God Related Quotes & Sayings

Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. — Rembrandt

Make amends to those you've hurt, and forgive anyone who has wounded you. If He does, then obey Him immediately. But then move on. Don't continue to beat yourself up over something that God has forgiven. True, you may still have to live with consequences related to your choices. But the Father doesn't want you to live with unresolved guilt, shame, or regret. Seek Him and be free. — Charles F. Stanley

If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which runs,
"The Gods are to each other not unknown."
Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Deuteronomy 11, God offers Israel a choice; either a life of productivity and enjoyment made possible by obedience to Him, or a life of difficulty and opposition made necessary by disobedience. The happiness Israel desires can only be theirs by being properly related to Him. — Max Anders

Her way of being religious was as nonconformist as her nonreligious life had been. She was skeptical about many of the practices of the institutional church. She preferred to trust in the personal relationship she had grown to experience with God. This relationship transformed her ability to be in community and enabled her to see the essence of those around her: "The longer I live, the more I see God at work in people who don't have the slightest interest in religion and never read the Bible and wouldn't know what to do if they were persuaded to go inside a church."

For Dorothy [Day], the bread broken at Mass wasn't any more holy than the bread broken at shelters and soup kitchens. Church didn't happen in a building. It happened in the way people related to each other. Christ wasn't any more present in the liturgy than he was when on person listened with compassion to the pain of another. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

faith presupposes reason and perfects it, and reason, enlightened by faith, finds the strength to rise to knowledge of God and spiritual realities'.15 For Ratzinger, faith and reason, theology and philosophy, are symbiotically, and not extrinsic-ally, related. Faith without reason ends in fideism, but reason without faith ends in nihilism. — Tracey Rowland

The people who related to God best
Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah
treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person. — Philip Yancey

In order to live as we were designed to live, we must be in pursuit not simply of manhood but of godly masculinity. That begins by being men who are rightly related to God, who understand what it means to fear him, and who respond to that fear by being alert, standing firm in the faith, and being men of courage. — Bob Lepine

By the help of God and with His precious assistance, I say that Algebra is a scientific art. The objects with which it deals are absolute numbers and measurable quantities which, though
themselves unknown, are related to "things" which are known, whereby the determination of the unknown quantities is possible. — Omar Khayyam

Since the sanctity of the body is so related to the sanctity of sex, why make the body so common? Why expose to the public eye this sacred thing which is the temple of God? — Mark E. Petersen

I used to think, that when my old inner demons started creeping back into my life, that it was a sign of failure or moral weakness. But the saints have shown me that part of the human condition is to struggle with the same sins and suffering over and over again. Once I accepted the fact that I'd probably always have to be on guard against spiritual attacks related to food and my weight, I began to really recover. — Kate Wicker

Lord, thank You today that You are a good and a faithful God. Oh, God, increase my faith! Give me this day and this week a greater capacity to trust You, to rest in Your promises. Lord, help me to see You related to the very circumstances I face. Might I see how all that comes our way and how we handle it is directly related to our willingness to rest in Your promises and walk closely with You. Grant that kind of victory to me. May this day be different because of what I've prayed and acknowledged before You in this moment. And I promise to give You thanks and praise and glory for Your care and compassion for my life. In Jesus' name I ask these things. Amen. — James MacDonald

God's Word is not presented in Scripture in the form of a theological system, but it admits of being stated in that form, and, indeed, requires to be so stated before we can properly grasp it - grasp it, that is, as a whole. Every text has its immediate context in the passage from which it comes, its broader context in the book to which it belongs, and its ultimate context in the Bible as a whole; and it needs to be rightly related to each of these contexts if its character, scope and significance is to be adequately understood. — J.I. Packer

I'm a raging leftist political activist. I've never had a spiritual thought in my life related to God. I'm clear that that's a human invention. — Patch Adams

Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial? What do we mean when we say that heaven is in the clouds? From Jesus Christ to Elvis Presley, every culture tells us of high-flying bird men who zoom around the world creating magnificent works of art and choosing willing followers to share in the eternal glory from beyond the stars. Can all these related phenomena merely be dismissed as coincidence? — Erich Von Daniken

If you want to be of use to God, get rightly related to Jesus Christ and He will make you of use unconsciously every minute you live. — Oswald Chambers

When it was Hearts turn, she related a vision she had: that River hadn't wanted to be born, preferring to stay with God in heaven. God had convinced him to go, and they haggled over how long, settling on twenty-three years. — Gavin Edwards

I think God creates what one might call spiritual families, people who may or may not be physically related to each other, but who will travel together the whole of the way. And it's a long way. — Elizabeth Goudge

One of God's central qualities is compassion, a word that in Hebrew is related to the word for "womb." Not only is compassion a female image suggesting source of life and nourishment but it also has a feeling dimension: God as compassionate Spirit feels for us as a mother feels for the children of her womb. Spirit feels the suffering of the world and participates in it ... — Marcus Borg

One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust. — Richard J. Foster

His [the pedestrian's] elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts his at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was 'possessed' into a text that lies before one's eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more. — Michel De Certeau

Spirit is not a mystic concept. The spirit of a person is manifest in her aliveness, brightness of his eyes, in the resonance of her voice and in the ease and gracefulness of his movements. These qualities are related to and stem from a high level of energy in the body ... Sensing the harmony between the internal pulsation of our body and that in the universe, we feel identified with the universal, with God. We are like tuning forks vibrating at the same pitch — Alexander Lowen

Cut it out!" Phillip exploded. "Cut it out right now or I swear I'm going to pull over and knock your heads together. Oh, my God." He took one hand off the wheel to drag it down his face. "I sound like Mom. Forget it. Just forget it. Kill each other. I'll dump the bodies in the mall parking lot and drive to Mexico. I'll learn how to weave mats and sell them on the beach at Cozumel. I'll be quiet, it'll be peaceful. I'll change my name to Raoul, and no one will know I was ever related to a bunch of fools."
Seth scratched his belly and turned to Cam. "Does he always talk like that?"
"Yeah, mostly. Sometimes he's going to be Pierre and live in a garret in Paris, but it's the same thing."
"Weird," was Seth's only comment. ( ... ) Getting new shows was turning into a new adventure. — Nora Roberts

But the soul of man is the actuating principle of the body and makes it exist as a body, unifies it, possesses it, and develops it. The parents prepare the body; God infuses the soul and makes the person. The union of the body and spirit form one being! The original source of Power, Energy, Thought, Action, Love, and Passion comes from the soul united to the body! This Original Energy, which we will call Vita, has three principal manifestations, because man may be considered as related (a) to himself, (b) to humanity, and (c) to the cosmos. — Anonymous

God does not exercise an alien domination of the world but a liberating lordship that sets creation free; God's rule lets family, culture, government, and church fulfill their created purposes, both distinct from and related to one another, and without any usurped heteronomy of one over the other. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The canon is an artifact of revelation, not an object of revelation itself. It is known infallibly to God by necessity and to man with a certainty directly related to God's purpose in giving the Word to the church. The canon exists because God has inspired some writings, not all writings. it is known to man in fulfillment of God's purpose in engaging in the action of inspiration so as to give His people a lamp for their feet and a light for their path. — James R. White

As if reading his mind, Lily huffed. "You're as predictable as the spring rains, son of mine, and as boring as drying paint. Unless there's an emergency, you're home every night by seven, you eat dinner by yourself, go for a run, watch exactly one hour of TV by yourself, and go to bed at ten o'clock. If God ever loses his watch, he only has to look at Lance Beaufort to get back on schedule."
...
"I've been having trouble with my phone," he tried.
Lily took two strides to the desk, leaned over it with both hands braced on the surface, and stared.
"Okay, yes! I have been over there. But it's for work. And ... and it's work related!"
"Oh? Explain that to me, because I thought you were the sheriff, not in training for a role in Lassie. — Eli Easton

A person who wants to "know Jesus" must, due to the nature of God's revelation, know Him as He is related to the Father and the Spirit. We must know, understand, and love the Trinity to be fully and completely Christian. This is why we say the Trinity is the greatest of God's revealed truths. — James R. White

Meditate then, on all these things, and on those things which are related to them, both day and night, and both alone and with like-minded companions. For if you will do this, you will never be disturbed while asleep or awake by imagined fears, but you will live like a god among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is in no respect like a mortal being. — Epicurus

The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an unfinished symphony. A day may round out an insect's life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt the power of an endless life. — Henry Ward Beecher

