Quotes from Lilias Trotter

source: wikipedia

The sentence of death passes, in the Cross, on the old nature in its entirety, as the new comes into being. This is the one only basis and groundwork for all carrying out in our practical experience of what that death means. Once for all let this be clear. Apart from the work done on Calvary, all working out of a death process in our own souls is only a false and dangerous mysticism. . . . "I have been crucified with Christ" (RV)--yes, long before I ever asked to be--glory be to God! and yet as freshly as if it were yesterday, for time is nowhere with Him.
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“We have not to produce out of our higher nature a lowliness and a patience and a purity of our own, but simply to let the pure, patient, lowly life of Jesus have its way in us by yieldingness to it and by faith in its indwelling might. "All that God wants from man is opportunity." The whole of our relationship to His power, whether for sanctification or for service, is summed up in those words.”
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“Surrender--stillness--a ready welcoming of all stripping, all loss, all that brings us low, low into the Lord's path of humility--a cherishing of every whisper of the Spirit's voice, every touch of the prompting that comes to quicken the hidden life within: that is the way God's human seed-vessels ripen, and Christ becomes "magnified" even through the things that seem against us. "Mine but to be still: Thine the glorious power, Thine the mighty will.”
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“Measure thy life by loss and not by gain,
Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth.
For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,
And he who suffers most has most to give.”
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Trained faith is a triumphant gladness in having nothing but God - no rest, no foothold - nothing but Himself - A triumphant gladness in swinging out into that abyss, rejoicing in a very fresh emergency that is going to prove Him true - The Lord Along - that is trained faith.
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I was watching vaguely the breaking of the waves while listening for His voice.  Suddenly, there came, clothed in His living power, the words – “Fear ye not me,” saith the Lord, “which have placed the sand for a bound of the sea that they cannot pass; though they roar they shall not pass over it!”  Oh with what joy it came as one watched them hurling themselves in with all their might and succeeding in doing nothing but washing a few tiny pebbles a few inches and dragging others back in their place – such power, and such impotence!
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Shall we not ask God to convict us, as to where lies the hindrance to this self-emptying? It is not alone mere selfishness, in its ordinary sense, that prevents it; long after this has been cleansed away by the Precious Blood there may remain, unrecognised, the self-life in more subtle forms. It may co-exist with much that looks like sacrifice; there may be much of usefulness and of outward self-denial, and yet below the surface may remain a clinging to our own judgment, a confidence in our own resources, an unconscious taking of our own way, even in God’s service. And these things hold down, hold in our souls, and frustrate the Spirit in His working. The latent self-life needs to be brought down into the place of death before His breath can carry us hither and thither as the wind wafts the seeds. Are we ready for this last surrender?
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What a revolution would come over the world – the world of starving bodies at home – the world of starving souls abroad – if something like this were the standard of giving; if God’s people ventured on “making themselves poor” as Jesus did, for the sake of the need around; if the “I” – “me” – “mine” were practically delivered up, no longer to be recognized when they clash with those needs.
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Study the inner life of Jesus. “I speak not of Myself,” He says.  “I can of Mine own self do nothing.”  “I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.”  His human self-life, sinless though it was, was laid down that He might live by the Father; and our self-life, defiled and worthless, shall we not lay it down that we may live by Him? 
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For all their teaching of surrender and sacrifice is no fanciful mysticism; it is a simple reality that can be tested at every turn – nay, that must be so tested.  If we are apprehending Christ’s death in its delivering power, our homes will not be slow to find it out.
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O Jesus, the Crucified, I will follow Thee in Thy path.  Inspire me for the next step, whether it leads down into the shadow or up into the light.  Surely in what place my Lord the King shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will Thy servant be. 
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Let us dare to test God’s resources…Let us ask him to kindle in us and keep aflame that passion for the impossible that shall make us delight in it with him, till the day when we shall see it transformed into a fact.
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“So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.” (Helen Lemmel use these words as the inspiration for writing "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus")
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“Take the very hardest thing in your life – the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot.  Just there He can bring your soul into blossom.”
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Be our fellowship in His rejection what it may, we will welcome it, rejoicing if we are even “counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name”; “esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt”; “going forth unto Him without the camp.”
