Quotes by Authors - Page 4966

People often ask: If there’s a God, how can He allow so much suffering in the world? Realize all world suffering you perceive is a mirror to your own psychological self-abuse, gender imbalance, prejudice, poverty, and hunger. You couldn’t even perceive each suffering aspect of external reality if it didn’t already exist within you. Touch and transmute your own psychological suffering, and perceive the world in kind.
Alexandra Katehakis
I am very close to HIM, sometimes I think I am HIM, with my mood is the weather,bright and sunny forever.
Santosh Kalwar
Christians walk as strangers in the world: They are untamed. They are free. To persevere with love, yet untamed by man, is often what leaves that open space for divine revelation when God so wills.
Criss Jami
With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.
Orson Scott Card
If all men are made in God's reflection, then why do some people continue to acknowledge only what is in their part of the mirror? If every man was created equal and in the image of God, then how can any man claim that one race is better than another?
Suzy Kassem
What the spiritual journey is all about is uniting our will with God's will, wanting what He wants, loving what He loves, living a life that in all its aspects honors Him and gives Him glory.
Ralph Martin
He said focus. The word focus. I hear angels singing. Everything goes dark except for a light that beams down on Sean. It is a God-given sign- like when people see the Virgin Mary in their grilled cheese, except this isn't religious and I'm actually not a big fan of dairy. I stare at the back of his head. His HEAD. Something I see every day but never really see because it's been there forever. Since the first day of third grade.I crumple up my web. I don't need it. Praise be, the Focus Gods have spoken.I am going to write about Sean Griswold's Head.
Lindsey Leavitt
Even if there were pains in Heaven, all who understand would desire them.
C.S. Lewis
Regardless of your chosen faith, at the end of your life's journey, your heart will be measured in two ways. One, the weight of your conscience must far outweigh the weight of a feather. Two, any impurities in your heart must weigh no more than one feather.
Suzy Kassem
The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails
James Joyce
... one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn't aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.
Gretchen Rubin
THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINSLaugh, I tell youAnd you will turn backThe hands of time.Smile, I tell youAnd you will reflectThe face of the divine.Sing, I tell youAnd all the angels will sing with you!Cry, I tell youAnd the reflections found in your pool of tears -Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterdayTo guide you through the fears of tomorrow.
Suzy Kassem
It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of God so that they regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love. The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it is embodied in systems of religion and expressed in modes of worship.
Ellen G. White
I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.
Alain de Botton
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.
Cindy Martinusen Coloma
It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.
Pat Conroy
No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku?
Tamora Pierce
A miracle is a single mom who works two jobs to care for her kids and still helps them with their homework at night. A miracle is a child donating all the money in their piggy bank to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. That's where you'll find the hand and face of God.
Cathie Linz
Suffering can bend & break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us & through us, because suffering is fertile... it an grow new life.
John Green
There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.
Neal A Maxwell
Whose little boy are you?
James Baldwin
Men and women are needed whose prayers will give to the world the utmost power of God; who will make His promises to blossom with rich and full results. God is waiting to hear us and challenges us to bring Him to do this thing by our praying. He is asking us, to-day, as He did His ancient Israel, to prove Him now herewith." Behind God's Word is God Himself, and we read: "Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, his Maker: Ask of me of things to come and concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me." As though God places Himself in the hands and at the disposal of His people who pray - as indeed He does. The dominant element of all praying is faith, that is conspicuous, cardinal and emphatic. Without such faith it is impossible to please God, and equally impossible to pray.
E.M.Bounds
With or without God, good decisions can be made; But only with God will great decisions be made.
Damon Thueson
What a comfort to know that God is a poet.
Rachel Held Evans
There is no fact, no detail of our life too sordid for God's intervention. God has seen murder. God has seen rape. God has seen drug addiction's and alcoholism's utter degradation. God is available to us no matter what our circumstances. God can find us in a crack house. God can find us crumpled in a doorway or cowering on a park bench. We need only reach out to discover that God reaches back. We are led a step at a time even when we feel we are alone. Sometimes God talks to us through people. Sometimes God reaches us through circumstances or coincidence. God has a million ways to reach out to us, and when we are open to it, we begin to sense the touch of God coming to us from all directions.