...godly power and godly love are related to one another neither through subordination nor dialectically. Rather, God's mightiness is understood as the power of his love. Only love is almighty. Then God's lordship is to be understood as the rule of his mercy and God's law is accordingly the law of his grace. — Eberhard Jungel

Tell me what you think about money, and I will tell you what you think about God, for these two are closely related. A man's heart is closer to his wallet than anything else. — Billy Graham

If God were a theory, the study of theology would be the way to understand Him. But God is alive and in need of love and worship. This is why thinking of God is related to our worship. In an analogy of artistic understanding, we sing to Him before we are able to understand Him. We have to love in order to know. Unless we learn how to sing, unless we know how to love, we will never learn to understand Him. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

God's holiness is not an unloving holiness, and God's love is not an unholy love. It is only by keeping these two primary moral qualities of the divine being closely related that we may rightly behold the character of God. (p. 98) — Thomas C. Oden

The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory) - how do such theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called "unspeakable" and "indiscribable," the holistic knowledge shared by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with "the occult" and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics; Emerson spoke of "the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . ."; Melville referred to "that profound silence, that only voice of God"; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found "more divine than yourself. — Peter Matthiessen

The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church. p. 98 — Carl R. Trueman

In this story, the sun moves. In this story, every night meets a dawn and burns away in the bright morning. In this story, Winter can never hold back the Spring ... He is the best of all possible audiences, the only Audience to see every scene, the Author who became a Character and heaped every shadow on Himself. The Greeks were right. Live in fear of a grinding end and a dank hereafter. Unless you know a bigger God, or better yet, are related to Him by blood. — N.D. Wilson

Fear of God and love for God coexist happily in the heart of people who are rightly related to Him. — Max Anders

If secularism is to be understood as a political ideology or social-movement agenda that advocates (at least) the separation of church and state or (at most) the diminishment of religion in society, then humanism can be understood as a related and yet distinct phenomenon; it is more of an optimistic cultural expression or personal worldview, defined by what beliefs it eschews as well as what beliefs it affirms. Simply put, humanism rejects belief in heaven, hell, God, gods, and all things supernatural, while at the same time affirming belief in the positive potential for humans to do and be good, loving, and altruistic. Humanism rejects faith in favor of reason, it rejects superstition in favor of evidence-based thinking, and it replaces worship of a deity with an appreciation for and love of humankind and the natural world. — Phil Zuckerman

Happiness is a by-product of wanting something more than happiness-to be rightly related to God and our neighbor. — Timothy Keller

And how closely related to you is Cousin Beatrice?"
Reynaud gave him a look. "Not that close.
"Glad to hear it." Vale dropped into a cushioned chair. "I hope she recovers fully so that you can then propose to her. Because I tell you now, matrimony truly is a blessed state, enjoyed by all men of good sense and halfway adequate bedroom skills."
"Thank you for that edifying thought," Reynaud growled.
Vale waved his glass. "Think nothing of it. I say, you haven't forgotten how to treat a lady in the bedroom, have you?"
"Oh, for God's sake!"
"You've been out of refined society for years and years now. I could give you some pointers, should you need them. — Elizabeth Hoyt

we need to think through issues in terms of the Bible's big story - a biblical worldview. Our social involvement should be set in the framework of a biblical worldview shaped by the story of redemption. We should explore issues by looking at them in the light of creation, humanity's fall into sin, God's redemption - promised in the Old Testament and accomplished through Christ - and the return of Christ and the transformation of all things. Being biblical, then, means ensuring that our actions are related to our biblical framework rather than appending isolated biblical texts to each action. — Tim Chester

Faith and character are intimately related. Faith in the power of obedience to the commandments of God will forge strength of character available to you in times of urgent need. — Richard G. Scott

God is not related to creatures as though belonging to a different "genus," but as transcending every "genus," and as the principle of all "genera. — Thomas Aquinas

ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape as "One day a wag - what would the wretch be at? Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! ... " — Ambrose Bierce

Aunt Marcie and my dear cousin, Marki, man it's good to share blood with you fantastic ladies. We are related through and through. Whatever God was doing when he connected us, I'm positive that he did it for a reason. — Bandit Publishing

Never take your obedience as the reason God blesses you; obedience is the outcome of being rightly related to God. — Oswald Chambers

Faith is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. — Oswald Chambers

Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away. — Soren Kierkegaard

Failure of success is not race-related; it's not socioeconomics-related; it is really predictable, based on principles that are laid down by God the Creator by which we are supposed to function. If we find them and obey them, success becomes inevitable. That's why I was able to move from rats to 40,000 feet in the air in my own aircraft. — Myles Munroe

But he also felt a stitch of hesitation. Did God put him in the same room with Rabin so that he could eliminate the Israeli leader and his Oslo process? Or would Amir be imposing his own plan on God? He thought about the bullets in his magazine, the hollow points and the regular rounds. Then he turned his gaze back to Rabin and watched him leave the hall; Amir had missed his chance. But he gleaned valuable information. Rabin was hardly protected. If protests didn't stop the peace process, killing him might be a viable alternative. At home, he related the events to Hagai. It was too early, he told his brother. He needed to build his inner readiness. — Dan Ephron

There is no limit to what God's people can expect their God to do if they are rightly related to Him. — Max Anders

Art cannot be excused from following God's law, and art disgraces itself by seeking that freedom. Anything that cannot be put into an image or onto a canvas without demanding the sacrifice of modesty or injuring shame must simply be eschewed. Art is not autonomous. Art is one of the more refined human life expressions, and all these life expressions are organically related and stand continuously under God's ordinance. — Abraham Kuyper

The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience. — Muhammad Iqbal

There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature's God in America and China's Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington. — Patrick Mendis

If there was one thing I learned from all my research, it was that the majority of the early pioneers didn't dwell on the hard times; they indeed related every aspect of their lives to their relationship with God, specifically in regards to this disastrous journey. They thanked Him for their lives and the fact that they made it through. Most didn't blame leaders or those around them. They learned to accept their plight and move forward with faith. — Mike Ericksen

Because there is one God, all people are related to that one God on equal terms. The central command of that one God is to love neighbors - to treat others as we would like them to treat us, as expressed in the Golden Rule. We cannot claim any rights for ourselves and our group that we are not willing to give to others. Whether as a stance of the heart or as outward practice, religion cannot be coerced.[217] — Miroslav Volf

It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance - lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt — Alan W. Watts

The cross was the centerpiece of Paul's theology. It wasn't merely one of Paul's messages; it was the message. He taught about other things as well, but whatever he taught was always derived from, and related to, the foundational reality that Jesus Christ died so that sinners would be reconciled to God and forgiven by God. — C.J. Mahaney

The one thing that matters is whether a man will accept the God Who will make him holy. At all costs a man must be rightly related to God. — Oswald Chambers

Religion, born of the earth's need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

These solar poems sound very monotheistic, with the high god in his heaven; here we can see whence our traditional concepts of God come. These numinous notions are repeated in the Bible and are clearly related to, if not derived from, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian and other sources, not arising as a result of unique "divine revelation" to the "chosen people. — D.M. Murdock

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. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish. — Fulton J. Sheen

No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere, and body is in the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an effect arising from the first existence of being, because when any being is postulated, space is postulated. — Isaac Newton

There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish.
He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole 'fishers of men' analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable? — Michel Faber

Yet the most pervasive error one encounters in contemporary arguments about belief in God - especially, but not exclusively, on the atheist side - is the habit of conceiving of God simply as some very large object or agency within the universe, or perhaps alongside the universe, a being among other beings, who differs from all other beings in magnitude, power, and duration, but not ontologically, and who is related to the world more or less as a craftsman is related to an artifact. — David Bentley Hart

I stake the future on the few humble and hearty lovers who seek God passionately in the marvelous, messy world of redeemed and related realities that lie in front of our noses. — William McNamara

Edmund Clowney observes that prayer involves an honesty that has no real parallel in human relationships, because every human relation necessarily involves only a part of your personality. We relate differently to our spouse, our business partner, and a chance acquaintance on the street because each of our social roles expresses only a part of our personhood. Even our spouse sees only part of who we are. "In relation to God, however, we are 'naked and pinned down' (Heb 4:13). Our masks are gone, pretense is useless: the relationship is not partial, but total. All that we are stands related to our Maker and Redeemer."245 — Timothy J. Keller

We must not therefore consider the afflictions that come upon us as happening by chance or solely from the malice of men; we should be convinced that what happens, happens by the will of God. Apropos of this it is related that two martyrs, Epictetus and Atho, being put to the torture by having their bodies raked with iron hooks and burnt with flaming torches, kept repeating: "Work thy will upon us, O Lord." Arrived at the place of execution, they exclaimed: "Eternal God, be thou blessed in that thy will has been entirely accomplished in us [30] . — Alfonso Maria De Liguori

The Lord doesn't want your service as much as He wants you. He loves you more than He loves what you can do for Him. Now, that's an important point to make, because in our day and age - especially in the type of church atmosphere that I grew up in - it's all about service, a push to do something for God. It's true that you were created for God's pleasure and glory, but God 's acceptance of you is not related to what you do for Him. The Lord sacrificed Himself so He could have you, not your service. — Andrew Wommack

Now, as at the beginning of the 19th century, there is a certain discovery of Eckhart and related figures. There are questions as to how far our Eckhart accords with the real medieval teacher of that name, but there are certainly images in his work that help us work our way past several of the aporia with which we're confronted in our attempts to think about God. — George Pattison

How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem; and I can not help thinking that if Aesop had noticed them, he would have made a fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and this is the reason why when one comes the other follows, as I find in my own case pleasure comes following after the pain in my leg which was caused by the chain. — Plato

There's a goddess of the river," I said. "Yes - Mother Thames," he said patiently. "And there's a god of the river - Father Thames." "Are they related?" "No," he said. "And that's part of the problem." "Are they really gods?" "I never worry about the theological questions," said Nightingale. "They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen's Peace - that makes them a police matter." A — Ben Aaronovitch

Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. — Oswald Chambers

I related to 'A Clockwork Orange' in a personal way. I was a bit of a thug growing up. It's taken some reform for me. Thank God for artistry and creativity as an outlet. — CeeLo Green

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, "Please God, don't let me look poor." In the year 2000, they prayed, "Please God, don't let me look old." Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled. The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility.
— Tom Wolfe

As God is merciful, so you also be merciful. As he loves and cares for all His creatures and His children and are related to Him, because He is their Father, so you also love all His creatures as your brethren. Let their joys be your joys, and their sorrows yours. Love them and with every power which God gives you, work for their welfare and benefit, because they are the children of your God, because they are your brothers and sisters. — Pirkei Avot

The decrees of the Sovereign Ordainer, as related to fate and predestination, are of two kinds. Both are to be obeyed and accepted. The one is irrevocable, the other is, as termed by men, impending. To the former all must unreservedly submit, inasmuch as it is fixed and settled. God however, is able to alter or repeal it. As the harm that must result from such a change will be greater than if the decree had remained unaltered, all, therefore, should willingly acquiesce in what God hath willed and confidently abide by the same. — Baha'u'llah

We shrink therefore from God, knowing that He wants to enrich our being, rather than our having - that He wishes to elevate our nature, not to submerge and lose it in trifles. He has called us to the superior vocation of being His children, of partaking of His nature, and of being related to Him as branches to a vine. Few of us completely want that elevation; it is our petty desire to have more,not to share the glory of being more.We want the poor shadows, not the light - the sparks, and not the sun - the arc, and not the circle. As the desire for the world and things increases in us, God makes less and less appeal. We hold back, our fists closed about our few pennies, and thus lose the fortune He holds out to us. That is why the initial step of coming to God is so hard. We cling to our nursery toys and lose the pearl of great price. — Fulton J. Sheen

I have never been able to entertain a God-idea which was not integrally related to the fact of chipmunks, squirrels, hippopotamuses, galaxies, and light years. — Joseph Sittler

John the Baptist, who we are told was related by blood to Jesus, was preaching the impending judgement of God, urging repentance and moral reform, and baptizing in the Jordan River those who responded. — Kenneth Scott Latourette

Lovers cannot imagine any opposition, no matter how small, to the beloved. They cannot endure to see the beloved veiled by something that causes Him to be forgotten. Moreover, lovers regard as futile any speech not about the beloved, and any act not related to Him as ingratitude and disloyalty. — Fethullah Gulen

Imprint deep upon your minds the principles of piety towards God, and a reverence and fear of His holy name. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and its consummation is everlasting felicity. Possess yourselves of just and elevated notions of the Divine character, attributes, and administration, and of the end and dignity of your own immortal nature as it stands related to Him. — William Samuel Johnson