Quotes by Authors - Page 4954

The glory of God is as destructive of evil as it is creative of good.
John G. Lake
Keep it simple and keep it real. The more basic we see our connection to God and Spirit, the easier it is to feel like you're a part of it.
Jim Fargiano
Faith, in its most correct form, never removes responsibility; it removes fear of responsibility. The results are complete opposites with the greater saying, 'God's will is my delight.
Criss Jami
Man was designed in a way in which he must eat in order to give him a solid reason to go to work everyday. This helps to keep him out of trouble. God is wise.
Criss Jami
At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart's love upon people like us.
Alistair Begg
Everyone claims to be okay with freedom of religion, but the moment you mention God there is a strange tension that fills the air. If there was a 6th sense, that would be it.
Criss Jami
There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.
R. Scott Bakker
God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory.
Criss Jami
One of the greatest gifts from God is the eternal perspective. It is a level of fearlessness, a level of understanding where one can experience even emotional harmony with God.
Criss Jami
Disasters work like alarm clocks to the world, hence God allows them. They are shouting, 'Wake up! Love! Pray!
Criss Jami
If a man cannot serve two masters, neither can Christianity, or several thousand of them as the case may be.
E.A. Bucchianeri
We are in God’s hands. We can’t come up with a surprise big enough or a sin vile enough to thwart His plan. If we allow Him to refine us we will inevitably end up free from the impurities that separate us from Him.
Toni Sorenson
Don't creationists ever wonder about the fact that the paleontologists found ape-like skulls with the 'human leg and foot bones,' rather than the other way around, i.e., human skulls with 'ape leg and foot bones?' . . . Come on, creationists, think about it! Did God hide the human skulls, only leaving behind leg and foot bones belonging to human midgets with misshapen feet, and mix such bones only with the skulls of ape-like creatures with larger cranial capacities than living apes? What a 'kidder' the creationists' God must be.
Edward T. Babinski
There is a beauty in paradox when it comes to talking about things of ultimate concern. Paradox works against our tendency to stay superficial in our faith, or to rest on easy answers or categorical thinking. It breaks apart our categories by showing the inadequacy of them and by pointing to a reality larger than us, the reality of gloria, of light, of beyond-the-beyond. I like to call it paradoxology—the glory of paradox, paradox-doxology—which takes us somewhere we wouldn’t be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love.
Nanette Sawyer
God is as real as a station wagon.
Peggy Payne
You were born into this life equipped to succeed. You are a part of God’s perfect plan. Yes, you. The plan would not be perfect if you were missing. Think about that. You matter more than you know.
Toni Sorenson
Before God does anything, before he makes anything for us to be sustained by, God says, "More than food, more than water, more than shelter, more than other people, they are going to need me.
Wesley Miller
Dominance is only for GOD.
Syed Islam
The brain, which operates on electromagnetic impulses, is as much an activity of the universe as are the electromagnetic storms in the atmosphere or on a distant star. Therefore science is one form of electromagnetism that spends it time studying another form…science is god explaining god through a human nervous system…isn’t spirituality the same thing?
Deepak Chopra
If you dont love somebody, it gets annoying if they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them, you get pleasure from their pleasure nad it makes it easy to serve. I didnt love God because i didnt know God. universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.
Donald Miller
Whatever thought grips the mind at the time of death is the one which will propel it and decide for it the nature of its future birth. Thus if one wants to attain god after death, one has to think of him steadfastly... This is not as simple as it sounds, for at the time of death the mind automatically flies to the thought of an object (i.e. money, love) which has possessed it during its sojourn in the world. Thus one must think of god constantly.
Stephen Mitchell
Marty, my mother used to say "Never get greedy with God." I think what she meant was "Don't dare ask for more if you already have what you need."
James Patterson
Knowledge and book learning are not wisdom," said the captain."Is this book wisdom?" asked Lucy, putting the manuscript back on the table."It has some elements of wisdom in it, me dear," replied the captain. "I did not lead a very wise life myself but it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come to age very often through shipwreck and disaster, and at the heart of the whirlpool some men find God.
