Faith Of A Child Quotes & Sayings

Practice acceptance on yourself so you can be kinder with your child. Practice nonjudgmental awareness of your life so you can save your loved ones from the cruelty of your own impossible standards and your hard-hearted disappointment. Practice greater faith and lesser blame. Take this blink of time when you are still stumbling at the gate, still awkward at the tasks, to turn down the sound and tumble freely in a state of grace. Life — Karen Maezen Miller

Paul makes it clear enough that it takes more than an Abrahamic pedigree to be a child of God. To be a child of God requires faith in Christ. — Martin Luther

There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them. — Amity Shlaes

God's revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child's heart. — E. M. Bounds

When later he [St. Joseph] carried the Child in his arms, acts of loving faith welled up constantly in his heart. It was a worship that pleased our Lord more than that which he receives in heaven. Picture to yourself Saint Joseph, adoring the little Child in his arms as his God. He tells of his readiness to die for Christ, of all his plans to promote Christ's glory, and to win more souls to his love. No lover builds more scintillating plans for his loved one than a saint. — Peter Julian Eymard

Whenever a woman strengthens the faith of a child, she contributes to the strength of a family - now and in the future. — The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

The most important gift you can give your child is to help them begin a walk of faith with the God of the universe. From the moment your children arrive in your home, you are teaching them how to see the world, what to consider important, what to seek, what to love. As a mother, you have the opportunity to form your home and family life in such a way that God's reality comes alive to your children each day. — Sally Clarkson

Adults who think that children must be manipulated for their own good have developed the attitude of a controlling parent who lacks faith in himself, the child, or humanity or himself. — Carl Rogers

It was only when I started to reconnect with my inner child four years into recovery (I was over four years clean and sober off drugs and alcohol) and started to attend a love addiction support group that I was able to trust again and have faith that there are just as many honest and trustworthy women as there are women who are not interested in monogamy.
However, it was after ten years of continuous recovery that I started to really dig deep into my childhood grief work and was finally able to reclaim my inner child. I started to take risks again. On a practical level, you can't get very far in this world if you resent and distrust the opposite sex and, sadly, many men and women suffer in this area. Rather than celebrating the opposite sex, they fear them. Empathy and self-compassion has helped me in this area too. — Christopher Dines

Why the Romans, Father?" I asked him one afternoon.
"Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead," he answered. — Judith Merkle Riley

Atheists as well as theists unconsciously observe society's convention that we must be especially polite and respectful to faith. And I never tire of drawing attention to society's tacit acceptance of the labelling of small children with the religious opinions of their parents. Atheists need to raise their own consciousness of the anomaly: religious opinion is the one kind of parental opinion that - by almost universal consent - can be fastened upon children who are, in truth, too young to know what their opinion really is. There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents. Seize every opportunity to ram it home. — Richard Dawkins

Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn. — Henry David Thoreau

It's hard to trust your child to find his or her own path, especially when we're told everyday by professionals that children must fit into rigid boxes. We all want to give our kids the best opportunities we can, which is why it feels like such a disservice if we don't push them in the "right" direction. Celebrating you children's passions rather than redirecting them, especially when those passions don't line up neatly with a checklist for future success, can feel like jumping off a cliff. It certainly did for me. But that leap of faith is necessary if your kids are going to fly. — Kristine Barnett

Child, do you know where trult great courage comes from, the kind of courage that will never back down?'
I said, "Faith."
"And love," she said. "faith is a kind of love you know. Love of what is unseen but certain. Love makes us strong and brave. — Dean Koontz

We can commit ourselves fully to anything - a discipline, a life's work, a child, a family, a community, a faith, a friend - only with a poverty of knowledge, an ignorance of result, self-subordination, and a final forsaking of other possibilities. If we must make these so final commitments without sufficient information, then what can inform our decisions? — Manny Howard

After hearing much from his patients about alleged faith-healing, a Minnesota physician named William Nolen spent a year and a half trying to track down the most striking cases. Was there clear medical evidence that the disease was really present before the 'cure'? If so, had the disease actually disappeared after the cure, or did we just have the healer's or the patient's say-so? He uncovered many cases of fraud, including the first exposure in America of 'psychic surgery'. But he found not one instance of cure of any serious organic (non-psychogenic) disease. There were no cases where gallstones or rheumatoid arthritis, say, were cured, much less cancer or cardiovascular disease. When a child's spleen is ruptured, Nolen noted, perform a simple surgical operation and the child is completely better. But take that child to a faith-healer and she's dead in a day. — Carl Sagan

