God S Spirit Quotes & Sayings

Fasting is the only method of suicide permitted by the Catholic Church. All other ways imply despair, a distrust of God's wisdom, an unwillingness to bear the hardships with which God tests his children. An absolute sin, suicide's punishment is eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. But fasting is undertaken for the purpose of penance, meditation, and spiritual ecstasy. It purifies the spirit by denying the body. It brings a soul closer to God. — David Morrell

IT IS YOUR JOB TO PROTECT THE UNITY OF YOUR CHURCH. Unity in the church is so important that the New Testament gives more attention to it than to either heaven or hell. God deeply desires that we experience oneness and harmony with each other. Unity is the soul of fellowship. Destroy it, and you rip the heart out of Christ's Body. It is the essence, the core, of how God intends for us to experience life together in his church. Our supreme model for unity is the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are completely unified as one. God himself is the highest example of sacrificial love, humble other-centeredness, and perfect harmony. — Rick Warren

Philosophy has been described as thinking about thinking, and all Christians should do that. The term comes from two Greek words, philia ("love") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus "loving wisdom." Nothing anti-Christian appears in that definition. Problems arise if we seek wisdom apart from God, or elevate human reason above Him, but according to Proverbs 4:5-7, God's people should love and seek wisdom.
Formal philosophy is divided into three major areas-incidentally, all core Christian issues: (1) Metaphysics,
which asks questions about the nature of reality: "What is real?" "Is the basic essence of the world matter, or spirit, or something else?" (2) Epistemology, which addresses issues concerning truth and knowledge: "What do we know?" "How do we know it?" "Why do we think it's true?" (3) Ethics, which considers moral problems: "What is right and wrong?" "Are moral values absolute or relative?" "What is the good life, and how do we achieve it? — Rick Cornish

The power of the Holy Spirit cannot be successfully duplicated. If a person is supernaturally changed and given a love for God's glory, God did it. — R.T. Kendall

The Lord has given the Holy Spirit upon the earth, and in whomsoever He dwells, that one feels paradise within himself. You might say: why hasn't this happened to me? Because you have not given yourself over to the will of God, but you live according to yourself. Look at the one who loves his own will. He never has peace in himself and is always displeased with something. But whoever has given himself over to God's will perfectly has pure prayer. His soul loves the Lord, and everything is acceptable and good to him. — Silouan The Athonite

I make a special appeal regarding how young women might dress for Church services and Sabbath worship. We used to speak of "best dress" or "Sunday dress," and maybe we should do so again. In any case, from ancient times to modern we have always been invited to present our best selves inside and out when entering the house of the Lord - and a dedicated LDS chapel is a "house of the Lord." Our clothing or footwear need never be expensive, indeed should not be expensive, but neither should it appear that we are on our way to the beach. When we come to worship the God and Father of us all and to partake of the sacrament symbolizing the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we should be as comely and respectful, as dignified and appropriate as we can be. We should be recognizable in appearance as well as in behavior that we truly are disciples of Christ, that in a spirit of worship we are meek and lowly of heart, that we truly desire the Savior's Spirit to be with us always. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Words are mighty, words are living:Serpents with their venomous stings,Or bright angels, crowding round us,With heaven's light upon their wings:Every word has its own spirit,True or false, that never dies;Every word man's lips have utteredEchoes in God's skies. — Adelaide Anne Procter

For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God's face, shines. — John Calvin

Even though many of us are working very hard at it, we rarely, if ever, experience the joy and peace that are promised in the Bible. So what's the problem? Perhaps we are still holding the reins of our lives too tightly, afraid to surrender ourselves to God's Spirit. — Ann Spangler

God's Word refreshes our mind and God's Spirit renews our strength. — T. B. Joshua

Of course, of course. Mr. Buzzby, did it ever occur to you that a god may live, figuratively, a dog's life?'
'Eh?'
'Gods are transfigured, you know. They go up in smoke, as it were. In smoke and flame. They become pure flame, pure spirit, creatures with no visible body.'
("A Visitor From Egypt") — Frank Belknap Long

