Best 4545 quotes in «christianity quotes» category

All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.

All this self-styled spirituality, all these super-rational claims, if they are not rooted in charity, only lead in the end to animalism… If purity consists in a perfect abandonment to life according to the senses and the mechanism of the senses there is more of it in a brute beast than in a saint.

All too often people say to artists, 'To be an artist is fine if your art can be used for evangelism.' And art has often become a tool for evangelism. But let's be precise. As such there is nothing against this. But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true; things and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God; if Christ came to make us human, the humanity and the reality of art find their foundation in him. So art should not be used to preach even if it can help. Yet there is another way that art can be or is meaningful.

All we have to do is ask and believe that God will work on our behalf and give us what we need to overcome and rise above the adversities and stress that we are facing.

Alone in the dark, the Creator lights a flame of fire, to guide my path.

Almighty Father, do not destroy mankind. Save us from every calamity.

A lot of the heartache and confusion we feel in dating stems from treating dating mainly as practice for marriage (clarity through intimacy), instead of as discernment toward marriage (clarity and then intimacy).

Although I believe identity politics '"produces limited but real empowerment for its participants," it is important to note that it contains significant problems: first, its essentialist tendency; second, its fixed _we-they_ binary position; third, its homogenization of diverse social oppression; fourth, its simplification of the complexity and paradox of being privileged and unprivileged; and fifth its ruling out of intersectional space of diverse forms of oppression in reality.

Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: ‘Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.’ But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God’s goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God’s blessing. For if you had trust in God’s grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper.

Although healing practices are periodically marginalized, they do not remain so for long. In one way or another, healing always finds an occasion for reemergence. In the midst of inexpressible suffering, it seems that someone will always believe in the beauty and wonder of the gospel.

Also, always encourage 'being good' over 'doing good.' Acts of goodness are the difficulty for us and should, of course, be avoided. 'Being good' is far less problematic, largely because it lacks definition and can be solely a state of mind completely unattached to reality.

Although some of the people at church rejected and even denounced me, this did not particularly hinder me in my search. Rather, the fact that there were church people as weak and foolish as I was myself gave me a deep sense of reassurance. Arrogantly I thought, 'If God accepts that sort of person, isn't it possible thatHe will even accept me?' And I began to read the Bible more attentively.

Although we should affirm the wonder and mystery of sexual intimacy and romantic attraction as God's good creations, we need to set these aesthetic enjoyments within the context of the Christian virtues of fidelity, self-sacrifice, and patience in suffering. Bringing this together, our pastoral approach should be double-edged, seeking to challenge our culture's worship of sexual desire and personal fulfillment while offering a different vision of human flourishing. Christian formative involves both RESISTANCE and REDIRECTION. But is is the redirection of our desires that enables our resistance of cultural idolatries. Failure to attend to the dynamics of our desires leads to inevitable self-deception regarding the 'freedom' of our actions. Especially within our sexual lives, our hearts must be truly captivated by the goodness of the Christian vision of life, so that our whole self is drawn toward it, or our commitment to live in tune with it will be brittle.

A man ought to pray daily for himself, his wife, his children and his family.

A man is more or less of a Christian only in proportion to the speed with which he advances towards infinite perfection, irrespective of the stage he may have reached at a given moment. Hence the stationary righteousness of the Pharisee is worth less than the progress of the repentant thief on the cross.

A mark of true Christianity will be its intellectual vigour and its search for meaning in every aspect of life. True Christianity will always be critical, questioning and continually developing in its understanding of God and of human life. The subject matter for religion is every human experience. In Christian understanding, God is immanent, that is, God is present in all things, and creation itself is a sign, and an effective sign, of God’s presence - a sacrament. That is why there has been such an emphasis on scholarship and learning in the Christian tradition. Faith, as St Anselm wrote, ‘seeks understanding’, for it is the nature of true faith to trust that God is at work in everything and that there is no question which falls outside the scope of religious inquiry. When faith in God weakens, the critical element will also weaken, and there will be more warning against false doctrines than encouragement to develop our understanding. If the critical element is not fostered, Christians will remain infantile in their religious belief and practice, which will have little or no relation to everyday life and behaviour.

A man walks into a coffee shop. As the man talks across the counter, the coffee guy makes his coffee and sets the cup and saucer between them. But the man doesn’t drink it; he keeps talking, so the coffee gets cold, useless. The coffee guy pours it out and pulls another, sets it up. The man still can’t stop talking and the next one goes bad too. So the coffee guy throws that one out, makes another. And this goes on, see? You may think you’re the coffee guy in the parable, but you’re not —you’re the espresso. (It’s like that in parables.) You’re not for you. You’re someone else’s beverage. And God, the coffee guy, he’s going to keep remaking you again and again, as many times as it takes until you’re drinkable. God’s pulling the shots and he’s got standards.

