If you are seriously interested in the spiritual life, finding a spiritual director is no problem. Many are standing around waiting to be asked. However, sometimes we don't really want to get rid of our loneliness. There is something in us that wants to do it by ourselves. I constantly see this in my own life. A spiritual director is not a great guru who has it all together; it's just someone who shares his or her sinful struggles, and by doing so, reveals there is a Presence who is forgiving.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
I have come to understand there is no formula which is readily prescribed, easily taken, or immediately successful for encouraging other believers. What we are to them is often far more important than what we say. How we sit and listen and are a part of their lives is often far more important that the words we speak.
David Jeremiah
Turning Point
ALL extreme sensitiveness, fastidiousness, suspicion, readiness to take offence, and tenacity of what we think our due, come from self-love, as does the unworthy secret gratification we sometimes feel when another is humbled or mortified; the cold indifference, the harshness of our criticism, the unfairness and hastiness of our judgments, our bitterness towards those we dislike, and many other faults which must more or less rise up before most men's conscience, when they question it sincerely as to how far they do indeed love their neighbours as Christ has loved them. He will root out all dislikes and aversions, all readiness to take offence, all resentments, all bitterness, from the heart which is given up to His guidance. He will infuse His own tender love for man into His servant's mind, and teach him to "love his brother as Christ has loved him."
Jean Nicolas (J N) Grou
Wiki Article
So often in ministry, I have wanted to do it by myself. If it didn't work, I went to others and said, "Please!" searching for a community to help me. If that didn't work, maybe I'd start praying. But the order that Jesus teaches us is the reverse. It begins by being with God in solitude; then it creates a fellowship, a community of people with whom the mission is being lived; and finally this community goes out together to heal and to proclaim good news.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and wouldn't go to the churches and Gospel Halls;.... I disliked very much their hymns which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
Many of your friendships grew from your need for affection, affirmation, and emotional support. But now you must seek friends to whom you can relate from your center, from the place where you know that you are deeply loved. Friendship becomes more and more possible when you accept yourself as deeply loved. Then you can be with others in a non-possessive way. Real friends find their inner correspondence where both know the love of God. There spirit speaks to spirit and heart to heart.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to those who love us. But it is necessary that we face this also. The full acceptance of our abjection and uselessness is the virtue that can make us and others rich in the grace of God. It takes heroic charity and humility to let others sustain us when we are absolutely incapable of sustaining ourselves. We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere, both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction.
Thomas Merton
Website
Let each one do what she can; what one cannot herself do, she does by another who can do it, if she loves in another that which personal inability alone hinders her from doing; wherefore let her who can do less not keep back the one who can do more, and let her who can do more not urge unduly her who can do less. For your conscience is responsible to God; to each other owe nothing but mutual love.
Augustine
Works And Biography
Some Christians try to go to heaven alone, in solitude. But believers are not compared to bears or lions or other animals that wander alone. Those who belong to Christ are sheep in this respect, that they love to get together. Sheep go in flocks, and so do God's people.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
We have assigned the obligations of our faith to a few while keeping the privileges for us all.
David Platt<
There is a story of a man who was walking down the street. He paused at a used book store, and in the window he saw a book with the title, How to Hug. He was taken by the title and, being somewhat of a romantic nature, went in to buy the book. To his chagrin, he discovered it was the seventh volume of an encyclopedia and covered the subjects "How" to "Hug". Everyone knows that the church is a place where love ought to be manifested, and many people have come to church hoping to find a demonstration of love - only to discover an encyclopedia on theology.
Ray C. Stedman
How to Hug
You need to be in fellowship of a church...If you separate a live coal from the others, it will soon die out. However, if you put a live coal in with other live coals, it will be a glow that will last for hours.
Billy Graham
Billy Graham Organization
The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself, even though he is grieved by the passions of those who are not yet purified. But when they amend their lives, his delight is indescribable and knows no bounds.
Maximos
There is a false self-distrust which denies the worth of its own talent. It is not humility - it is petty pride, withholding its simple gifts from the hands of Christ because they are not more pretentious. There are men who would endow colleges, they say, if they were millionaires. They would help in the work of Bible study if they were as gifted as Henry Drummond. They would strive to lead their associates into the Christian life if they had the gifts of Dwight L. Moody. But they are not ready to give what they have and do what they can and be as it has pleased God to make them, in His service - and that is their condemnation.
Charles Reynolds Brown
Short Biography and Listing of Papers at Yale.
I want the whole Christ for my Saviour, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship, and the whole world for my mission field.
John Wesley
Wesley Centre
The way to grow in holiness is to be around people more holy than ourselves. We hear their stray comments and absorb their judgment of what's important. We listen to their prayers and find that God is bigger than we'd thought.
Oswald Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest
There's not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs, than with his children, servants and neighbours.
Henry Ward Beecher
Archives
For the early believers koinonia was not the frilly 'fellowship' of church-sponsored bi-weekly outings. It was not tea, biscuits and sophisticated small talk in the Fellowship Hall after the sermon. It was an unconditional sharing of their lives with the other members of Christ's body.
Ron Sider
Biography
In your heart God has excavated an immense space where he has placed a precious treasure. From now on you have the twofold duty of receiving and giving: sharing the treasure of the kingdom you bear within you and stretching the area of your tent for those around you.