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It is only as we go on in a life of surrender that the blessed joy of pouring forth upon Him our costly things dawns on us. The giving sets free, as has been well said, a spring of conscious love, and the love, in its turn, inspires to fresh giving; and though the pain involved is still pain, such a strange sweetness becomes interwoven with it that we wonder whether heaven can be perfect without the possibility of suffering loss for Him.
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But this stepping out at all risks, with the element of uncertainty contained in it, is just where the truth of our surrender is tested, and therefore it must be faced thoroughly. So long as we reserve to ourselves the power of withdrawing to the old life if an emergency arises, there is no real progress possible.
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There came such a lovely sense... of what it means to be "buried with Christ" - not only dead but buried - "put to silence in the grave" - "I can" and "I can't" put to silence side by side - the lovely silence and stillness of "a grave beside Him" with God's seal on the stone and His watch set, that nothing but the risen life of Jesus may come forth. ~ Lilias Trotter
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God's guidance, if our soul's instinct is healthy, tallies with the sense of rest - in a very real way, this sense of rest guides us - and legislates for us. Anything that brings a sense of restlessness means that we have got further from under the cloud shadow - we have gone off on some self devised path, or we have not kept pace with God... It is the same in cases of perplexity - where there is no clear command in His word to guide us - where the sense of rest falls (always taking for granted that our wills are in His Hand) there is His path - it is there that the shadow of His cloud is falling.
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There should be neither undergrowth, nor overgrowth, but balanced growth. Spiritual equilibrium alone will bring forth much fruit both in us and in others. We were created for more than our own spiritual development; reproduction, not mere development, is the goal to mature - reproduction in other lives.
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But what if God begins from the other side, generating a glow of Holy Spirit fire from within? No matter if, for the moment, it is a hidden process; nothing can be seen of the soldanella under the ice until the top of the air-bell gives way and the flower is there. I believe a moment will come of a sudden breaking forth of that which has been working below the surface, and the miracle of the snowfields will be wrought afresh by the crowding up of human souls who have won through the hardest fights.
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He shall sit as a priest upon his throne. 'Ask of me and I will give thee... as thy possession.' What he receives as Priest he dispenses as King and somehow the whole aspect of prayer has been reversed. I used to think that our intercession must sweep round from us to him and bring back the answer, but now I see it differently; it all starts with him and sweeps down here as low as our helplessness, then back to his throne, the place of power and authority.
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'Concerning the work of my hands command ye me', is the Old Testament foreshadowing of these creative hours of which, with our poor, tentative, calculating faith, we know so little. But to command is to know the will of the Father and it has come to me with new light and power that the first thing we have to be sure of day by day, is that our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. If we can listen in the stillness, till our hearts begin to vibrate to what he is feeling about the matter in question, whether it concerns ourselves or others, we can, from that moment, begin to pray down from his throne.
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It is utterly, unbelievably simple. Receive Jesus with a heart-grasp, and you will find, like the flower, a spring of eternal life, entirely distinct from your own, that is perishing, set working deep down in your inmost being.
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"The death of the Cross" - death's triumph hour - that was the point where God's gate opened; and to that gate we come again and again, as our lives unfold, and through it pass even on earth to our joyful resurrection, to a life each time more abundant, for each time the dying is a deeper dying. The Christian life is a process of deliverance out of one world into another, and "death," as has been truly said, "is the only way out of any world in which we are."
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The sap - the will - the "ego" - is withdrawn from the former existence, its aims and desires, and is sent into the new. It is given over to the other side: we hold to it that this is now our life, the only one that has the right to be. We reckon ourselves dead to the old; we reckon ourselves alive to the new; "putting off" the former, "putting on" the latter.
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Oh! the pains that God has to take to bring us to this happy, childlike "abandon," equally ready for silence, or for saying or doing unhesitatingly the next thing He calls for, unfettered by surroundings or consequences. How much reserve and self-consciousness have to give way with some of us, before the absolute control passes into His Hands, and the responsibility with it! Then only can we know the "liberty," the "boldness," the "utterance" of Pentecost. "Whithersoever the Spirit was to go they went, thither was their spirit to go:" that is "the perfect law of liberty."