Devoted To God Quotes & Sayings

We were constantly hearing it repeated, that we must never again look upon ourselves as our own; but must remember, that we were solemnly and irrevocably devoted to God. — Maria Monk

That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God's devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it]" (Ephesians 3:18 AMPC). A — Daniel Duval

Beware of making a fetish of consistency to your convictions instead of being devoted to God. — Oswald Chambers

Since there is no one like God, therefore all people should fear Him - in other words, dread His power and be devoted to His person. — David Jeremiah

To build a church when a school house is needed is to perpetrate a theft upon education.
To build a church when a hospital is needed is to take from the parched lips of the sick the cup of relief and from the suffering the merciful hand of help.
When the object of man's conduct will be to improve the conditions of his fellow man and not the appeasement of a mythical God, he will become more understanding and more indulgent of the frailties, mistakes, and action of others, and by the same token he will become more appreciative of their efforts.
He will develop a greater consciousness to avoid mistakes and to prevent injury. Life and its living will take on a greater significance, and our efforts and energies will be devoted to creating as much joy and happiness as possible for all living creatures. — Joseph Lewis

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. — Sri Aurobindo

A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump; a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree. PROVERBS 11:28 — Rick Warren

We must serve the Lord, our God with all our heart, with all our soul and in everything be devoted to Him — Sunday Adelaja

An institution theoretically devoted to providing comfort to those in need (the church) is in trouble because it has embraced the same pressure cooker we find everywhere else. — Tullian Tchividjian

One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. — Oswald Chambers

We can say that the people closest to God are teachers who devoted themselves to being beneficial to others. For they are the ones who build the human; they are the ones who build the society. the ones to build the present and future, and the ones to put their stamp on the future are teachers. — M. Fethullah Gulen

41. Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. The Fellowship of the Believers 42. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44. All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47. praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. — Anonymous

The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity, who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted. — George MacDonald

Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.
A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth. — Richard Matheson

There is no emptiness of soul ever for those whose life is devoted to God. — William Lawson

Joseph decided it was safe to come out from hiding and flee Judaea. He devoted his life to keeping the Grail and spreading the Gospel of Jesus. Before he died, Joseph passed the Grail for safekeeping to a group of early Christians in the Roman province of Tarraconensis, who kept and venerated the relic but understood from his teachings that its power was best kept hidden lest evil men exploit it. And generations later the Grail ascended, some would say closer to God, carried by monks to a high peak in Hispania to a mountain that would come to be called Montserrat. — Glenn Cooper

One should never become devoted to a teacher, any more than one should become devoted to a statue of a god. There is only one thing to be devoted to, and that is your mind. — Frederick Lenz

There is no hope for a worldly man if he is not sincerely devoted to God. — Ramakrishna

Reacting to Jesus' pronouncement that remarriage after divorce is adultery, his disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry" (Mt 19:10). From the first moment of its declaration, the teaching Jesus propounded as the will of God was deeply distressing, even to men of good will. Subsequent centuries have shown no slackening in the energy and ingenuity devoted to weakening or nullifying the force of this teaching, and as long as it is expedient to circumvent the doctrine, there will be attempts to explain away its scriptural anchoring. But the doctrine is given as absolute in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and even Paul goes out of his way to insist that, as a messenger of the teaching and not its author, he is not to blame for its rigor: "To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord" (1 Cor 7:10). There can be no serious doubt that the teaching is dominical. — Robert Dodaro

Who can pray this request and mean it? Only he who looks at the whole of life from this point of view. Such a man will not fall into the trap of superspirituality, so concentrating on God's redemption as to disregard his creation; people like that, however devoted and well-meaning, are unearthly in more senses than one, and injure their own humanity. Instead, he will see everything as stemming ultimately from the Creator's hand, and therefore as fundamentally good and fascinating, whatever man may have made of it (beauty, sex, nature, children, arts, crafts, food, games, no less than theology and church things). Then in thankfulness and joy he will so live as to help others see life's values, and praise God for them, as he does. Supremely in this drab age, hallowing God's name starts here, with an attitude of gratitude for the goodness of the creation. — J.I. Packer

They devote themselves every day to what Jesus taught: to prayer, to fellowship, to breaking of bread together. They shared what they owned; they served each other's needs. Ethnic barriers came down as they became known by the way they loved each other. It's a different community, devoted to a Jesus way of life with God. — John Ortberg