Anonymous
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The Hospitality Commands: Building Loving Christian Community By Alexander Strauch Hospitality is a crucial element in building Christian community. Hospitality may well be the best means we have to promote close, brotherly love. It is especially important in churches where people really don't know each other or where relationships are superficial, Sunday morning only relationships. Hospitality is also an effective tool for evangelism. Showing Christ's love to others in a home environment may be the only means Christians have to reach their neighbours for Christ. A Christian home can be a lighthouse for God in a spiritually dark neighbourhood. It also contains study questions and assignments for group study, making it an excellent resource for an adult Sunday school class or small group fellowship. |
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Community: Building Relationships Within God's Family, InterActions Series
Bill Hybels, Kevin Harney In this series of interactions you will grow in your ability to build healthy relationships and learn to develop and nurture lasting community. Leader's Notes for each chapter are included. |
Thomas a Kempis
Thomas a Kempis Biography And Works
The complaint that church is boring is never made by people in awe.
R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Ministries
I love the small group of women with whom I meet weekly to discuss whatever book we have chosen and what it means in our lives and in our understanding of Christ. We do not try to coerce each other, even when we disagree. We try to listen to each other, and to God.Therefore, this group is for me another icon, and one that helps me to keep my eyes and ears open, and my mind ready to move and grow in understanding.
Madeleine L'Engle
Website
More Madeleine L'Engle Materials
I'm not suggesting that we have the power to heal physical conditions with our human fingers. But I do believe there's a healing of the spirit that takes place when we touch others. There's a comfort that can't be found anywhere else but in a touch or a hug. Somehow, God's love and power is shared with others through the simplicity of our physical touch.
Amy Nappa
As to the importance of the children of God opening their hearts to each other, especially when they are getting in a cold state, or are under the power of a certain sin, or are in especial difficulty; I know from my own experience how often the snare of the devil has been broken when under the power of sin; how often the heart has been comforted when nigh to be overwhelmed; how often advice, and great perplexity, has been obtained, - by opening my heart to a brother in whom I had confidence. We are children of the same family, and ought therefore to be helpers one of another.
George Muller
George Muller Foundation
When you can help someone, don't expect your pastor to do it.
Anonymous
Thank God for the commonplace people! They turn our houses into homes; they make life restful and sweet. Jesus loves the commonplace. Here then is a great, comforting thought: we are all loved - the brilliant and the commonplace, the dreamy and the practical.
Dr. John Henry J. H. Jowett
Biography and online Resources
A church full of love, is a church well built up. I had rather see a church filled with love a thousand times, than filled with the best, the highest, and most glorious gifts and parts that any men in this world may be made partakers of...I know the end of all Christ's institutions is to increase love.
John Owen
Biography-Website
The best remedy I know against sudden fits of impatience is a silence that is gentle and without malice. However little one says, pride always comes into it, and one says things that plunge the heart into grief for a whole day after. When one is silent and smiles in a friendly manner, the storm passes over; one smothers one's temper and indiscretion, and so enjoys pure and lasting happiness.
Francis de Sales
Biography And Works
I have a better Caretaker than you and all the angels. He it is who lies in a manger, but at the same time sits at the right hand of God, the almighty Father. Therefore be at rest.
Martin Luther
Biography and Information
A hearse is a poor vehicle to start attending church in.
Anonymous
Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.
Frederick Buechner
Short Biography
Finally, mark this, that you must always make the AMEN strong, never doubting that God is surely listening to you with all grace and saying YES to your prayer. Remember that you are not kneeling or standing there alone, but that all Christendom, all devout Christians are standing there with you and you with them in one unanimous, united prayer which God cannot ignore. And never leave off praying without having said or thought: There now, this prayer has been heard by God; this I know of a certainty. That is what 'Amen' means.
Martin Luther
Biography and Information
We have false expectations of our holy days, of our churches, of each other. We have false expectations of our friends. Jesus did not. He had expectations, but they were not false, and when they were not met, he did not fall apart. He was never taken in by golden calves! Friendship not only takes time, it takes a willingness to drop false expectations, of ourselves, of each other. Friends - or lovers - are not always available to each other. Inner turmoils can cause us to be unhearing when someone needs us, to need to receive understanding when we should be giving understanding.
Madeleine L'Engle
Website
The way we behave toward people indicates what we really believe about God.
Warren W. Wiersbe
Biography and Daily Devotional
No person has a right to lead such a life of contemplation as to forget in one's own ease the service due one's neighbour; nor has any person a right to be so immersed in active life as to neglect the contemplation of God.
Augustine
Works and Biography
To call yourself a child of God is one thing. To be called a child of God by those who watch your life is another thing altogether.
Max Lucado
Upwords
Do deeds of love for Him, to Him, following His steps. Believest thou in Christ? Do the works of Christ, that thy faith may live. Thou who sayest thou abidest in Christ, oughtest so to walk as He walked. If thou seekest thine own glory, enviest the prosperous, speakest ill of the absent, renderest evil to him who injureth thee, this did not Christ.
Edward B. Pusey
Short Biography
Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together. Never do they love one another so well as when they witness the outpouring of each other's hearts in prayer.
Charles G. Finney
Online Works and Biography
Job's friends chose the right time to visit him, but took not the right course of improving their visit; had they spent the time in praying for him which they did in hot disputes with him, they would have profited him, and pleased God more.
William Gurnall
Online Works
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