Jesus Quotes - Page 26

Jesus didn’t have to extend His love. He didn’t have to think of me when He went up on that cross. He didn’t have to rewrite my story from one of beauty to one of brokenness and create a whole new brand of beauty. He simply didn’t have to do it, but He did. He bought me. He bought me that day He died, and He showed His power when He overcame death and rose from the grave. He overcame my death in that moment. He overcame my fear of death in that unbelievable, beautiful moment, and the fruit of that death, that resurrection, and that stunning grace is peace. It is the hardest peace, because it is brutal. Horribly brutal and ugly, and we want to look away, but it is the greatest, greatest story that ever was. And it was, and it is.

The nature of the love of God for us is thereby revealed. It is not the love of an indulgent parent who gives into every whim of the child. In the end that is not the ‘love’ for the child but a form of self love for the parent. Despite the massive propaganda to the contrary, Our lord’s purpose for us is not to make us happy, but to make us holy. He loves us too much to leave us part saved, part remade, part sanctified. He wills our holiness, and since ‘suffering produces…’ (Rom 5:3), we may expect him to allow things in our lives which, in our self-centred pursuit of happiness, we ourselves would exclude. Yet even in the shadow of his love there is always mercy. Our sorrows are shared by him; he comes to us in our pain. The end of it all is not only his glory, which needs no justifying, but also our good.

The past does not define me, it ignites me. The past is not a piece of me, it has placed me

Let Him pull you from the drowning waters of our world. He will wipe the tears from your pain; soothe the disappointments of tomorrow and comfort you from this cold, dark life. He will bring you everlasting Joy.

Allene van Oirschot

The Church really does not know what [peace and justice] mean apart from the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. After all, Pilate permitted the killing of Jesus in order to secure both peace and justice (Roman style) in Judea.

Stanley Hauerwas

When we begin to live like Jesus, people will perceive our peace as an indictment on their violence; they will see our security as an indictment on their insecurity.

Jonathan Martin

The contradiction is resolved when you realize that for Jesus peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love. -p83

Frederick Buechner

Jesus of Nazareth told us to say these twelve words when we prayed: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' ... And for those words alone, he deserves to be called ;the Prince of Peace.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This sin weighs heavily upon the Body of Christ and will call down the judgment of God. In Germany there is an even greater sin weighing upon us Christians and that is the crime our nation has committed against Israel, God's chosen people.Six million Jews were killed; because of this the wrath of God is upon us. As Christians we are especially to blame. For when the terrible crime occurred and millions of Jews were tortured with inhuman cruelty and killed at the hands of German people, the Church in our country remained silent.The Christians did not stand up as the Danes did and protest the injustice. With the exception of a number of individuals the church members were not driven by the desire to help the Jews at all costs. Nor did they ring the church bells the night the synagogues were burnt down.The Church gave no reaction - an indication that she was dead. Because we were silent, we heaped guilt upon ourselves, and we were struck by the judgment that later descended upon our nation.Our churches were destroyed. Germans were killed by the thousands in bombings. Refugees thronged the streets, and the Iron Curtain divided our country.

M. Basilea Schlink

By our everyday actions, by our unwillingness to admit our mistakes and sins, we Christians have declared God dead - perhaps without even realizing it. For is we no longer want to humble ourselves before God and man, acknowledging our sins, if we no longer want to repent, we do not need a living Savior.

M. Basilea Schlink

The spirit of contrition and repentance has by and large become foreign to us. Repentance implies a turning to God. Instead of repenting, however, we demand that God adjust to our modern concepts.Because the spirit of contrition and repentance is missing, church services , evangelizations and other Christian meetings often lack power and cannot move the listeners to tears of contrition. How very much we, the members of the Body of Christ, have hardened our hearts!We no longer want to see sin for what it is. When God is dishonoured and blasphemed and His commandments are abandoned, we do not regard it as such. Nor do we see that when God Himself is declared dead in His Church and His commandments are no longer regarded as binding, these are the signs of the times that Jesus said we should watch for.

M. Basilea Schlink

The increasing lawlessness and the fact that love has grown cold - signs that Jesus specifically named for the end times (Matthew 24:12) - are put aside by the Church as being of no great importance, although the unprecedented facts and examples are alarming. We need to call to mind certain trends in the past years.The soaring crime rate. The glorification of brutality and perverse forms of sex. The increase in drugs, which have already claimed millions of addicts. The alarming growth of involvement in occult activities, and in spiritism and even satanic cults.And all this is taking place in "Christian" nations, yes, mainly in these countries, and even in their churches. Who takes this as a challenge to pray, fast and repent?