I liked the way the Jewish religion seemed, on the whole, to have devoted so much energy and art to finding loopholes in its crazy laws; I like what this seemed to me to imply about its attitude toward God, that dictatorial and arbitrary old fuck with his curses and his fiats and his yen for the smell of burnt shoulder meat. — Michael Chabon

My parents aren't hippies. I'm North as in the North Pole. Unfortunately. My brother is Nicholas, and my sister is Noelle.
Wow. God. That's
About a hundred times worse than your name.
I was going to say devoted. Festively devoted. — Stephanie Perkins

Human cruelty took the form of a pact with the deity. A solemn oath was made to kill everything, in which people forbade themselves any display of reason or compassion. A city or a land was devoted to destruction and it was believed an insult to God if one did not observe the abominable oath. — Ernest Renan

A Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his own; he is the servant of God, and therefore ought to be wholly devoted to Him. — William Carey

Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief. The lords prayer is less than 50 words long, and 6 of those words are devoted to asking god not to lead us into temptation. — Aldous Huxley

To be diligent means to be serious and devoted to the work of God — Sunday Adelaja

God has virtually been made an illegal subject in that state institution most devoted to the shaping of the minds and values of our people - the public schools. — Pat Swindall

Above all else, he was afire with heavenly love, unassumingly patient, devoted to unceasing prayer, and kindly to all who came to him for comfort. He regarded as equivalent to prayer the labour of helping the weaker brethren with advice, remembering that he who said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God', also said, 'Love thy neighbour'. His self-discipline and fasting were exceptional, and through the grace of contrition he was always intent on the things of heaven. Lastly, whenever he offered the sacrifice of the Saving Victim of God, he offered his prayers to God not in a loud voice but with tears welling up from the depths of his heart. — Bede

Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his Glory. — William Law

22 a "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 a but if b your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 c "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and d money. [6] — Anonymous

They are strong wives, devoted moms, and beautiful women, trying to find a way to earn and keep their wings because God knows, it's not easy being married to the military. — L.M. Fields

Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word. — Martin Luther

We are, all of us, utterly committed and deeply devoted to our "style", our "way", our "approach to life." We have absolutely no intention of giving it up. Not even for love. So God creates an environment where we have to. It's called marriage. — John Eldredge

No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). He speaks frequently and unambiguously to economic issues. He says, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" and "Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation" (Luke 6:20, 24). — Richard J. Foster

I would urge us to be not too certain of our accustomed ways of looking at Genesis, and to open ourselves to the wisdom of the God-bearing men of the past who have devoted so much intellectual effort to understanding the text of Genesis as it was meant to be understood. These Holy Fathers are our key to understanding Genesis. — Seraphim Rose

Alternatively, anyone who favors Intelligent Design in lieu of evolution might pause to wonder why God devoted so much of His intelligence to designing malarial parasites. — David Quammen

God stands ready to allocate his power to all who are radically dependent on Him and radically devoted to making much of Him. — David Platt

Oh that God would give me the thing which I long for! That before I go hence and am no more seen, I may see a people wholly devoted to God, crucified to the world, and the world crucified to them. A people truly given up to God in body, soul and substance! How cheerfully would I then say, 'Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.' — John Wesley

The preacher must be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion. He is devoted to God. His aim, aspirations, ambition are for God and to God, and to such prayer is as essential as food is to life. — E. M. Bounds

I cannot say for sure when my reliable ideas about God began to slip away, but the big chest I used to keep them in is smaller than a shoebox now. Most of the time, I feel so ashamed about this that I do not own up to it unless someone else mentions it first. Then we find a quiet place where we can talk about what it is like to feel more and more devoted to a relationship that we are less and less able to say anything about. — Barbara Brown Taylor

GOD will not permit that a soul which desires to be devoted entirely to Him should take other pleasures than with Him: that is more than reasonable. — Brother Lawrence

All too frequently in today's world, a Christian is defined on the basis of the horizontal relationship between oneself and "neighbor" rather than the vertical relationship with Deity. In this distorted view of Christianity, our relationship with others becomes more important than loving God, having faith in Christ, and being a devoted disciple of His gospel. If God isn't first, sooner or later He will simply be a nice embellishment to our lives. When we put God first, we are empowered to love each other better, even if our love is not at first understood. The trouble is that too often we ignore things that should be first in our lives and go after secondary things, thereby losing both. — Camille Fronk Olson

