When we deny our pain, losses, and feelings year after year, we become less and less human. We transform slowly into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them. Sad to say, that is the fruit of much of our discipleship in our churches. But when I began to allow myself to feel a wider range of emotions, including sadness, depression, fear, and anger, a revolution in my spirituality was unleashed. I soon realized that a failure to appreciate the biblical place of feelings within our larger Christian lives has done extensive damage, keeping free people in Christ in slavery.
Fellowship
Beth Moore
Satan loves isolation. He wants to draw the believer out of healthy relationships into isolated relationships and out of healthy practices into secretive, unhealthy practices. He purposely woos us away from those who might openly recognize the seduction and call his hand on it. Let’s beware of anything that separates us from godly people.
Kate Lore
When you debate a person about something that affects them more than it affects you, remember that it will take a much greater emotional toll on them than on you. For you, it may feel like an academic exercise. For them, it feels like revealing their pain only to have you dismiss their experience and sometimes their humanity. The fact that you might remain calmer, under those circumstances, is a consequence of your privilege, not increased objectivity on your part. Stay humble.
Dan McCollam
What if church is supposed to be less like a lecture hall and more like a spiritual gymnasium where we come and workout the spiritual faith and muscle required to do the works of Him who sent us?
Nancy Boyd-Sherman
There is an amplified encounter in the gathering of faith filled hearts that is not reproducible on your own. However, there is an intensified intimacy in the quiet of our personal and solitary rendezvous that is inhibited by the presence of others. People of faith need both to thrive.
Josh McDowell
March 12, 2020
Rather than viewing Scripture as a book that merely teaches us how to believe and how to act, Jesus shows us that everything is rooted in how we ought to love. By distilling all the doctrinal and behavioral truths of the Bible down to a simple two-part statement—love God and love each other—the Lord of the universe showed us that the dual boundaries of what we believe and how we behave are intended to be understood and experienced within the framework of deep, loving relationships with him and with one another.
Josh McDowell
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Charles Finney
February 28, 2020
When there are dissensions, and jealousies, and evil speakings among professors of religion, then there is great need of a revival. These things show that Christians have got far from God, and it is time to think earnestly of a revival.
Banning Liebscher
February 23, 2020
The spirit of independence has separated too many people from community, and the enemy’s darts are raining down on them. It’s not really that complicated. If it’s raining and you don’t want to get wet, then jump under an umbrella.
A. W. Tozer
Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.
Lysa TerKeurst
January 26, 2020
If they make the choice to walk over me rather than walk with me, I’ll have to love them from afar.