Christianity Quotes - Page 64

One needn't identify as a feminist to participate in the redemptive movement of God for women in the world, The gospel is more than enough. Of course it is! But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti's future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.

At the same time, they find their mind-god has played a trick on them. For mind is a part of the very system it has closed around it, and being inside, there is no reason to think any statement made by some part concerning the whole has any validity. Mind was caused by the material universe, if mind is right. But only the greater can accurately define the lesser, never the other way round, so if mind is right, mind would never know.

Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.

And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

We have to be ready for the blessings God tosses at us. In order to catch your blessing, you have to let go of your burden.

To be the salt, you also need to be the shaker. To shake the world. Shake the truth. Shake the people. Shake the word. Have it sprinkle, melt and preserve humanity.

Nothing is quite as beautiful as seeing someone do exactly what they were designed to do, to watch someone who has found that thing, that passion, that singular calling and expresses it with conviction.

We could never muster the strength to make lasting changes in our lives. That's why we must rely on God's strength to transform us.

Faith is the most unexercised muscle known to man.

How ought we to love God, Father?" he asked in a whisper."By loving men, my son""And how ought we to love men?" "By trying to guide them along the right path""And what is the right path?""The one that rises"- Nikos Kazanzakis, Christ Recrucified

God made man, but man made the society we live in.

God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder who laid the foundation of his house on the rock, we learn to let our knowledge of God change us.

Why don't people ask us about our hope? The answer is probably that we look as if we hope in the same things they do. Our lives don't look like they are on the Calvary road, stripped down for sacrificial love, serving others with the sweet assurance that we don't need to be rewarded in this life.

Enjoy the times of plentiful and endure the times of scarcity.

Belief is a wonderful way to pass the time until the facts come in.

A sophiological Christianity focuses on the path.

I am going to show you great and mighty things which no one has ever seen before.... I am going to take you places where no one has ever been. I am going to take you to heights where no one has ever reached. If you will only come to me with all your heart, I will do a mighty work in you, which no man can undo but yourself.

Life did come with a manual.

May you find new opportunities in every encounter.

When we love God with our hearts in disproportion to our minds, our faith is out of kilter with the kind of faith God wants us to have.

Although it pains me, I must admit that I have never found what I ‘need.’ And I am in this place because long ago I took it upon myself to decide what I ‘want’ to need, verses surrendering to what I ‘need’ to need. And thankfully I have realized that God made Christmas everything that I ‘want,’ but more so He made it everything that I ‘need.

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God's love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God's Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.

While faith may be helpful to the one possessing it, making him feel good and fulfilled and peaceful inside, one thing it is not is responsible. It cannot be. No matter how much you might value your faith, it cannot be responsible. Why not? Faith, by its very nature, is invested with your personal feelings on any given matter.

Every wedding must be an occasion of joy that human beings can do such great things, that they have been given such immense freedom and power to take the helm in their life’s journey…

True Christians are those who carry out Christ's doctrine in their lives.

God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'--that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world.

Whether or not I protect the weeds isn't a matter of just recognizing the weed for what it is, but possessing the conviction to grab hold of the roots and yank like my life depends on it.

The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection: His claim upon us is something more and other than the claim of moral duty.

You must determine your goal. What matters most? Winning arguments? Or resembling Christ? Even in the heat of an argument we should be asking ourselves if we are acting like Christ.

Our sacred duty is to love, motivate and pray for one another, so that, we all received grace of God, for every good deed.

Did he know that God loved him from the foundations of the earth? With a power far exceeding the immensity of the cosmos, He turned all His attention to creating that man and declared, "You are My child. I love you.

Eternal life truly begins the moment you’re born again. It’s a present tense—not future tense—reality. If you’re a believer, eternal life is now!

I've been a Christian since I was a little girl. But my Christianity is a muddy mess of thoughts and opinions and making God into what works for me-like going shopping at the mall and picking out whatever I want, putting together faith like I would an outfit. Somehow I don't think the Creator, the I AM, the savior of the world is something we can mix and match to out liking.

The truth of the gospel is the true words of God.

If I should be available to everyone, I will eventually end up with nothing to give to anyone. So the greatest gift you can receive from me is my time. Count yourself lucky if I give you a minute of my hour.

Human nature is never satisfied.

Separating one's “self” physically from the world (as an unseen entity) alienates the human being from the facts of a sensual world and its realities. In order to have a self, you must provide a story for that self. Whether it is the tale of past pain or future fears the etheric self requires a story because it is hitchhiking on the natural.

When a politician spends a million on himself, we rally and call him a thief. But when a cardinal spends the same amount on his attire, we kneel down and kiss his hand.

Spirituality is conversation with God, everything else is just religious custom.

By Hays' reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.

Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.

God loves us toughly enough not to allow us to be happy with our sins. The recollection of sin rightly brings misery of conscience. How else could moral awareness be saved from sentimentality? The deepest human happiness, we learn, is grounded in holiness - God's holy love and our responsive attempts to reflect it fittingly.

If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn't understand what it was that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgement, to common sense, or why they would say "I know, I know" when I urged a little reasonableness on them, and why it meant "It doesn't matter, I just don't care." That's what the saints and the martyrs say. And I know now that it is passion that moves them to their prodigal renunciations. I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don't see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. I devoutly believe this to be true. I remember in those days loving God for the existence of love and being grateful to God for the existence of gratitude, right down in the depths of my misery. I realized many things that I am at a loss to express. And of course those feelings become milder with time, which is a mercy.

Eventually everyone dies, but death, in various forms and ways, still comes as a shock. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Or they consign you to flames. The flesh sizzles and the bones crackle. be grateful it happens in that order.

Of course God does outrageous things. But in reality, what insanity would prompt me to follow a God who did anything less?

Because God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension. This is the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them, the rise of science.

Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.

Culture cannot be a monolithically universal phenomenon without some kind of demonic imposition of one culture over the rest of cultures. Nor is it possible to dream of a universal "Christian culture" without denying the dialectic between history and eschatology which is so central, among other things, to the eucharist itself. Thus, if there is a transcendence of cultural divisions on a universal level - which indeed must be constantly aimed at by the Church - it can only take place via the local situations expressed in and through the particular local Churches and not through universalistic structures which imply a universal Church.

There were two worlds, two lives, for each person: this one--brief, narrow, finite; and the hereafter-- eternal, limitless, infinite. Fame, to mean anything, should go with one into the next world, where one could enjoy it perpetually.

Part of leadership is preparing those who follow to someday go on ahead without you.

Christianity is living hope.

I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.

...if He has a message to get across to us, He will continually reaffirm what He has said through a variety of ways.

Indeed if they ever once saw the endless supply of eternal opportunities The Adversary offers them every temporal moment of day after day of their fuddled little lives, they would stagger at the sheer industry and prodigality of His efforts. Conversely, if they ever gained a glimpse of how their ordinary actions actually effect and shape things not only under time but without, the very vast weight of that would almost certainly end in their becoming humble.

Don't Copy What Someone Is Doing, Copy What God Wants You To Do.

Millions of professing Christians are only just that—“professing.” They have never possessed Christ. They live lives characterized by the flesh.

There can never be someone greater at being you than you.

The state of no being knows neither pleasure nor pain.

Be in the World, Not of the World—Kind of like Lucky Charms cereal: there are lots of pretty marshmallows in with the cereal, but they’re not the same. So live with the cereal, but remember: you’re a pretty marshmallow.

Don’t complain. Find the courage to be grateful for every circumstance.