Once sin creeps its way into your life, it's hard to turn around. You can't pull yourself back up on your own, and certainly not while you're surrounded by people who are helping you dig the hole. This is why we all need Christ. We can't do it on our own. I can't do it on my own, and that's why I've devoted my life to serving God, or at least trying to. I need Him. Michael Sweet can't do this alone. And in 1990, I needed God more than ever to help pull me out of the abyss - but in order for that to happen, I needed to make some drastic changes. God will only help you if you're willing to yield to Him and turn your life around. — Michael Sweet

Let not then any one deceive you, as indeed you are not deceived, inasmuch as you are wholly devoted to God. — Ignatius Of Antioch

I'm the devoted slave of anyone who doesn't claim to have attained dining with God at every way station. Many inns must be left behind before you reach your home. — Rumi

The key to praying with power is to become the kind of persons who do not use God for our ends but are utterly devoted to being used for His ends. — John Piper

I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be devoted to feeding and clothing the body. — Lucy Stone

The first lady of Uganda is a devoted evangelical and beloved by the faith community. At an evangelical conference in Argentina, one minister said, "Mama Janet has given us the keys to Africa." She has done that by creating a nation that has embraced a Dominionist form of Christianity that believes that Christians have a God-given right to rule the world. — Roger Ross Williams

And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do. — Paul The Apostle

Men and women in all parts of the world have a desperate need to take time from their demanding routines of everyday life and to quietly observe God's miracles taking place all around them. Think of what would happen if all of us took time to look carefully at the wonders of nature that surround us and devoted ourselves to learning more about this world that God created for us! — M. Russell Ballard

When we are grasped by the vision of a center of value and power more luminous, more inclusive and more true than that to which we are devoted, we initially experience the new as the enemy or the slayer - that which destroys our "god." Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "Religion is the transition from God the Void to God the Enemy, and from God the Enemy to God the Companion." Only with death of our previous image can a new and more adequate one arise. — James W. Fowler

Now our whole activity is devoted to God, and our whole life, since we are bent on progress in divine things. — Origen

When the natural power of vision is devoted to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the power of perceiving God's will and the whole life is kept in simplicity. — Oswald Chambers

The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur'an. It teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace. — George W. Bush

God takes full responsibility for the life wholly devoted to Him. — Charles Stanley

Glorious God stated: "Whosoever shows enmity to someone devoted to Me, I shall be at war with him, etc." — Al-Nawawi

For a Christian to return to a Jewish territoriality is to deny fundamentally what has transpired in the incarnation. It is to deflect appropriate devotion to the new place where God has appeared in residence,
namely, in his Son. This explains why the New Testament applies to the person of Christ religious language formerly devoted to the Holy Land or the Temple. He is the new spatiality, the new locale where God may be met. — Gary M. Burge

What hinders me from hearing is that I am taken up with other things. It is not that I will not hear God, but I am not devoted in the right place. I am devoted to things, to service, to convictions, and God may say what He likes but I do not hear Him. — Oswald Chambers

Rather than remain a sealed jar, she sought only to pour herself out to others. Everything she did mirrored her faith. It was as though every waking hour of the day she was devoted to pleasing her God by serving others. This God that she worshiped consumed her. It didn't ask for a brief visit to a temple, or a small votive offering of food or coin, or a few prayers every now and then. This God wanted all of her. — Francine Rivers

to the child, the Father all for the child. We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted Thine, will have the power in faith to speak out the Our too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the — Andrew Murray

May the Lord our God be with us as He was with our ancestors. May He not abandon us or leave us h 58 so that He causes us to be devoted G to Him, i to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commands, statutes, and ordinances, which He commanded our ancestors. — Anonymous

Suddenly, the voice of Yahweh broke Joshua out of his weeping. "Get up, Joshua. You sound more like the pathetic Israelites wishing they could go back to Egypt than their leader Moses in pleading for them." Joshua was terrified. He did not get up. "Joshua, get up, will you." Joshua got up. "Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant and taken some of the devoted things of herem from Jericho. They have lied and taken them for their own possession. Therefore the people of Israel have become herem, and devoted to destruction. I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things in your midst." "Who, my lord and god?" said Joshua. "Who is it who has taken these devoted items? — Brian Godawa

