Best 4545 quotes in «christianity quotes» category

...if a Catholic priest dressed in his sacred garments solemnly said the right words at the right moment, mundane bread and wine turned into God’s flesh and blood. The priest exclaimed ‘Hoc est corpus meum!’ (Latin for ‘This is my body!’) and hocus pocus – the bread turned into Christ’s flesh. Seeing that the priest had properly and assiduously observed all the procedures, millions of devout French Catholics behaved as if God really existed in the consecrated bread and wine.

If a church doesn't have the volunteers, the space, and the resources to launch a ministry with every base covered, let's not chide them for getting it wrong. Let's cheer them on for taking a step in the right direction, for meeting the immediate needs in their midst, and for expanding their accommodation to any degree, and striving to do it well.

If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages.

If anyone understands, it's Jesus.

If a public policy screecher began demanding that we all start rationing salt water because the planet Earth (which is our only home) was about to run completely out, and that many leading theologians agreed with this (and they would too), and that they offered their agreement in the name of the Lord Jesus, and with many solemn amens, I would still want to know how they could possibly think we were going to run out of salt water

If anyone thinks he has faith and yet is indifferent towards this possession, is neither cold nor hot, he can be certain that he does not have faith. If anyone thinks he is Christian and yet is indifferent towards his being a Christian, then he really is not one at all. What would we think of a man who affirmed that he was in love and also that it was a matter of indifference to him?

If any locals had seen the dark-robed group as they moved through the darkness they might well have felt the stirrings of fear. Monks – anonymous, rootless, untraceable – were able to commit atrocities with near impunity. ‘Our angels’ some Christians called them. Rubbish, said non-Christians. They were not angels but ignorant, boorish thugs, men in appearance only who ‘led the lives of swine, and openly did and allowed countless unspeakable crimes’. As the author Eunapius wrote with sardonic distaste: ‘in those days every man who wore a black robe and consented to behave in unseemly fashion in public, possessed the power of a tyrant, to such a pitch of virtue had the human race advanced!’ Even a wholeheartedly Christian emperor mutedly observed that ‘the monks commit many crimes’. And on that night, these monks were about to commit another. Shenoute’s target was not, this time, one of his monks but one of the wicked, godless pagans. In sermon after furious sermon Shenoute had turned his famously fiery prose on these people. Their hearts were ‘the nests of the spirits of wickedness’. If disturbed then these evil people would spit out poison. The Bible, Shenoute told his congregants, said that those who set up pagan images should be killed. As he put it in one particularly vigorous sermon, God wished His people to ‘remove the abominations from His presence’. The emperors, Shenoute thundered, had declared that the entire earth must be cleansed of perversions. No stone was to be left on top of any other stone of any pagan temple. Not one. In the entire earth.

If anyone had a right to lecture people about their sin, it was the sinless son of God. If even he could meet sinners as equals, how much more should we Christians---all sinners ourselves---treat as equals the people we encounter in our lives?

If bad men, to serve their own private ends, pretend to be religious when they are not, it is not the fault of Christianity. More importantly, it is not the fault of Christ! The Bible tells us that men are to be judged by their fruits; and the wickedness and hypocrisy of a thousand false professors does not prove religion—nor Christ Himself—to be wicked and hypocritical and false. We don’t set our faith and hope on religion or Christianity, but on Christ alone.

If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic.

If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with your tear ducts, which connect to the heart, as well as with your ears, which connect to the brain. Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning.

If Christian, we open the Holy Bible. And read, they shall grow in the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

I fear that so often we Christians give the idea that the truth is fiction by the way we live and by the lack of dedication to the teachings of our Lord.

I fear the signs point to the time of Revelation being upon us. If it is so, then this is only the beginning.

I feel like a child who has found a wonderful trail in the woods. Countless others have gone before and blazed the trail, but to the child it's as new and fresh as if it had never been walked before. The child is invariably anxious for others to join in the great adventure. It's something that can only be understood by actual experience. Those who've begun the journey, and certainly those who've gone further than I, will readily understand what I am saying.

If each hair on our head is accounted for; then wouldn't even the smallest of prayers matter?

If economies collapse and lawlessness rules and resources are scarce, many people who claim with their mouths that they follow Jesus... will abandon him with their lives.

I feel the life slipping out of me. When the pain comes, I cry out, but there is no prayer in it, only fear. I kneel and recite my office and the Rosary but the words are empty - dry gourds rattling in the silence. The dark is terrible and I feel so alone. I see no signs but the symbols of contradiction. I try to dispose myself to faith, hope and charity, but my will is a blown reed in the winds of despair.

If enough individuals are full of despair and anger in their hearts, there will be violence in the streets. If enough individuals are full of greed and fear in their hearts, there will be racism and oppression in society. You can't remove the external social symptoms without treating the corresponding internal personal diseases...Pope Francis draws our attention to the 'invisible thread' of the market, which he describes as 'the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.' This mentality generates inequality, which in turn generates 'a violence which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control'...changed individuals cross racial, religious, ethnic, class or political boundaries to build friendships. These friendship work like sutures, healing wounds in the social fabric. They 'humanize the other,' making it harder for groups to stereotype or scapegoat. They create little zones where the beloved community is manifest...They help people envision the common good--a situation where all are safe, free, and able to thrive. As my friend Shane Claiborne says, our problem isn't that rich people don't care about poor people; it's that all too often, rich people don't know any poor people. Knowing one another makes interpersonal change and reconciliation possible. (p. 167-168)

I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck...And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.

