Quotes & Sayings About Covenant Life

The choice for devoted Latter-day Saint women is not just to simply go forward and try to be happy and create a fulfilling life. As women of covenant our goal is to go forward and develop stron testimonies and nurturing and caring hearts that will prepare us for our roles as mothers in eternity. With that end in mind, I determined to go on happily, to become 'anxiously engaged in a good cause' (D&C 58:27), and to believe that the rest would take care of itself. — Kristen McMain Oaks

For all that Christ did is thine. That perfect righteousness which Jesus wrought out, when through His stainless life He kept the law and made it honourable, is thine, and is imputed to thee. Christ is in the covenant. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The doctrine of the carnal Christian[32] has destroyed more lives and sent more people to hell than you can imagine! Do Christians struggle with sin? Yes. Can a Christian fall into sin? Absolutely. Can a Christian live in a continuous state of carnality all the days of his life, not bearing fruit, and truly be Christian? Absolutely not ! - or every promise in the Old Testament regarding the New Testament covenant of preservation has failed, and everything God said about discipline in Hebrews is a lie (Heb 12:6)! "A tree is known by its fruit" (Luk 6:44). — Paul David Washer

The only unforgivable crime is to cut short the experiment of one's own life before its natural end. To do so is a weakness and a pity - for the experiment of life will cut itself off soon enough, in all our cases, and one may just as well have the courage and the curiosity to stay in the battle until one's eventual and inevitable demise. Anything less than a fight for endurance is cowardly. Anything less than a fight for endurance is a refusal of the great covenant of life. — Elizabeth Gilbert

When we fight sin, we don't do so with our own unction. We fight sin with the weapons that grace gives us: the blood of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and the promise of the new covenant, that Christ has paid for our shortcomings in obedience to the law by his perfect life imputed to us. That fight is the first component of grace-driven effort. — Matt Chandler

Worthy partakers of the sacrament are in harmony with the Lord and put themselves under covenant with Him to always remember His sacrifice for the sins of the world, to take upon them the name of Christ, and to always remember Him, and to keep His commandments. The Savior covenants that we who do so shall have His Spirit to be with us and that, if faithful to the end, we may inherit eternal life. — David B. Haight

We are a covenant-making people. We make covenants at the waters of baptism. We renew those covenants each week as we worthily partake of the sacrament. We take upon ourselves the name of Christ; we promise to always remember Him and to keep His commandments. And in return He promises us that His Spirit will always be with us. We make covenants as we enter into the temple, and in return we receive the promised blessings of eternal life-if we keep those sacred covenants. — Sheldon F. Child

The result of these trends is that today the courts, unrestrained by
higher law and disdainful of majority will, are the dominant force in American politics. As law professor Russell Hittinger writes, in Casey the Court has laid down a "new covenant" by which it agrees to give citizens the right to decide for themselves the meaning of life, to decide what is right and wrong, to do as they please. In exchange for this guarantee, the Court asks only that the people accept the Court's assumption of ultimate power.3S Or as Notre Dame's Gerard Bradley puts it, the Court has said: "We will be your Court, and you will be our people. — Charles W. Colson

This bicovenantal nature of God's plan for redemption is important in theonomy's argument that there is one moral law revelaed in Scripture and this one moral law governs all men. Theonomy makes a clear distinction between the moral law and ceremonial aspects of God's law. This distinction is *covenantal* in nature, and explains how theonomy maintains basic continuity in biblical ethics from the Old to New Testaments, while advocating discontinuity between the Testaments in terms of ceremonies, certain aspects of public worship, and other select forms of covenant life. — William O. Einwechter

This has been the vicious cycle of evangelical revivalism ever since: a pendulum swinging between enthusiasm and disillusionment rather than steady maturity in Christ through participation in the ordinary life of the covenant community. The regular preaching of Christ from all of the Scriptures, baptism, the Supper, the prayers of confession and praise, and all of the other aspects of ordinary Christian fellowship are seen as too ordinary. — Michael S. Horton

What is covenant church membership? It's the idea that commitment in a local church is a two-way street. The believer commits to attend, pray for, uphold the doctrines of, and generally promote the mission of a particular congregation. Meanwhile, the congregation as a whole agrees to teach, pray for, encourage, and generally hold every member accountable to live a Christ-like life. While covenant church membership is implied in a number of passages, it's also an implicit part of the Bible's storyline: God ordained a people for himself and as God's people the church is to live out, together, all the commandments of Christ. — Anonymous

In the Bible, when God made a covenant with Abraham, He removed Abraham from the pagan world. The pagan system was such that if you were born poor, you were poor all of your life, and if you were born rich, you were rich all of your life.
However, in their covenant, God said to Abraham, "You are going to increase and prosper." This became the blessing, the rare and dramatic change that took place in Abraham's lifetime, making Abraham different from the pagans. The pagans did not understand prosperity. They lived from hand to mouth and knew no other way of life. — Celso Cukierkorn

We find these joys to be self evident: That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving "village." And to pursue a life of purpose.
We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human. To recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution.
We commit ourselves to peaceful ways and vow to keep from harm or neglect these, our most vulnerable citizens. As guardians of their prosperity we honour the bountiful Earth whose diversity sustains us. Thus we pledge our love for generations to come. — Raffi Cavoukian

As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. "Life is a journey and a struggle," she had said. "We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation." I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it. — Wangari Maathai

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. — Various

I promise you, if you will heed the voice of warning of the Holy Ghost and will follow His direction, you will be blessed with the ministering of angels, which will add wisdom, knowledge, power, and glory to your life. Remember, the Lord is bound by solemn covenant to bless our lives according to our faithfulness. — L. Tom Perry

Every man who truly loves a woman, and every woman who truly loves a man, hopes and dreams that their companionship will last forever. But marriage is a covenant sealed by authority. If that authority is of the state alone, it will endure only while the state has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction ends with death. But add to the authority of the state the power of the endowment given by Him who overcame death, and that companionship will endure beyond life if the parties to the marriage live worthy of the promise. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should — Terry Pratchett

Walk in your path of integrity with steadfast steps, and show that you are invincibly strong in the strength which confidence in God alone can confer. Thus you will be delivered from anxious care, you will not be troubled with evil tidings, your heart will be fixed, trusting in the Lord. How pleasant to float along the stream of providence! There is no more blessed way of living than a life of dependence upon a covenant-keeping God. We have no care, for he careth for us; we have no troubles, because we cast our burdens upon the Lord. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

For resurrection faith means courage to revolt against the "covenant with death" (Isa. 28:15), it means hope for the victory of life which shall swallow up and conquer life-devouring death. ~ p.14 — Jurgen Moltmann

Biblical teaching called for cohesive families whose happiness was based on the bonding of one female and one male in a durable relationship of covenant fidelity in love, committed to protect the life and well-being of their offspring. Fatherless children were the strongest argument against hedonic sexual experimentation. — Thomas C. Oden

As his counterpart, the woman completes or fills out a man's life, making him a larger person than he could have been alone, bringing into his frame of reference a new feminine dimension from which to view life that he could have known in no other way. Then, too, he also brings to his wife a masculine perspective that enlarges her life, making her a fuller, more complete person than she could have been apart from him. This marriage union by covenant solves the problem of loneliness not merely by filling a gap, but by overfilling it. More than mere presence is involved. The loneliness of mere masculinity or femininity is likewise met. — Jay E. Adams

Biblically defined marriage is a man and a woman for life, and so anything different than that is not God's ideal whether it be polygamy, whether it be divorce, whether it be a marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. The ideal would be a man and a woman under a covenant of God's blessing. — Max Lucado

. . . the symptoms and effects of the life of faith are totally unspectacular. . . .true covenant faith is expressed by concern for others. . . .this concern is expressed by loving actions that promote the next person's well-being and by verbal expressions of prayer for the next person. Block, Book of Ruth, p. 612. See also James 2:17. — Daniel I. Block

In the New Testament the basic command of old covenant life, 'Be holy as I am holy', now means, 'Become like Jesus.' God involves himself in this work as the triune Lord: the Father commands it; the Son has died to provide the resources for it; the Spirit indwells us in order to effect it in our lives. As Augustine famously prayed, God commands what he wills and gives what he commands. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

We came to see that the Great Awakening was actually a reawakening of a deep national desire for the Covenant Way of life. This yearning did not die with the passing of the Puritan era, but only went dormant. It was a desire which would produce a new generation of clergymen who would help to prepare America to fight for her life. — Peter Marshall

How pleasant to float along the stream of providence! There is no more blessed way of living than a life of dependence upon a covenant keeping God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Everything you do is connected to who you are as a person and, in turn, creates the person you are becoming. Everything you do affects those you love. All of life is covenant.
Imbedded in the idea of prayer is a richly textured view of the world where all of life is organized around invisible bonds or covenants that knit us together. Instead of a fixed world, we live in our Father's world, a world built for divine relationships between people where, because of the Good News, tragedies become comedies and hope is born. — Paul E. Miller

Forty years ago, at the dawn of molecular biology, the French biologist Jacques Monod wrote his famous book Chance and Necessity, which argues bleakly that the origin of life on earth was a freak accident, and that we are alone in an empty universe. The final lines of his book are close to poetry, an amalgam of science and metaphysics: The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose. Since — Nick Lane

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 z Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but a our sufficiency is from God, 6who has made us sufficient to be b ministers of c a new covenant, not of d the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but e the Spirit gives life. — Anonymous

Prosperity is not a promise, it's a covenant. You don't pray to get prosperity, you give to get it. Prosperity is not measured by how much you get but how much you give. — McWilton Chikwenengere

Gods were like possums.
You could go your whole life without seeing one, but once you found one of them, you found the whole freaky family. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?"
Absently he replied, "I was, once."
"And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?"
... Unconsciously, he clenched his fist over his ring. "I live."
"Another?" Foamfollower returned. "In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more
with one word you will make me weep. — Stephen R. Donaldson

Let us look upward and look inward, in the faith of the Son and the Spirit, and God will show us that every word written in the Book of the Covenant is not only true, but that it can be made spirit and truth within us, and in our daily life. This can indeed be. — Andrew Murray

The Joseph in you must rise to the challenges of life and turn them into gold. — Ikechukwu Joseph

But in life we are motivated to step from a place of hope and into a place of faith and from there move into obedience. Obedience is a sign that we really believe His covenant is true. For instance, do you know that tithing is a test to see how closely we believe God. — Kerry Kirkwood

To be a leader, you do not need a crown or robes of office. All you need to do is to write your chapter in the story, do deeds that heal some of the pain of this world, and act so that others become a little better for having known you. Live so that, through you, our ancient covenant with God is renewed in the only way that matters: in life. Moses' last testament to us at the very end of his days, when his mind might so easily have turned to death, was: choose life. — Jonathan Sacks

I can't find the compulsory mutilation of the genitals of children a subject for humor ... It's designed to repress sexual pleasure ... The full excision, not just the snip but the full mandatory covenant is fantastically painful, leads to trauma, leads to the dulling of the sexual relationship. And can be, in itself life-threatening at that moment. We have records, I can show them to you, of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in the United States of boy babies who died or had life-threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice. — Christopher Hitchens

His intercession was not only solidarity but identification with us: he bears all of us in his Body. And thus his whole life as a man and as Son is a cry to God's heart; it is forgiveness, but forgiveness that transforms and renews. I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me; he suffered and suffers for me; he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought, not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant. — Pope Benedict XVI

However, "the doers of the law" is not quite an empty set since Jesus fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of his coheirs. So we are saved by works after all, but by Christ's rather than by our own. It is not merely verse here and there that will be persuasive on this point, but the broader exegetical conviction that Christ has assumed Adam's representative role, fulfilling all righteousness (i.e., the covenant of works) and dispensing it to his coheirs in a covenant of grace. Otherwise, Christ's active obedience is suspended in midair. In the absence of Christ's active obedience in fulfilling the covenant of works, Wright substitutes the imperfect but Spirit-led faithfulness of the believers' whole life lived. P.28 — Michael S. Horton

We made a sacred covenant to follow the Creator's life plan at all times, which includes the responsibility of taking care of this land and life for His divine purpose. We have never made treaties with any foreign nation, including the United States, but for many centuries we have honored this Sacred Agreement. Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way. — Thomas Banyacya

Tim stared at the steel rod in the gloved hand. "Is that a magic wand?"
The Covenant Man appeared to consider. "I suppose so. Although it started life as the gearshift of a Dodge Dart, America's economy car, young Tim."
"What's America?"
"A kingdom filled with toy-loving idiots. It has no part in our palaver. — Stephen King

Those who have hardened, have a covenant with Death. Those who remain gentle are conjoined with Life. — Laozi

