Discipleship Quotes

Capital is necessary to the cultivation of esthetic value.

Having a big family is costly and invasive. As we realize how big our family is in Christ, how our family obligations transcend our artificial boundaries, there ought to be a weightiness to our response to our brothers and sisters in need.

The 20th century, the author observes, fostered the idea that fulfillment is possible on Earth.

Bob Dylan's Christianity has been allusive, idiosyncratic, and never the sort to place him on anyone's side in any Kulturkampf.

The web of trust is built at eye level, peer to peer.

My cell phone is my only individual zone, just for me.

In brokenness comes beauty, divine fragility.

Time after time during the next six months, he would put me together again.

If you eat, breathe and grow, two things are happening—which have little to do with either air or burgers. You are receiving an education and your “spirit” is being formed. To be alive is to be formed.

Church is not meant to be fun. It's meant to be formative.

The author cites researcher David Howard's idea of post-traumatic growth. Howard contends that some individuals faced with a traumatic event actually develop new strength.

Spontaneities offer one kind of pleasure and taste of sanctity, repetitions another equally pleasurable and holy.

I was determined to get them away from the idea that their education is a private experience.

Jesus of Nazareth always comes asking disciples to follow him--not merely "accept him," not merely "believe in him," not merely "worship him," but to follow him: one either follows Christ, or one does not. There is no compartmentalization of the faith, no realm, no sphere, no business, no politic in which the lordship of Christ will be excluded. We either make him Lord of all lords, or we deny him as Lord of any.

You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.

The Must be worthless by our estimation or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

[T]he road to character is built by confronting your own weakness.

The pastor owns the opportunity to issue of the flock that it is OK not to be OK.

It is not a brave thing to trust God. To true believers, it is a sweet necessity.

Holy desire can be learned. All prayer is part work and part rest.

Boethius moved from considering history from the actor's point of view to a "timeless" eternal view. From the divine perspective, nothing is ever utterly lost, because all of life is possessed by God in the eternal now. Though time was gnawing away at Boethius and stealing all he valued, God was beyond time and loss. Gaining this philosophical vantage allowed the last Roman to become one of the first men of the Middle Ages.

We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.

Moses challenged parents both to teach the faith diligently and to maximize normal encounters or ongoing discussion.

The Atreides are known to start late getting there growth.

Jesus-shaped spirituality hears Jesus say "believe and repent," but the call that resonates most closely in the heart of a disciple is "follow me." The command to follow requires that we take a daily journey in the company of other students. It demands that we be lifelong learners and that we commit to constant growth in spiritual maturity. Discipleship is a call to me, but it is a journey of "we.

Chaucer, like Homer, writes about a journey, but as a Christian he has a different goal. Homer wanted to go home, but Chaucer's pilgrims want a place of man's true home: paradise

The author attributes part of the Carter-Reagan divide to their respective attitudes toward the city from which they governed. Carter was deeply suspicious of its coziness. Reagan intended to enjoy his temporary home even while delivering it from its reigning ideology.

Maybe you have been looking for peace for no one but yourself.

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.

The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see.

What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people?" Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.

I had rather have God for my banker than all the Rothschilds.

Christians ought to have a different approach to business. As believers, we should view work as both service and a form of worship.

The Resurrection is most clearly needed and most clearly revealed in those communities that are constantly seeking to correct and transform the world through the wisdom and power of the Word of God made flesh in their lives and actions in history.

Worship shadows eternity and provides supernatural encouragement.

Nothing but the infinite can ever satisfy me; I am such a great sinner that I must have infinite merit to wash my sin away;" but we have had our sin removed, and found that there was merit to spare; we have had our hunger relieved at the feast of sacred love

You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely his, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to “clear the numberless ascensions”* in about two minutes.

Resurrection hope turned those who believed it into a counter-empire, an alternative society that knew the worst that tyrants could do and knew that the true God had the answer.

That's the whole point of being 20. You could be a lot of things. I am much older than you are. I AM things.

the heart of a prophet is not his own to bestow.

There's a difference, you know, between faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow. The other one will make you sleep.

The president notices that when he takes off his coat to dig, people take more notice of the visual than they did his preceding remarks.

The better you get, the better you better get.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.

Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God's grace and is on his way to becoming a Christian. (...) Being saved is trusting in what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us.

A writer at the time said, "Lincoln means to sink the man in the public officer.

If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.

A graceless pastor is a blind man elected to a professorship of optics.

Tasks don't have to be high-impact to be worthy of high effort. Most things we do in any given day are relatively low impact. The cumulative impact of thousands of low-impact test is huge. These tasks can be transposed into worship.

The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good.

pessimists see people as liabilities to manage, as burdens or threats that we must minimize.

The genealogy of blessing always traces back to God-ordained risk.

Every place is now God's temple, and His people can as truly serve Him in their daily employments as in His house. They are to be always "ministering," offering the spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise, and presenting themselves a "living sacrifice.

His Kingship, precisely because it is so broad, so total, is doomed to be rejected by anybody who is still into tribalism, or small belonging systems. We don't really like the big Kingdom if it gets in the way of our smaller kingdoms, and it always does.

Peace is the opposite of dreaming. It’s built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don’t even see. It’s a messy business, bringing peace into the world.

Leviathan laughs at the javelin, but he trembles at prayer. Sword and spear need furbishing, but prayer never rusts, and when we think it most blunt it cuts the best. Prayer is an open door which none can shut. Devils may surround you on all sides, but the way upward is always open.

This child-like spirit soon perceives the grandeur of the Father "in heaven," and ascends to devout adoration, "Hallowed be Thy name." The child lisping, "Abba, Father," grows into the cherub crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy.

He could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones.