Nearer To God Quotes & Sayings

Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell. As it might be pigs in a crowded sty, jostling and shoving to bury their snouts in the trough; until one of them momentarily lifts his snout upwards in the air, in so doing expressing the hope of all enlightenment to come; breaking off from his guzzling to point with his lifted snout to where the angels and archangels gather round God's throne. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me:
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God! to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Though, like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Then let the way appear
Steps unto heaven;
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given:
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Then with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
Bethel I'll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.

Or if on joyful wing,
Cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
Upward I fly:
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee. — Sarah Flower Adams

Friendships are the purer and the more ardent, the nearer they come to the presence of God, the Sun not only of righteousness but of love. — Walter Savage Landor

We all want to do the will of God, and we know that there is nothing nearer to His heart than the evangelization of the world. — Oswald J. Smith

The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance. — Joseph Addison

Walk more closely with God. Get nearer to Christ. Seek to exchange hope for assurance. Seek to feel the witness of the Spirit more closely and distinctly every year. Lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily threatens you. Press towards the mark more earnestly. Fight a better fight, and war a better warfare every year you live. Pray more. Read more. Subdue self more. Love the brethren more. Oh that you may endeavor to grow in grace every year, that the end of your Christian course may be better than the beginning! — J.C. Ryle

(Life) it was a little bit nearer than God, but no less powerful and terrible. Yes, it was something, perhaps, that one did not wish to understand because one feared it, something to which one paid tribute lest it should feel offended and seize one, body and soul. — Arthur Holitscher

God's justice stands forever against the sinner in utter severity. The vague and tenuous hope that God is 'too kind' to punish the ungodly has become deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws everyday nearer and the command to repent goes unregarded. As responsible moral beings, we dare not so trifle with our eternal future. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Believe me, you cannot stand still in your souls. Habits of good or evil are daily strengthening in your hearts. Every day you are either getting nearer to God, or further off. — J.C. Ryle

The nearer a man gets to God, the greater he sees his sin. — David Lloyd-Jones

The nearer you approach to God, the less you reason and argue. When you attain Him, then all sounds - all reasoning and disputing - come to an end. Then you go into samadhi - sleep - , into communion with God in silence. — Ramakrishna

There's nothing life can throw at us that God can't use to draw us nearer to him. — Kyle Idleman

Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man's ken now are but poor-mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and clich?-shouting publicity agents. Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance, ignorance bringing them nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God. — Sean O'Casey

Of all the animal creations of God, main is the only animal who has been created in order that he may know his Maker. Man's aim is life is not therefore to add from day to day to his material prospects and to his material possessions, but his predominant calling is, from day to day to come nearer to his own Maker. — Mahatma Gandhi

Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God. — John Quincy Adams

The Triune God is in the world, nearer to us than we are to ourselves, yet the world is also encompassed by his loving presence. He does have the whole world in his hands, even while he inhabits the whole world. For Christians, being saved means being caught up into this communion, indwelled by God and indwelling in him, and being opened up so that other people have room in us and we in them. — Peter J. Leithart

Do you desire to be nearer to God today? Fill your mind with the truth of the Word and your heart with prayer, and trust God to take care of you. — Warren W. Wiersbe

No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, — Anonymous

God is nearer to me than I am to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they do not know it. — Meister Eckhart

The nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart. -Charles Spurgeon — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

By meditating, you are beginning to act and every action which is pleasing to God brings you closer to the actualization of your God-given vision — Sunday Adelaja

Let us realize, my daughters, that true perfection consists in the love of God and of our neighbour, and the more nearly perfect is our observance of these two commandments, the nearer to perfection we shall be. Our — Teresa Of Avila

A believer longs after God, to come into his presence, to feel his love, to feel near to him in secret, to feel in the crowd that he is nearer than all the creatures. Ah! dear brethren, have you ever tasted this blessedness? There is greater rest and solace to be found in the presence of God for one hour than in an eternity of the presence of man. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