I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do most for God's glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity, but maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ's blood, by being filled with the Holy Spirit at all times, and by attaining the most entire likeness to Christ in mind, will, and heart, that it is possible for a redeemed sinner to attain to in this world. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal patterns and rhythms of the Christian life in a community, so that we may bear fruit like a well-watered tree. Despite common appearances, the church is the place where God's new creation is coming into existence and being sustained by the Spirit like a great vineyard. — Michael Horton

Every time we open the Bible, let's stop and pray, whether for fifteen seconds or fifteen minutes, asking the Spirit to teach us. When I read the Bible, I want God to talk to my soul. — Jim Cymbala

Only the Holy Spirit has the power to make the changes God wants to make in our lives ... We allow Christ to live through us ... through the choices we make. We choose to do the right thing in situations and then trust God's Spirit to give us his power, love, faith, and wisdom to do it. Since God's Spirit lives inside of us, these things are always available for asking. — Rick Warren

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. — Jerry Bridges

I believe firmly, that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking, and everything that is contrary to God's law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit, and ambition and self-seeking, and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else. Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us. There must be an emptying before there can be a filling; and when the heart is turned upside — D.L. Moody

Be thou as the immortal are, Who dwell beneath their God's own wing A spirit of light, a living star, A holy and a searchless thing: But oh! forget not those who mourn, Because thou canst no more return. — Alfred Tennyson

The soul seeks to retain its authority and move independently, while the spirit strives to possess and master everything for the maintenance of God's authority. — Watchman Nee

Just as God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, as we become more like Him, neither can we. The best people have a heightened awareness of what little of the worst is still in them! Indeed, the divine discontent, the justifiable spiritual restlessness that we feel, is a natural follow-on feeling in the disciple who has taken the Lord's counsel to "make you a new heart and a new spirit." (Ezekiel 18:31.) — Neal A. Maxwell

It's such a frustration when you see in the name of religion, in the name of God, what people are doing is something we never expected. The religion has to be Spirit-oriented, but it is only power-oriented or money-oriented. In the original scriptures, or we can say in the origin of this religion was the truth. And all these religions bloom on the same play of spirituality like beautiful flowers at different times, but people have plucked it and now they are fighting with the dead flowers. — Nirmala Srivastava

I have a theory about soul mates
that God wants to be our sweetheart. And once we fall in love with life and have an intimate relationship with Spirit, that's when we meet our soul mate. It's as if God says, 'You're not meant to be alone on this earth. I just wanted you to love me first. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

When you pray, remember that you are not praying to a distant God, but to the God that dwells within you. Don't just speak the words; feel what they mean in your life. Don't pray from your lips, but from your heart. Your prayers aren't for God, they are for you, to remind you of the presence of the Holy Spirit within you. When you say "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," remember that you are loved and protected. God has planned greater things for us than we can imagine. The more we maintain an awareness of God's unchanging love, the safer and more at home we will feel in the world. — Susan L. Taylor

The child in Bethlehem would grow up to be a friend of sinners, not a friend of Rome. He would spend his life with the ordinary and the unimpressive. He would pay deep attention to lepers and cripples, to the blind and the beggar, to prostitutes and fishermen, to women and children. He would announce the availability of a kingdom different from Herod's, a kingdom where blessing - of full value and worth with God - was now conferred on the poor in spirit and the meek and the persecuted. — John Ortberg

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

When you wish evil on your enemies, remember that you are also someone else's enemy. Matthew 5:44 — Felix Wantang

Nowhere do Jesus or the apostles ever treat the Old Testament as human reflections on the divine. It is instead the voice of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:25; Heb. 3:7) and God's own breath (2 Tim. 3:16). — Kevin DeYoung

Worship is not music. We can certainly worship Him without musicians and without a song. And by the way, God does not actually seek worship. The Word tells us that He seeks worshippers. He's not looking for those who make the most beautiful music. He's looking for those who worship in spirit ... and in truth. Music is only one of the ways that he has ordained for us to express our worship. Yet too many worship leaders today spend more time honing their craft and planning / rehearsing their worship sets, than they spend on their face, alone in worship. — Steven Rice

Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed. — Thomas Watson Jr.

