Christianity Quotes - Page 66

Sometimes that's what prayer is--simply inviting God to join us where we actually are, not because He isn't already here but because inviting Him reminds us it's true.

The unchurched kids laughed at the Bible studies based on television shows or songs of the moment. They weren't impressed at all by the video clips provided by the denomination's publisher, or by the knock-off Christian boy bands crooning about the hotness of sexual purity. What riveted their attention wasn't what was relatable to them but what wasn't.

The primary business I must attend to every day is to fellowship with the Lord. The first concern is not how much I might serve the Lord, but how my inner man might be nourished.

The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I've ever met.""You've met God?""Certainly. I telephone Him every night.

Five minutes after something happened might not be the best time for you to get into your Facebook and tell everybody. Men's panic does not produce God's power.

God isn't looking for perfect people. He is looking to perfect people.

The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.

In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call.

Whoever honoured the word of God shall be blessed.

The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.

If, in your attempt to follow Jesus, you exclude, condemn or discriminate against someone, you are doing it wrong.

Cosmopolitanism starts from the _singular_ individual rather than the _faceless_ collective

In Tom's hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer his cherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr. Legree, having refitted Tom's handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to investigate the contents of his pockets. He drew out a silk handkerchief, and put it into his own pocket. Several little trifles, which Tom had treasured, chiefly because they had amused Eva, he looked upon with a contemptuous grunt, and tossed them over his shoulder into the river. Tom's Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten, he now held up and turned over. "Humph! pious, to be sure. So, what's yer name,—you belong to the church, eh?" "Yes, Mas'r," said Tom, firmly. "Well, I'll soon have that out of you. I have none o' yer bawling, praying, singing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself," he said, with a stamp and a fierce glance of his gray eye, directed at Tom, "I'm your church now! You understand,—you've got to be as I say." Something within the silent black man answered No! and, as if repeated by an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic scroll, as Eva had often read them to him,—"Fear not! for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by my name. Thou art MINE!

Faith is holy flame.

The Bible says he was raised not just after the blood-shedding, but by it. This means that what the death of Christ accomplished was so full and so prefect that the resurrection was the reward and vindication of Christ's achievement in death.

Jesus Christ is the mighty Saviour.

We may pick and choose to graft different fruits onto our spiritual tree, but regardless of what we call it, others will see a confusing fruit salad.

The best proof that He will never cease to love us lies in that He never began.

Let the brickwork of ignorance be thrown down, and let not spiritual sunshine be shut out from the self-deceived heart. Pride, Self-love, cowardly Mistrust of God’s wisdom and goodness, are natural to our fallen nature; but the entrance of His Word into the heart is as that of the glorious beams of the day,—joy, brightness, and holiness follow the admission into its deepest recesses of the pure, life-giving light of Heaven!

Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.

That sin will never stand firm which is heartily prayed against....We must spread out all our case before our heavenly Physician, if He is to give us daily relief.

Your attitude of serving the Lord can transform even the most menial of tasks into a magnificent sacrifice of love.

There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis.

You can never be really sure of how much you believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death to you.

[D]on't try to know everything. You can't. Find Him in the Word, for the Holy Ghost wrote this Book. He inspired it, and He will be revealed in its pages.

To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. If Christians are to take advantage of the death of romanticism, we must consciously build back the mentality and practice of antithesis among Christians in doctrine and life. We must do it in our teaching and example toward compromise, both ecclesiastically and in evangelism. To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at these points where there is a cost in doing so, is to push the next generation into the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.

Every time I go look for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross, in death and resurrection. This is our God.

To search for God is to seek the truth of God.

Prayer is a heart exercise. It’s an act of communicating with God about what’s most important and pressing in your life.

Moreover, our certitudes were closely bound to a given set of symbols. Change the well defined Latin term for an undefined Greek one and every bishop and every priest found himself at a loss. We knew the catechism by heart; mention catechesis and we are no longer sure who made us and why. We could manage a dogmatic sermon all right but just listen to our homilies! We were absolutely firm about confession and contrition; all our firmness vanished at the one word METANOIA. We knew exactly what the Mass was; the Eucharist is hazy. Even the Consecration and the Real Presence have been engulfed in the mist of ANAMNESIS. All this is patently true, is undeniable. We had received a solid theological training in our seminaries. It did not stand the test. It collapsed overnight without leaving track or trace.