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense his own already ... It is like a small child going to its father and saying, 'Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.' It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. — C.S. Lewis

But they all stood beneath the cross, enemies and believers, doubters and cowards, revilers and devoted followers. His prayer, in that hour, and his forgiveness, was meant for them all, and for all their sins. The mercy and love of God are at work even in the midst of his enemies. It is the same Jesus Christ, who of his grace calls us to follow him, and whose grace saves the murderer who mocks him on the cross in his last hour. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God ...
Your devoted child in J.C.
M. Teresa — Brian Kolodiejchuk

Beware of being obsessed with consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. The important consistency in a saint is not to a principle but to the divine life. It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him. — Oswald Chambers

What you complain of in yourself, comprises the best marks of grace I can offer. A sense of unworthiness and weakness, joined with a hope in the Savior, constitutes the character of a Christian in this world. But you want the witness of the Spirit. What do you mean by this? Is it a whisper or a voice from heaven, to encourage you to believe that you may venture to hope that the promises of God are true, that he means what he says, and is able to make his word good? Your eyes are opened, you are weary of sin, you love the way of salvation yourself, and love to point it out to others, you are devoted to God, to his cause and people. It was not so with you once. Either you have somewhere stolen these blessings, or you have received them from the Holy Spirit. — Tony Reinke

God wants to be seen on earth through His devoted servants — Sunday Adelaja

We are a heathen company, more devoted to the customs and the Holy days than to the Holiness itself. We find more pleasure in the song and dance of God than in the piety. — Jim Crace

The reason we feel disillusioned about our life and faith is not because Christianity isn't fulfilling, but because we've stopped thinking and acting like a Christian - someone who has sold all she has for the pearl of great value, someone who considers everything a loss compared to the greatness of knowing Jesus Christ. Without this opportunity to suffer we will, like Lance, "go crazy," becoming undisciplined robots who think that relief is found in leisure and irresponsibility when in fact it comes from being wholly devoted to God's kingdom. — Gary L. Thomas

being attached to any one philosophy or religion
dwelling on moot differences and wanting to fit in
despite the path all are led Home in time
following an alternative pathway is certainly no crime
Krishna, Buddha, Allah or Zohar Kabbalah
devoted nonviolently, one is led to Nirvana
Hindu Sages, Zen Masters or Christian Mystics
many tongues, but identical truth spoken from their lips
mentioning Self or no-self or God is Father or Mother
according to their culture emphasizing one method or another
allness vs. nothingness, meditation vs. prayer
devotion in practice is all you should care
when Truth reveals itself you're beyond all conception
then not a single man-made word will hold any traction — Jarett Sabirsh

Think of the last thing you prayed about - were you devoted to your desire or to God? Was your determination to get some gift of the Spirit for yourself or to get to God? "For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him" (Matthew 6:8). The reason for asking is so you may get to know God better. "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4). We should keep praying to get a perfect understanding of God Himself. — Oswald Chambers

All things being at God's disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction. — John Calvin

Once I was liable to the same mistakes, but, thanks to God, no longer ... '
Well, isn't it just as worthwhile to have devoted and applied yourself to this goal as to have read or written fifty pages? — Epictetus

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. — Anonymous

For how can some idea of God come into your mind without your immediately thinking (since you are His creation) that by the right of creation you are subject to His rule? That your life ought to be devoted to His service? That all that you plan or say or do should be related to Him? If this is so, it clearly follows that your life is wickedly corrupt unless it is ruled in obedience to His holy will. — John Calvin

St. Triduana devoted herself to God in a solitary life at Rescobie in Angus (now Forfarshire). While dwelling there, a prince of the country having conceived an unlawful passion for her is said to have pursued her with his unwelcome attentions. To rid herself of his importunities, as a legend relates, Triduana bravely plucked out her beautiful eyes, her chief attraction, and sent them to her admirer. Her heroism, it is said, procured for her the power of curing diseases of the eyes. — Michael Barrett

If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left. — Charles Dickens

That we should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of GOD; which would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him. — Brother Lawrence