The Turk and the devils break through without any trouble and lay everything waste, because God does not want His people to trust in anything else but Himself. This is the reason why men have acknowledged this confidence in the Creator through the Son, through whom He has received us into favor and made a covenant with us, and this covenant is to have the confidence that our life depends on God alone, against all the snares and might of Satan and the world. If He wants me destroyed, He has no need to send soldiers, but if not, defiance to all the Turks, death, and the devil in hell! Therefore — Martin Luther

This question lies at the heart of the debates over justification: Is the promissory covenant subsumed under (or absorbed into) the covenants of law, resulting in a covenatal nomism? Or are the two covenant always distinguished and, on the point of justification, to be treated in fact as antithetical means of inheriting eternal life? P.22 — Michael S. Horton

God has a plan for the conquest of all things by His covenant people. That plan is His law. It leaves no area of life and activity untouched, and it predestines victory. To deny the law is to deny God and His plan for victory. — Rousas John Rushdoony

Sophie, you must be careful," he said. "Quentin is in the rush of exhilaration that sometimes overtakes people new to God, and you mustn't rush into a commitment until you know he is a man to whom you can be loyal in good times and bad, for better and for worse. You will be joining your life with his for all time. You will walk alongside him into whatever valleys or sorrows come his way, agreeing to help shoulder the burdens. His money and power cannot release you from these obligations. That is the nature of the marriage covenant. — Elizabeth Camden

Marriage. The roots are deep. The covenant is solid. The love is sweet. Life is hard. And God is good. — John Piper

There is no more blessed way of living, than the life of faith based upon a covenant-keepin g God - to know that we have no care, for He cares for us; that we need have no fear, except to fear Him; that we need have no troubles, because we have cast our burdens upon the Lord, and are conscience that He will sustain us. — Charles Spurgeon

Simon had been sent by Barabbas to find out if the Nazarene was a fellow revolutionary, a self-proclaimed messiah, or something else. Simon's heart had been strangely moved by this stranger and he was still trying to figure him out. But the Rabbi remained a mystery to him. The centurion had asked him to heal his servant and Jesus replied that he had not seen such great faith in all of Israel. That was shocking enough, to attribute such goodness to a filthy, unclean stranger to the covenant. But then he said that many such people would come to the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom - in other words, Israelites - would be thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. As an Essene scribe at Qumran, Simon had spent his whole life in rituals of cleanness and separation. — Brian Godawa

Secondly, the proper counsel and intention of God in sending his Son into the world to die was, that thereby he might confirm and ratify the new covenant to his elect, and purchase for them all the good things which are contained in the tenure of that covenant, - to wit, grace and glory; that by his death he might bring many (yet some certain) children to glory, obtaining for them that were given unto him by his Father (that is, his whole church) reconciliation with God, remission of sins, faith, righteousness, sanctification, and life eternal. — John Owen

Under reverent, patient care, the wild seed gradually relinquishes its protective husk and entrusts its reproductive life to human hands.(thus) this sacred law and covenant with Mother Earth; Respectful care brings abundance. If you take, you must give back-Return the gift. — Marilou Awiakta

The disobedience of the first Adam was the judicial ground of our condemnation; the obedience of the last Adam is the legal ground on which God alone can justify the sinner. The substitution of Christ in the place of His people, the imputation of their sins to Him and of His righteousness to them, is the cardinal fact of the Gospel. But the principle of being saved by what another has done is only possible on the ground that we are lost through what another did. The two stand or fall together. If there had been no covenant of works there could have been no death in Adam, there could have been no life in Christ.
Arthur Walkington Pink, The Divine Covenants (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), 33 — Arthur W. Pink

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might. — Rumi

A covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered. When God enters into a covenantal relationship with men, he sovereignly institutes a life-and-death bond. A covenant is a bond in blood, or a bond of life and death, sovereignly administered. — O. Palmer Robertson

When God makes a covenant with us, God says: 'I will love you with an everlasting love. I will be faithful to you, even when you run away from me, reject me, or betray me.' In our society we don't speak much about covenants; we speak about contracts. When we make a contract with a person, we say: 'I will fulfill my part as long as you fulfill yours. When you don't live up to your promises, I no longer have to live up to mine.' Contracts are often broken because the partners are unwilling or unable to be faithful to their terms.
But God didn't make a contract with us; God made a covenant with us, and God wants our relationships with one another to reflect that covenant. That's why marriage, friendship, life in community are all ways to give visibility to God's faithfulness in our lives together. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