I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and a proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand. — Joan Didion

I want to have the eyes of an adult to see the world as it is, but I more desperately want to have the heart of a child to make certain that I never forget what it could be. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Mass madness, if it's going to last more than a week or two, requires mass media or mass government or the synergistic efforts of both. It isn't just that the pretense that a man can marry a man will put religious believers at a disadvantage. It's that it must set that ordinary tribeswoman in its sights, regardless of her religion. It's not just her faith she must renounce. She must renounce her common sense. She must not be allowed even to think that the pretense is insane. She must be re-educated to believe that two fingers are three fingers, or that the sun rises in the west, or that the child in her womb is really a rock, or that excrement is nutritious, or anything else that no sensible person would ever come to discover on her own. — Anthony M. Esolen

There is nothing
no, nothing
innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deep sea. — Charles Dickens

Families who lovingly accept the difficult trial of a child with special needs are greatly to be admired. They render the Church and society an invaluable witness of faithfulness to the gift of life. In these situations, the family can discover, together with the Christian community, new approaches, new ways of acting, a different way of understanding and identifying with others, by welcoming and caring for the mystery of the frailty of human life. People with disabilities are a gift for the family and an opportunity to grow in love, mutual aid and unity ... If the family, in the light of the faith, accepts the presence of persons with special needs, they will be able to recognize and ensure the quality and value of every human life, with its proper needs, rights and opportunities. — Pope Francis

More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world
a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward ...
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. — Barack Obama

I am led irresistibly to this conclusion: food may be life, but the source of power is faith, not food. And who is more capable of a total act of faith than a child? — Stephen King

Faith is not something you have to get. It's something that you, as a bornagain child of God, already have. Act on it by releasing it to God. That's when your healing starts! — Oral Roberts

Is letting our children watch TV a form of child abuse? If our children grow up knowing everything about Britney Spears and nothing about nature or faith, about anything, is that not a form of child abuse? — Patch Adams

The biggest surprise
and it came as a great revalation
was understanding that whatever happens, no matter how catastrophic or wonderful, it's just another patch. There are times when something special happens: a marriage, graduation, or the birth of a child. There's no denying it's a glorious patch. It might even be a red patch
the one that pulls the whole quilt together. But I couldn't stop repeating, It's just another patch. — Sue Bender

Some people say it is a shame. Others even imply that it would have been better if the baby had never been created. But the short time I had with my child is precious to me. It is painful to me, but I still wouldn't wish it away. I prayed that God would bless us with a baby. Each child is a gift, and I am proud that we cooperated with God in the creation of a new soul for all eternity. Although not with me, my baby lives. — Christine O'Keeffe Lafser

Placing the burden on the individual to break down doors in finding better education for a child is attractive to conservatives because it reaffirms their faith in individual ambition and autonomy. But to ask an individual to break down doors that we have chained and bolted in advance of his arrival is unfair. — Jonathan Kozol

Go home and say to yourself, 'I am a wayward, foolish child. But He loves me! I have disobeyed and grieved Him ten thousand times. But He loves me! I have lost faith in some of my dearest friends and am very desolate. But He loves me! I do not love Him, I am even angry with Him! But He loves me! — Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent or a child is a rich blessing. Such love nurtures and sustains faith in God. Such love is a source of strength and casts out fear. Such love is the desire of every human soul. — David A. Bednar

Swallows The peppered sky chimes in the key of swallows. Arcing northward from Central America, dual citizens of the torn world, though native to the unity, wonderful yet I find myself dispossessed of wonder. Like the birds, we all sleep under bridges of one kind or another. When the core competency of a culture is strategic judgmentalism many things go rancid into the mean and meaningless. The routines set in, the procedures, the long, slow death-drone of sameness. The occasional lone hawk feathers up a bit of mild novelty here and there, then gets wing-clipped by celebritism, homeless in a cage. If my faith was real, I would abandon my luxurious pursuit of a mythopoetic identity and go fetch water for the dying. We are each and all the dispossessed if one child stands at our gates unwelcome. — James Scott Smith

Faith and power, he had come to believe, were interchangeable. Was the final truth even simpler? That no act of faith was possible until you were rudely pushed out into the screaming middle of things like a newborn child skydiving chutelessly out of his mother's womb? — Stephen King