M. Basilea Schlink

We are apathetic and indifferent towards our sins, and we are usually not disturbed by them at all. We are more likely to weep over what is done to us, or over difficult leadings. We weep over our sorrows, troubles and disappointments. Each one of us does so, for this is our human nature.But not everyone comes to the point of true contrition and repentance and weeps over his sins. Such reactions are foreign to human nature. The human heart has a way of thinking that it is always in the right and has no need to weep over its sins. By nature, we are self-confident and impenitent. We blame others or even accuse God when we do not understand His ways.

M. Basilea Schlink

The human heart has a way of thinking that it is always in the right and has no need to weep over its sins. By nature, we are self-confident and impenitent. We blame others or even accuse God when we do not understand His ways.

M. Basilea Schlink

Self-justification - that is, claiming one's innocence and thus in the final analysis blaming God - is an inheritance we have received from Adam and Eve. Even the worst criminals have this urge to exonerate themselves.They claim innocence in the face of the most heinous crimes. Prison chaplains write that there is no place like prison to find so many self-righteous people, maintaining that they are actually innocent. They think they have been imprisoned unjustly. We human beings have an excuse for everything and thus we see no reason why we should repent and turn from our ways. If we think we are in the right, that we have good reason to justify ourselves and say that we are not guilty, why should we repent?

M. Basilea Schlink

If we are discouraged because we lack repentance and excuse ourselves by saying that it does not lie in our power to obtain a contrite heart, because repentance can only be granted as a miracle of the Holy Spirit, it is a sign that our thinking has been clouded by the Enemy.

M. Basilea Schlink

Only penitent sinners, who are granted forgiveness, are set on fire with love for Jesus. So I can testify how impoverished a life without daily repentance is. Heaven does not draw near. The radiance of joy is missing. There is no adoration or songs of praise. Love for Jesus is not burning in one's heart. There is no power in one's ministry, and it bears no fruit.

M. Basilea Schlink

Thus the penitent are actually sincere, truthful and realistic. They sorrow for their sins before it it too late, unlike others who neglect to do so and will be sorry for their sins for all eternity. They are grieved over their sins now, so that they can turn over a new leaf and begin to lead a new and different life.

M. Basilea Schlink

To be spiritually alive is to live in repentance. Spiritually dead are those Christians who never weep over their sins or who have long ceased to do so. Dead - in God's eyes - are those Christians who can no longer rejoice over God's forgiveness. Whenever this joy is missing, even if we may call ourselves committed Christians, there is something wrong in our lives.

M. Basilea Schlink

Only repentance can save us from spiritual death and lead us to eternal life, and only repentance lets us have a foretaste of this divine life here and now.

M. Basilea Schlink

Only those who are alive can bring life to others. The spiritually dead are unable to generate life, because there is no life in them. They cannot be a testimony to others by their deeds. They are simply dead. Whoever does not live in repentance belongs to the spiritually dead, who cannot bring anyone to life. But the penitent are full of life, divine life; and they can bring others to life. Whenever someone repents, he scarcely needs to say a word. He doesn't need to preach at others. Rather, when he lies prostrate before God and man and confesses with a broken and contrite heart, "I have sinned; I am guilty," his words have the power of life. They can open the hardest hearts and bring to life the spiritually dead.

M. Basilea Schlink

Everyone hungers for a foretaste of heaven. The word "heaven" strikes a note in everyone's heart, for all men are Adam's children, driven out of paradise, but still cherishing a deep desire for the lost paradise.

M. Basilea Schlink

Repentance is the gateway through which the Gospel can come to us. Repentance is the gateway to a joy-filled life with Christ, for it is the prerequisite for attaining forgiveness, and wherever forgiveness is received, there is salvation and joy.

M. Basilea Schlink

Sinners with broken and contrite hearts have but one desire. Filled with thanksgiving, they want to love Him who loved them so much. They are so overwhelmed that He has borne their sins and carried them away. When we receive forgiveness, our hearts are so filled with joy that we cannot help but love Him with a lavish love. We cannot help but give our lives to Him who gave His life for us and set us free from the prison of sin. We cannot stop thanking Him, and so we do everything possible to bring Him joy and to bestow our gifts upon Him, serving Him with all our talents and strength. And this is what heaven is all about: centering upon Jesus and loving Him above all else.

