Christianity Quotes - Page 8

There is something gratuitous about creation, an unnecessary abundance of beauty, and through its blossoms and pleasures we can revel in the sheer largesse of the Father.

Michael Reeves

I was brought up in a Christian environment where, because God had to be given pre-eminence, nothing else was allowed to be important. I have broken through to the position that because God exists, everything has significance.

Evangeline Paterson

Before we even discovered that we were so smart, our Manufacturer already had it all figured out.

Yay Padua-Olmedo

God, unlike His creation, is always proactive and never reactive.

Andrena Sawyer

Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a first 'art system'), into a national, a European, indeed a planetary matter. In order to spread from the few to the many, the renaissance had to discard its humanistic exterior and reveal itself as the return of ancient mass culture. The true renaissance question, reformulated in the terminology of practical philosophy - namely, whether other forms of life are possible and permissible for us alongside and after Christianity, especially ones whose patterns are derived from Greek and Roman (perhaps even Egyptian or Indian) antiquity - was no longer a secret discourse or an academic exercise in the nineteenth century, but rather an epochal passion, an inescapable pro nobis.

Peter Sloterdijk

For a brief moment I felt I was the older, the more mature."A gift of life," I responded, "if not to say, a gift of God, such as music, should not have the mocking charge of paradox leveled at it for things that are merely evidence of the fullness of its nature. One should love them.""Do you believe love is the strongest emotion?" he asked."Do you know any stronger?""Yes, interest.""By which you probably mean a love that has been deprived of its animal warmth, is that it?""Let's agree on that definition!" he said with a laugh. "Good night!"We had arrived again at the Leverkühn house, and he opened his front door.

Thomas Mann

Now, it is of course well known that Christ continually uses the expression 'imitators.' He never says that he asks for admirers, adoring admirers, adherents; and when he uses the expression 'follower' he always explains it in such a way that one perceives that 'imitators' is meant by it, that is not adherents of a teaching but imitators of a life....

Søren Kierkegaard

Apprenticeship assumes that knowing a trade not only comes by numbers and outlines but also by watching and inhabiting. Knowing is found in these forms, because teaching is. We teach not only by our words and assignments but also by the manner of our words and the ways we ourselves already embody the assignments we give.

Zack Eswine

Good teaching gains its authority from having consistent and repeated support from multiple scriptural sources, and it builds a firm base for our unity and our confidence in Christ.

Reid A. Ashbaucher

God's glory in our lives has little to do with our sacrifice and everything to do with our surrender.

Alisa Hope Wagner

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God- the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Giving out of your surplus does not make you generous, it makes your selfishness more tolerable! Giving while you are lacking is what pleases the Lord.

William Branks

The Christian witness never benefits when Christian organizations are known more for what they are against than what they are for.

Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

For all his gentleness and humility unto death on the Cross, God does not relinquish his attribute of being judge and consuming fire. Nothing is more majestic than his Passion; even his anxiety is sublime. And God never denies his attributes to those who are his light in the world. They shine like stars in the cosmos, and even their anxiety, if God allows it, bears the marks of their divine destiny.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

If people feel lost and alone and helpless and broken and hopeless today, what will it be like if the world really begins to come apart at the hinges?

Brandon Andress

A true Christian does not judge whether a person is worthy of help, but only judges a need and how to best meet that need.

Toni Sorenson

Who is willing to suffer for a Savior they won't even trouble themselves to learn about?

Aimee Byrd

Courtesy, not control, that was His means. Just as He requested the stars to sing and they leapt into bright being, so request was to be their rule over bird and beast, seas and trees, mountains and moons and all the dancing distances between the heavenlies filled with the unending song of Creation.

Geoffrey Wood

Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.

G.K. Chesterton

Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing One; Christianity seeks after God with the most elementary passion it can find—the craving for a father, the hunger that is as old as the hills. It turns the whole cry of a lost universe into the cry of a lost child.

G.K. Chesterton

The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh

To obtain and possess the kingdoms of the world, with their power and glory, by violent injustice is to worship Satan. To obtain and possess the kingdom, the power, and the glory by nonviolent justice is to worship God.

