident following a few victories. Should you not rely upon the Holy Spirit you will soon be thrown once more into a distressing experience. With holy diligence you must cultivate an attitude of dependency.”

— Watchman Nee

73. “We should not open our mouths too hastily upon approaching God. On the contrary, we first must ask God to show us what and how to pray before we make our request known to Him. Have we not consumed a great deal of time in the past asking for what we wanted? Why not now ask for what God wants?”

— Watchman Nee

74. “Oh, Lord, you have indeed been gracious to me.”

— Watchman Nee

75. “Attempting to follow Him without denying the self is the root of all failures.”

— Watchman Nee

76. “Nothing is wrong with the inlet: It is the outlet that is obstructed. The water of life does not spring forth because the flow has no way through. Were the outlet cleared, the water of life would flow unceasingly. What a child of God needs is not more life but more flow of life.”

— Watchman Nee

77. “As God’s child advances spiritually be shall discover that the Lord’s time is as important as the Lord’s will. Do not rashly beget an Ishmael lest he become the greatest enemy to Isaac.”

— Watchman Nee

78. “They spend more time in analyzing, in collecting materials, and in hard thinking than on prayer, on seeking God’s mind, and on waiting for the power from above.”

— Watchman Nee

79. “By the time the average Christian gets his temperature up to normal, everybody thinks he has a fever!”

— Watchman Nee

80. “It is important to receive God’s arrangement in the circumstances. This arrangement is the discipline of the Holy Spirit. To escape God’s arrangement just one time is to lose an opportunity to have our capacity enlarged. A believer can never be the same after passing through suffering.”

— Watchman Nee

81. “The devil abhors light and truth because these remove the ground of his working.”

— Watchman Nee

82. “When a believer has crossed into the domain of the spiritual he daily ought to maintain a combat attitude in his spirit, praying therewith for the overthrow of all the works of Satan done through the evil powers.”

— Watchman Nee

83. “When the fruit of your service is out of all proportion to the gifts you possess, THAT is Blessing!”

— Watchman Nee

84. “Everyone who believes in God must have His revelation in his spirit, or else what he believes is not God but mere human wisdom, ideals or words. Such faith cannot endure the test.”

— Watchman Nee

85. “A mistaken thought may be corrected easily, but an errant affection is nearly unmanageable.”

— Watchman Nee

86. “The child of God ought to confess his weakness that he does not know how to pray, and petition the Holy Spirit to teach him.”

— Watchman Nee

87. “If whatever men know comes through their brain without the Holy Spirit regenerating their spirit, then their knowledge will help them not one whit. If their belief rests in man’s wisdom and not in God’s power, they are merely excited in their soul.”

— Watchman Nee

88. “The book of Acts is the best aid in approaching our work. We do not find there anyone consecrating himself as a preacher nor anyone deciding to do the Lord’s work by making himself a missionary or a pastor. What we do see is the Holy Spirit Himself appointing and sending men out to do the work.”

— Watchman Nee

89. “Baptism is faith in action.”

— Watchman Nee

90. “Take this as the secret of Christ’s life in you: His Spirit dwells in your innermost spirit. Meditate on it, believe in it, and remember it until this glorious truth produces within you a holy fear and wonderment that the Holy Spirit indeed abides in you.”

— Watchman Nee

91. “If we verily bear the cross we shall be neither controlled nor influenced by soulical affection but shall be fit to love in the power of the Holy Spirit. Even so did the Lord Jesus love His family while on earth.”

— Watchman Nee

92. “So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us the Law to keep: he gave us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not keep it.”

— Watchman Nee

93. “The Lord has shown me that I can do anything, but that He has said, apart from Me ye can do nothing. So it comes to this, that everything I have done, and can still do apart from Him is nothing!”

— Watchman Nee

94. “The Christian life from start to finish is based upon this principle of utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus.”

— Watchman Nee

95. “Eternal life means more than mere future blessing to be enjoyed by believers; it is equally a kind of spiritual ability.”

— Watchman Nee

96. “If you would test the character of anything, you only need to enquire whether that thing leads you to God or away from God.”

— Watchman Nee

97. “An unpeaceful mind cannot operate normally.”

— Watchman Nee

98. “It is not only the proclamation of the whole truth that is needed today; it is the release of the spiritual reality which the truth expresses, and that can only be realized as we allow ourselves to be caught into the mighty on-flowing tide of the Spirit.”

— Watchman Nee

99. “Often Satan injects pride into the believer’s spirit, evoking in him an attitude of self-importance and of self-conceit. He causes him to esteem himself a very outstanding person, one who is indispensable in God’s work. Such a spirit constitutes one of the major reasons for the fall of believers.”

— Watchman Nee

100. “To secure one’s freedom the Christian must experience God’s light which is God’s truth.”

— Watchman Nee