Quotes & Sayings About Our Great God

Antony said to Poemen, 'Our great work is to lay the blame for our sins upon ourselves before God, and to expect to be tempted to our last breath. — Benedicta Ward

I think his development has been lightning quick because of his God-given talent. He has great aptitude and he's been able to develop very fast in front of our eyes at every level. — Brian Sabean

What the Latins have done in this text (1 John v, 7) the Greeks have done to Paul (1 Tim. iii, 16). They now read, "Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh"; whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome as well as the rest, read, "Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh." Our English version makes it yet a little stronger. It reads, "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." — Isaac Newton

Central to knowing the Father is understanding the revealed pattern of family. The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and is ordained of God. Living in loving family relationships not only brings us great happiness, but it also helps us learn correct principles and prepares us for eternal life. In addition, family relationships help us know, love, and understand the Father. This is one reason Latter-day Saints have always emphasized the importance of marriage and family both in the Church and in society. God's plan provides a way for family relationships to extend beyond the grave. We can return to the presence of God, eternally united with our families. — Quentin L. Cook

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to Jesus' two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds. Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety. — Os Guinness

Nearly twenty years before, Hudson Taylor had written in an editorial: "All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them." As he looked at himself, Hudson Taylor saw nothing but weakness; but as generations of Christians have studied Taylor's life, they have become acquainted with a man who dared to believe the Word of God and, by faith, carried the gospel to inland China - and saw God work wonders! "Want of trust is at the root of almost all our sins and all our weaknesses," he wrote in that same editorial, "and how shall we escape it but by looking to Him and observing His faithfulness. The man who holds God's faithfulness will not be foolhardy or reckless, but he will be ready for every emergency. — Warren W. Wiersbe

But he alone having reached our deep corruption, he alone having taken upon himself our labors, he alone having suffered the punishments due for our impieties, having recovered us who were not half dead merely, but were already in tombs and sepulchers, and altogether foul and offensive, saves us, both anciently and now, by his beneficent zeal, beyond the expectation of any one, even of ourselves, and imparts liberally of the Father's benefits - he who is the giver of life and light, our great Physician and King and Lord, the Christ of God. — Eusebius

Our poor people are great people, a very lovable people, They don't need our pity and sympathy. They need our understanding love and they need our respect. We need to tell the poor that they are somebody to us that they, too, have been created, by the same loving hand of God, to love and be loved. — Mother Teresa

All the old traditions tell us that there is more than one path to the great Goal ... The shortest and easiest pathway of all is the pathway of Love. It is the one pathway that is open to all, irrespective of what their personal conditions or circumstances may be. For every person, everywhere, true attainment awaits through the yoga of Love, for yoga means union and it is our union with God that makes the attainment possible. — Emmet Fox

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180) — Brian McLaren

There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for. — Stephen Levine

I remember once visiting an outdoor exhibition of sculpture in Arnhem, the Netherlands. One of the artists had placed this notice at the base of a majestic beech: "Statues are hewn by fools like me: only God could make this tree." The Taoists looked at the inside of the tree. They saw God present, not as the super-sculptor, but as the primal force from which the tree drew its being and its specific form. Becoming aware of this divine origin was for them "great knowledge," to be distinguished from the "small knowledge" of our petty, every-day existence. — John Wijngaards

In the heroic effort of the handcart pioneers, we learn a great truth. All must pass through a refiner's fire, and the insignificant and unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong. There seems to be a full measure of anguish, sorrow, and often heartbreak for everyone, including those who earnestly seek to do right and be faithful. Yet this is part of the purging to become acquainted with God. — James E. Faust

Prayer Thank You, Lord, that You are a God of justice who longs to show mercy and grace to us. Thank You that You are our great Defender against the Enemy, other people, and unjust suffering. Thank You that You see all we are going through and that You have compassion and pity on us. Help us to have compassion and pity on others who are likewise going through a time of trial or suffering. We ask that You would help us to bless our enemies and that You would use times of frustration, suffering, and trials to make us more like Jesus. Forgive us when we hurt others, and forgive us when we fall into gossip or self-pity. Give us the strength and grace to trust in You, lean on You, and depend on You at all times and in all things for Your perfect judgment and grace. In Jesus' name, Amen. — Beth Redman

The Pascal of our generation puts it this way: "We run away like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, our masters" - clicking, scrolling, tapping, liking, sharing . . . anything. "We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us." In fact, "we want to complexify our lives. We don't have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it."12 — Tony Reinke

You are worried about what man has done and is doing to this magical planet that God gave us. And I share your concern. What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one who is committed to protecting and holding close the things by which we live ... And we want to protect and conserve the land on which we live - our countryside, our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is our patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it. — Ronald Reagan

