Quotes by Authors - Page 4955

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace.
Timothy J. Keller
Yes, he had made a good choice after all when he had chosen the God of the green pasture and the still waters! He was very powerful, and the fact that He expected you to think for yourself and do something in return for His help did not matter, as long as you could work things out.
Anne Holm
After the prayer they executed an armed robbery. That sounds very strange this many years later: prayer and then armed robbery.
Diet Eman
God Only Knows the Issue.
Deborah Heiligman
Life will be a whole lot better if we understand what our salvation in Christ means.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
Yesterday the paper had a "short" summary of the places where Jews are not allowed! I can better mention where they are still aloud: "in their houses and in the streets!" God, punish those who are persecuting the people you chose and to whom Jesus also belonged. -From the diary of Diet Eman
Diet Eman
The realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it
Archbishop Anthony Bloom
By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.
Diet Eman
That wish - that prayer - both men and women would have scorned me for - "But, Father, Thou wilt not despise!" I said, and felt that it was true.
Anne Brontë
And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some.
Robin Wasserman
Independence is counterfeit freedom. We think if we can make all our own choices and do our own thing, we will be free. But the opposite is true. By trying to be independent, we are attempting to take God’s place as the ruler of our lives. We can never succeed at creating happiness because we are the created, not the Creator.
Pauline Creeden
The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.
Thomas Merton
God is the ultimate recycler. We have a good planet here. It has its troubles, yes. We have overpopulation, we have pollution, we have global warming, we have the Thursday night television lineup,” more laughter, “and, of course, we have the infected. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and it might seem like a great idea to hold the Rapture now—why wait? Let’s move on to Heaven, and leave the trials and tribulations of our earthly existence behind us. Let’s get while the getting’s good, and beat the rush.“It might seem like a great idea, but I don’t think it is, for the same reason I don’t think it’s a great idea for a first grader to stand up and say that he’s learned enough, he’s done with school, thanks a lot but he’s got it from here. Compared to God, we’re barely out of kindergarten, and like any good teacher, I don’t believe He intends to let us out of class just because we’re finding the lessons a little difficult. I don’t know whether I believe in the Rapture or not. I believe that if God wants to do it, He will… but I don’t believe that it’s coming in our lifetime. We have too much work left to do right here.
Mira Grant
Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep.
Dean Koontz
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
Thomas Merton
In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
John Steinbeck
We can scarcely indeed look into any part of the sacred volume without meeting abundant proofs, that it is the religion of the Affections which God particularly requires. Love, Zeal, Gratitude, Joy, Hope, Trust, are each of them specified; and are not allowed to us as weaknesses, but enjoined on us as our bounden duty, and commended to us as our acceptable worship.
William Wilberforce
It is unfortunate that in most cases when the sins of the father fall on the son it is because unlike God, people refuse to forgive and forget and heap past wrongs upon innocent generations.
E.A. Bucchianeri
Holiness consists simply in doing God's will, and being just what God wants us to be.
Thérèse de Lisieux
Dumnezeu este doar unul şi acelaşi pretutindeni.
Leo Tolstoy
Everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.
Jeannette Walls
Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.
Michel de Montaigne
Old religious dogma attempts to convince you that you are on a journey to God, then makes you pay tolls along that roadway.
Steve Maraboli
Elizabeth's barreness and advanced age--a double symbol of hopelessness--became the means by which God would announce to the world that nothing is impossible for Him.
Charles R. Swindoll
Yes, our Father has a plan, Ciminae,” he said. “But he leaves it up to his children to accept his will. It is their agency. He cannot force his will upon them. If he did, he would cease to be God. They . . . we must choose for ourselves to accept his will with unbreakable faith in our Father. That is when the Father moves us to do his will.” (The Spirit. From Book 2, "Worlds Without End: Aftermath," coming September 1, 2012)
Shaun Messick
At least one indication of unbelief is the tendency to measure life's challenges against our own adequacy instead of God's promises. To enter our Sabbath rest, we must put an end to self-reliance - trusting in our own abilities to overcome difficulties, rise above challenges, escape tragedies, or achieve personal greatness.
Charles R. Swindoll
I would stand there at times and remember how beautiful God created this world, and then I would be reassured that he would certainly take care of me and all of my loved ones.
Diet Eman
(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.
Diet Eman
Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn't that what he wanted us to do?
Jeannette Walls
It's not enough merely to believe there is a God. You must believe in the God who is there.
Charles R. Swindoll
The Promised Land was a tangible representation of God's ultimate desire for His people, but they failed to comprehend His gift for at least three reasons: It was unconditionally promised, it was outrageously generous, and it was absolutely free. None of those make sense in the world as we know it...
Charles R. Swindoll
Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To require God to prove that He is able and willing to fulfill His promises would be proof positive that one does not trust Him.