Over the past month, Muslims have fasted, taking no food or water during daylight hours, in order to refocus their minds on faith and redirect their hearts to charity. Muslims worldwide have stretched out a hand of mercy to those in need. Charity tables at which the poor can break their fast line the streets of cities and towns. And gifts of food and clothing and money are distributed to ensure that all share in God's abundance. Muslims often invite members of other families to their evening iftar meals, demonstrating a spirit of tolerance. — George W. Bush

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won't be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may "hit" you - but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God's voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise "divine reading" of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading "not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you." This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it. — Timothy Keller

The minute a man stops supplicating God for His Spirit and direction, just so soon he starts out to become a stranger to Him and His works. When men stop praying for God's Spirit, they place confidence in their own unaided reason, and they gradually lose the Spirit of God. — Heber J. Grant

Holy men of old were moved upon by the Holy Spirit and the revelation given to them is God's Word in the Holy Scriptures. Is God speaking any less today through holy men called of God to bring a message through revelation to this generation? ... We wave our Bibles and cry, 'This is the Word of' God.' Indeed it is God's Word, but the Holy Spirit yet brings revelation to this generation today that is no less God's Word ... The prophet is not a method that God uses; but in fact is the only method he uses to speak to this generation. — Earl Paulk

Love is probably the most powerful force in the cosmos, capable of creating miracles. Love can manifest in so many ways - love between parent and child, husband and wife, partner and partner, teacher and student, service volunteer and recipient, God and one's spirit. The manifestations of love are innumerable. — Mike Love

In the PC(USA) Book of Confessions, A Brief Statement of Faith made explicit the equality of all people: "In sovereign love God created the world good and makes everyone equally in God's image, male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community."60 A Brief Statement of Faith also provided clear confessional warrant for the ordination of women, declaring that the Spirit "calls women and men to all the ministries of the Church. — Jack Rogers

As we live in the Spirit, we live in the process of God's mind — T. B. Joshua

God uses means. Natural laws and human ingenuity are his tools, even when we do not see his hand. He didn't just establish these laws and then step away. As contemporary science reminds us, apparent chaos is ubiquitous. Things should fall apart, but they don't. Not for one moment could the cosmos sustain itself apart from the Father's loving word, which he speaks in his Son and by his Spirit. — Michael S. Horton

A person's sense of morality and responsibility to other human beings, must not come from a professed faith or belief system. Because when it does - it is merely a projection and not an internalization. A person must be able to say "I believe this, I do this, I say this, because this is who I am; not because I see myself as a member of so and so belief system." Adam and Eve walked with God every day in the garden of Eden and yet, they still chose their own way. This only means that their own way had nothing to do with God's way. Even if they walked with God physically, daily, in a garden! This is witness to the fact that your sense of morality and responsibility must be incarnated within you. In fact, this is the beauty of God - to unfold your own spirit within you - and then you see your own spirit and say that it is indeed beautiful. — C. JoyBell C.

Now when you meditate, try to meditate in a sustained way, first of all sustain it. Then you find that you are getting into the state of Samadhi, means at a state where you start feeling the joy and the bliss of God's blessings, and then you start saying "O God, what a blessing, what a blessing, and what a blessing". Once you have reached that state then you have to realize "Who am I". Who are you? What are you? You are the Spirit. After establishing your sustained attention on the Spirit you'll develop a state where you'll be in a complete state of witnessing with joy. — Nirmala Srivastava

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because 'God' is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, 'God' is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. Each of us projects our limited experience on a cosmic screen in letters as big as our minds can fashion. For those whose vision is constricted (illiberal, narrow-minded people), this can have horrific consequences. But others respond to the munificence of creation with broad imagination and sympathy. Answering to the highest and best within and beyond themselves, they draw lessons and fathom meaning so redemptive that surely it touches the divine. — Forrest Church

I believe in one thing: the human spirit is immortal and indestructible. In the beyond there could be anything, it is of no importance whatsoever. What we call death is not death. It's a rebirth. A caterpillar becomes a cocoon. I think there is a life after death and it is that that is unnerving. It would be so much simpler to conceive of oneself as a telephone cord that is unplugged. Then you could live any way that you wanted. God would have no importance of any kind. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Luther's early position proclaimed that everyone, including "the humble miller's maid, nay, a child of nine," could interpret the Bible. However, as Christianity began to fracture, he radically altered his position. He called the Bible the "heresy book." In 1525 he wrote: "There are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow will have nothing to do with baptism; another denies the sacraments; a third believes that there is another world between this and the Last Day. Some teach that Christ is not God; some say this, some say that. There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Spirit and he himself is a prophet."104 — James M. Seghers