John Dominic Crossan

Tolerance is not a Christian value. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty--these are Christian values.

Charles J. Chaput

When life knocks us down, God CAN put us back together again. He can meet us in our brokenness and restore us to something even more glorious than we were before we were shattered.

Heather Hart

Let us be so taken up with the knowledge of God's goodness and the desire to fellowship with Him that our emotions are warmed and our outer man reflects great love. Although we must not seek emotional experiences for their own sake, we must not shun them merely because others misuse them or ignore God's instructions on worship.

Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we rceive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best--if you like, it 'works' best--when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance.

C.S. Lewis

The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship, even natural to worship unnatural things

G.K. Chesterton

Leading worship is about a heart that craves to magnify the Lord!

Gangai Victor

God is not an audiophile demanding the best possible stage sound.

Gangai Victor

My recommendation instead, however, is that we do not surrender questions of value, whether absolute matters of truth, goodness, and beauty or relative judgment of more or less truth, goodness, and beauty. With those questions to the fore, in fact, we can interrogate various other traditions and truly learn something that can improve our own. Perhaps the Presbyterians really do know more than we do about due process in church government. Perhaps the Orthodox really do know some things we do not about iconography. Perhaps the Mennonites really can teach us the meaning of 'enough.' Perhaps the Pentecostals can help liberate us from dull and disembodied worship. Baptists who have learned to improve their procedures from Presbyterians, their art from the Orthodox, their finances from the Mennonites, and their worship from the Pentecostals do not therefore become worse Baptists but better ones. And so around the ecumenical circle, no?

John G. Stackhouse Jr.

A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God's grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God's love and welcome to us.

Christine Pohl

If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the center of your life.

Timothy J. Keller

Worship isn't just a concept or idea--it is a real encounter at appointed times with the one true God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. If all the ideas about worship today can't be ran slated into real plans for dialoguing with God, what good are they?

Constance Cherry

This philosophy of spiritual formation through the consumption of external experiences creates worship junkies — Christians who leap from one mountaintop to another, one spiritual high to another, in search of a glory that does not fade.

Skye Jethani

Worship isn’t just a concept or idea— it is a real encounter at appointed times with the one true God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. If all the ideas about worship today can’t be translated into real plans for dialoguing with God, what good are they?

Constance Cherry

Whatever confronts your faith can be a test but if it stands to oppose the content of your personality and the validity of your convictions then it's threat.

Kingsley Opuwari Manuel

To give the whole store away to match what this year's market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.

Martin E. Marty

Once more, the joyful character of the eucharistic gathering must be stressed. For the medieval emphasis on the cross, while not a wrong one, is certainly one-sided. The liturgy is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole 'beauty' of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the 'necessary.' Beauty is never 'necessary,' 'functional' or 'useful.' And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy.

Alexander Schmemann

A church begins to die when it says, ‘They were just children.

Wess Stafford

Religion and spirituality can easily be intertwined; however, there is a very distinct separation between the two.

Ricky Maye

The fact that you don't feel Him [God] holding you doesn't change the fact that He still is.

Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman

The Christian church is an encyclopaedia of prehistoric cults and conceptions of the most diverse orgiin and that is why it is so capable of proselytising: it always could and it can still go wherever it pleases and it always found and it always finds something similar to itself to which it can adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should be an occasion of cross-cultural hospitality. Consider an analogy: when I travel to France, I hope to be made to feel welcome. However, I don't expect my French hosts to become Americans in order to make me feel at home. I don't expect them to start speaking English, ordering pizza, talking about the New York Yankees, and so on. Indeed, if I wanted that, I would have just stayed home! Instead, what I'm hoping for is to be welcomed into their unique French culture; that's why I've come to France in the first place. And I know that this will take some work on my part. I'm expecting things to be different; indeed, I'm looking for just this difference. So also, I think, with hospitable worship: seekers are looking for something our culture can't provide. Many don't want a religious version of what they can already get at the mall. And this is especially true of postmodern or Gen X seekers: they are looking for elements of transcendence and challenge that MTV could never give them. Rather than an MTVized version of the gospel, they are searching for the mysterious practices of the ancient gospel.

