Best 3954 quotes in «church quotes» category

Good reputation and growth doesn´t mean to God that the church is alive.

Gossip is multiplying like breeding rabbits in the Church today. We may pretend it isn't, but we're only lying to ourselves. We like to put pretty little bows on it in the Church today. We like saying that we're just passing on some information so that so-and-so can be prayed for by our other sister. We like to justify it in our heads, but sin is sin so I'm going to call it that.

Go to church and get directions so you won’t get lost.

Go to church to learn about forgiveness; come back to become a forgiver! Go to church and learn about kindness; come back to become a kind person! If things go like that, you will be a true image of Christ after going to church only 10 times on 10 Sundays!

Government should not be involved in marriage at all, I believe. There’s no reason for it. I don’t get the value of my marriage government, I get it from God. I want the government out of my life. If you want to find a church that marries a gay couple, that’s totally fine. My church does not do that and it will fundamentally change what i believe is the eternal family, the basic building block. And I have a right to believe that, and I have a right to go to a church that believes that and we have a right to practice. As long as I’m not trying to force you to do anything.

Gradually I remembered what I had known all along, which is that church is not a stopping place but a starting place for discerning God's presence in this world. By offering people a place where they may engage the steady practice of listening to divine words and celebrating divine sacraments, church can help people gain a feel for how God shows up—not only in Holy Bibles and Holy Communion but also in near neighbors, mysterious strangers, sliced bread, and grocery store wine.

Grace has a face. It is Jesus Christ.

Grace makes us inwardly RIGHT so we walk outwardly UPRIGHT

Guld er Guld, hvor det end findes, og Lærdom er Lærdom, af hvis Mund den end flyder; Forskiellen alleene kand være, at dens Lærdom, hvis Levnet svarer dertil, opbygger meer, end en andens, der intet andet haver at beraabe sig paa, uden paa den Ære at være indskreven udi Kirkens Matricul, og at han haver faaet Ret til at igiennemhegle Mennesker for det, som han dagligen selv øver.

Habits form much more than our schedules: they form our hearts.

Happy Sunday Churchgoers, Look at your Neigbor,and say: "@!#$@%^&*()_$#%#$$%^" That's Martian for "you're awesome.

Happy Youth Day 1 Timothy 4:12 Ecclesiastes 12:1

Hard by the church stood the public house; so often the two are closely conjoined, honorably sharing both joys and sorrows.

Having true compassion for people isn't about the words that are spoken and the actions that are done. Having true compassion is an attitude from the heart that can't be faked.

Having your own church doesn't make you a good guy. It only makes you tax-exempt.

He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.

He explained, however, that the Eucharist is about the unity of the church. If a majority vote determined the matter, then the unity would be betrayed. He noted that some people in the church might not be ready to make this move. He would call a meeting, inviting those who might have reservations to come and express their worries … If they strongly dissented, we would have to wait.

He had been the pastor of Tate's church since Tate's boys were in high school--probably over ten years now. Tate thought he was a fair man with a good heart. It helped that his sermons were interesting and not fire and brimstone like the guy they'd had before him. Tate understood too well the repercussions of his sin. He went to church to hear about hope, to be encouraged. That was a thing Mitch seemed naturally born to--encouraging others.

He hated the Inquisition and what it had done to the Spains. He found it logical that the Church should want to safeguard the doctrines that empowered it, but at what cost? Thousands upon thousands had been tortured, hundreds upon hundreds had died in agony, tens of thousands had been banished from the land. A whole society had been upended. But preserving the Faith was only part of it. The war for the crown of Castile, in which his family had been slaughtered, plus the war in Grenada–the whole Reconquista, in fact–had bankrupted the monarchy. Banishing the Jews and Moors did more than make the Spains a Christian realm. It left the abandoned properties to be looted by the Church and the royal treasury–an equal share between them. The same with heretics: the Church and the treasury divided their property and money down the middle. Wealth and power–the two Holy Grails of Church and state.

Hence the vocation of the Church of Christ in the world, in political conflict and social strife, is inherently eschatological. The Church is the embassy of the eschaton in the world. The church is the image of what the world is in its essential being. The Church is the trustee of the society which the world, not subjected to the power of death, is to be on that last day when the world is fulfilled in all things in God.

Hell, no. A church is the one thing we don't have. Physics is the religion around here. Use the Lord's name in vain all you like,' he laughed, 'just don't slander any quarks or mesons.

He (Jesus) gave up his life not because of the so-called sins of humanity, but because he was too adamant to give in to orthodox monstrosity.

He looked up at the round, stained glass window in front of him, a blurred kaleidoscope backlit in the morning sun. It glowed. The color of heaven. Of her hair. He sat back and cracked open the dry, leather cover of a pew Bible, and a mixture of sweat and tears christened its pristine pages.

Here is a very simple and trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: If it's not about Christ, it's not Christianity.

Here is where most preachers make their mistake. They are afraid that by preaching the gospel too clearly, it will be their fault if people lapse into sin. They imagine that the gospel is food for the carnal-minded. True enough, to many the gospel does become the smell of death unto death, but that is not the fault of the Gospel. That happens only because men do not accept -do not believe-the Gospel. Faith is not merely thinking, "I believe." Your whole heart must be seized by the gospel and come to rest in it. When that happens, you are transformed and cannot help but love and serve God.