But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). God and His Word, in essence or essential nature, is truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalms 5:5; 33:4; 105:5; 119:151, 160; John 1:17; 14:6; 16:13). Many Christians consider all truth as God's truth, yet they will look to other sources beyond the Bible. However, the only reliable source of truth is God's inerrant Word, the Bible (Psalm 18:30; John 8:31-32; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). All other sources are fallible and cannot be used as the measure for truth. — Paul Smith

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. JOHN 15:12 Dear Jesus, help me to love others the way that You do. I know that You love them unconditionally, no matter how they act or what they have done. I find it hard to always do that. You have commanded us to love You and love others, but I find it far easier to love You than I do to love them. Other people fail me and You never do. Other people can be unloving and You never are. That's why I need Your love to fill my heart every day. Thank You that You are the God of love - You don't just have love, You are love. I pray that Your Spirit of love in me will flow out of me to others like a river. Enable me to show love even to those who are hard to love. Teach me how to be loving to others in a consistent and unfailing way. Enable me to be the kind of person people are attracted to because of Your love in me. In Jesus' name — Stormie O'martian

The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is God's "I Will" to every seeker for full salvation of spirit, soul and body. — Kenneth E. Hagin

On many occasions I have been asked if I think persecution will come to the Western church. My answer might surprise you. I believe that if you find yourself enslaved inside a controlling church structure of legalism and bondage, then you are already being persecuted! So many Christians seem impossibly distracted from hearing God's voice. Instead of listening to that still, small voice that brings true peace and joy, they blindly follow the voices of mainstream religion. The worst kind of persecution for a Christian is when you are separated from the joy and presence of the Holy Spirit. — Brother Yun

Oh! now to be alone, on some grand height, Where heaven's black curtains shadow all the sight, And watch the swollen clouds their bosom clash, While fleet and far the living lightnings flash ... And see the fiery arrows fall and rise, In dizzy chase along the rattling skies, - How stirs the spirit while the echoes roll, And God, in thunder, rocks from pole to pole! — Robert Montgomery

Only God satisfies. ONLY GOD SATISFIES. Let this truism settle down deep inside your heart. It is the unveiled truth. Feed this truth to your spirit. Force it down and command it to chase down, repel, and extricate all lies the Devil has successfully planted inside your spirit. Will it to sleigh your flesh. Forget about finding happiness and fulfillment in your spouse, friend, or child. Fulfillment comes only when you are totally invested in your relationship with God. When you are facing a trial or walking through a storm, it is God who will comfort and satisfy your soul with boundless and extraordinary love and guidance. Within God's love there is an all-embracing grace. — Cheryl Zelenka

I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the Cross, the Cross
God's hammer, God's fire. — Abbott Eliot Kittredge

To evangelize, therefore, it is necessary to open ourselves once again to the horizon of God's Spirit, without being afraid of what he asks us or of where he leads us. — Pope Francis

Whom God legally saves, He experimentally saves; whom He justifies, them He also sanctifies. Where the righteousness of Christ is imputed to an individual, a principle of holiness is imparted to him; the former can only be ascertained by the latter. It is impossible to obtain a Scriptural knowledge that the merits of Christ's finished work are reckoned to my account, except by proving that the efficacy of the Holy Spirit's work is evident in my soul. — Arthur W. Pink

The religious climate of Jesus's day was evidence of what happens when no one stops the counterfeit. The Spirit of God had gone silent after Malachi, but that did not stop the spiritual authorities from trying to keep the whole mechanism turning under the power of their own self-righteousness. Can you imagine what it might be like to have been faking spiritual power for hundreds of years when suddenly the real thing shows up? — Jared C. Wilson

Do not sell your soul for a bucketful of pleasures and temptations. It's God's priceless gift to you. — Christian Hunt