My concern with this is not about who owns the trademark. If a label is used chiefly to lionize "us" and demonize "them," we'd be better off without it. Rather, my concern is that the richness and breadth of Reformed faith and practice are being reduced to a few doctrines. In the process, even those doctrines lose much of their supporting rationale. In fact, their meaning changes at crucial points. For example, I believe that the doctrine of election is inextricably bound up with covenant theology and with the covenantal life that is shaped in the New Testament by the means of grace. As I have argued, even "eternal security" is different from the doctrine of perseverance. — Michael S. Horton

In Greek the word for covenant is also the word for testament. Every proper covenant eventually becomes a testament. Before the person who enacted the covenant dies, it is the covenant. After he dies, that covenant becomes a testament. A testament in today's terms is a will ... We have a will full of hundreds of bequests. My heavenly Father has given me all these bequests, and they have been covenanted to me as a testament. That is the new testament. We have the New Testament of the Bible in our hands, but this is not the reality. The reality of all the hundreds of bequests in the New Testament is Christ. Without Christ, the Bible is empty, so the real testament, the real will, is Christ. Christ is our title deed, and this title deed is in our spirit as the all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling, consummated Spirit. — Witness Lee

No jot, iota, or tittle of the temple rites is otherwise than uplifting and sanctifying. In every detail the endowment ceremony contributes to covenants of morality of life, consecration of person to high ideals, devotion to truth, patriotism to nation, and allegiance to God. — James E. Talmage

Whenever you feel that you are weak, you must call for God's faithfulness, saying, "O God, You are faithful. I am weak, but You must make me strong according to Your Word." We are all living under the covenant with God's faithfulness as the sure sign that the flood will not come. This is the church life. — Witness Lee

All the other covenants show God's love and transmit God's love, but it is only in the marital covenant that the love is so real and powerful that it communicates life. — Kimberly Hahn

In his latest book Marc Ellis asks the defining question for Jewish life today: 'Can injustice, represented by Jewish domination of Jerusalem, be at the heart of the covenant?' Ellis's answer is that the covenant of Israel with God has been shattered by the creation of a state at the expense of Palestinian life in the land. It can only be renewed by a new ethic and practice of justice that reconcile these two people, who have become irrevocably linked together in the land, either for good or for ill. — Rosemary Radford Ruether

It is in the ordinances of the temple that we are placed under covenant to Him ... .[If] we will enter into our covenants without reservation or apology, the Lord will protect us. We will receive inspiration sufficient for the challenges of life. — Boyd K. Packer

Brother, the act of faith, by which you accept and enter this life in the New Covenant, is not commonly an act of power, but often of weakness and fear and much trembling. — Andrew Murray

This kingdom of God life is not a matter of waking up each morning with a list of chores or an agenda to be tended to, left on our bedside table by the Holy Spirit for us while we slept. We wake up already immersed in a large story of creation and covenant, of Israel and Jesus, the story of Jesus and the stories that Jesus told. We let ourselves be formed by these formative stories, and especially as we listen to the stories that Jesus tells, get a feel for the way he does it, the way he talks, the way he treats people, the Jesus way. — Eugene H. Peterson

This is my commandment," the Saviour says, "That ye love one another, as I have loved you." He sometimes spoke of commandments, but the love, which is the fulfilling of the law, is the all-including one, and therefore is called His commandment--the new commandment. It is to be the great evidence of the reality of the New Covenant, of the power of the new life revealed in Jesus Christ. — Andrew Murray

Be we reminded that the gathering of Israel is not the ultimate endpoint. It is but the beginning. The true endpoint is eternal life. It is that God's children, in a covenant relationship with Him either by lineage or by adoption, will be able to dwell with Him and their families forever. That is God's glory-eternal life for His children! — Russell M. Nelson

Marriage in the Church changes all of us who are believers. This is why marriage, along with the sacrament of Holy Orders, is called a social sacrament. It changes everyone's life, not just the lives of those who enter into a particular marriage covenant. Everyone therefore has a stake in the success of a marriage. — Francis George

We've been given the covenant community because we need each other, and together we'll be more mature, experience more life, and know more joy than we ever would apart from one another. — Matt Chandler