As Augustine says, God is at once both nearer than what is inmost to me and beyond what is highest in me. We can say all of this with some confidence merely because we can observe the divine simplicity's plural expressions and effects in contingent things, and from those abstract toward the reality of their unconditioned source. But, in the end, how that simplicity might be "modulated" within itself is strictly unimaginable for us. At that uncrossable intellectual threshold, religions fall back upon inscrutable doctrines, philosophers upon inadequate concepts, and mystics upon silence. "Si comprehendis, non est deus," as Augustine says: If you comprehend it, it is not God. — David Bentley Hart

Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented. — Arthur C. Clarke

Take heed of thinking. The farther you go from the church of Rome, the nearer you are to God. — Henry Wotton

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

For the nearer everything is unto unpassionateness, the nearer it is unto power. And as grief doth proceed from weakness, so doth anger. For both, both he that is angry and grieveth, have received a wound, and cowardly have as it were yielded themselves unto their affections... For it was ordained unto holiness and godliness, which specially consist in an humble submission to God and His providence in all things; as well as unto justice: these also being part of those duties, which as naturally sociable, we are bound unto; and with without which we cannot happily converse one with another: yea and the very ground and fountain indeed of all just actions. — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

But then I wasn't just asking questions; I was being changed by them. I was being changed by my prayers, which dwindled down nearer and nearer to silence, which weren't confrontations with God but with the difficulty - in my own mind, or in the human lot - of knowing what or how to pray. Lying awake at night, I could feel myself being changed - into what, I had no idea. It was worse than wondering if I had received the call. I wasn't just a student or a going-to-be preacher anymore. I was a lost traveler wandering in the woods, needing to be on my way somewhere but not knowing where. — Wendell Berry

When you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes
In the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you
There's no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower. — Rumi

You will never find Jesus so precious, as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, or a rock rising above the storm! Do not set your hearts on any of the flowers of this world. They shall all fade and die. Prize the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. Jesus never changes! Live nearer to Christ than to any person on this earth; so that when they are taken away, you may have Him to love and lean upon. "Yes, He is altogether lovely. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend!" (Song of Solomon 5:16) — Robert Murray McCheyne

The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were - the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them. — John Calvin

I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Of all teachings that which presents a far distant God is the nearest to absurdity. Either there is none, or he is nearer to every one of us than our nearest consciousness of self. An unapproachable divinity is the veriest of monsters, the most horrible of human imaginations. — George MacDonald

We say that if a temple, or a symbol, or an image helps you to realize the Divine within, you are welcome to it. Have two hundred images if you like. If certain forms and formulas help you to realize the Divine, God speed you; have, by all means, whatever forms, temples, whatever ceremonies you want to bring you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them; the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward towards the brutes. — Swami Vivekananda

We should all know more, live nearer to God, and grow in grace, if we were more alone. Meditation chews the cud and extracts the real nutriment from the mental food gathered elsewhere. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The modern challenge to motherhood is the eternal challenge
that of being a godly woman. The very phrase sounds strange in our ears. We never hear it now. We hear about every other type of women: beautiful women, smart women, sophisticated women, career women, talented women, divorced women. But so seldom to we hear of a godly woman
or of a godly man either, for that matter. I believe women come nearer to fulfilling their God-given function in the home than anywhere else. — Peter Marshall

The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God. — Cyril Connolly

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God. — Martin Buber

The great mystery of our metaphysical situation, that God is nearer to us than we are ourselves, is manifest in the fact that we cannot even be wholly ourselves - in the sense of individuality as a unique divine thought - until we are reborn in Christ. — Dietrich Von Hildebrand

My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother. — Louisa May Alcott

None of us can know how poor we are in comparison with what we might have been if we had lived habitually nearer to God in prayer. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The nearest we approach God ... is as creative beings. The poet , by echoing the primary imagination , recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them ... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action . — R.S. Thomas

Art neither belongs to religion, nor to ethics; but, like these, it brings us nearer to the Infinite, one of the forms of which it manifests to us. God is the source of all beauty, as of all truth, of all religion, of all morality. The most exalted object, therefore, of art is to reveal in its own manner the sentiment of the Infinite. — Victor Cousin

Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery. — Bede Griffiths

We would all know more, live nearer to God, and grow in grace - if we were more alone with God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless. — Simone Weil

I'm in the Dance Band on the Titanic Singing "Nearer my God to thee" and the icebergs on the starboard bow Won't you dance with me? — Harry Chapin

In proportion as the ardor of divine love brings you nearer to God, so will a larger concourse of saintly brethren flock to you. For, as the Lord says, 'A city set on a hill cannot be hid' (Mt. 5:14). — John Cassian

Nearer, my God, to Thee. — Sarah Fuller Flower Adams

There is a purpose in life
to raise men nearer to the likeness of God. Whoever seeks that ideal, daily, finds joy; and in no other way can true joy be found. — John Andreas Widtsoe

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts — A.W. Tozer

I am born for God only. Christ is nearer to me than father, or mother, or sister - a near relation, a more affectionate Friend; and I rejoice to follow Him, and to love Him. Blessed Jesus! Thou art all I want - a forerunner to me in all I ever shall go through as a Christian, a minister, or a missionary ... — Henry Martyn

He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God. — Abraham Kuyper

Mathois said, 'The nearer a man comes to God, the more he sees himself to be a sinner. Isaiah the prophet saw the Lord and knew himself to be wretched and unclean (Is. 6:5). — Benedicta Ward

Now that I was sitting here holding my own flesh and blood with my heart about to explode from sheer joy, I felt nearer to knowing what it meant to be loved by God. The thought occupied my mind all summer - at every diaper change and every feeding, with every coo and smile and cry.

So this is what it's like to really love someone else, to have the sum total of everything you are and love, living and breathing outside of you?

It was my first, real taste of heaven, of communion with God, and in a way, its own baptism of sorts. — Edie Wadsworth

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?' — Isidor Isaac Rabi

The mantram becomes one's staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God. — Mahatma Gandhi

The Book of Mormon is the most correct of any book on this Earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than any other book. — Joseph Smith Jr.

I haven't a single friend; I must live alone. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to the others of my art; I associate with Him without fear, I have always recognized and understood Him, and I have no fear for my music,-it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

The nearer we live to God while we live, the more ready we will be to dwell forever in His presence when we die. — J.C. Ryle

I am not in the least surprised that your impression of death becomes more lively, in proportion as age and infirmity bring it nearer. God makes use of this rough trial to undeceive us in respect to our courage, to make us feel our weakness, and to keep us in all humility in His hands. — Francois Fenelon

By then I wasn't just asking questions; I was being changed by them. I was being changed by my prayers, which dwindled down nearer and nearer to silence, which weren't confrontations with God but with the difficulty
in my own mind, or in the human lot
of knowing what or how to pray. Lying awake at night, I could feel myself being changed
into what, I had no idea. — Wendell Berry

Who am I that I should urge these missionaries to confess their sins in public, when, for all I know, they may be living nearer to God than I am? The Spirit of God does not need me to act as His detective. — Jonathan Goforth

We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. — Maurice Maeterlinck

Man is a mixed being, made up of a spiritual soul and of a fleshly body; the angels are pure spirits, herein nearer to God, only that they are created and finite in all respects, free from decay, free from the power of death, whereas God is infinite and uncreated. — Augustus Hare

the nearer we approach to God, the more we are drawn by Him. — Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Do I as a Christian understand myself? Do I know my own real identity? My own real destiny? I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Saviour is my brother; every Christian is my brother too. Say it over and over again to yourself first thing in the morning, last thing at night, as you wait for the bus, any time when your mind is free, and ask God that you may be enabled to live as one who knows it is all utterly and completely true. For this is the Christians secret of the Christian life, of a God-honouring life. — J.I. Packer

But God himself is truth; in propagating which, as men display a greater integrity and zeal, they approach nearer to the similitude of God, and possess a greater portion of his love. — John Milton

Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say - "I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis." If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis. — Oswald Chambers

When it seems as if God is far away, remind yourself that He is near. Nearness is not a matter of geography. God is everywhere. Nearness is likeness. The more we become like the Lord, the nearer He is to us. — Warren W. Wiersbe

