Quotes by Speakers - Page 154

Faith is to believe in something when common sense tells you not to and situation surrounding you says otherwise.
Sesan Kareem
More than commitment, dedication, character, discipline, patience, determination, perseverance and prayer, you need faith because you must first belief before you can witness a pragmatic change in your life.
Sesan Kareem
Doubt is a cancerous mindset that kills dreams before it becomes a reality. It destroys your passion and enthusiasm before you take a step. Kill doubt with faith.
Oscar Bimpong
‪So you've been having a tough time. You don't know how long more you can hold on. Remember bad days don't last forever. Keep patience alive!
Mufti Ismail Menk
Sometimes we simply don't want to face the truth about ourselves; the myth reads so much better. Sometimes we do not seek help because it will mean we have to change, and change is painful and unpredictable. To me, now, faith is bringing all that is true about our lives into the blinding light of God's grace. It is believing that He will still be there at the end of the journey, and so will we, perhaps a little bloodied, probably with a limp, and possibly, as the Skin Horse said, with most of our hair loved off, but we will be there.
Sheila Walsh
I now think it takes more faith to name our need than to keep believing that something will happen and not doing anything about it. It takes faith, and great courage, to get help, to take the first painful step toward the dream that is in our hearts...I know now that you can look at bricks and cement for years, believing in the vision of a home, but until you get down on your hands and knees and start to build, it will remain a dream.
Sheila Walsh
We must understand the essence of our faith to be something other than a list of opinions, propositions, or statements that our group holds but cannot prove. (p. 22)
Brian D. McLaren
Wasted tries, The many whys, Is it the soul of Compromise? Lows and highs, Believing in lies, In life we have to improvise. Frustration and cries, The last leg of sighs, You are the dreamer in disguise! To the guilt say goodbyes, Open your eyes, Your soul - I do so recognize.
Julieanne O'Connor
Joy is not the absence of darkness. Joy is confidence that the darkness will lift.
Rebekah Lyons
And now for me, faith is less of a brick edifice of belief and doctrine and right answers than it is a wide-open sky ringed with pine trees black against a cold sunset, an altar, a welcome, bread and wine, an unfathomably ferocious love, and a profound sense of my belovedness.
Sarah Bessey
I want you to wrestle with the Bible. Do it. Wrestle until, Jacob-like, you walk with a limp ever after, and you receive the blessing of the Lord.
Sarah Bessey
But I've noticed, too, that prayer for some other people is less like a spare tire and more like a road map. It is not something tucked away in small compartment and rarely used. It is used constantly. These people understand how necessary a road map is if they are to ever get where they want to go. For them, prayer isn't just for emergency use, but it guides them through the intricacies of life.
Steve Goodier
History has taught us that when understanding and tolerance are fostered, people of different faiths can live together in harmony. Regrettably, history has also taught us the opposite, that such states of equilibrium can quickly degenerate and succumb to rhetoric of anger and fear, sometimes leading to violence and even war. A balance of mutual respect and tolerance needs to be maintained through good works. Interrelations need continual nurturing.
Gudjon Bergmann
God's love is based on nothing, and the fact that it is based on nothing makes us secure. Were it based on anything we do, and that 'anything' were to collapse, then God's love would crumble as well. But with the God of Jesus no such thing can possibly happen. People who realize this can live freely and to the full.
Brennan Manning
When God calls us to do something, its rarely safe but its always right.
Jayce O'Neal
Worry is the antithesis of trust. You simply cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive.
Elisabeth Elliot
I believe in a God who not only intervenes in human affairs--again and again--but one who also makes banquets out of stale bread.
Karen Swallow Prior
it is not what happens to you, it is what happens in you.
Sesan Kareem
Reading the recipe of your grandma’s chicken soup will never compare to the taste. Seeing a magnificent sunset will never compare to somebody else’s description of that same sunset. Feeling the electrifying sensation of a passionate kiss will never compare to a second-hand account. Nothing replaces experience. If experience is at the heart of every religion, then theology points the way, practice gives us the vehicle, but we must take the steps if we want to personally explore our faith and reap experiences rather than rely solely on second-hand accounts.
Gudjon Bergmann
Experifaith is distinctly different from storyfaith. It does not provide answers to life’s big questions. Rather, it proposes a path of discovery through practice, where a person can come to his or her own conclusions. As such, it has more in common with the modern scientific method than storyfaith does, and, when practiced properly, experifaith is mostly verifiable within a community of practitioners.
Gudjon Bergmann
In an ideal world, both experifaith and storyfaith would provide spiritual aspirants of all faiths with guidance. Storyfaith would preserve tradition and teach morals through parables and examples. Experifaith would provide the blueprint for a personal path to follow. In the context of chocolate, storyfaith is a lecture about chocolate, including information about origins and fables about positive attributes, while experifaith is the literal act of tasting the chocolate.
Gudjon Bergmann
Faith Never does seem Feasible
Jocelyn Andersen
Surrender is Serenity & a Bridge to Bliss.
Julieanne O'Connor
The will to succeed should be powerful: The willingness to prepare for success is paramount (KR, 1990)
Kieran Revell
But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept.
Sheila Walsh
...we need to stop plotting the course and instead just land the plane on our plans to make a difference by getting to the "do" part of faith.
Bob Goff
The Father is truly the only Promise Maker who is in earnest a Promise Keeper. A promise from God is a promise kept.
Sheila Walsh
Tom has been having a difficult patch, and we meet at the church of IKEA as often as possible, because it is equidistant from our houses and always cheers us up. Yesterday I asked, 'In your depression, and with so many people having such a hard time, where is Advent?' He tried to wiggle out of it by saying, 'You Protestants and your little questions!' Then, when pushed, he said: 'Faith is a decision. Do we believe we are ultimately doomed and fucked and there's no way out? Or that God and goodness make a difference? There is heaven, community, and hope - and hope that there is life beyond the grave.' 'But Tom, at the same time, the grave is very real, dark and cold and lonely.' 'Advent is not for the naive. Because in spite of the dark and cold, we see light - you look up, or you make light, with candles, or with strands of lightbulbs on trees. And you give light. Beauty helps, in art and nature and faces. Friends help. Solidarity helps. If you ask me, when people return phone calls, it's about as good as it gets. And who knows beyond that.
Anne Lamott
Jesus lets us be real with our life and our faith.
Bob Goff
Why do many believers insist on repeatedly pointing to the crimes of 20th century dictators who led officially atheistic societies as some sort of evidence of their god's existence? It makes no sense.If the rivers of blood on Stalin's hands and Mao's hands, for example, are supposed to prove there is a god, then what do the oceans of blood on the hands of several thousand years' worth of religious kings, queens, presidents, popes, priests, generals, Crusadersm jihadists and tribal chiefs prove? It's not, of course, but if bodycount is somehow the measure of a god's likelihood of existence, then believers lose.It is clear that humans are quite capable of killing with or without images of gods bouncing around in their heads. If anything, however, history suggests that the concept of gods makes the idea of massacring your fellow man (and women and children, too, of course) a lot easier to act upon.
Guy P. Harrison
Answers based in truth are the foundation of wisdom.
Jayce O'Neal
When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.
Shauna Niequist
To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth.
Os Guinness
The beauty of Catholicism is every human being's right.
Matthew Kelly
Waiting is an exercise of faith that demonstrates the condition of our hearts. Waiting on God is an act of faith. And faith is what separates the men from the boys.
Steve Farrar
Sometimes we can focus so much on nothing that we make it a big something of nothing
Ricky Maye
Our witness is only as strong as our freedom is real. We can have the most noble convictions in the world, but if we are snarky and impatient when we don't get our way, those things will interfere with our influence. If we gossip more than we pray, those misspoken words will demolish our influence. If our addictions get in the way of living out our convictions, we'll have mostly a negative influence.
Susie Larson
As I ponder my pilgrim’s progress to Orthodoxy, however, I realize that I didn’t make the trip alone, but in a two-seater. And I wasn’t the one driving.