A mental choice, absent a real heart change, is no choice at all. We couldn’t force ourselves to be something we were not. That just couldn’t happen. And it didn’t.

A mission-minded family will serve together. Look for needs in your community and brainstorm with your spouse about how you can partner together to meet those needs in a way that works for you. My husband is handy, and I love to cook. My casserole dish and his tool box work well together. Is there a single mom who could use some help with yard work? Is there an elderly couple who needs help hanging their Christmas lights? Look for creative ways you can serve side by side and connect with each other and your neighbors.

Am intrat în închisoare orb, cu vagi străfulgerări autogene ale beznei, care despică întunericul fără a-l risipi, şi ies cu ochii deschişi. Am intrat răsfăţat, răzgâiat. Ies vindecat de fasoane, nazuri, ifose. Am intrat nemulţumit. Ies cunoscând fericirea. Am intrat nervos, supărăcios, sensibil la fleacuri. Ies nepăsător. Soarele şi viaţa îmi spuneau puţin. Acum ştiu să gust felioara de pâine cât de mică. Ies admirând mai presus de orice curajul, demnitatea, onoarea, eroismul. Ies împăcat. Cu cei cărora le-am greşit, cu prietenii şi duşmanii mei, ba şi cu mine însumi".

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and because firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the case against a miracle is—just because it is a miracle—as complete as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined to be. Why is it more than merely probable that all men must die, that lead cannot when not supported remain suspended in the air, that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water, unless it is that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and for things to go differently there would have to be a violation of those laws, or in other words a miracle? Nothing is counted as a miracle if it ever happens in the common course of nature. When a man who seems to be in good health suddenly dies, this isn't a miracle; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet often been observed to happen. But a dead man’s coming to life would be a miracle, because that has never been observed in any age or country. So there must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, because otherwise the event wouldn't count as a ‘miracle’. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, we have here a direct and full proof against the existence of any miracle, just because it’s a miracle; and such a proof can’t be destroyed or the miracle made credible except by an opposite proof that is even stronger. This clearly leads us to a general maxim that deserves of our attention: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact that it tries to establish. And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the stronger one only gives us an assurance suitable to the force that remains to it after the force needed to cancel the other has been subtracted.

An atheist's response to a creationist asking 'what if' there was a God, That would be quite an unsettling thought.

America isn’t perfect but there’s not a better place in the world for people of any faith.

Among the tastemakers and power brokers and intellectual agenda setters of late-twentieth-century America, orthodox Christianity was completely déclassé.

And how can evil be the mere absence of good? Is genocide the absence of something, of what? Of kindness? Were there no kind Nazis? Of love? Were there no Maoist revolutionaries who loved their families? Evil is an act, we commit evil proactively, it doesn't simply emerge in the absence of good. When you don't put a dollar in the donation tin in the front of the convenience store it doesn't mean that an ax murderer was created. We human beings have one set of actions described as "good" and another set described as "evil.

And I’m glad to see that all three clients are male. Not that the females can’t be corrupted, I’ve just always found the males more amenable to temptation. The males have always had all the power, so that does much to explain it. As they say: Easy pickings.

and I realized that real nobility is in the soul, not in a name.

And once their imaginations are liberated, they begin glimpse the grand interconnectedness of all things. Eternity begins to peek out from behind the everyday things and they see the trappings of any earthly moment as the stage and props for Heaven to reveal itself. There is now nothing ordinary. Everything is being used and spun out for His vast scheme and in His eternal economy, nothing is wasted. Suddenly, all the myriad moments and minutiae of a lifetime show their orchestration —there was nothing that did not lead to this! They look over all their time to find that His redemption has always been rushing, swooping, swerving through their experience, racing to and fro to intervene and infuse Grace.

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.

And now, we have no option. We can't say 'maybe' 'it's possible' 'it looks very probable...' No way! We have to say this is what the Bible teaches! This is fact! May 21, 2011 is the day of the Rapture, it is the day that Judgment Day begins...

And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they’ve lost, forever.

And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

And the extraordinary thing is that according to these texts all powers, all the power and glory of the kingdoms, all that has to do with politics and political authority, belongs to the devil. It has all been given to him and he gives it to whom he wills. Those who hold political power receive it from him and depend upon him. (It is astonishing that in the innumerable theological discussions of the legitimacy of political power, no one has ever adduced these texts! [Matthew 4:8-9; Luke 4:6-7]) This fact is no less important than the fact that Jesus rejects the devil's offer. Jesus does not say to the devil: It is not true. You do not have power over kingdoms and states. He does not dispute this claim. He refuses the offer of power because the devil demands that he should fall down before him. This is the sole point when he says: 'You shall worship the Lord your God and you shall serve him, only him' (Matthew 4:10). We may thus say that among Jesus' immediate followers and in the first Christian generation political authorities - what we call the state - belonged to the devil and those who held power received it from him.