Charles R. Swindoll
Faith itself cannot accomplish anything, yet without faith, no one can fly.
Charles R. Swindoll
Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30
Charles R. Swindoll
When we panic, we instinctively turn to our own internal resources because we doubt Him.
Charles R. Swindoll
While God, for the most part, allows this cosmos [creation] to work according to the laws of nature, there is never a time when He is not actively involved in every detail of life.
Charles R. Swindoll
The crisis of physical hunger is essentially a crisis of faith. What or whom will you trust to meet your most basic needs? Will you trust the God who made human bodies, or will you seek your own way? (Deuteronomy 8:1-3)
Charles R. Swindoll
Life...as God intended it enables us to live above the drag of fear, superstition, shame, pessimism, guilt, anxiety, worry, and all the negativity that keeps people from seizing each day as a gift from Him.
Charles R. Swindoll
God presents the Sabbath rest as a shelter we can enter. (Hebrews 4:1-11)
Charles R. Swindoll
The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.
Thomas Merton
God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.
Jeannette Walls
God never asked us to meet life's pressures and demands on our own terms or by relying upon our own strength. Nor did He demands that we win His favor by assembling an impressive portfolio of good deeds. Instead, He invites us to enter His rest.
Charles R. Swindoll
Israel's first king, Saul, looked like he was born for the role. He was tall, handsome, intelligent, and sensitive to God's leading. But he eventually lost most of his attractive qualities, the most important being obedience.
Charles R. Swindoll
Warren knows God doesn't chow down on Doritos or caviar. What he fails to see, however, is that there is no difference in principle between the old animal sacrifice theology and his own. Surely the same principle applies to emotional gratification. He is still manifestly talking about the care and feeding of God. His God, like an insecure boyfriend, seems to need emotional stroking.
Robert M. Price
Fundamentalists offer us a "loving" God who is some kind of divine stalker.
Robert M. Price
God help me! I am small and alone but I must help them; and I most not waste a moment, because every moment another soul dies.
Leslie H. Hardman
Telling someone like my mother that Hell is a real, physical place, somewhere you can travel to and from, would be like spray-painting the statue of Jesus hanging over the pulpit during mass. Better off telling her the Pope is gay.
Bill Blais
In the wilderness, God's covenant people struggled with a choice between feeding their bellies and nourishing their souls. God provided manna--a breadlike food that fell to the ground during the night--to sustain the wandering Israelites and to teach them how to value His Word more than physical fulfillment.
Charles R. Swindoll
In some ways I admire Aunt Helen's unwavering certainty in God's divine plan. It must be comforting, to have faith like that. To believe so concretely that there's someone—something—out there watching guard, keeping us safe, testing us only with what we can handle. I've never believed in anything the way Aunt Helen believes in God.
Hannah Harrington
In seasons of hiddenness our sense of value is disrupted, stripped of what "others" affirmed us to be. In this season God intends to give us an unshakable identity in Him, that no amount of adoration nor rejection can alter.
Alicia Britt Chole
The matters we or the world might consider trivial, He cares about and wants to remedy. He longs to relieve our worries and has promised to supply our most fundamental needs.
Charles R. Swindoll
Jesus never commanded believers to produce fruit. Fruit is the *purpose* of the branch, but it is not the *responsibility* of the branch. The branch cannot produce anything on it's own. However, if it remains attached to the vine, it will receive life-sustaining sap, nourishment, strength, everything it needs.
Charles R. Swindoll
Sin may have the power to kill and destroy, but God is the Creator of life. He can create it from nothing, and He can restore it from death.(John 11:25-26)
Charles R. Swindoll
Boldness in the course of a noble fight is worth the risk...If you stand on truth, you'll only regret your timidity later, but you'll never regret being bold.
Charles R. Swindoll
Choose to view life through God's eyes.
Charles R. Swindoll
To be "in Christ" is to place one's trust in Him for salvation from sin. To be "in Christ" is to trust His goodness, not our own; to trust that His sacrificial death on the cross paid the complete debt of death we owe for our sin; to trust that His resurrection gives us eternal life instead of relying upon our own ability to please God. To be "in Christ" is to claim, by faith, the free gift of salvation. To be "in Christ" is to enjoy a completely restored relationship with our Father in heaven by virtue of His Son's righteous standing.
Charles R. Swindoll
God has called His creation to find satisfaction in a personal relationship with Him, and stop trying to manage the world by conforming it to our expectations, and to allow Him to govern His creation. He continues to say through an ancient Hebrew worship song, "Be still and know that I am God!
Charles R. Swindoll
God never calls His people to accomplish anything without promising to supply their every need.
Charles R. Swindoll
Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?
Elisabeth Elliot