Best 3954 quotes in «church quotes» category

One of them is a very familiar personage. Her name is “Mother Church.” She is, in many ways, an admirable and dedicated person, deeply concerned about her children, endlessly and tirelessly careful for every detail of their welfare. Her long experience has taught her to understand her family very well. She knows their capabilities and she knows their weakness even better. She is patient and imperturbable, quite unshockable (she has witnessed all of the considerable range of human wickedness in her time) and there are no lengths to which she ill not go to educate her family. She has a huge fund of stories, maxims and advice, all of them time-tested, and usually interesting as well. She is very talented, skilled din creating a beautiful home for her children; she can show them how to enrich their lives with the glory of music and art. And there is no doubt that she loves God, and wishes to guide her children according to his will. On the other hand, she is extremely inclined to feel that her will and God's are identical. In her eyes there can be no better, no other, way than hers. If she is unshockable, she is frequently cynical. She is shrewd, with a thoroughly earthy and often humorous shrewdness. She knows her children's limitations so well that she will not allow them to outgrow them. She will lie and cheat if she feels it is necessary to keep her charges safe; she uses her authority 'for their own good' but if it seems to be questioned she is ruthless in suppressing revolt. She is hugely self-satisfied, and her judgement, while experienced, is often insensitive and therefore cruel. She is suspicious of eccentricity and new ideas, since her own are so clearly effective, and non-conformists get a rough time, though after they are dead she often feels differently about them. This is Mother Church, a crude, domineering, violent, loving, deceitful, compassionate old lady, a person to whom one cannot be indifferent, whom may one may love much and yet fight against, whom one may hate and yet respect.

One person does make a difference. Jesus was one person. He made a difference. Stop telling the Lord that the problem is too big. Stop looking at your problem. The more you look at the problem, the bigger it gets. God is bigger than that problem. Keep your eyes on God! Let God be bigger than your feats! You are one person, but you have the life of God on the inside of you. You can and will make a difference!

One of the tragedies of current Christianity in America is that we have so few compelling illustrations of this life that Jesus lived and the type of radical community he came to create. Leading pastors and preachers are little more than family-friendly celebrities or game show hosts with all the razzle-dazzle and mass media presence that accompanies the position.

One Tree is of life, the other is of death. Do our fruits hang from the bad tree, or the good? Only by testing the fruits of a Tree (or, rather, testing ourselves) can we truly see what kind of tree we are!

Only the church can provide people with quality fellowship

Only the church can show people how to restore their lives according to the word of God

Only those who do not practice sin can stand in the presence of the holy God." - "I NEVER KNEW YOU

On the church vaulting above was the clock-face of eternity, void of number and serving as its own hand, only one black finger was pointing and the dead wanted to tell the time by it.

On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism.

On the subject of who is to blame for our disunity - “The easy conclusion- that the devil is at work trying to destroy the church- is true, but itʼs not the whole story. Of course the enemy is at work doing that. But closer examination shows that much of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the church itself-on believers in god-and how our own devilish deeds have alienated other followers of God. Sadly, weʼve done the devilʼs work for him.

On the other hand, activist Christians who talk much about justice promote a notion of justice that envisions a society in which faith in God is rendered quite unnecessary, since everybody already believes in peace and justice even when everybody does not believe in God.

O reino de Deus não será avançado por nossas igrejas se encherem de pessoas, mas pelas pessoas em nossas igrejas se encherem de Deus.

Originally, Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church. Now, Tarot's mystical qualities were passed on by modern fortune-tellers.

Our bread was given, not earned. We had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but sit there together, saying sonorous words in unison, listening to language we did not hear anywhere else in our lives. Take heart. Go in peace. Bear fruit. Although we could have sat quietly with Bibles on our laps and read these things to ourselves, we took turns reading them out loud to each other instead. The words sounded different when Kline read them than they did when Kathy read them. They sounded different from the mouth of a young mother than they did from the mouth of a widow. This was because the words did not come straight off the page. They percolated up through the silt and gravel of real people's lives so that the meaning in them was fluid, not fixed. Listening to one another read Holy Scripture, some of us learned what is meant by 'the living word of God.' We also sang things we could more easily have said. The Lord be with you. And also with you. None of us would have dreamed of doing this in the grocery store, but by doing it in church we remembered that there was another way to address one another. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord. Where else did any of us sing anymore, especially with other people? Where else could someone pick up the alto line on the second verse of 'Amazing Grace' and give five other people the courage to sing in harmony? Sometimes, when we were through, we would all just stand there listening until the last note turned entirely to air. We could even be quiet together, which was something else that did not happen many other places in our lives. Silence was so countercultural for most of us that it took a lot of practice before we could do it together.

Our churches are full of people during work hours, in the morning, at noon, in the evening praying, instead of being in the factories, libraries, and laboratories, facilitating economic growth.

Our fights should really be for the mission of the church and the mission of the family instead of trying to have bigger churches or better families. When it comes to entities that god has created specifically to make disciples and accomplish His mission (of influencing a generation to have a stronger, deeper, and more authentic relationship with God), there is the church...the family...and nothing else.

Our greatest fear as individuals & as a church should not be of failure, but of suceeding at things in life that dont really matter.

Our “ministry” should be an overflowing of our lives, an overflowing of our walk with Jesus Christ! We aren’t our ministry, it’s an byproduct of our relationship with Jesus Christ!

Our wives, our families, and our churches need godly men who have discernment--discernment to deal with life and life-issues on a spiritual level.

Our musical artistry and leadership of people need to work together to create an environment that welcomes participation instead of causing disengagement.

