God Reaching Us Quotes & Sayings

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ. — John Piper

Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us. — Christian Wiman

The mission that God has given us is a highly relational mission. Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" John 20:21. Jesus came into this world, lived in obscurity for 30 years and then spent three years relationally investing in twelve men, whose charge was to do the same thing by relationally investing in others. This strategy has worked for 2000 years each of us has been touched by someone reaching out to and investing in us relationally, thus advancing the gospel and the mission of God. — Gary Rohrmayer

Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he's also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. — Barack Obama

The entrepreneur of the world handles difficult situations with stress, worry and frustration relying only on the knowledge they have access to. The entrepreneur with God's favor has an omniscient presence living inside and is blessed to have answers and solutions to tough problems flow directly to them. Having the favor of God resting on you is a wonderful position to be in, CEO! He has strategically placed us in this entrepreneurial army, not only to defeat the enemy and his advances, but to also go above-and-beyond, reaching success that few obtain. — V.L. Thompson

It's not words, so much, just my mind going blank and thoughts reaching up up up, me wishing I could climb through the ceiling and over the stars until I can find God, really see God, and know once and for all that everything I've believed my whole life is true, and real. Or, not even everything. Not even half. Just the part about someone or something bigger than us who doesn't lose track. I want to believe the stories, that there really is someone who would search the whole mountainside just to find that one lost thing that he loves, and bring it home. — Sara Zarr

This may be the most valuable and the most challenging thing we can learn from Calvin's ecclesiology today: that the church is not something that we form of our own accord. It is not a product of our reaching out to God, but a gift of God reaching out to us.107 — Michael S. Horton

Torcida told me a creation story of his people and why they consider Mount Gorongosa sacred. In early times, he said, God lived with his people on the mountain. Humans were giants then and not afraid to ask God for special favors. In a drought they would say, Bring us water. The Creator, growing tired of their constant importuning, moved his residence up to heaven. Still the giant people persisted, reaching up from the mountain. At last, to put them in their place, God decided to make them small. Thereafter life became a great deal more difficult - and so it has been to this day. — Deborah Blum

The plan God has doesn't just involve us as individuals, but also the people who share part of our lives. Jesus was never alone; there were always people around him. He had friends, followers, and people He could depend on. Never be afraid, someone wants to listen in your time of need. Reaching our hands out, especially when we're hurting has the power to heal our hearts. — Ron Baratono

Whitefield came to a realization that would have far-reaching effects. He saw that the Bible didn't teach that we must work harder at becoming perfect and holy, but that we must instead throw ourselves on God's mercy. Moral perfection wasn't the answer: Jesus was the answer. Jesus had been morally perfect and we weren't supposed to save ourselves - we were supposed to ask him to save us. — Eric Metaxas

I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, unite, and love. I'd like to think God's hands are a bit like Grace's man hands - gentle but big, busy, and tough. God's hands are those of a creator - an artist who molded and shaped the universe out of a void, who hewed matter from nothingness. — Cathleen Falsani

Meister Eckhart, the thirteenth-century spiritual teacher, summed it all up beautifully: "Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. — Eckhart Tolle

Remember that God is everywhere, all around us, constantly reaching out to us, even in the most unlikely situations. — The Irish Jesuits

Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time: and not only time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections, not only temporal affections but the very taint and smell of time. — Meister Eckhart

If we choose Jesus as our model, we simultaneously choose his own model, God the Father. Having no appropriative desire, Jesus proclaims the possibility of freedom from scandal. But if we choose possessive models we find ourselves in endless scandals, for our real model is Satan. A seductive tempter who suggests to us the desires most likely to generate rivalries, Satan prevents us from reaching whatever he simultaneously incites us to desire. — Rene Girard

When we think of the height of God's infinity we should not despair of His compassion reaching us from such a height; and when we recall the infinite depth of our fall through sin we should not refuse to believe that the virtue which has been killed in us will rise again. For God can accomplish both these things: He can come down and illumine our intellect with spiritual knowledge, and He can raise up the virtue within us and exalt it with Himself through works of righteousness. — Maximus The Confessor

Most of us forget to take time for wonder, praise and gratitude until it is almost too late. Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large; it is a God-ward going. — Faith Baldwin

The only way to know God, the only way to know the other, is to listen. Listening is reaching out into that unknown other self, surmounting your walls and theirs; listening is the beginning of understanding, the first exercise of love.

None of us listen enough, do we, dear? We only listen to a fraction of what people say. It's a wonderfully useful thing to do. You almost always hear something you didn't expect. — Tony Hendra

When people pray, they're choosing to believe there's a good, loving God reaching out to us, listening to our prayers, and meeting with us. — Ed Cyzewski

The teaching that diminishes the urgency for reaching all the unreached peoples of the world with the only news that can save them is a teaching that opposes people. Listen to these severe words spoken by the apostle Paul about what it means to "oppose all mankind." He says that those who killed the Lord Jesus "drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved" (1 Thess. 2:14-16). This is what people do who tell us that the nations don't need to hear about Jesus in order to be saved. They oppose all mankind. Oh, how we need to let the Bible define what love does! — John Piper

Let us protect our children; and let us not allow them to grow up into emptiness and nothingness, to the avoidance of good hard work, to introspection and analysis without deeds, or to mechanical actions without thought and consideration. Let us steer them away from the harmful chase after material things and the damaging passion for distractions ... Let us educate them to stand with their feet rooted in God's earth, but with their heads reaching even into heaven, there to behold truth. — Friedrich Frobel

Sometimes to touch us, God touches someone that's close to us. This is what opens our eyes to the fact there is a higher power than ourselves, whether we call it God or not. — Ron Hall

It happens to all of us," I concluded that Easter Sunday morning. "God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes. — Elisabeth Elliot

God, Eva. Your cunt loves my cock." Reaching for the headboard, Gideon stretched over me, my legs trapped between us. Fully exposed and tilted back for his pleasure, I was helpless to do more than watch as he straightened his hips and sank the last few inches of his penis into me. The sound that left me was a harsh wail, the pleasure so intense it hurt. Distantly, I heard Gideon curse, felt his powerful body shudder. "You good?" he bit out, his teeth grinding. I tried to catch my breath, my lungs expanding as much as they were able. "Eva." He growled my name. "Are. You. Good?" Unable to speak, I reached for his hips, my fingers catching in his boxer briefs. I had a moment to think how hot that was, that he hadn't bothered to undress either one of — Sylvia Day

A life of love is difficult, but it is not a bleak or unrewarding life. In fact, it is the only true human and happy life, for it is filled with concerns that are as deep as life, as wide as the whole world, and as far reaching as eternity. It is only when we have consented to love, and have agreed to forget ourselves, that we can find our fulfillment. This fulfillment will come unperceived and mysterious like the grace of God, but we will recognize it and it will be recognized in us. — John Powell

The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us ... God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions. — Bill McKibben

Ever may God perform marvel upon marvel, Lord of glory! It was but little while ago that I hoped never in all my life to find healing of any of my woes, when this best of houses stood stained with blood and dripping with fresh gore: that was a grief far-reaching to every one of my counsellors, 765 who hoped not that they ever in the world should defend this stronghold of the people of the land from the malice of demons and of devils. Now hath one young man through the might of the Lord wrought a deed that we none of us with our wisdom were able to compass. Lo! this may she say, if 770 yet she lives, whosoever among women did bring forth this son among the peoples of earth, that the eternal God was gracious to her in her childbearing! Now, Beowulf, best of men, I will cherish thee in my heart even as a son; hereafter keep thou well this new kinship. Lack — Unknown

God is reaching out to us, wanting us to see we need him. But since he is God, we think he wants some song and dance from us - in other words, behavior modification. He actually just wants us. He longs to set us free. And yes, to accomplish all that, he wants us entirely. God is home to us. He is where we were made to be. He is what we were made for. We just forget all that while we are trying to be good and independent. — Jennie Allen

We always look for Christ amid magnificence. But ... Christ has a history of showing up amide the unlovely. Born in a dirty stall. Crowned with thorns. Died gasping on a shameful cross atop a jagged rise.
We don't need to be beautiful for Christ to take us in. He is equally at home when we're broken-down and dirty. It's like George Herbert wrote:
'And here in dust and dirt, O here,
The lilies of God's love appear.'
We think magnificence is in short supply, that dust and dirt choke out the lilies. But that's not true and never was. Lilies may root in dirt, but they reach for heaven - and in the reaching, reveal their magnificence.
- chapter 24 — Philip Gulley

The Bible isn't about people trying to discover God, but about God reaching out to find us. — John R.W. Stott

He has never left you.It is justthat your soul is so vastthat just likethe earth in its innocence,it may think,"I do not feel my lover's warmthagainst my face rightnow."But look, dear,is not the sun reaching down its armsand always holding a continentin its light?God cannot leave us.It is just that our soul is so vast,we do not always feel His lipsupon theveil. — St. Catherine Of Siena

When we confess a sin, we are not asking that God or others see it from our point of view, from the vantage point of our intentions or our motives. Instead, we use God's point of view. We submit to the righteous hand of God. We consent that the Bible is true and that the law of God condemns us. And this either drives us into mad depression or into the open arms of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The implications are far-reaching. Confession of sin is meant to drive us to Christ, for our good and for his glory. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

As soon as Russians feel the ground under their feet and are confident that they have reached firm ground, they are so delighted at reaching it that they rush at once to the furthest limit. Why is that? You are surprised at Pavlishtchev, and you put it down to madness on his part, or to simplicity. But it's not that! And Russian intensity in such cases is a surprise not to us only but to all Europe. If one of us turns Catholic, he is bound to become a Jesuit, and one of the most underground. If he becomes an atheist, he's sure to clamour for the extirpation of belief in God by force, that is, by the sword. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The alternative connection to what is ultimate is, of course, revelation. In this view, it is not the human being reaching up to seize the meaning of life, or gazing into itself for that meaning, but God reaching down to explain life's meaning. In this understanding, there can be no speaking of God, no speaking of meaning, before his speaking to us is heard. This way was treated rudely by the Enlightenment luminaries because it both limited human freedom in shaping the meaning of reality and resorted to what was miraculous in the way revelation has been given. And it has not been treated any more kindly by the postmoderns for whom its grand, overarching Story is anathema and who do not believe that they can escape their own subjectivity. But this is the Christian confession. — John Piper

Mercy, GOD, mercy!": the prayer is not an attempt to get God to do what he is unwilling otherwise to do, but a reaching out to what we know that he does do, an expressed longing to receive what God is doing in and for us in Jesus Christ. In — Eugene H. Peterson

In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase. — Abraham Joshua Heschel