Best 4545 quotes in «christianity quotes» category

When God intends a mercy for his people, he stirs up the spirit of prayer in them. Fervency unites the soul and directs the thoughts to the work at hand. It will not allow diversions and denies all foreign thoughts seeking to intrude. Pray fervently or you do nothing. Cold praying is no more prayer than a painting of fire is fire. How can prayers that do not even warm your own heart move God’s? A fervent prayer will never find a cold reception with God. Elijah’s prayer called fire down from heaven because it carried fire up to heaven.

When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are begotten. When the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs back at the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and that love is the Holy Spirit.

When I betray the love and grace God has shown me, I fall back on the promise that Jesus prays for me... not that I would never face testing, nor ever fail, but that in the end I will allow God to use the testing and failure to mold me into someone more useful to the kingdom, someone more like Jesus.

When I am divided within myself, when I am so preoccupied with my own sins, egocentricity, and moral failures that I cannot hear the anguished cry of others, then I have subtly reestablished self as the center of my focus and concern.

When I call on God, I am not trying to get his attention and I am not trying to get Him to notice me. In all this my journey with Him two questions usually comes to my mind, they are; am I paying attention to him or am I trying to get his attention?

When I die, I shall then have my greatest grief and my greatest joy; my greatest grief, that I have done so little for Jesus, and my greatest joy, that Jesus has done so much for me.

When I look into the future, I am frightened, but why plunge into the future? Only the present moment is precious to me, as the future may never enter my soul at all. It is no longer in my power, to change, correct or add to the past; For neither sages nor prophets could do that. And so, what the past has embraced I must entrust to God. O present moment, you belong to me, whole and entire. I desire to use you as best I can. And although I am weak and small, You grant me the grace of Your omnipotence. And so, trusting in Your mercy, I walk through life like a little child, offering You each day this heart burning with love for Your greater glory. King of Mercy, guide my soul.

When I read Sunshine’s book, it was a scary recalibration of my thought process and a refreshing re-pondering of lifelong ideas.” • Taken from the Foreword written by Evangelist Carl Harris

When, in 2012, Newt Gingrich was asked about how his religious beliefs would affect his conduct should he become president, the Republican nominee hopeful answered, "One of the reasons I am running is there has been an increasingly aggressive war against religion and in particular against Christianity" in the United States. For a potential president to state that he sees himself as a wartime candidate who will defend his party against other citizens is astonishing. There is not even a pretense here of "united states".

When I pray - I mean really pray - for people and situations throughout the day, I'm a much humbler person and more sensitive to the lives of the people around me. I am not the master of my fate and captain of my soul. I've tried that, and it makes me more of a task master and a jerk. Prayer puts things in God's hands, and I like the Creator's power more than my own.

When I realize that God makes his gifts fit each person, there's no way I can covet what you got because it just wouldn't fit me.

When I speak about Jesus Christ, I do not speak about Christianity. Christianity has basically nothing to do with Jesus. The spirit of Christ can not be organized. Then it will not liberate you. Christ is the very essence of religion. Christ is the culmination of all human aspirations. In Christ all the aspirations of humanity are fulfilled. Christ celebrates life, he loves life, he is a song and a dance. He is also transcendental. When you come closer to him, you will find that his inner being is transcendence. You will meet the unknown, where the world disappears and God appears. You can trust him, because he is like you. He is part of your suffering, pain and sorrow, but he is also transcendental. That is why Jesus became a mile stone in the history of human consciousness. Jesus lived and loved with truth and grace. Jesus being was truth and grace. Whenever truth is there, grace is there. And whenever grace is there, truth is there. To come closer to Jesus, you have to find your own inner being, the kingdom of God. That is the whole message of Jesus. Then you will find that God is eternal. God is the whole existence. His creativity is eternal. God is creativity. God is not a person. God is existence, being. God is the energy that underlies all life, which is in the stones, in birds, in animals, in human beings and in the stars.

When it comes to our embedded beliefs, our relative intolerance to ambiguous and contrary information leads us in many instances to ignore or less thoroughly process incoming data for its actual truth value. It is for this reason that society at large is so prone to religiosity because taking a skeptical stance is the difficult path; it is the path of greatest cognitive load. The cognitive load is high because we have to conscientiously work to continually question the information we receive and often re-program our subconscious for a subject matter that is both complex and abstract. More simply stated, it is cognitively easy for people to attribute perplexing phenomena to an abstract, all-powerful deity than it is to engage in a rigorous examination to discern potential explanatory data.

When it comes to the church what has your answer been? Has it been no? Has it been, "Well, maybe, if I have time"? Or has it been an unconditional yes? Imagine how your life might change if you were willing to say to your church and to God, My answer is yes. Anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Use me as your church and for your glory.

When I think of the years when I had no faith, what I am struck by, first of all, is how little this lack disrupted my conscious life. I lived not without God, nor wish his absence, but in a mild abeyance of belief, drifting through the days on a tide of tiny vanities — a publication, a flirtation, a strong case made for some weak nihilism — nights all adagios and alcohol as my mind tore luxuriously into itself. I can see now how deeply God’s absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that pride and fear and self-live at once protected me from and subjected me to. Was the fall into belief or into unbelief? Both. For if grace woke me to God’s presence in the world and in my heart, it also woke me to his absence. I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe.

When it comes to worry, our problem is we fear an invisible future that a timeless God has seen. Perhaps you should talk to Him about it.

When I tell other Christians of my time with the goddess, I think they expect me to characterize it as a period in my life when I was misguided, and that I have now thankfully come back to both Jesus and my senses. But it's not like that. I can't imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can't imagine that God doesn't reveal God’s self in countless ways outside of the symbol system of Christianity. In a way, I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise it can feel like I am worshipping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.