M. Basilea Schlink

He has been waiting for us, waiting in vain, and His fatherly heart was filled with grief. When He then sought to call us home through chastenings, we rebelled against Him and His actions and again refused to come home to the Father. What else should He do with us?

M. Basilea Schlink

With the word "Repent" He was beckoning to us as the Savior, offering us His love and salvation. But behind this word we can also see the grief of God that His children have turned away from Him.

M. Basilea Schlink

Is it not shameful to accept God's blessings as though they were our due without thinking of the heart of the Giver, who planned them all in love for us, and giving Him the response of love and gratitude?

M. Basilea Schlink

Our repentance should begin with the fact that we have no longer taken the Word of God seriously and have not come to repentance. We dared to use our own standards and were satisfied when we lived up to them. We are like the Pharisees.Outwardly we participate in Christian activities, perhaps even enthusiastically...And we think that this is enough. We use our own yardstick.But God will measure our lives according to His standards, and we shall have no excuse when we appear before His judgment seat, for He has clearly proclaimed His standards in His Word.

M. Basilea Schlink

How quick we are to reject what others tell us! How fast we are to cast the blame on others, saying they always criticize us and find fault with us, they are not satisfied with anything we do, they do not understand us.But if we cannot accept anything others tell us, we are proud. The humble want to hear what others tell them. They have the courage to hear the truth about themselves and to admit that they need to change. Whether it is a small matter or a big matter, they say, "Yes, it is true. I need to turn over a new leaf.

M. Basilea Schlink

Our objections - whether they be theological or psychological - usually have but one root: It is pride that makes us reject the message of repentance.For repentance means humbling ourselves before God and man, changing our ways and making amends. In doing so, we admit that our former ways were wrong, and that is humbling.No other sin is so firmly ingrained in our hears as pride, especially in the hearts of those who acknowledge Jesus as their Savior.

M. Basilea Schlink

People say, "How can God let that happen? How can God remain silent about all the wicked things that happen on earth, about all the terrible crimes that are committed?" And here again self-righteousness makes us blind and deaf.We no longer perceive how God speaks in judgment through wars and all the other troubles in the world. Yes, He is speaking powerfully. Such judgments are His last attempt to win us back in love.

M. Basilea Schlink

Dear God, I ask that today and every day that follows you wash any anger from my heart. I desperately want to look at the world differently. Please help me understand that this anger is hurting me more than anyone else. Teach me to find love in every situation and then to find peace in my heart for the rest of my life. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Jesus came to bring life more abundantly. He came to save the soulsick, to deliver those bound up in sin, to break the chains of bondage and addiction. He came to heal the hurting, and comfort and restore the used, abused, bruised, battered, and broken. He came to forgive the worst sinner and to bring life to the lifeless. He came to reconcile us with God so we can have relationship with our Father.

In Jesus the full meaning of peace is revealed: he gave peace, made peace and is our peace (Jn. 14:27; Eph. 2:14f.).

Gordon J. Wenham

Jesus can identify with our weaknesses or failures because He shared in our humanity in the flesh.

The bible doesn't say Jesus had a power to command, only to recommend, which leaves each one of us with an individual freedom of choice. Maybe it's just that there are too many of us making too many bad choices for the good of the whole." He took a bite out of his apple. "Too many people and none of us wanting or able to hear the harmony.

More often than not, the foolishness of our humanity drives us to destroy the very things that we need to keep ourselves from destroying ourselves. And because that’s the case, God will never allow us to destroy Christmas.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Last night, I spoke to God.I told Him my plans. He started to cry.I thought I was great to move The Greatest to tears.He said that He was crying only becausemy plans were very differentthan His plans for me.

You’re in love with your image of Linda. Mr. Green is in love with his image of Jesus. Both of your images have little to do with reality. Both of you are making yourselves miserable.’'That’s not fair, comparing me to him. You don’t see me hammering nails in people.’'You prefer to hammer them through your own hands.

Christopher Pike

Look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Anonymous

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Anonymous

That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Anonymous

Not my will, but thine, be done.

Anonymous

The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God.

Madeleine L'Engle

WORSHIP IS ACTION.""Worship is not lazy, boring and sad.Worship is zealous, famous and joyful.

If your ministry can't work without you, then it is no longer Christ-centered. Minister toward Jesus, not yourself.

Rev. Kellen Roggenbuck

Never embrace a version of the gospel that doesn't require you to do life with someone who isn't like you.