R.A. Dick
Yes, she believed God loved her. But if this whole fiasco was His idea of love . . .
Lauraine Snelling
Children, like God, see only our actions.
Marty Rubin
Discourse is not life; its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying you will make a man that will live longer than he.
Michel Foucault
God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
Ralph Ellison
She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin around this here bush and get your old ass in gear.
Stephen King
The sight of her made him understand why he'd lost his faith in God.
Sarah Langan
Why do you believe in God?" the woman asked me in the busy corridor. I don't remember the answer I gave. It was probably too long and rattled in her ears. I wish I could go back and answer her again. "Because HE believes in me," I would say. Isn't that enough?
Donna VanLiere
In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God's kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance.
Haruki Murakami
When hiding ourselves behind religiosity becomes the order of the day, grace is left by the wayside; without being honest about our own sin, we will never show compassion toward others. If we are to adorn ourselves with anything, it should be with compassion and honesty—the foundations of connecting to our community.
Matt Litton
If one would praise the Almighty, one must then revel in His works, and take them whole, adore their very grossness, savor the oozing quiddity of that slime of which He seems to be inordinately fond. Love is not nice. God's love assuredly is not; and human love, its copy, must not presume to be so.
Eric Frank Russell
If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.
Chuck Palahniuk
He does not call those who are worthy, but those whom He will.
Therese of Lisieux
The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.
Dallas Willard
Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.
Allen R. Hunt
If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.
John Ortberg
Every day you and I walk through God's shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.
John Ortberg
When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.
John Ortberg
Learned arguments do not make a man holy and righteous, whereas a good life makes him dear to God.
Thomas à Kempis
My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think she's right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)
Rachel Held Evans
There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort.
Criss Jami
I believe that at the center of the universe there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any one of us.
Fred Rogers
Once, I remember, Father Abbot said that our purpose is justice, and with God lies the privilege of mercy. But even God, when he intends mercy, needs tools to his hand.
Ellis Peters
Woods are grim places. Farmers shoot squirrels, crows, magpies, and hang them up on trees to warn Mother Nature to get it together or else. Much notice she takes, being in league with God. They're a right pair, more carnage than the rest of us put together.
Jonathan Gash
Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child's slightly dirty neck.
Anne Lamott
I'm through with you. Yes, I am going to put you down. From now on, I am my own God. I am going to live by the rules I se for myself. I'll discard everything I was once taught about you. Then I'll be you. I'll be my own God, living my life as I see fit. Not as Mr. Charlie says I should live it, or Mama or anybody else. I shall do as I want in this society that apparently wasn't meant for me and my kind. If you are getting angry because I am talking to you like this, then just kill me, leave me here in this graveyard dead. Maybe thats where all of us belong anyway. Maybe then we wouldn't have to suffer so much. At the rate we are being killed now, we'll all be soon dead anyway.
Anne Moody
The love of Christ for me will get last say. He is merciful to me for his name’s sake, for the sake of his own goodness, for the sake of his steadfast love and compassion (Psalm 25). When he thinks about me, he remembers what he is like, and that is my exceeding joy. My indestructible hope is that he has turned his face towards me, and he will never turn away.
David A. Powlison
If we require some kind of sign, or "proof," for our belief in God, then we believe, or place our tust, not in God but in the sign or proof.
Robert L. Short
The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.
G.K. Chesterton
The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.
Susan Howatch
The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.
John Piper
You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
C.S. Lewis
I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.
Clive Barker
God arranges everything for us, so that we need have no more fear or trouble and may be quite sure that all things will come right in the end.
Johanna Spyri
you won’t ever get ahead if you keep feeling sorry for yourself. You must stop all the negative talk and start thinking positive. You have a lot of potential but your life won’t change until you change how you think”.
Michele Woolley
...Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.
Timothy J. Keller
Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.
George MacDonald
Your mind was made to know and love God.
John Piper