I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful
as a child is
for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance. — Faith Baldwin

I was born into a Christian family and brought up in a Lutheran church. My faith has been the center point of my life, really, since I was a child, but at 16 years of age, I fully surrendered my life over to Christ. At that point, as a teenager, I began to grasp the concept of Christ's true love and forgiveness. — Michele Bachmann

Once, when I was puzzled to know why there were so many religions, he said: "There is one universal religion, Helen- the religion of love. Love your heavenly father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as you ever can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to heaven." And his life was a happy illustration of this great truth. In this noble soul love and widest knowledge were blended with faith that had become insight. He saw God in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens and consoles. — Helen Keller

I really like to please people, and I think it's a symptom of being an only child. — Paloma Faith

Our faith is what inspires us to reach out and volunteer to help others. As a child my parents taught me the biblical charge, "To whom much is given, much is expected," and faith guides me that way. And I believe, especially in this day and age, it's vital that we provide our children with a foundation from which to build their lives - one that gives them a sense of purpose. — Gretchen Carlson

You know how the little child feels towards his father. You may have an axe in your hand, or a sword;--the child is not afraid, for he knows you are a father. He will seize hold of it and play with it as with a feather, for he can not dream of danger or fear, so long as the instrument is in his father's hand. He believes that you love him; and knows that you will not hurt him, so that even a sword in your hand awakens no fear in his bosom. So of God. You are no more afraid when God plays with the forked lightning than when he paints his bow on the vaulted sky in the stillness of approaching sunset. This is faith. It trusts God amid the storm as in the calm, assured that He is forevermore the same and always infinitely good and wise. — Anonymous

No man can have anything better after faith than a woman of righteous character, loving and child-bearing. And no man can have anything worse after unbelief than a sharp-tongued woman of bad character. — Umar

It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men's theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother's influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children's needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother's influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child's basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother's loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother's influence and teaching in the home - and how apparent when neglected! — Ezra Taft Benson

Let us think of the human race as if it were a single human being," Ibn Rushd proposed. "A child understands nothing, and clings to faith because it lacks knowledge. The battle between reason and superstition may be seen as mankind's long adolescence, and the triumph of reason will be its coming of age. It is not that God does not exist but that like any proud parent he awaits the day when his child can stand on its own two feet, make its own way in the world, and be free of its dependence upon him. — Salman Rushdie

That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent. — Graham Greene

Live simply and without thinking too much, like a child with his father. Faith without too much thinking works wonders. The logical mind hinders the Grace of God and miracles. Practice patience without judging with the logical mind. — Elder Paisios Of Mount Athos

Spare your father's white hair; spare the tender years of your child, offer a sacrifice for the prosperity of the emperor'. I replied 'no'. 'Are you a Christian?' asked Hilarian. And I answered 'yes I am'. — Vibia Perpetua

Have you been listening to the music that many young folks are hearing today? Some of it is nerve-jamming in nature and much of it has been deliberately designed to promote revolution, dope, immorality, and a gap between parent and child. And some of this music has invaded our Church cultural halls.

Have you noticed some of our Church dances lately? Have they been praiseworthy, lovely, and of good report? (Article of Faith 13.) "I doubt," said President McKay, "whether it is possible to dance most of the prevalent fad dances in a manner to meet LDS standards. — Ezra Taft Benson

Few, in the days of early youth,
Trusted like me in love and truth.
I've learned sad lessons from the years;
But slowly and with many tears;
For God made me to kindly view
The world that I was passing through.
And all who tempt a trusting heart
From faith and hope to drift apart,
May they themselves be spared the pain
Of losing power to trust again!
God help us all to kindly view
The world that we are passing through! — Lydia Maria Francis Child

Child of God, if you would have your thought of God something beyond a cold feeling of His presence, let faith appropriate Christ. — Frederick William Robertson

In July, 1853, it pleased the Lord to try my faith in a way in which before it had not been tried. My beloved daughter and only child, and a believer since the commencement of the year 1846, was taken ill on June 20th. "This illness, at first a low fever, turned to typhus. On July 3rd there seemed no hope of her recovery. Now was the trial of faith. But faith triumphed. My beloved wife and I were enabled to give her up into the hands of the Lord. He sustained us both exceedingly. But I will only speak about myself. Though my only and beloved child was brought near the grave, yet was my soul in perfect peace, satisfied with the will of my Heavenly Father, being assured that He would only do that for her and her parents, which in the end would be the best. She continued very ill till about July 20th, when restoration began. "On — George Muller