My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God’s love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Believe in whatever if you want believe in "Jesus" the guy who probably doesn't exist.- If he is so powerful and magical as in the bible is said why he didn't save us with clapping hands or something like this and ... tadatada here we are saved?? He is alive and everything is alive!- How for god sake the bad people go in heaven??You kill and you go heaven why??You don't have a thing to communicate so you go in heaven to talk about your travel?- If the stuff about "Jesus" are true logically we should have the ability to go out of the body, which will mean that there is soul, which can't be hold by any thing which will go as far as I know (...Please don't say "Oh, oh I don't like that Idea.." <--- it's logical, if you think in the same way you will find that what is it, believe or not... "To go outside of the body and the body to be without a body the soul to be outside..." <--- you said soul exist didn't you??So now you complain, under soul there are a lot stuff to be put concluded which will mean to be put in the logical order.

Given the lethal enormity of sin and the inestimable value of a single soul, a baby in a manger and a man on a cross makes more sense that anything else I will ever be able to possibly imagine.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

I do not know you, my friends, not individually, most of you, but this is the wonderful thing about the work of a preacher, he does not need to know his congregation. Do you know why? Because I know the most important thing about every single one of you, and that is that each of you is a vile sinner. I do not care who you are, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I do not care what particular form your sin takes. There is a great deal of attention paid to that today. The preacher is not interested in that. I do not want a catalogue of your sins. I do not care what your sins are. They can be very respectable or they can be heinous, vile, foul, filthy. It does not matter, thank God. But what I have authority to tell you is this. Though you may be the vilest man or woman ever known, and though you may until this moment have lived your life in the gutters and the brothels of sin in every shape and form, I say this to you: be it known unto you that through this man, this Lord Jesus Christ, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. And by him all who believe, you included, are at this very moment justified entirely and completely from everything you have ever done— if you believe that this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that he died there on the cross, for your sins and to bear your punishment. If you believe that, and thank him for it, and rely utterly only upon him and what he has done, I tell you, in the name of God, all your sins are blotted out completely, as if you had never sinned in your life, and his righteousness is put on you and God sees you perfect in his Son. That is the message of the cross, that is Christian preaching, that it is our Lord who saves us, by dying on the cross, and that nothing else can save us, but that that can save whosoever believeth in him.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There is another reason also why the soul has traveled safely in this obscurity; it has suffered: for the way of suffering is safer, and also more profitable, than that of rejoicing and of action. In suffering God gives strength, but in action and in joy the soul does but show its own weakness and imperfections. And in suffering, the soul practices and acquires virtue, and becomes pure, wiser, and more cautious.

San Juan de la Cruz

But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep shit. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

It is also said that the sheep heed the Shepherd, because they know his voice. Is it true that men recognize Christ's call and respond to it? In one sense it must be, for he has said so; yet much in me qualifies the statement. Actually I respond much more readily to the call of 'the others'; I neither really understand Christ's summons nor follow it. Therefore, in order that I may hear, he must not only speak, but also open my ears to his voice. Part of me, the profoundest part, listens to it, but superficial, loud contradiction often overpowers it. The opponents with whom God must struggle in order to win us are not primarily ‘the others,’ but ourselves; we bar his way. The wolf who puts the hireling to flight is not only outside; he is also within. We are the arch-enemy of our own salvation, and the Shepherd must fight first of all with us – for us.

Romano Guardini

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behavior such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser… True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.

Single Christians living in purity and community are billboards for the sufficiency of Jesus

The longer you look at Jesus, the more you will want to serve him in his world. That is, of course, if it’s the real Jesus you’re looking at. Plenty of people in the church and outside it have made up a ‘Jesus’ for themselves, and have found that this invented character makes few real demands on them. He makes them feel happy from time to time, but doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t suggest they get up and do something about the plight of the world. Which is, of course, what the real Jesus had an uncomfortable habit of doing.

Jesus says to anyone who uses their faith or lack of faith to excuse their acts of disobedience to his call: First obey, do the external works, let go of what binds you, give up what is separating you from God's will! Do not say, I do not have the faith for that. You will not have it so long as you remain disobedient, so long as you will not take that first step. Do not say, I have faith, so I do not have to take the first step. You do not have faith, because and so long as you will not take that first step. Instead, you have hardened yourself in disbelief under the appearance of humble faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity.

Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, "What!? all this, and Christ too?" What is "all this," compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, "I have no wish at all about it." "But if you might wish, which would you choose?" "I would not choose at all." "But if God bade you choose?" "I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take." Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

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