These conversations went on and on with person after person. I stood literally amazed by the grace of God, not just upon one Christian passionate about sharing the gospel, but upon an entire community passionate about sharing the gospel. As I looked around, I observed a contagious culture of evangelism across the church. It is a culture of evangelism that is not ultimately dependent on events, projects, programs, and ministry professionals. Instead, it is a culture of evangelism that is built on people filled with the power of God's Spirit proclaiming the gospel of God's grace in the context of their everyday lives and relationships. — J. Mack Stiles

The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified, and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Jesus did not bathe this planet with his blood to have you serve the world, the flesh, and the devil. He died to make you holy. You are not your own. First Corinthians 6:20 says 'For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.' — Adrian Rogers

When we blame others and defend our own position, we are blind. We struggle to remove the speck out of our brother's eye while there is a log in ours. It is the revelation of truth that brings freedom to us. When the Spirit of God shows us our sin, He always does it in such a way that it seems separate from us. This brings conviction, not condemnation. — John Bevere

Lord, help me to be still before you. Lead me to a greater vision of who you are, and in so doing, may I see myself - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Grant me the courage to follow you, to be faithful to become the unique person you have created me to be. I ask you for the Holy Spirit's power to not copy another person's life or journey. "God, submerge me in the darkness of your love, that the consciousness of my false, everyday self falls away from [me] like a soiled garment. . . . May my 'deep self' fall into your presence. . . . knowing you alone . . . carried away into eternity like a dead leaf in the November wind."24 In Jesus' name, amen. — Peter Scazzero

The Church has for a long time looked like a Church of baroque princes. It is now returning to the spirit of simplicity which marked its origins-when the "servant of God" chose to be a carpenter's son on earth and chose fishermen as his first messengers.
If in the past (or even the present) the Church seemed too closely identified with the ruling classes, the term "Church of the poor" unquestionably expresses a project of fundamental importance, a willingness to break free of such chains. It also means that in the footsteps of Christ the Church is sent especially to the forgotten and the outcasts. — Pope Benedict XVI

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.
Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning. — Lawrence Hill

God's will for your life is not very complicated. Obviously, living a Christlike life is hard work, and what following Jesus entails is not clear in every situation. But as an overarching principle, the will of God for your life is pretty straightforward: Be holy like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God. — Kevin DeYoung

We believe that our salvation depends solely upon God's work in us, and not upon our testimony; and the little child with stammering lips, but wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, will precede vain scribes into the Kingdom of Heaven. — Abraham Kuyper

Timing is so important! If you are going to be successful in dance, you must be able to respond to rhythm and timing. It's the same in the Spirit. People who don't understand God's timing can become spiritually spastic, trying to make the right things happen at the wrong time. They don't get His rhythm - and everyone can tell they are out of step. They birth things prematurely, threatening the very lives of their God-given dreams. — T.D. Jakes

III
But may I, when alone again I have the city's crush
and tangled noise-skein and the furor
of its traffic all around me,
may I above the mindless swirl
recall sky and the gentle mountain rim
on which the far-off herd curved homeward.
May my spirit be hard as rock
and the shepherd's life to me seem possible-
the way he drifts and turns brown in the sun and with a practiced
stone-throw mends his flock, whenever it frays.
Steps slow, not light, his body pensive,
but in his standing there, majestic. Even now a god
might enter this form and not be lessened.
He lingers for a while, then moves on, like the day itself,
and shadows of the clouds
pass through him, as though space were slowly
thinking thoughts for him. — Rainer Maria Rilke

God's at work, lightening every load! — Israelmore Ayivor

What about justice," he asked, "and charity, and resignation, and courage, and everything which makes the human soul to live!" Religion, he continued, "is a spirit, a movement of the heart. You make of it a power, a society, an exterior force, something which struggles with other powers and other societies. To love God and one's fellow man, is it necessary to have so much materiality?"42 — Mary McAuliffe

In the struggle for righteousness, there is nothing more helpful than being passionately in tune with Christ through His Spirit and being passionately committed to doing His will. It has been said that in order to tune in to God's voice, we must tune out this world's noise. — Billy Graham