When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment.

When I was seven I believed in God so I told Him I was sorry about kicking my sister and to “please not condemn me to eternal suffering in the interminable fires of Perdition for my transgressions.

When I was trying to earn Jesus by being good, I missed the real Jesus who wants us to love him and serve him not for what he gives but for who he is—dangerous, unpredictable, radical, and amazing.

When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel's over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal.

When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his Home, we turn away, but when he confides to us that he is 'acquainted with Grief', we listen, for that also is an Acquaintance of our own.

When Jesus said to turn the other cheek he meant to ignore those who hurt you. When he said he is the son of God, he added that we are all sons of God too. And he didn’t really say to love your enemies, but to be compassionate with them, for their evil emerges from ignorance. In other words, we are all sons of God and we should aspire to be as Jesus, but if someone hurts you, don’t accept the pain; rather understand that he does so out of ignorance and it is better to ignore such person. Now, that sounds much more simple, doesn’t it? The Bible is full of practical suggestions that are misinterpreted by lunatics, and that’s all there is to it. He did die in the cross to save mankind from the Roman Empire, but then humans created Communism and since then have not been freed, although christianity kept expanding. We might very well say at this point that the two main forces in the world are Christianity and Communism, being Communism the army of Satan. Communism is, at present moment, the greatest threat to humanity.

When Jesus put on flesh, He made human existence “sacred.” Thus, when you are inhabited by Jesus through His Holy Spirit, your life takes on the “sacred” characteristic as well. This does not mean that you become God or incapable of sinning like Jesus was in His incarnation. However, it does mean that something is qualitatively different about you at the core.

When last did you thank God? When last did you appreciate him? Some people are just busy praying for more things they need God to do. The best way to pray is by thanking God first for the things He has already done in your life. For the remaining job in your life, He knows how to finish it.

When others focus on what your child cannot do, see it as an opportunity to focus on who God is and what he can do through you and your child. Sometimes inability is the vehicle for experiencing the blessing of God's powerful presence and provision.

When next the devil attack you apply your break; resist the devil and he will flew from you. The bible didn't say you should run from the devil but resist him.

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180)

When our passion for the Great Commission, becomes our search for the Great Politician, we know we're lost.

When outsiders claim that we are unchristian, it is a reflection of this jumbled (and predominately negative) set of perceptions. When they see Christians not acting like Jesus, they quickly conclude that the group deserves an unchristian label. Like a corrupted computer file or a bad photocopy, Christianity, they say, is no longer in pure form, and so they reject it. One quarter of outsiders say therefore most perception of Christianity is that the faith has changed for the worse. It has gotten off-track and is not what Christ intended. Modern-day Christianity no longer seems Christian.

When our pride usurps Truth, we walk on the shifting sands of relativism, an ego driven reality.

When parents don't empower a children's ministry team with information to successfully care for their child, everyone loses.

When parents observe a church culture of acceptance, they are more likely to disclose their child's diagnosis.

...when Paul says in Romans 4:3, 5, 9, and 22 that 'faith is counted as righteousness,' he does not mean that our faith is our righteousness. He means that our faith unites us to Christ so that God's righteousness in Christ is reckoned to us.

When reason has followed its road to the end, the point of crisis is reached and man is brought to the great question mark over his own existence.

When sex was something godlike, Lust was the profane curiosity that killed many a straying cat. Now, having removed mystery, Lust is less a long-standing, overpowering yearning, more a sudden craving of the appetite. Less quest, more impulse buy.

When prayer goes viral, people are not excited about “it” (prayer) but are infectious about “Him

When Rome was at the height of her glory and power, there appeared a disturbing sect called Christians. Because of a fire that burned within them, these people dared to be different . . . they refused to be defiled by the sensual practices of a disintegrating civilization. In a period when human life was cheap, they put a high value upon human beings, their souls, and their destiny. These Christians refused to be absorbed into the godless society of Rome. They had not heard of the rule that we hear today, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

When satan sees a baby, however, he doesn’t see a fragile, sweet, gurgling child; he sees a potential grown-up who is bought by the blood of the lamb and filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, a servant of God and a soldier of the cross, a great threat to his kingdom.

WHEN SIN HINDERS YOUR WORSHIP. God will never delay His promise. You have delayed Him. "..However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8b

When some one mortal yet eternal human merely being relying on precisely nothing but the audacious love of his Maker, calls on Him to part the Heavens, well, we are undone.

When the human heart starts tightening under pressure, God's heart releases love and grace. There is more than enough in God's economy.

When society was patriarchal, as it was in the New Testament context and as it has been everywhere in the world except in modern society in our day, the church avoided scandal by going along with it - fundamentally evil as patriarchy was and is. Now, however, that modern society is at least officially egalitarian, the scandal is that the church is NOT going along with society, not rejoicing in the unprecedented freedom to let women and men serve according to gift and call without an arbitrary gender line. This scandal impedes both the evangelism of others and the edification - the retention and development of faith - of those already converted.

when the enemy shows you your miserable past, show him your glorious future

When there are a thousand outside voices telling me that I should dress this way, eat this way, go to this club, shop at this mall, the one true place I can look to for peace of mind and inner tranquillity is the Word of God.” -Shenita Etwaroo

When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something. I leave every Christian to judge by his own experience, whether we do not overlove the world more in prosperity than in adversity (374) [.]

When u have d solution u become a pilgrim land

When under suffering we see good men go to pieces we do not witness the failure of a moral discipline to take effect; we witness the advance of death where death comes by inches.

When was it that they who dwell upon the earth have not sinned in thy sight? or what people have so kept thy commandments? Thou shall find that you all by name had kept thy precepts; but not the heathen.

When we appear to be “more a loser than a victor” on the Path it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we are growing spiritually.