If God can help us locate demands, He can also help us locate the leaks.

If God has really done something in Christ on which the salvation of the world depends, and if He has made it known, then it is a Christian duty to be intolerant of everything which ignores, denies, or explains it away.

If God gives you a gift and you don't know what to do with it, it won't make you happy. Some of you God gave a wonderful husband but you can't make a home and some of you God gave a wonderful wife but you can't make a good husband. Some of you can't even unwrap the gift so that you can appreciate it.

If God gives you a hundred bucks, you better bet He’s going to ask you what you bought.

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.

If everything went according to their own plans, they would never know what it means to follow God.

If God be denied, then His sovereignty and infallibility accrue to other agencies.

If God give you a status, don't turn yourself to a statue. Don't become a monument. God still want to reside inside you but not in a monument.

If God is love (1 John 4:7) but intended Christ’s atoning death to be the propitiation for only certain people so only they have any chance of being saved, then 'love' has no intelligible meaning when referring to God. All Christians agree that God is love. But believers in limited atonement must interpret God’s love as somehow compatible with God unconditionally selecting some people to eternal torment in hell when He could save them (because election to salvation and thus salvation itself is unconditional).

If he had given away anything else, he would have been charged with indecent exposure.

If God’s suggesting that I am expected to do good and also obligated to manufacture a genuine desire for it, this boat’s sunk, still sitting on the trailer in the driveway. A stack of things need to happen before I desire to be good…

If God wants to move me, then I go! Yes, I am scared. Yes, I doubt. Yes, I am afraid things will crumble around me. Yes, I know this will be tough and this stress will sometimes seem unbearable. Yes, I know life will never be the same. But God wants to use ME! I am not saying no. I have my call. I must go!

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.

If... I focus only on what God commands for us as wives to do, it detracts nothing from God's commands for our men. His Word for them still stands.

If I have any expertise, it is in the realm of spiritual darkness: fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, suspicion of religious comforters, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and at the same time shame over my inability to speak of God without a thousand qualifiers, doubt about the health of my soul, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms. These are the areas of my proficiency.

I finally spoke, my voice trembling. “Hello…Son. I love you. I made you. I’m your God. I will always be there for you. I will do everything I can to keep you safe.” My love for him was so strong. Adam just looked at me, intrigued. He then smiled and opened his arms in a wide embrace. I started crying, feeling his tight hold over me. He then released his grip and said one word: “Daddy.

I find it appalling that the Church claims Mary consented at the age of thirteen to become the mother of God.” “But she did,” James said. “There is ample evidence to show she consented.” “Isn’t that the classic defense of the pedophile?” Helena asked. “In Christ’s time and even today in some countries in the Middle East and India, child marriages are customary. But that doesn’t make it right. In Europe and the U.S. we prosecute adults for preying on children. God would be arrested for impregnating a girl below the age of consent.” “People didn’t live as long then,” James said. Helena would not back down. “But human biology hasn’t changed. My point is she was too young to consent. The brain of a young teenager isn’t fully developed.” “The mysteries of the faith require us to have faith.” “Don’t hide behind that nonsense. What kind of message is the Church sending to women? Only virgin children are pure? Experienced mothers are impure and unfit to raise Christ? It’s creepy and insulting when you think about it, but you would have me suspend rational judgment and just accept something I would tear your eyes out for thinking about my underage sister?

If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous self. Indeed, many otherwise orthodox Christians, who recoil at the notion of theological liberalism, have unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core. Averse to hierarchies and control, contemporary evangelicalism thrives on autonomy: the autonomy of the nondenominational church, at a macrocosmic level, and the autonomy of the individual Christian, at the microcosmic level. And it does not seem to me that the emerging church has changed much on this score; indeed, some elements of emergent spirituality are intensifications of this affirmation of autonomy and a laissez-faire attitude with respect to institutions.

I find it sad that more Christian literature does not address miracles, and the possibility of demons in our midst. Jesus performed countless miracles in his life that were clearly discussed in the New Testament. And, he cast out demons. Why do some Christians act as those the potential for miracles died with Him? Why do people believe in angels, but not demons? Both were evident in the Bible.

If I should ask thee how great dwellings are in the midst of the sea, or how many springs are in the beginning of the deep, or how many springs are above the firmament, or which are the outgoings of paradise: Peradventure thou would say unto me, ‘I never went down into the deep, nor as yet into hell, neither did I ever climb up into heaven.

I firmly believe a great many prayers are not answered because we're not willing to forgive someone.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

If it is Christian, it will be Bible-centered.

If it's not for Him, I guess I'd be dead few years ago.

If I should be available to everyone, I will eventually end up with nothing to give to anyone. So the greatest gift you can receive from me is my time. Count yourself lucky if I give you a minute of my hour.

If it isn't one blessing, it's another!

If Jesus is not the focus, the worship is bogus.

If Jesus was put to death by powerful elites protecting their turf, then the murder is only a historical or academic puzzle. But if those who knew Him best—His longtime admirers—were involved, everything changes. It suddenly becomes personal, for we are then forced to confront the more troubling questions: Would I have sided with the majority and cried out for His blood? Would you?

If Jesus meant for his followers to rule the world, then why did he teach them to wash feet? As difficult as it is to accept, I believe that his death on the cross reveals the God who suffers for love instead of punishing the unloving, the God who lays down his life for his friends.

If Miss Watson had told Huck what the Bible says about living in a resurrected body and being with people we love on a resurrected Earth with gardens and rivers and mountains and untold adventures--now that would have gotten his attention.