As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I have a vision of the whole Church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon. — Ezra Taft Benson

The nearer to the church, the further from God. — John Heywood

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it. — C.S. Lewis

When you see a condemned man on his way to the gallows, it moves you to pity. If you could do something to free him, you would do it. Well, brothers and sisters, when I see a person in mortal sin, I see someone drawing nearer with every step to the gallows of hell. And seeing him in this unhappy state, I happen to know the way to free him: that he be converted to God, ask God's pardon, and make a good confession. Woe betide me if he does not. — Anthony Mary Claret

The moral task of man is a process of spiritualization. All creatures are go-betweens, and we are placed in time that by diligence in spiritual business we may grow liker and nearer to God. The aim of man is beyond the temporal in the serene region of the everlasting Present. — Meister Eckhart

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WHAT TO BEGIN NEXT

I can't decide what work, what study, to being next, among the several possible. If there is no spirit, no soul, no divine dimension or value, then whatever we do is just killing time, meaningless and idle. On the other hand, if God and the mystery of spirit overlap with this time and place in simultaneous layering, then anything we work on performs eternity and is the very motion of mystery. Each gesture and word and idea appears in this moment's presence and in the other as well. This is a great truth of being.

Whether a particular actions leads toward a future heaven or hell is not worth considering. Even when you will die is not important. Eternity creates itself at this point. This moment is where you grow nearer and nearer God. Time and the infinite curl together in every nick, touch, taw, tine, and root fiber. Here and now is where you can be shown the miracle of what continuously occurs. — Bahauddin

We are always searching for God afar off, when all the while He is nearer to us than our own soul. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Genuine faith can find encouragement, even in that which is discouraging and get nearer to God. — T. B. Joshua

God is nearer to us than our own spirit — Julian Of Norwich

Every trial a man goes through, if he is faithful in that trial and does honor to God and his religion he has espoused, at the end of that trial or affliction that individual is nearer to God, nearer in regard to the increase of faith, wisdom, knowledge and power, and hence is more confident in calling upon the Lord for those things he desires. — Lorenzo Snow

The nearer a soul is to God, the more it deserves our esteem; the closer the ties that bit it to us, the more sensible is our love for it, and the more whole-hearted should be the devotion we show in all that concerns family, country, vocation, and friendship. Thus, instead of destroying patriotism, charity exalts it, as we see in the case of St. Joan of Arc or St. Louis. — Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Thou art never at any time nearer to God than when under tribulation; which He permits for the purification and beautifying of thy soul. — Miguel De Molinos

God is not a Power residing in the clouds. He is an unseen Power residing within us and nearer to us than finger nails to the flesh. — Mahatma Gandhi

Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other. — Simone Weil

At the fork in every road, choose the road that brings you nearer to God. — Elizabeth George

We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event ... we'll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off. — Ted Turner

We are nearer to him than his jugular vein. — Anonymous

The clergy [in the 14th century] on the whole were probably no more lecherous or greedy or untrustworthy than other men, but because they were supposed to be better or nearer to God than other men, their failings attracted more attention. — Barbara Tuchman

I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God. — Meister Eckhart

'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. True it is that Death's face seems stern and cold When he is sent to summon those we love; But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after another, lift their frowning masks, And we behold the Seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the Glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God. — James Russell Lowell

God is the "mysterium tremendum," that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I. — Martin Buber

Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are. — Thomas Aquinas

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, or things that have happened to you. There's no need to go outside. — Rumi

The accidents of life separate us from our dearest friends, but let us not despair. God is like a looking glass in which souls see each other. The more we are united to Him by love, the nearer we are to those who belong to Him. — Elizabeth Ann Seton

The cry of revolt against such a god [a god which just affirms the world as it is] is nearer the truth than is the sophistry with which men attempt to justify him ... — Karl Barth

Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond
Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer,
To our bower at the lily root.
Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands.
There is little shelter.
Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank
Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all thing sink Into a soft caul of forgetfulness. The fugitive colors die. Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,
The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues.
Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster
Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us anymore: The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water Of golgotha at the tip of a reed,
And how a god flimsy as a baby's finger
Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. — Sylvia Plath