Part of your spiritual journey is shedding other people’s expectations about what your spiritual journey should look like. And shedding your own too, by the way. I am not you. You are not me. We started at different times and places. We will end at different times and places. Our journeys are just that…ours. I’m not sure that many if any of us should be trusted, but I sure do trust the author and finisher. Seek…and you will find. Not because you’re doing it right, but because God plans to be found…in ways and at times that are unique and specific to you. No need to compare with your neighbor. No good in judging your neighbor either. We’re all in different places on our own unique path. It’s not supposed to look the same.
Christian Living
Billy Sunday
If you have no joy, there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.
John White
There are no shortcuts to holiness. There is no easy way to conquer the flesh. Christian character is a matter of growth, not of secrets or formulas. Growth takes time. It also takes the discipline of prayer, of study, of heart searching, of sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s pleading, and of consistent obedience. It must always begin with a renewed thankfulness for the never-ending grace of God, and a sense of being set free repeatedly to a life of holiness.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Your life as a Christian should make non-believers question their disbelief in God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Daily Christian Quote Website
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Eugene H. Peterson
God created the heavens and the earth. Heavens, the realm of the spiritual, and earth, the realm of the physical. It is easy to find instances of people who take one and leave the other. We have specialists in things of the spirit who ignore things of the earth—people who are so heavenly-minded that they do no earthly good. They are full of dreams, visions, pious sighs, and beautiful thoughts, but somehow it never makes any difference in how they treat their friends, conduct their business, or care about the world. And then there are people who are specialists in the material and ignore things of the spirit. They collect money, pursue sensations, play games, or accumulate possessions, but with all their devotion to the material, they never seem to become any better, happier, or more useful. They are selfish, disgruntled, and anxious.
N.T. Wright
The early Church believed that God was energizing them by his own personal presence. The Spirit was given so that individual believers, and still more the believers when joined together for corporate worship, would take up their responsibilities as God’s eyes and ears, his hands and his feet, to do what needed to be done in the world. This is why, from the very start, the early Christians looked out at the world, as Jesus had looked out upon his beloved people Israel, and had seen what God was wanting to do and say, and had prayerfully got on and done and said that themselves. That is what ‘mission’ is all about.
Brennan Manning
I want neither a blood’n’guts religion that would make Clint Eastwood, not Jesus, our hero, nor a speculative religion that would imprison the Gospel in the halls of academia, nor a noisy, feel-good religion that is a naked appeal to emotion. I long for passion, intelligence, and compassion in a Church without ostentation, gently beckoning to the world to come and enjoy the peace and unity we possess because of the Spirit in our midst.
Ray Johnston
Nobody does very well in marriage, in relationships at work, psychologically, or in life in general, if they’re not buoyant. Getting down is part of life. Staying down is what will kill you. If any Christian tells you. He’s never been discouraged, he’s lying. All of us are going to get down. You’re going to get down this year. It’s just going to happen. You may be there right now. But if you stay down, your education doesn’t matter. Your theology doesn’t matter. Your skill level doesn’t matter. Your financial backing doesn’t matter. If you get down and stay down, you will drown.
Jack Frost
Some of the most hurtful, difficult relationships… have had some of the most dramatic impacts on maturity and spiritual growth in my life. Without them, I may never have discovered some of the attitudes of pride, vindication, self-justification, and self-righteousness that I was full of. They helped me see how opinionated I was and how important it was for me to be right all the time in order to prove my self-worth!
George Muller
Our holy faith does not consist in talking. ”Reality, reality, reality,” is what we want. Let us have heart-work; let us be genuine. Brethren! we should live so as to be missed – missed both in the Church and in the world, when we are removed. Oh how rapidly is time hastening on! We should live in such a manner as that, if we were called hence, our dear brethren and sisters might feel our loss, and from their inmost souls exclaim, “Oh that such a one were in our midst again! ” We ought to be missed even by the world. Worldly persons should be constrained to say of us, “If ever there was a Christian upon earth, that man was one.”