I cannot at the same time accept the glory and give God the glory ... Glorifying God means being occupied with and committed to His ways rather than preoccupied with and determined my own way. It is being so thrilled with Him, so devoted to Him, so committed to Him that we cannot get enough of Him! — Charles R. Swindoll

Aunt Wellington, of whom Valancy stood in abject awe, would tell her about Olive's new chiffon dress and Cecil's last devoted letter. Valancy would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended.
And Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would. — L.M. Montgomery

If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men. — Oswald Chambers

I hardly ever so longed to live to God and to be altigether devoted to Him. i want to wear out my life in His service, and for His Glory!! — David Brainerd

Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God's sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others' lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God's testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others. — Oswald Chambers

Hunting because of the 2004 Hunting Act. This is not a good advertisement for legislation. Yet, to appreciate the full force of the sham, recall, in wonder, the great ruptures between town and country, left and right, liberals and animal-welfare nuts, that preceded the ban. The march of 400,000 wax-jacketed pro-hunt protesters through London, the 700 hours of parliamentary debates devoted to the issue, the threat from Labour backbenchers to oppose all government business unless the ban was brought - it was madness. Even at the time, it seemed so: a dilettantish, illiberal, class-infused blot on what was otherwise a British golden age, for politics and the economy - as even the ban's reluctant main architect, Tony Blair, later admitted. A man not given to regrets, the then prime minister considered the ban one of his biggest. "God only knows," he reflected, what the point of it was. — Anonymous

I've discovered it is not sufficient simply to try to take time for quietness but that I must, with all diligence, make time. Whatever keeps me from prayer, solitude, and the Bible, however good it appears, is my enemy if I am to be God's devoted friend and follower. — Tommy Barnett

For under moonlight the forms of the earth were liquid and they passed in or out of his body who ventured, in solitude, some gesture of communication with those forms. Especially under moonlight, especially when his own breath was the purest liquid. Thus Aziz Khan. Sometimes almost bewildered as a bird, compelled to flick from the sides of his body, not knowing what it was he did, never questioning his own actions but performing them without realising that, ardent though was his faith in Islam, the god he was most devoted to was the cosmos. — Zulfikar Ghose

The true Calvinist is someone whose whole life is devoted to the glory of God. — James Montgomery Boice

Much is now being said about evangelism; but before we get effective evangelism, we have to get effective evangelists. Evangelism is useless unless it is the work of one devoted to God, willing and glad to suffer all things for God, penetrated by the attractiveness of God. New machinery, adaptations and adjustments, are not the first need ... but more devoted, adoring, sacrificial souls. — Evelyn Underhill

People pour themselves into their own doctrines, and God has to blast them out of their preconceived ideas before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ. — Oswald Chambers

See to whom Jesus is drawing near, three kinds of people: to those who make peace with him, to those who are devoted to God, and to those who are kind to their neighbors. — Thomas Aquinas

When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him ... It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward ... Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time ... the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life. — Leo Tolstoy

The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body. — Carl Jung

If we are truly devoted to doing God's will, pain and pleasure won't make any difference to us. — Brother Lawrence

There is something you can't fix, can't heal, or can't escape, and all you can do it trust God. Finding ultimate refuge in God means you become so immersed in his presence, so convinced of his goodness, so devoted to his lordship that you find even the cave is a perfectly safe place to be because he is there with you. — John Ortberg

Palgolak was a god of knowledge ... He was an amiable, pleasant deity, a sage whose existence was entirely devoted to the collection, categorization, and dissemination of information ... Palgolak's library ... did not lend books, but it did allow readers in at any time of the day or night, and there were very, very few books it did not allow access to. The Palgolaki were proselytizers, holding that everything known by a worshipper was immediately known by Palgolak, which was why they were religiously charged to read voraciously. But their mission was only secondarily for the glory of Palgolak, and primarily for the glory of knowledge, which was why they were sworn to admit all who wished to enter into their library. — China Mieville

Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them, and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires, are never lost. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God. — Thomas Merton

Without prolonged moments of adoration, of prayerful encounter with the word, of sincere conversation with the Lord, our work easily becomes meaningless; we lose energy as a result of weariness and difficulties, and our fervor dies out. The Church urgently needs the deep breath of prayer, and to my great joy groups devoted to prayer and intercession, the prayerful reading of God's word and the perpetual adoration of the Eucharist are growing at every level of ecclesial life. — Pope Francis