Quote collection
425 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"With an abstract idea it is possible to enter into a relation of formal knowledge, to become enthusiastic about it, and perhaps even to put it into practice; but it can never be followed in personal obedience. Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ."
"If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ...It does not depend, therefore, on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray."
"Every Christian must be fully Christian by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some spiritual realm."
"Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare. And when this cup You give is filled to brimming with bitter suffering, hard to understand, we take it thankfully and without trembling, out of so good and so beloved a hand. Yet when again in this same world You give us the joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun, we shall remember all the days we lived through, and our whole life shall then be Yours alone."
"Wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith."
"All are called to be what in the reality of God they are already."
"Discipleship never consists in this or that specific action: it is always a decision, either for or against Jesus Christ."
"The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day."
"The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ."
"Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory."
"Then fear will grow pale and fade away, and you will be free, through your faith in our strong and living Savior, Jesus Christ."
"Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity."
"One who loves his community destroys community; one who loves its members builds community."
"There is no way to peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture."
"The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech."
"We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions."
"Every sermon must contain a certain shot of heresy."
"And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful”; and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm."
"God has willed that we should seek and find God's living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings."
"We should find God in what we do know, not in what we don't; not in outstanding problems, but in those we have already solved."