Julia Cameron
Don't sit back and wait for God to do it all. Ask for His advice, but be prepared to do the hard yards yourself.
Morris Gleitzman
Do you remember? Do you remember the world before the poison?
Amy Reed
The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God himself.
Emmet Fox
We will never be happy until we make God the source of our fulfillment and the answer to our longings. He is the only one who should have power over our souls.
Stormie Omartian
Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.
Oswald Chambers
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
C.S. Lewis
Atheism is a conclusion reached by the most reasonable methods and one which is not asserted dogmatically but is explained in its every feature by the light of reason. The atheist does not boast of knowing in a vainglorious, empty sense. He understands by knowledge the most reasonable and clear and sound position one can take on the basis of all the evidence at hand. This evidence convinces him that theism is not true, and his logical position, then, is that of atheism.We repeat that the atheist is one who denies the assumptions of theism. he asserts, in other words, that he doesn't believe in a God because he has no good reason for believing in a God. That's atheism -- and that's good sense.
E. Haldeman-Julius
Man invents nothing God did not create first.
Mitch Albom
When we look for success, it should be for the sole purpose of boasting sincerely in Christ. There's no other reason for it. Success is only worth it when the more intense it gets for you, the more you find yourself bragging for his glory rather than your own.
Criss Jami
And so must learn to love with our mouths and voices, as well as with our eyes, flesh, heart, brains, and with everything we have, right down to our toenails. There is not anything about us that cannot love, and that is not called to love, and that is not destined to be turned, conformed, and reduced to pure love. It ...is the priceless deposit left by the burning away of selfishness.
Mike Mason
To question the world around us and all its complexities is not blasphamy, but simply using the mind God gave us for its intended purpous. God is an artist. Artist do not create to have someone just glance and say "That is pretty." Artist want viewers to look closer, deeper--to really see what they have created--not just glance.
Cristina Marrero
It was by faith, nothing wavering, that Joseph saw God our Eternal Father and Jesus Christ, His Son.
Thomas S. Monson
If we had more sleepless nights in prayer, there would be fewer souls to have a sleepless eternal night in hell.
Leonard Ravenhill
I believe that people who are devoutly religious, within any specific religion, have no true respect for the ultimate vastness that is God.
Clair Huffaker
[Orange] is one of God's favorite colors--- He stuck it right there between red and yellow as the second color in the rainbow. He decorates entire forests with shades of orange every autumn. It shows up in sunrises at the start of the day, sunsets at the end of the day, and in the glow of the moon at the right time of night.
Reggie Joiner
We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart.
Jerry Bridges
To me, God is like this happy bus driver.
Jerry Stahl
Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus "ate and drank, but did not defecate."Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man.
Milan Kundera
Don't allow the opinions of other people to shape your concept of him. Get to know him yourself, and let the goodness of God change you from the inside out.
Judah Smith
There is never a moment when God is not in control. Relax! He’s got you covered.
Mandy Hale
The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a heaven and a hell when all I see now is hell.
Aaron B. Powell
Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.
Joris-Karl Huysmans
When you saw a wounded who cry out for help,you may be the one sent by God to bring a favor.
Toba Beta
In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work …
Elizabeth Gilbert
To love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and our neighbor as ourself.
Anonymous
God is the name we give to the science we don't understand. Science is the name we give to the God we don't understand.
Steve Maraboli
How do we accomplish this matter of gathering life together in God? We must begin primarily by refocusing our attention keeping our minds and hearts directed toward God. The essence of the centered life is attention to God in all we think, say and do. It is the growing realization of His presence in our most down-to-earth living.
Sue Monk Kidd
I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.
Elizabeth Gilbert
There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)
Stephen Levine
Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
Yann Martel
Sometimes when we say "God is silent," what's really going on is that he hasn't told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories, the ones we live in, he is seldom silent.
Paul E. Miller
Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty... and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love.
Brennan Manning
But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
God lives in the place of praise. If we want to be where He is, we need to go to His address.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss
It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.
Martin Amis