Not everyone rejects Christianity solely on the basis of intellectual doubts. Some people reject it simply because they don’t want it to be true, so they purposefully talk themselves out of believing it.

May the Lord‘s purpose for my life be fulfilled in Jesus name. Amen.

The nation has been turned upside down and inside out. The country that was once discovered by people seeking religious freedom is now oppressing religious rights. It has been a slow train rumbling down the track of destruction since the 1960's. It started with the removal of the Bible from our public schools. Next the generation known as the 'love generation' opened the door for the approval of sex outside of marriage. For every ten years since then, it's been a slippery slope of materialism, I got mine, what can you do for me, and money is power. "We as a nation have stopped focusing on God and family and replaced them with money and success. Parents are teaching their children to do whatever it takes to get ahead...just don't get caught. If you do, find someone to blame it on.

Cosmopolitan theology is a theology for _the impossible_.

Let yourself go. Let others in. This is the essence of being made in God's image.

How could any Lord have made this world?... there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for this world to commit... No happiness lasted.

And you know what I realize now? That we're all waiting on something, no matter where we are in life. It's the human condition.

Christianity is just simple. Preach as if Jesus Christ is on the first seat listening to you. Work as if Jesus Christ is your immediate supervisor. Give as if you are giving to Christ. Eat and drink as if you are dining with Christ. Walk as if you are taking a stroll with Christ. Dance as if you are dancing with Christ. Think as if Christ is marking your thought. Dress as if you have a meeting with Christ. Clear your heart as if it is the only guest room available for your special guest, Christ. Speak as if you are speaking to Christ. Watch as if you are looking at Christ. Listen as if you have borrowed the ears of Christ. Respect time as if you borrowed from Christ. All else matters less and no problem then exists. Living to gratify mankind and ourselves is a mere hypocrisy in the first order and the underpinning of the woes of mankind.

There's enough grief in this world without always getting into whose fault it is.

The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.

Zoroastrianism? Oh, there’s never been but a few hundred thousand of them at any one time, mostly located in Iran and India, but that’s it. The one true faith. If you’re not a Zoroastrian, I’m afraid you are bound for Hell.”The man looked stunned and shocked. "It's not fair." The demon gave a mirthful laugh. “Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn’t it?

In the realm of power, Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty—necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels. This particular true faith, moreover, is more deeply concerned about the soul than it is about the body, to which fact the flesh (and the corpses) of countless infidels bears witness.

Our concern for victims is the secular mask of Christian love.

Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator.

God's grace is the power for greatness.

We have to do a better job at the work of anthropology if we hope to maintain our role in the public discourse.

Listening to the debates about public schools on the Christian Right, one hears plenty of opposing opinions and a great deal of confusion. Some want to change the schools, others want to leave them. But the smart money seems to know what it is doing. It provides support for programs like the Good News Club, which slowly erode the support for public education in the country at large and in their own constituency in particular. And then it lays the groundwork for dismantling public education in favor of a private system of religious education funded by the state.

I believe there is dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low.

There seems to be something in our human nature that draws us away from a life-giving relationship with Jesus because it feels more comfortable to focus on what to do and not do. That tendency robs us of real joy and peace.

True contemplation can only thrive when defended from two opposite exaggerations: quietism on the one hand, and spiritual fuss upon the other. Neither from passivity nor from anxiety has it anything to gain.

The Holy God.The righteous God.The supreme God.

God wants us to know we are saved, for saved people are dangerous people, willing to face off with the world, unafraid of the consequences since they know that, whatever happens, they will have eternal life.

God has always been about the business of shattering expectations, and in our culture, the standards of leadership are extroverted. It perfectly follows the biblical trend that God would choose the unexpected and the culturally "unfit" - like introverts - to lead his church for the sake of greater glory.

Gratefulness is the glory to God.

We fall on our knees in awe of God’s greatness.

For the Word, realizing that in no other way would the corruption of human beings be undone except, simply, by dying, yet being immortal and the Son of the Father of the Word was not able to die, for this reason he takes to himself a body capable of death, in order that it, participating in the Word who is above all, might be sufficient for death on behalf of all, and through the indwelling Word would remain incorruptible, and so corruption might henceforth cease from all by the grace of the resurrection.

No amount of organization and time management will compensate for a lack of Christian character, not when it comes to this great calling of glory through good—bringing glory to God by doing good to others.

Where darkness had once overshadowed many of us, the radiant light of Christ exposed the truth that not one of us is truly ever alone.

...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for