Patience means accepting that which cannot be changed and facing it with courage, grace, and faith. It means being "willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father." Ultimately, patience means being "firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord" every hour of every day, even when it is hard to do so. In the words of John the Revelator, "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and ... faith [in] Jesus. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common - human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, exploitation of women, racial apartheid, debtors' prisons, the killing of the elderly and incurably ill - have been banned, in large part because of a gospel stream running through cultures influenced by the Christian faith. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast. Many — Philip Yancey

Each boy's socialization is unique. Even two siblings close in age do not learn identical values. Culture is thus transmitted on a continuum. In a culture that is fairly religious, for example, some children will grow up to be devout believers; others will reject the faith completely; and most will fall in with the average level of religious observance for their community. Where a child will land on this continuum partly depends on how strong a set of messages he or she receives from the social environment and partly on his or her personal predispositions. The family rebel, for example, might become an atheist, while the child who is most focused on pleasing the parents might become even more religious than they are. — Lundy Bancroft

Credulity as a character trait is encouraged in every child who grows up with religious training, which invariably insists on the virtue of blind faith and the sinfulness of doubting and questioning. — Barbara G. Walker

Independance grows out of a child's faith that her source of security will always be there when she needs it. — Kathleen Huggins

God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed-for son. Abraham built an altar, put firewood upon it, and trusted Isaac up on top of the wood. His murdering knife was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan: God was only joking after all, 'tempting' Abraham, and testing his faith. A modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma. By the standards of modern morality, this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse, bullying in two assymetrical power relationships, and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defence: 'I was only obeying orders.' Yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions. — Richard Dawkins

If you feel sincerely sorry on account of your sins, and believe that Christ is able and willing to forgive you, the work is done. You may trust with all the confidence of a child who confesses his fault, and casts himself into his father's arms. This is faith; a simple trust in the power and willingness of the Father to forgive, for the sake of what Christ the Son has done. — Samuel I. Prime

She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. [ ... ] This naive combination in her of the child and the thinking woman, this childlike and absolutely genuine thirst for truth and justice, and absolute faith in her impulses
all this lighted up her face with a fine glow of sincerity, giving it a lofty, spiritual beauty, and one began to understand that it was not so easy to gauge the full significance of that beauty which was not all at once apparent to every ordinary unsympathetic eye. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On the eve of our marriage, there might have been good reason to really ask, "What is marriage?" Is it the impression and expectation that this man can make me happy - can be a savior that helps me forget the tragedy of my parents' failed relationship as well as my own as his child? What is certain is that marriage was not to be a commitment or covenant. — H. Kirk Rainer

Besides it's as nothing to the death of a child. He doesn't mind telling you his faith was sorely tried. There's no grief like a parent's. — Eimear McBride

The relationship between love and appropriate action is demonstrated repeatedly in the scriptures and is highlighted by the Savior's instruction to His Apostles: 'If ye love me, keep my commandments' (John 14:15). Just as our love of and for the Lord is evidenced by walking ever in His ways (see Deuteronomy 19:9), so our love for spouse, parents, and children is reflected most powerfully in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds (see Mosiah 4:30)."Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent, or a child is a rich blessing. Such love nurtures and sustains faith in God. Such love is a source of strength and casts our fear (see 1 John 4:18). Such love is the desire of every human soul."We can become more diligent and concerned at home as we express love - and consistently show it. — David A. Bednar

I recognized that Christianity had taught me that sacrifice is the way of life. I forgot the neighbor who raped me, but I could see that when theology presents Jesus' death as God's sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive.

But what if this is not true? What if nothing, or very little, is saved? What if the consequence of sacrifice is simply pain, the diminishment of life, fragmentation of the soul, abasement, shame? What if the severing of life is merely destructive of life and is not the path of love, courage, trust, and faith? What if the performance of sacrifice is a ritual in which some human beings bear loss and others are protected from accountability or moral expectations? — Rebecca Ann Parker

Mark 9 records a very interesting interchange between Christ and His disciples after some of them were unable to cast a demon from a tormented child. I am convinced that the argument they had with some of the educated, dignified teachers of the law diminished their faith so drastically, they were unable to do one of the very things they had been empowered by Christ to do. If you want to be full of faith, don't argue with a legalist! Love them. Serve side-by-side with them if God wills. Don't judge them. But understand that unbelief is highly contagious. — Beth Moore

