Is God my friend? Yes, but He was my Lord before He was my friend and my friendship with God can only go where His Lordship has already been.
Relationship with God
John Newton
The love I bear Christ is but a faint and feeble spark, but it is an emanation from himself: He kindled it and he keeps it alive; and because it is his work, I trust many waters shall not quench it.
Lysa Terkeurst
You may go through seasons where God seems silent in an area of your life. Don’t let that discourage you. You are not alone. In those hard seasons, remember that your relationship with God is the most important. Keep trusting Him. Keep praying. Keep watching for Him. And remember, God’s Word is Him speaking to us in written form—always available, and never silent.
Philip Yancey
God’s style often baffles me: God moves at a slow pace, prefers rebels and prodigals, restrains power, and speaks in whispers and silence. Yet even in these qualities I see evidence of God’s longsuffering, mercy, and desire to woo rather than compel. When in doubt, I focus on Jesus, the most unfiltered revelation of God’s own self. I learn to trust God, and when some tragedy or evil occurs that I cannot synthesize with the God I have come to know and love, then I look to other explanations.
Francis Chan
The Holy Spirit is a person. He is not an indistinct power or thing. I often hear people refer to the Holy Spirit as an “it”, as if the Spirit is a thing or force that we can control or use this distinction may seem subtle or trivial, but it’s actually a very serious misunderstanding of the Spirit and His role in our lives.
Kris Vallotton
One of the most common reasons we don’t hear God on any kind of regular basis is because we don’t “turn aside” from our daily activities to hear Him. Jeremiah prophesied it like this: “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). The heart of the matter is really the matter of the heart. God wants us to value our relationship with Him, not treat Him like a cosmic bellhop or a casual friend. If my friend calls me, I may see his name come up on my caller ID and think, I’m not in the mood to talk to him today. I’ll call him back later. But if the president of the United States calls me, I will likely have quite a different response to him or her. I like the way Bobby Connor… explains the situation: “We are too familiar with the God we hardly know.”
Chris Frost
The reason God values process is because process requires relationship. By shortcutting the process we actually shortcut relationship and short change ourselves.
Rolland Baker
Jesus is the center of our faith. I keep returning to the center because I want to be centered. Here, clinging closer to Jesus, we are safe, protected,shielded from the storms of life. The storms will come; we will still be challenged, stretched, wrung out. But we will be anchored in Him. Secure, unshaken.
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.
Eugene H. Peterson
The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with Him.