Out here, the open night is my church, the trees are my congregation, the stars are my angels and the moon is the only god that I know.

Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t a million dollar church, it wasn’t perfection, it wasn’t about how many times you prayed or apologized or that one day a month where you fed the homeless. And you weren’t banished to hell for that one time you told someone to fuck off. You didn’t end up in hell for that time you were a bitch to your fellow man. It took a lot to end up there, and man worked at it with crazed enthusiasm. They worked harder at chiseling their way into hell, than any other action.

Part time christian cannot defeat a full time devil

Pastors are over-extended taking care of a few hundred sheep in their church

Pastors enter congregations vocationally in order to embrace the totality of human life in Jesus' name. We are convinced there is no detail, however unpromising, in people's lives in which Christ may not work his will. Pastors agree to stay with the people in their communities week in and week out, year in and year out, to proclaim and guide, encourage and instruct as God work his purposes (gloriously, it will eventually turn out) in the meandering and disturbingly inconstant lives of our congregations. This necessarily means taking seriously, and in faith, the dull routines, the empty boredom, and the unattractive responsibilities that make up much of most people's lives. It means witnessing to the transcendent in the fog and rain. It means living hopefully among people who from time to time get flickering glimpses of the Glory but then live through stretches, sometimes long ones, of unaccountable grayness. Most pastor work takes place in obscurity: deciphering grace in the shadows, searching out meaning in a difficult text, blowing on the embers of a hard-used life. This is hard work and not conspicuously glamorous.

Past the entrance to the cloisters (in the church of Santa Croce in Florence) is Rossellino's funerary monument to the humanist chancellor Leonardo Bruni, He was chancellor of Florence from 1427 until his death in 1444. He is shown resting on his bier, as if asleep, holding his History of Florence. His epitaph is one of the most moving ever recorded: "Historia luget, eloquentia muta est," "History herself is in mourning, and eloquence has been silenced.

Peace is my creed. Hope is my doctrine. The world is my church. Love is my religion.

People should see genuine, authentic love in the church

People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ--they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.

People think we didn't have theatres in Scotland for centuries because the Church suppressed them. Well, perhaps. But you could also argue that we had theatres in every town and village in the land: they were called kirks, and every week folk packed in to see a one-man show about life, death and the universe.

People who say we are just preaching "extreme grace" must not understand how extremely gracious our Father is.

...people who've been hit with the gospel respond naturally with radically changed lives and hearts. The church and the ministries of the church are gospel centered when they flow from hearts that are afire with wonder at the glory and grace of God, revealed in the person of Jesus.

People will rather pass by the weak, the lame, the beggars, the orphans, the tormented, the widows and take their large offerings to church, to the man of God who already has a mansion and jets , what a shallow mindedness.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.

Persecution for Christians is not a possibility, it's a promise, it's not a maybe, it's a surely! Following Jesus can mean finding the trouble you've been looking for!

Perhaps the strongest indictment against us as the Church is that we have settled for an Americanized version of the Church that mirrors whatever culture says, and there is no collective sense of loss, no sense of remorse. We have sinned deeply. The problem is that we haven’t got a taste of the sinfulness of racism... We don’t see the wickedness of profiling God’s people that He has created to be one and that He has created in His image (p. 75).

Pesa itolewe kwa masharti au bila masharti chukua, kwani huyo aliyeitoa si yake. Benki, kwa mfano, ikitaka kukupa mkopo itakuwa na masharti yake; chukua, iwapo utakubaliana na masharti hayo. Jambazi akikupa pesa ili ukafanyie ujambazi chukua pia. Lakini hiyo usiipeleke kanisani, ipeleke serikalini. Serikali itajua jinsi ya kupambana na huyo aliyekupa hiyo pesa, na hiyo pesa itaendelea kuimarisha ulinzi na usalama nchini. Pesa kuendelea kuimarisha ulinzi na usalama nchini ni sawa na zaka, au sadaka, na wewe utabarikiwa kwa kupata nyingine.

Preaching the whole council of God involves man’s environment and physical being as well as his soul. There is no doubt that the church is in danger of getting off the main track and getting lost.

Preaching the Gospel in a brutal way is like telling your wife that you love her while she gets a punch right in her face.

Pop stars AREN'T cool. Cheating on your husband or your wife isn't cool. Having no modesty with your body and no self-respect is NOT cool. It doesn't matter how pretty someone's voice is, or if they SAY they are Christian, God calls us to modesty and faithfulness, so we need to be careful to not idolize anyone that goes way off of what God wants.

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.

Put the masks on! I now pronounce you husband and wife!

Refusal to engage in spiritual warfare does not exempt you from being among the next casualties of war

Raised in a completely nonreligious family, Joliot never attended any church and was a thoroughgoing atheist all his life.

Reconciliation is wonderful, but it’s not always possible, because it depends on a godly response from both parties. Forgiveness however depends only on us. We can forgive even if the offending party is unresponsive.

Religion and spirituality can easily be intertwined; however, there is a very distinct separation between the two.

Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarreling with one another. These theories, again, are based upon belief. One man says there is a Supreme Being sitting above the clouds governing the whole universe, and he asks me to believe that solely on the authority of his assertion. But if you actually attempt to realize what Christ realized, the entire structure of the Church would collapse.

Religion is great at instilling the fear of hell, but awful at giving a taste of heaven.

[R]eal prayer is not an excuse for laziness but, in fact, is one of the most arduous engagements I know of in ministry. Prayer is not a replacement for hard work but, in most cases, empowerment for even more fruitful work.