Here then are the choices we all face moment by moment: Will we aim to be impressive? Will we expect to be in complete control? Will we ensure that we always come out on top as winners? Or will we be happy for the power of Christ to rest upon us in our endless weakness? 'No man can give at once the impressions that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.' Neither can any church.

Here was a question she'd considered at some length: at New Hope she'd been taught that premarital sex was more than just a bad idea, it was sinful. In God's eyes, though, what was the difference between having sex with someone you loved before you were married, and having sex with someone you loved after you were married? If you undertook the act in a genuine state of mind and heart, if it was done in love, didn't that make it a pure act? God knew her heart.

Holiness in the purest form is independent of all textual doctrines, all churches and all institutions.

He warned that any church that ignored reality would not survive to enjoy the divine.

High heels are a short (theist) woman's (subconscious) way of telling God to go to hell … in public.

History tells us that all horrible things are not committed by evil men alone. The church has it's place, the saints and the sane too.

Holiness is as much about what you do on a Monday morning on the factory floor as it is about what you do on a Sunday morning in a church gathering. Holiness is as much about the kind of neighbour you are as it is about the kind of church member you are. It is as much about who you are when you are holding a steering wheel as who you are when you are holding a Bible.

He’s not going to applaud us for becoming famous during our lifetimes; He’s going to ask us how we used our spotlight to bring Him glory. He’s not going to ask us how many trophies and awards we received; He’s going to ask us how we used our gifts to build the body of Christ.

Hit don’t make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o’ churches. There’s the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don’t know what-all. I cain’t see much difference to nary one of ‘em. There’s a good to all of ‘em and there’s a bad.

How can we pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow? One thing is God’s will and another is just cultural differences? What if it’s all cultural? What if homosexuality or saving yourself for marriage is as outdated as women staying silent in church or Leviticus forbidding tattoos?

How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

However grand our sacramental downsittings and updressings may be, they remain only and precisely sacraments: real presences, under particular signs, of the happier order that faith can discover under any and all signs. They're a bit like the church. As long as we see them as an earnest of the kingdom, they're all right; when we put on airs and act as if they were the kingdom itself, they look just silly.

However it—or the kind of extreme individualistic epistemology it embraces—can lead historians to an overly skeptical approach particularly to those sources that were intended to recount and inform events of the past, that is, testimony in this restricted sense. Particularly in Gospels scholarship there is an attitude abroad that approaches the sources with fundamental skepticism, rather than trust, and therefore requires that anything the sources claim be accepted only if historians can independently verify it…..

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel's fatal mistakes was their insistence on having a human king rather than resting on the theocratic rule of God over them. We can detect a note of sadness in the word of the Lord, 'they have rejected me from being king over them' (1 Sam. 8:7). The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change.

How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228).

How to love is the real question. We all know to love and to keep loving more, but man's confusion comes from the differing opinions on how to love. The Church will always be accused of not loving enough by human standards - which should be its motivation to love more - however that is, in many cases, because its focus is and should also be to love on levels of eternal significance. This is the level of love that will inevitably go unnoticed by those who do not believe in eternity.

How vigilant we must be to ensure that we don’t allow our impression of Jesus to be held captive by the prevailing mores of our secular culture! Rather, it is essential that we continue to return to the Gospels to ensure that the reverse occurs: to allow Jesus to hold our hearts and imaginations captive in response to the dominant thinking of our time. For exiles trying to live faithfully within the host empire of post-Christendom, the Gospel stories are our most dangerous memories. They continue to fire our imaginations and remind us that it’s possible to thrive on foreign soil while serving Yahweh, but it’s the kind of thriving that often rejects popular wisdom. These stories are the standard by which we judge all other stories, all other descriptors of life today. If, after reading these dangerous biblical stories, you can’t imagine Jesus the Messiah as a televangelist, strutting around on stage in a flashy suit, playing it up for the cameras, then you are forced to reject this image and seek another mode of being Christ today.

I am an old man, and I here declare that I never knew them to be productive of any good in the worship of God, and have reason to believe that they are productive of much evil. Music as a science I esteem and admire, but instrumental music in the house of God I abominate and abhor. This is the abuse of music, and I here register my protest against all such corruption of the worship of the author of Christianity.

I am afraid the church is trying to speak out on too many issues that really do not concern the church. There are certain issues we know to be wrong—racial injustice, crime, gambling, dishonesty, pornography. On these matters we must thunder forth as the prophets of God.

I am accountable. I am correctable. I am transformable. Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God. By the love of God. By the word of God. Completely supplied in Christ Jesus. Unto all good works.

I am being a minister of light and a destroyer of ignorance and I shall never keep quiet until this horrendous mountain is pulled down in my country, in the church of Christ and in my continent.

I am usually able to tolerate all kinds of victims of indoctrination except those who have been infected with xenophobia, racism, or homophobia.

I am convinced if the church went back to the main task of proclaiming the Gospel it would see people being converted to Christ, and it would have a far greater impact on the social, moral, and psychological needs of people than anything else it could possibly do.

I became a Christian at the age of seventeen. I made a very conscious act of commitment and my only desire was to be kept in purity and holiness throughout the whole time of my earthly pilgrimage. I didn't choose Christ's narrow path for the riches, fame, or comfortable life it would bring, for I had experienced several times in my family before I became a Christian that true discipleship would mean a life of persecution.

I believe in God because I believe in what I feel. And when I'm in church or praying, I feel loved. I feel safe. I feel like someone knows me.