Kovacs to a female believer in New Revelation: ..I'm calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband's angle, he's a man, he's got everything to gain from this crapshit. But you? You've thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it's soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you'll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we've won for ourselves to come back and try again. You'll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you'll condemn her to the same fucking thing — Richard K. Morgan

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil's fools. — Martin Luther

Liar," I mumble, swimming in nausea and coughing up blood. My arms and legs feel weighted, and sticky streams ooze out of the gouges in my skin. "You left me."
"I'm still here, aren't I?" Morpheus guides me down beside Ivory and exposes her birthmark, touching it to mine. Heat flashes along my body. "I've always believed in your power. For the queen I saw in you even as a child ... for the woman you could never see in yourself. My faith is as unchanging as my age. — A.G. Howard

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong. — Richard Dawkins

I would not send my child to a vacation Bible school in 99.9% of the Baptist churches in America. Have some teacher that doesn't even understand anything about the gospel of Jesus Christ, ask those little children, 'How many of you want to go to Heaven?' and damn most of them! Harden their heart to the gospel with some silly profession of faith because it was a silly proclamation of the gospel! It brought no genuine repentance, it brought no faith; it's no different than the Roman church that baptizes every infant that is born. — Paul Washer

It takes the faith of a child to follow Christ and the courage of a man to follow through on that faith and become a true servant. — Faith Blum

A child does not try to know the mother, it simply has faith in her. In the same way, having faith in the Divine is the source of the greatest strength. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Like the death of a crone in one twin bed as a child is born in the other. Have faith, old heart. What is living, anyway, but dying. — Sharon Olds

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other's powers in a curious sort of homage - heard in adult life decades down the line - to a small child's awe at their own parents' apparently miraculous capacities. To — Alain De Botton

But know that to serve God is nothing else than to serve your neighbor and do good to him in love, be it a child, wife, servant, enemy, friend ... If you do not find yourself among the needy and the poor, where the Gospel shows us Christ, then you may know that your faith is not right, and that you have not yet tasted of Christ's benevolence and work for you. — Martin Luther

We can put it this way: the man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not even look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and rests on that alone. He has ceased to say, "Ah yes, I used to commit terrible sins but I have done this and that." He stops saying that. If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith. Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, "Yes I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin, yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ and God has put that to my account. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

It is a masterpiece of the devil to make us believe that children cannot understand religion. Would Christ have made a child the standard of faith if He had known that it was not capable of understanding His words? — Dwight L. Moody

Have we this day grace enough to make trenches into which the divine blessing may flow? Alas! we too often fail in the exhibition of true and practical faith. Let us this day be on the outlook for answers to prayer. As the child who went to a meeting to pray for rain took an umbrella with her, so let us truly and practically expect the Lord to bless us. Let us make the valley full of ditches and expect to see them all filled. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life. Jesus listened. In John's Gospel we are told that Jesus was moved with the deepest emotions (11:33) ... The gospel portrait of the beloved Child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to His emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of Man did not scorn of reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive antennae to which He listened carefully and through which He perceived the will of His Father for congruent speech and action. — Brennan Manning

... of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines ... Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred ... As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is ... a faith that ... has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. — David Bentley Hart

So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says 'Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.' And the artist either says 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessicarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. — Madeleine L'Engle

Like Nadia, I wrestled with the evangelical tradition in which I was raised, often ungracefully. At times I've tried to wring the waters of my first baptism out of my clothes, shake them out of my hair, and ask for a do-over in some other community where they ordain women, vote for Democrats, and believe in evolution. But Jesus has this odd habit of allowing ordinary, screwed-up people to introduce him, and so it was ordinary, screwed-up people who first told me I was a beloved child of God, who first called me a Christian. I don't know where my story of faith will take me, but it will always begin here. That much can never change. — Rachel Held Evans

The Figurehead of American Public Education Who Prefers Private Religious Education (!)All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith. — Rod Paige

Dear Lord, we know that You are a Father and that you love your Son. [...] We know how deep Your love is, that You know if even a hair falls from our head. Lord, we plead with You for this child. Be with the doctors that will take care of him. [...] Keep him in Your care, Lord, we pray. Keep him healthy. Let us enjoy him again. Amen. — Carolyne Aarsen