Love is unconditional acceptance. It is love of parents for child; also the non-possessive love of partners; also the caring love between all people that enables forgiveness. It's above energy, though it may be expressed energetically. It's our essential nature: Spirit itself, the quality we share with God. And it is the binding force of the Universe, inherent in all that is. — Peter Shepherd

However, as Gordon Fee has argued, it is doubtful whether Paul ever uses the language of "spirit" without some reference to the Holy Spirit. Here, then, while the immediate reference may be, indeed, to Paul's own "spirit," it is his spirit as taken up into the Holy Spirit. His "presence" with the Colossians, then, is not a simple "you will be in my thoughts and prayers," but involves a profound corporate sense of identity, based on and mediated by the Spirit of God. — Douglas J. Moo

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them. — Francis A. Schaeffer

...when we listen to the Spirit, we hear a deeper sound, a different beat. ...Living a spiritually mature life requires listening to God's voice within and among us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Don't let obstacles along the road to eternity shake your confidence in God's promise. The Holy Spirit is God's seal that you will arrive. — David Jeremiah

You can break my body but never my spirit because that's graced by God. — Veronica Purcell

When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He does so to bring us to repentance and, ultimately, to bring us to reconciliation with God, to forgiveness, to healing, and to cleansing. In other words, when the Spirit of God convicts us of sin, His entire purpose and entire motive is redemptive. When Satan accuses us, perhaps of the same sin, his purpose is to destroy us. That's why Paul says: "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. — R.C. Sproul

Rather than trying to prove our masculinity, we need to accept who we are in the spirit of the gospel. Instead of trying to live up to some cultural standard of manhood, we need to accept God's grace, which says, "I accept you just as you are." It is culture, not God, that alienates those who do not live up to the existing, narrow definition of manhood. — Nate Pyle

All God's revelations are sealed to us until they are opened to us by obedience. You will never get them open by philosophy or thinking. Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes. Let God's truth work in you by soaking in it, not by worrying into it. Obey God in the thing He is at present showing you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. We read tomes on the work of the Holy Spirit when ... five minutes of drastic obedience would make things clear as a sunbeam. We say, "I suppose I shall understand these things some day." You can understand them now: it is not study that does it, but obedience. The tiniest fragment of obedience, and heaven opens up and the profoundest truths of God are yours straight away. God will never reveal more truth about Himself till you obey what you know already. Beware of being wise and prudent. — Oswald Chambers

God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. — Bono

It is easy for the believer to observe God's mandate through the axis of time by the relinquishment of all ancient human ideas. The resurrection thereof can only be called for by the Aryan reincarnate spirit that demands a [cycle of existence leading to liberation through aimless drifting, wandering and mundane existence] - modeling thereby the spirit of the fauna; as in the case of Judah. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

The history of the Christian movement is nothing if not the history of Christians struggling to be faithful to God's Spirit as that Spirit is made manifest in new and surprising ways in new and surprising contexts. — Stephen B. Bevans

Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, "And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit. — John Of Damascus

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - universe. — Annie Dillard

Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.
Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night ... Simply despair! — Anton Chekhov

Jesus himself is the new Temple at the heart of the new creation, against that day when the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. And so this Temple, like the wilderness tabernacle, is a temple on the move, as Jesus's people go out, in the energy of the Spirit, to be the dwelling of God in each place, to anticipate that eventual promise by their common and cross-shaped life and work. — N. T. Wright

When God seems distant, you may feel that he is angry with you or is disciplining you for some sin. In fact, sin does disconnect us from intimate fellowship with God. We grieve God's Spirit and quench our fellowship with him by disobedience, conflict with others, busyness, friendship with the world, and other sins.10 — Rick Warren

The church for too long has followed Casper, the friendly ghost instead of seeking the fire of the Holy Spirit. We have turned limp at the thought of our own cross; we faint when we think of suffering or sacrifice. Beloved, it is time to embrace the fire of God's Presence. It is the fire that purifies our sacrifice. — Francis Frangipane