James K.A. Smith

Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization ─ Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism ─ Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.

Philip Yancey

Look at yourself! You're a priest. You know damn well that if I were setting out to make a girl at this moment instead of young Paolo, you'd take an entirely different view. You'd disapprove, sure! You'd read me a lecture on fornication and all the rest. But you wouldn't be too unhappy. I'd be normal... according to nature! But I am not made like that. God didn't make me like that. But do I need love the less? Do I need satisfaction less? Have I less right to live in contentment because somewhere along the line the Almighty slipped a cog in creation?... What's your answer to that Meredith? What's your answer for me? Tie a knot in myself and take up badminton and wait till they make me an angel in heaven, where they don't need this sort of thing any more? I'm lonely! I need love like the next man! My sort of love!

Morris West

Too many Christians reverse New Covenant commands as we seek, through condemnation of the world, the return of the never-existent, demonic myth of the "Christian Nation"!

Gary Patton

Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

Karl Barth

We were so created to worship God that it is probably embedded in our spiritual DNA itself!

Gangai Victor

Speak it till you reach it!

Michelle Cook-Hall

Yet people are still showing up to lift their hands after all these years even though the church is flawed and broken and beautiful and has a shameful, ugly side to it that I'll bet it wishes it didn't have and repeatedly tries to hide.Just like me.Just like you.Just like always.

Max Andrew Dubinsky

Here is a very simple and trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: If it's not about Christ, it's not Christianity.

D.R. Silva

A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet.

D.R. Silva

We get called dishonoring for pointing out the garbage in the church, yet nobody ever seems to think it's dishonoring that somebody put the garbage there in the first place.

D.R. Silva

The ministry found in the corners of one's life should match the ministry that is put on display.

Alisa Hope Wagner

If everything is mission, nothing is mission.

Stephen Neill

Martin Luther called the church building the “Mundhaus” (lit. “mouth house” or "speech house”) because he believed that the Graeco-Roman “pagan lecture” of the sophist entertainers who took over the Catholic church should be the focus of “the service”. Sermons might have been helpful in the later Middle Ages when even many Catholic priests couldn't read. However, modern research has repeatedly proven that lecturing is the worst possible way to educate others because it’s so boring. Might traditional, so-called-inspired preaching still be the best way to communicate God’s Word?” ~ © gfp '42™

Gary Patton

Most talk of a catholic spirit but it is only till they have been brought into the pale of their own church. This is downright sectarianism, not Catholicism. How can I act consistently, unless I receive and love all the children of God, whom I esteem to be such, of whatever denomination they may be?

George Whitefield

This is, indeed, an insightful observation. The Archbishop [Joseph L. Berardin] insists that the natural resemblance between Christ and his priests must not stop merely with the fact that they share a common masculinity. Our question is, 'Why must it BEGIN there?' If the faithful cannot see Christ in a male who exemplifies no godlike virtues - humility, gentleness, and self-effacing service - can they not see him in a female who does? Indeed, if the priest acts 'in persona Christi,' not 'in masculinitate Christi,' then 'NATURAL resemblance' between Christ and the priest, it would seem, does not entail PHYSICAL, that is SEXUAL resemblance, but a resemblance which is natural to the SPIRITUAL order with which the worshiping congregation has to do. And in this order there is neither male nor female, even as there is neither Jew nor Greek. We would, therefore, conclude that since the Word was made flesh, as the apostle John has declared him (John 1:14), we rightly heed those who, in the flesh, symbolize his presence as they speak and act in his name. But we see no reason to add to what the apostle said by insisting that the Word was made MALE flesh, for both male and female are equally bearers of the divine image. And since God created humankind in his image, male AND female, we can only conclude that women as well as men should be ordained to the priesthood, because femaleness, like maleness, is a fitting symbol (sacramental sign) of Deity.

Paul King Jewett

Whenever a group of people who are designed to primarily unite around one thing try to unite around something else, the result is devastating for all.

Rob Tims

This is a paradox of Whitefield's legacy: evangelicalism draws people of different churches while dividing those within the same denomination.

Melanie Ross

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Christianity Quotes - Page 8

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