And there are many people, both Moslem and Christian, who have a good grasp of each others0 conceptions of surrender to God an other principles. But the widespread existence of bias, misinformation and lack of knowledge (…) militate against the effectiveness of dialogue, (…) by the most subtle and one of the most effective of instruments, the subconscious, almost the subliminal, introduction of hostility.

And then I stand in front of God's Throne squinting up at His blazing glory and He says, 'You had your opportunities, boy. But did you listen? No. You went on heedlesly reading that garbagey magazine with pictures of naked girls in it. How juvenile! I gave geese more sense than that.' Please, God. I'm only fourteen years old. A teenager. Have mercy. Be loving. I was,' says God. 'For eons. And look at what it got me. You.' God turns in disgust, just the way Daddy does. 'Sorry, but I'm the Creator. I take it personally. There are slugs and bugs and night-crawlers I feel better about having created - I mean, there are sparrows - I've got my eye on one right now. Is that sparrow consumed with lust? No. He mates in the spring and that's the end of it. Consider the lilies. Do they think about lily tits all the time? No. They look not and they lust not, and yet I say unto you that you will never be half as attractive as they. Therefore, I say unto you, think not about peckers and boobs and all that nonsense and your Heavenly Father will see that you meet a good woman and marry her, just as I do for the sparrow and walleye - yea verily, even the night-crawler and the eelpout. But I've told you this over and over for nineteen centuries. And now, verily, it's too late. Time's up, buster. Lights out! Game's over!

And we will mess up. We will hold on when we should have let go. We will walk away when we should have run. We will go when we should have stayed and we will hurt others when we should have loved. But God forgives, He forgets, and best of all, He restores.

And yet their reward appear not, and their labor had no fruit: for I have gone here and there through the heathen, and I see that they flow in wealth, and think not upon thy commandments.

And why not—whatever despair we may feel concerning resurrection and reassemblage—find comic relief in the human determination to assert wholeness in the face of inevitable decay and fragmentation?

And you know what I realize now? That we're all waiting on something, no matter where we are in life. It's the human condition.

And yet if anything in the world can save you, it is not a convent and not Catholicism, but simply an active interest in your fellow-creatures. When experience and observation have taught us love and charity, we are saved, and life is no longer terrible. Fate may be as cruel as she pleases ; but if we have warmth and love in our hearts, we shall never be alone, never in despair, and shall never think of self-destruction, if only out of pity for all our suffering brothers, whom, as long as we live, we have always the chance of helping.

Ang peace ay matatagpuan sa dako ng pagsunod, sa paglabas ng pinto. Ang peace ay matatagpuan sa dako ng pagsunod, sa paglabas ng pinto. Ang peace ay hindi makukuha sa paghingi mo sa Diyos ng ibang mga sitwasyon. Ang peace ay makakamtan kapag nahanap mo ang Diyos sa kabila ng mga suliraning ito.

Ang isang paraan para magsimula ay sa pamamagitan ng pagtatanong kung ano ang will ng Diyos hindi sa paroroonang lugar o darating na panahon, kundi dito at ngayon.

An idle mind was a recipe for disaster. Bathsheba wasn’t just teetering on the edge; I knew she was going to be diving right into a pool of tragedy.

An instrument s a tool that is actively used to change something, and God has called all of his people to be instruments of change in his redemptive hands

Another component to living in the weeds and trees is earthly success, which will quickly place a crown on our heads without discipleship. The answer is Jesus Christ and it will always be him.

Anticipating death and calling it gain, Christians are evangelists of the grotesque. The very hope of the Gospel rests directly upon our ability to imagine a world in which suffering serves as the soil from which resurrection springs.

Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn't Jesus' fault.

Any day God removes His hand from you, you are finished. Your hope and trust is only in Him. Your confidence, your strength, your power and your life is in God. There is no better life without Him. Look around the world and you will understand me.

Anyone is capable of going to Heaven. Heaven is our home. People ask me about death and whether I look forward to it and I answer, 'Of course', because I am going home. Dying is not the end, it is just the beginning. Death is a continuation of life. This is the meaning of eternal life; it is where our soul goes to God, to be in the presence of God, to see God, to speak to God, to continue loving Him with greater love because in Heaven we shall be able to love Him with our whole heart and our soul because we only surrender our body in death - our heart and our soul live forever. When we die we are going to be with God, and all those we have known who have gone before us: our family and our friends will be there waiting for us. Heaven must be a beautiful place.

Anyone who utters “salvation only through Christ” inadvertently commits to the greatest blasphemy of all, which is differentiation, and this in turn diminishes the very essence of the title Christian.