I know no surer way of shaking off the dreary crust formed about the soul by the trying to do one's duty or the patient enduring of having somebody else's duty done to one, than going out alone, either at the bright beginning of the day, when the earth is still unsoiled by the feet of the strenuous and only God is abroad; or in the evening, when the hush has come, out to the blessed stars, and looking up at them wonder at the meanness of the day just past, at the worthlessness of the things one has struggled for, at the folly of having been so angry, and so restless, and so much afraid. Nothing focusses life more exactly than a little while alone at night with the stars. What are perfunctory bedroom prayers hurried through in an atmosphere of blankets, to this deep abasement of the spirit before the majesty of heaven? And as a consecration of what should be yet one more happy day, of what value are those hasty morning devotions, — Elizabeth Von Arnim

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot;
Follow your spirit: and upon this charge,
Cry - God for Harry! England and Saint George! — William Shakespeare

were we ordered to make a temple of wood and stone to the Spirit, inasmuch as such worship is due to God alone, it would be a clear proof of the Spirit's divinity; how much clearer a proof in that we are not to make a temple to him, but to be ourselves that temple. — John Calvin

God is our final say in who and what's negative and who and what's positive in our lives. It is best not to have this so over-simplified as the illusioned superstitionists have it; an infinite being's tests may not always be so flowery, and the things we may see as positive are in many cases simply desires of our sinful nature. We are to protect our spirit without falling into the narcissistic mistake of trying to protect our selfish emotions, which the latter, in turn, is more than unlikely to bring peace and happiness. But rather guilt and emptiness. When one walks around constantly, in his mind, attempting to separate positive versus negative people, he is already controlled by something even worse than those he calls the 'negative people', and that is before he spots it soon enough to avoid it as he hypocritically tries to avoid them. — Criss Jami

Tens of thousands of God's saints and sufferers through the ages have found their dark nights lightened and tortured souls strengthened because they found help from the Spirit in the Word of God. — Billy Graham

When God speaks, the Holy Spirit is the One who brings it to pass. He's the Doer of the things of God. So, when God wants to do something in your life, it will have to be by the Holy Spirit. This is why you need the Holy Spirit in your life today. — Chris Oyakhilome

I don't even want to call it God. I just want to call it connecting with something that's greater than I am. So that's the biggest thing from Tennessee - the spirit. — Valerie June

Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God's Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, with us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Let's ask ourselves: are we open to the Holy Spirit, do I pray to him to enlighten me, to make me more sensitive to the things of God?
And this is a prayer we need to pray every day, every day: Holy Spirit may my heart be open to the Word of God, may my heart be open to good, may my heart be open to the beauty of God, every day. — Pope Francis

I recommend to you Jesus Christ, the unchanging One. I recommend to you God's answer to your questions, God's solution to your problems, God's life for your dying soul, God's cleansing for your sin-cursed spirit, God's rest for your restless mind, and God's resurrection for your dying body. For advocate above, I recommend Him to you. You will find Him to be all He ever was
the very same Jesus. — A.W. Tozer

The degree of our spiritual strength will be in direct proportion to the time we spend in God's Word. — Elizabeth George

Belief in Yahweh doesn't come with your mind. It comes with your heart. When you only believe in things you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands, it is idolatry ...
To have faith in Yahweh is to know that there is a realm of the spirit beyond the comprehension of our minds ... Trusting in Molech ... or trusting in your own wisdom and intellect - there's no difference in God's eyes. It's all idolatry. — Lynn Austin

Praise and worship go way beyond the songs we're familiar with, songs we dislike or songs we disapprove. It's all about any type of songs that touch God's heart because He's the creator of nations and tribes and His desire is for every nation and every tribe to praise and worship Him in spirit and in truth. That's the God we serve. — Euginia Herlihy

Are you conscious of a growing failure of your bodily powers? Do you expect to suffer long nights of languishing and days of pain? O be not sad! That bed may become a throne to you. You little know how every pang that shoots through your body may be a refining fire to consume your dross
a beam of glory to light up the secret parts of your soul. Are the eyes growing dim? Jesus will be your light. Do the ears fail you? Jesus' name will be your soul's best music, and His person your dear delight. Socrates used to say, "Philosophers can be happy without music;" and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn. In Thee, my God, my heart shall triumph, come what may of ills without! By thy power, O blessed Spirit, my heart shall be exceeding glad, though all things should fail me here below. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon