Best 4545 quotes in «christianity quotes» category

Think about it. Before the creation of the world, before anything or anyone existed, there was a living, loving God. There is not chaos at the centre. There is a Father. The emptiness our earthly fathers have left in us should not be a deterrent from God but rather an invitation to have our needs fulfilled by him in the deepest part of our being.

Think of righteousness as living inside of, instead of up to, God’s standard for the right life. The welfare of you, your community, and your relationship with God are central to living righteousness.

Thinking is a tiring process; it is much easier to accept beliefs passively than to think them out, rigorously questioning their grounds by asking what are the consequences that follow from them.

Think of people you consider fanatical. They're overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It's not because they are too Christian, it's because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, emphatic, forgiving, or understanding- as Christ was... What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Christ and his gospel.

This belief, that science eradicates (the need for) God, is a myth many people believe today. The truth is that science, the study of the world and collection of our findings, has not and cannot disprove God. There is no scientific journal that has disproven God’s existence. This is because God cannot be put in a test tube and either verified or falsified. God is a spiritual being and is outside the reach of empirical scientific research. Christians cannot prove God the existence of God with absolute certainty, nor can atheists disprove his existence with any certainty. That does not mean that we cannot look at the evidence as to whether or not God exists.

Think of the miraculous ways God could use you if you were able to hold on to who you are in Christ.

This book is dedicated to the much needed establishing of greater unity in the wider body of Christ. It is dedicated to agreement with the prayer that Jesus prayed: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:” John 17:20-22 NKJV

This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race...

This is an assignment I'm always happy to be on, helping a hurting world through the power of prayer.

This invitation [to deny oneself] is less about depriving the self, and more about disowning, or renouncing a relationship with the part of ourself that is not what God created us to be.

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

This insistence on a degree of faith in the communicant is also illustrative of Wesley's belief in the necessity for the co-operation of an active faith in man with the gift of God's grace to make the sacrament effective, which is congruent with his whole theology of salvation, with it's blending of the objective and the subjective.

This is how it needs to be in life. Solomon also wrote these words in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV) "Two are better than one, because if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls down and has no one to help them up." God didn't intend for us to do life alone. So let me ask you, who do you turn to when life hits you hard in the mouth? Your family? Some trusted friends? A teacher or coach? Are you building relationships today that will be there for you tomorrow when adversity comes your way? Do you have humility to look to others for strength and encouragement, or are you holding to the foolish pride that says, "I need to make it alone"?

This is my greatest desire, to move heavenly onward.

This is my life. This is my calling.

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.

This is not the first time that the world has been in a mess but you are still God, you left us on the earth, not only to preach in a building but to be the church beyond the buildings.

This is our recurring temptation—to live within our camp’s caves, taking turns both as the shadow-puppeteers and the audience. We chant our camp’s mantras repeatedly so they continue reverberating in our skulls. When we stay entrenched within our belief-camps, we create the illusion of secure reality by reinforcing each other’s presuppositions and paradigms. We choose specific watering holes of information and evidence, and we influence each other in interpreting that data in accordance with the conclusions we desire. Our camps reinforce our existing cognitive biases, making cheating all the more common and easy.

This is therefore a time, not for unkindly criticism of fellow Christians, but for friendly conference; not for disputing over divergent views, but for united action; not for dogmatic assertion of prophetic programs, but for the humble acknowledgment that “we know in part;” not for idle dreaming, but for the immediate task of evangelizing a lost world. For such effort, no one truth is more inspiring, than that of the return of Christ. None other can make us sit more lightly by the things of time, none other is more familiar as a Scriptural motive to purity, holiness, patience, vigilance, love.

This kind of renunciation, in fact, has often been the strength, born of necessity, of the world's disinherited, of those who do not fit in with their surroundings or with their own body or with their own race or tradition and who hope, by means of renunciation, to assure for themselves a future world where, to use a Nietzschean expression, the inversion of all values will occur.

This life is the only opportunity we will have to worship God in the midst of trials and tests. Heaven will be perfect.

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the parties involved have entered into the following arrangement: What is the least we can all agree on and still get along? Of course, you can see this means no one is pleased.

This life is only a test' is a counter-productive mindset; it encourages wishful thinking toward and elusive and likely non-existent afterlife while often enabling the believer to squander this life as somehow less important.

This quarrel over the messianic status of Jesus within first-century Judaism had profound effects on Christianity and prompted it towards a fateful turning point that switched the emphasis from following the way of Jesus to believing things about Jesus. Gradually a Christian came to be thought of not as one who lives and acts in a certain way, but as one who holds certain convictions or theories. The trouble with religious convictions or beliefs is that, since we can rarely prove or disprove them, we get anxious about them and start quarrelling with people whose convictions or theories differ from our own.

This principle is taught in Scripture: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In other words, we learn to be loving because we are loved. Grace must come from the outside for us to be able to develop it inside. The opposite side of this truth is that we can't love when we aren't loved. And, taking the thinking further, we can't value or treasure our souls when they haven't been valued or treasured.

This story (novel-in-progress) tells of suffering. Many scripts ignore pain, but suffering is part of the human condition. Christ suffered, yet there is joy in His redemptive work. #salvation

This was all very well: Columbanus's success indicates the appeal of his mission. But his activities, for the first time, brought the nature of Celtic monasticism firmly to the attention of the Church authorities -- to western bishops in general, and to the Bishop of Rome in particular. The Irish monks were not heretical. But they were plainly unorthodox. They did not look right, to begin with. They had the wrong tonsure. Rome, as was natural, had 'the tonsure of St Peter', that is, a shaven crown. Easterners had the tonsure of St Paul, totally shaven; and if they wished to take up an appointment in the West they had to wait until their rim grew before being invested. But the Celts looked like nothing on earth: they had their hair long at the back and, on the shaven front part, a half-circle of hair from one ear to the other, leaving a band across the forehead.

This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, "Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution."[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms). --Making Senses of Scripture

This understanding of themselves as a people who wrestle with God and emerge from that wrestling with both a limp and a blessing informs how Jews engage with Scripture, and it ought to inform how Christians engage Scripture too, for we share a common family of origin, the same spiritual DNA. The biblical scholars I love to read don’t go to the holy text looking for ammunition with which to win an argument or trite truisms with which to escape the day’s sorrows, they go looking for a blessing, a better way of engaging life and the world, and they don’t expect to escape that search unscathed.

This world and everything in it will pass away in the blink of an eye. Yet as long as we’re still here, and as long as we’re living for God, we have a reason for being alive. And that’s to fulfill our mission as believers—to love God and love others.

Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.

…those who are the most confident are often those who don't have any fun.

Those who dare seek, shall find what they are seeking for.

Those, then, who run down created existence and vilify the body are wrong; not considering that the frame of man was formed erect for the contemplation of heaven, and that the organization of the senses tends to knowledge; and that the members and parts are arranged for good, not for pleasure. Whence this abode becomes receptive of the soul which is most precious to God; and is dignified with the Holy Spirit through the sanctification of soul and body, perfected with the perfection of the Saviour.

Those who did know Jesus - those who followed him into Jerusalem as its king and helped him cleanse the Temple in God's name, who were there when he was arrested and who watched him die a lonely death - played a surprisingly small role in defining the movement Jesus left behing.

Those whom we have culture in common we are meant to carry the beauty of culture into the future so others can benefit from it. To those whom we have interests-hobbies in common we are meant to exchange the love of that interest. We are meant to growing it and nurture it like a parent raises a child so our contribution to that interest can bring inspiration and happiness to all others that come across it. To those whom we have base fears love and humanity in common , we are meant to protect their humanity as if their life is ours because we would expect others to protect and respect our humanity if we are ever vulnerable and in their suffering position. Lastly, those to whom we have blood in common we are meant to come close. For the network of vessels sustaining your body carries the same energy that is in theirs. When their heart is unsteady, you steady it with yours. When their blood runs hot, you cool it with yours. When their heart is at peace you join them and protect that peace at any means necessary.

Those who preach bookish religion are the greatest atheists of all, because they don’t have the slightest idea of neither God nor religion. Their beloved religion is their book. And their God is in the doctrines.

... those who seek the lost Lord will find traces of His being and beauty in all that men have made, from music and poetry and sculpture to the gingerbread men in the pâtisseries, from the final calculation of the pure mathematician to the first delighted chalk drawing of a small child.

Those who trust and hope in the Lord, will forever be happy.

Though his public teaching lasted only three years, it has been scrutinized by scholars in every science—among them theology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology to name a few. Jesus’ influence has founded universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. Now spanning the entire globe, Jesus’ followers have been inspired throughout the centuries to set up educational institutions to teach what he taught.

Those years of anger weren’t just directed inward and towards others, I was also angry with God. As a kid, when I sang songs in the children’s choir and memorized verses in bible study, I was told there was a God who loved and protected us. He was a jealous God and could be angered, yes, but He always showed grace and mercy towards His people. I must not have been one of His people. He never protected me. As a matter of fact, I remember crying and pleading to God to make it stop when I was in DC being raped at five years old. I thought he heard my prayers when I moved to New Jersey. But when the abuse became worse and more frequent, it was easy for me to conclude God’s protection didn’t apply to me.

Though I’d proven to be a wretched, foolish woman, I knew deep in my broken heart that God was still just as good and loving as he’d been the moment he plucked a rib from Adam’s side and used that bone to give me life.

Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really is something 'timeless' in the Tyndale/King James synthesis. For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivalled only by Shakespeare in this respect. It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening. From the stricken beach of Dunkirk in 1940, faced with a devil’s choice between annihilation and surrender, a British officer sent a cable back home. It contained the three words 'but if not…' All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified. In the Book of Daniel, the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar tells the three Jewish heretics Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that, if they refuse to bow to his sacred idol, they will be flung into a 'burning fiery furnace.' They made him an answer: 'If it be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, o King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.' A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update it or make it 'relevant' is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare. 'Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,' says the Book of Job. Want to try to improve that for Twitter?

Though I despise it, I do not doubt His Love for the creatures. I have seen it —His ever-reaching outward for any hand that might reach back. At His love, I tremble yet believe.

Though its leadership fights to keep the doctrine pure, the faith is constantly contaminated, syncretized, revered, and tinkered with by its adherents - and by outsiders like me, who it continues to influence. It's sentimental and businesslike, the faith of superstitious peasants and of brainy postmodern Jesuits. It's undergirded a great deal of radical immigrant and labor activism for generations, but it's also been a reactionary force wielding money and power in support of political bosses.

Though you wear your fingers to the bone with service, weep your eyes out with repentance, make your knees hard with kneeling, and dry your throat with shouting, if your heart does not beat with love, your religion falls to the ground like a withered leaf in autumn.

Thou shalt not follow someone, merely because they are following you.

Thou shalt not tweet to be retweeted.

Thou hast given a right judgment, but why judge thou not thyself also?

Thou shalt not think that thou be a leader, merely because thee be having more than 0 followers.