In all the things that really matter, we are one. Love and faith, trust and empathy, family and friendship, sunsets and songs of awe: in every wish born in our humanity we are one. Our humankind, at this moment in our destiny, is a child blowing on a dandelion, without thought or understanding. But the wonder in the child is the wonder in us, and there's no limit to the good we can do when human hearts connect. It's the truth of us. It's the story of us. It's the meaning of the word God: we are one. We are one. We are one. — Gregory David Roberts

He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy. — Virginia Woolf

Our lives are also measured in three dimensions: Spirit, mind, and body. However, the greatest of these is Spirit, because to refuse the Spirit is to choose death. "For example, the body of a man may be shackled and jailed. Still, his Spirit praises God continuously. Another one may be materially rich and free, but his oppressed Spirit curses his miserable existence. A child's mind may be humble, but glorious in love and faith, while a genius may be too proud to appreciate the humility and simplicity that fruitful faith requires. And regarding the body, even beautiful people are oftentimes unhappy and unfulfilled. It is the Spirit of Love that fulfills us. — Kenneth E. Nowell

social infancy, regarded the legends of their faith as a child reads a fairy tale, credulous of all that is supernatural in the agency--unconscious of all that may be philosophical in the moral. It is true, indeed, that dim — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

When I was a child of six or seven my father would show me the chapter in the prophet Isaiah where the name Immanuel is found; more than once he spoke to me of the faith he put in me. — Immanuel Velikovsky

For a stalk to grow or a flower to open there must be time that cannot be forced; nine months must go by for the birth of a human child; to write a book or compose music often years must be dedicated to patient research ... To find the mystery there must be patience, interior purification, silence, waiting ... — Pope John Paul II

I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul listened intensely; for from within were heard Murmurings whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things, Of ebb and flow, and ever enduring power, And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless Agitation. — William Wordsworth

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

Not because you are religious, but because I myself have experienced and felt it keenly, I will tell you that in such moments one thirsts like "parched grass" for faith and finds it precisely because truth shines in misfortune. I will tell you regarding myself that I am a child of the age, a child of nonbelief and doubt up till now and even (I know it) until my coffin closes. What terrible torments this thirst to believe has cost me and still costs me, becoming stronger in my soul, the more there is in me of contrary reasonings. And yet sometimes God sends me moments in which I am utterly at peace. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We may live in an age when everything has to be "radical" and "revolutionary." For Luther the most radical thing one could do was to learn the basics of the faith with the simple trust of a little child. — Carl R. Trueman

It seems as you'll never know the rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me.'

'No,' said Silas, 'no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trusten until I die. — George Eliot

And on bad days when you feel like you're stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere, with no earth beneath you to sink your roots in, and no breeze to push your life forward, reach out to all those who ever gave you love, and believe with the faith of a child. — Sandra Kring

Young men, terminate, I beseech you, in your own experience, the sad divorce which has too often existed between intellect and piety. Take your stand, unswerving, heroic, by the altar of truth; and from that altar let neither sophistry nor ridicule expel you. Let your faith rest with a child's trust, with a martyr's grip, upon the truth as it is in Jesus. — William Morley Punshon

The gospel by which individuals come to personal faith, and so to that radical transformation of life spoken of so often in the new Testament, is the personalizing of the larger challenge just mentioned: the call to every child, woman, and man to submit in faith to the lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus and so to become, through baptism and membership in the body of Christ, a living, breathing anticipation of the final new creation itself — N. T. Wright

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

I believe in the support of the public school as one of the cornerstones of American liberty. I believe in the right of every parent to choose whether his child shall be educated in the public school or in a religious school supported by those of his own faith. — Al Smith

It is part of God's plan for us that Christ shall come to us in everyone; it is in their particular role that we must come to know him. He may come as a little child, making enormous demands, giving enormous consolation. He may come as a stranger, so that we must give the hospitality to a stranger that we should like to give to Christ ... — Caryll Houselander

Love is a leap of faith. There are no guarantees. Whether it's a lover or a child or a dog, you love because you have no choice. So figure out what you want, — Wendy Tyson

If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission and furnish him with his orders: Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth and, diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child, settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting, worry and fret and madden the worn and tried mother who watches by the child and humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. — Mark Twain

Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality: only what is really confessed is really forgiven. Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father's love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God's child. In each prayer to the Father I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love. 'And — Andrew Murray