Generous Christian Quotes & Sayings

I am not a fairy godmother or anything of that sort, but I hope to give you a happy home and a good education, and to send you out into the world true, brave, generous men, prepared to serve God truly all the days of your life."
~Aunt Persis — Constance Savery

Generosity involved in proactively forgiving other people. This form of generosity, and the positive feelings it evokes in generous forgivers, have been shown by studies to reduce stress, tension, and sadness, and to lead to lower heart rates, lower skin conduction levels, and lower blood pressure. By contrast, those who ungenerously hold grudges are more angry, feel less in control of their lives, and, partly as a result, exhibit symptoms of unhealthy physical conditions. — Christian Smith

God's extravagant generosity toward us compels us to be extravagantly generous toward others. — Andy Stanley

Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They've lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years. — Paul Bowles

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Truly, "the bravest are the tenderest; the loving are the daring." How generous - how truly brave the man who would thus dare death! who would, at the risk of life, perform a truly Christian deed! — Mary Ann Loughborough

St Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, spells this out further in the important eighth and ninth chapters, where he urges some of the Christian communities to be generous to others so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return. — Rowan Williams

Giving, goodness and generosity expresses love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Christian desire is always excessive, generous beyond what is asked. It is a desire not to consume the other, but to let the other be in the perfection they are called to grow into. It is a desire ultimately founded upon God as triune and, as triune, a community of love fore-given and given lavishly. — Graham Ward

A Christian who withdraws into himself, hiding all that the Lord has given him, is not a Christian! I would ask the many young people present to be generous with their God-given talents for the good of others, the Church and our world. — Pope Francis

Rather than leaving generous people on the short end of an unequal bargain, practices of generosity are actually likely instead to provide generous givers with essential goods in life - happiness, health, and purpose - which money and time themselves simply cannot buy. That is an empirical fact well worth knowing. — Christian Smith

The instructive admonitions, "give an account of thy stewardship," - "occupy till I come;" are forgotten. Thus the generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. — William Wilberforce

The Christian life is a thank-you from beginning to end as we ponder what God has done. What an absurdity to think that we could ever bargain with God, as if there were anything we could put on the table. Nothing we can do would ever earn his favor. Yet all is ours for free. And the cross reveals his willingness to forgive not just once, but over and over and over again. How can we repay such extravagant, generous love? We cannot and need not, and the heart's only answer is gratitude. — Rebecca Pippert

In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis. — Frances A. Yates

Actors are the most generous people when it comes to sharing their technique. But if you grew up in a household of carpenters, and you're making a table, everyone would have a different way of doing it. — Christian Camargo

Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man
a noble man
frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never. — Frederick William Robertson

Communicated in the right way, Judeo-Christian philosophy and the religions that uphold it bind a citizenry together in pursuit of a just and generous society. — Bill O'Reilly

You don't have to be rich to be generous. You have to be generous to be generous. — Johnny Hunt

We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp. — Brian D. McLaren

The truth is: We serve a generous God. He delights in giving us opportunities beyond our capabilities. He has promised to equip us, and remain with us through each bend in the road. — David Jeremiah

Whether we are poor or rich or somewhere in between, we honor the Lord with all he has placed in our care. We open our hands to the poor and share the joy of generous Christian giving. — Kimberly Hahn

And what about the question which looms up continually within Christian discussion, about how human behavior as a whole relates to the overwhelming grace of God? This is the point at which the story of the rich young man, and the other scenes in Mark 10, seem to be saying, No: what matters isn't simply keeping a bunch of rules; what matters is character. Not just any old sort of character, either, but a particular sort: the sort Jesus was urging and modeling - the character of patience, humility, and above all generous, self-giving love. And the message of Mark at this point seems to be that you don't get that character just by trying. You get it by following Jesus. — N. T. Wright

Eyes glazed over as the great rice-wine parties in the highlands were recalled, parties that are no longer held since the arrival of the mission. Bario has become a good, clean, upstanding, sober, hard-working Christian community. What a loss for these fun-loving and generous people. — Eric Hansen

A great destiny needs a generous diet ... What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni! — Christian Nestell Bovee

I don't know of a way to have a generous church without a generous pastor. — Johnny Hunt

There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin. — Christian Nestell Bovee

It is only as we remember and embrace His generous grace toward us that we can extend it to others. — David Jeremiah

And for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind. (2) — Daniel Defoe

Because we are rooted in a generous Christian heritage, we are eager to collaborate with people of other faiths, and those seeking the common good. Our networks of dialogue and action thus extend beyond Christian communities to persons of all faiths, as well as to communities that are not themselves faith-based. We welcome allies and allegiances wherever we find common cause ... — Brian D. McLaren

To begin with, you have to grasp the fact that Christian virtue isn't about you - your happiness, your fulfillment, your self-realization. It's about God and God's kingdom, and your discovery of a genuine human existence by the paradoxical route - the route God himself took in Jesus Christ! - of giving yourself away, of generous love which constantly refuses to take center stage. — N. T. Wright

If we should cease to be generous and charitable because another is sordid and ungrateful, it would be much in the power of vice to extinguish Christian virtues. — Roger L'Estrange