Frederica Mathewes-Green
One, just one, but definitely one of the great benefits of private prayer is that you can’t hide from your motives. In corporate prayer, we can sound like “all that”. We can blow Jesus smoke like nobody’s bizness in a crowd but, get alone with Him, and He won’t let you get away with the fake stuff. Try blowing Jesus smoke in your prayer closet and you’ll cough on it every time. Truth? That penetrating gaze of His hurts, but afterwards, it never fails to heal.
Shellie Rushing Tomlinson
It take faith to follow your dreams and courage to reach them.
E'yen A. Gardner
Could a body broken and blood spilled two thousand years ago restore my own damaged life?
Frederica Mathewes-Green
For several centuries, the Celtic church of Ireland was spared the Greek dualism of matter and spirit. They regarded the world with the clear vision of faith. When a young Celtic monk saw his cat catch a salmon swimming in shallow water, he cried, "The power of the Lord is in the paw of the cat!
Brennan Manning
It's better to dare to dream big and achieve half of your dreams than to dream small dreams and achieve all
Bernard Kelvin Clive
[at CMC West Coast 2011, on 1 Samuel 14] If just a few of you would step up and be like Jonathan ... as you step out in faith, you know what's going to happen? There'll be people like Saul who'll say, "God's doing something through that guy, God's doing something through that girl. I want to be a part of that.
Francis Chan
At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, 'Jesus is cool, it's just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.' This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force - not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man's comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus?
Mark Scandrette
PRAISE FOR 'THE JOURNEY HOME'Many saints are known and praised by all. We pray to them in litanies and celebrate their feast days. But the vast majority of holy men and women live heroic lives quietly before God. Loyal to family, lovers of God, servants in the Church, these unsung saints live everyday life as an example for us. David Hanneman is one such man. His story is exemplary and should be told to the world. He not only lived a noble life, but also suffered with heroism and grace as he passed into glory. This is a story to encourage and bless us all. We are thankful to Joseph Hanneman for sharing his father and making his story known to us who need such examples to encourage us as we face the difficulties and challenges of life.
Stephen K. Ray
Dusty, dark, cold, and hard, coal has no beauty of its own, but when it is consummated by fire it is beautiful and becomes what it was designed to be.
Frederica Mathewes-Green
I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize the continuity between the immanence of God in our world and eternity. Rather than simply waiting to be liberated to another time or place, we are being invited to collaborate in the healing and redemption of our world.
Mark Scandrette
When you SEE into the invisible, you will DARE to do the impossible!
John Paul Warren
What has happened to create this doubt is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or a bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God's place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. Instead of faith sizing up the problem, the situation ends with the problem scaling down faith. The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem.
Os Guinness
We are not asked to SEE," said Amy. "Why need we when we KNOW?" We know--not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. "It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering?
Elisabeth Elliot
The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.
Os Guinness
Interestingly, God's remedy for Elijah's depression was not a refresher course in theology but food and sleep... Before God spoke to him at all, Elijah was fed twice and given a good chance to sleep. Only then, and very gently, did God confront him with his error. This is always God's way. Having made us as human beings, He respects our humanness and treats us with integrity. That is, He treats us true to the truth of who we are. It is human beings and not God who have made spirituality impractical.
Os Guinness
Fear tries to get us to give up but faith takes us all the way through to victory
Joyce Meyer
We don't look at the stars in the universe and say how tragic they are, how bruised they are, even though that is what they are. We look at them and speak of the beauty they contain. The inspiration they give us. Even though stars are the scars of the universe we don't see them as these broken pieces of gaseous matter, we see them as these majestic astrological blessings that give hope to billions. What if you saw yourself in that same light, or better yet what if you saw others in a similar way.
Ricky Maye
For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.
Brennan Manning
Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised.
Joni Eareckson Tada
To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life. Jesus listened. In John's Gospel we are told that Jesus was moved with the deepest emotions (11:33)... The gospel portrait of the beloved Child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to His emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of Man did not scorn of reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive antennae to which He listened carefully and through which He perceived the will of His Father for congruent speech and action.
Brennan Manning
As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others -- and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.
Brennan Manning
Let the world know what you live for...not what you fall for!
John Paul Warren