Our ignorance of God is too great, because our estimations of God are too little. — Stephen Charnock

As I see it, in other words, God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it. — Frederick Buechner

We are all plants in God's great garden.
His knowledge is our soil.
With it we can live forever.
Without it we wilt and die. — Calvin W. Allison

The daily circumstances of life will afford us opportunities enough of glorifying God in trust, without our waiting for any extraordinary calls upon faith, our faith. Let us remember that the extraordinary circumstances of life are but few; that much of life may slip past without their occurrence; and that if we be not faithful and trusting in that which is little, we are not likely to be so in that which is great... Let our trust be reared in the humble nursery of our own daily experience, with its ever recurring little wants and trials, and sorrows; and then, when need be, it will come forth, to do such great things as are required of it. — Philip Bennett Power

We human beings don't realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colours and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one. — Malala Yousafzai

God alone knows how great it is. All I hope is that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best. — Winston Churchill

Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are. — Thomas Merton

God created us to be great in our calling — Sunday Adelaja

One day we shall domesticate him into a human being & then I shall be able to sketch him. For this is what we have done with ourselves & with God. The little boy will assist his own domestication; he is diligent & cooperative. He cooperates without knowing that the assistance we expect of him is for his own self-sacrifice. Recently, he has had much practice. And so he will go on progressing until little by little
because of essential goodness with which we achieve our salvation
he will pass from actual time to daily time, from meditation to expression, from existence to life. Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would constitute madness. — Clarice Lispector

Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above the brute. Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon show his teeth. It has been said that a man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never ceased to be an animal. Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing sacred except our own desires. Shrine after shrine has crumbled before our eyes; but one altar if forever preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,-ourselves. Our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make sacrifice to him. We boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us. What atrocities do we not perpetrate in the name of culture and refinement! — Kakuzo Okakura

Prayer is so great that wherever you look in the Bible, it is there. Why? Everywhere God is, prayer is. Since God is everywhere and infinitely great, prayer must be all-pervasive in our lives. — Timothy J. Keller

The Founding Fathers believed that faith in God was the key to our being a good people and America's becoming a great nation. — Ronald Reagan

Under every burden, ... God will slip His hand. Every gulf of sorrow, ... His great love has spanned, Into every heart-ache, ... God will our His balm: Ease the pain and anguish, ... bring a blessed calm. — Frances J Roberts

The ultimate reason why the democratic impulse is so strong - why we resist such differences - is that the sinful heart resents the final discrimination made in the judgment of God when He separates the sheep from the goats. Spelling tests smack of the Last Day. The way we manage our schools shows how, deep down, we would really like to abolish the Great White Throne Judgment. This resistance extends from the democratic government school system down to the most trivial awards ceremony. And judging from our awards ceremonies, many modern educators do not want God to separate the sheep from the goats. They want Him to hand out participant ribbons to all. — Douglas Wilson

There are some who believe that because they have made mistakes, they can no longer fully partake of the blessings of the gospel. How little they understand the purposes of the Lord. One of the great blessings of living the gospel is that it refines us and helps us learn from our mistakes. We "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God," yet the Atonement of Jesus Christ has the power to make us whole when we repent. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in
obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god. — Washington Irving

(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

Eid is a time of joy, after a season of fasting and prayer and reflection. Each year, the end of Ramadan means celebration and thanksgiving for millions of Americans. And your joy during this season enriches the life of our great country. This year, Eid is celebrated at the same time as Hanukkah and Advent. So it's a good time for people of these great faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, to remember how much we have in common: devotion to family, a commitment to care for those in need, a belief in God and His justice, and the hope for peace on earth. — George W. Bush

The Great Commandment to love God and love others is a call to intimacy; the Great Commission to go and make disciples is a call to fruitfulness. Intimacy is to precede fruitfulness. The Great Commandment must precede the Great Commission and is an inseparable part of it. When intimacy does not precede fruitfulness, we easily become subject to our own mission and become focused upon religious duty, hyper-religious activity, and aggressive striving that leaves an angry edge in our life and relationships. — Jack Frost

We will never know how great God's love is until we first see how great our sin is. — Steven J. Lawson

I learned that one person hurting another really is like a hand curling into a fist to smash the foot. And that all that really matters is family and other people. And that the purpose of life is to find the Light of God, but not the light from some old guy with a beard sitting up there judging us. The light is the love we give each other on our way back home. And that God wouldn't mind if we spent a little less time telling him how great he is and a little more time loving each other, and not just the people we're supposed to love, but everyone. — Paul H. Magid

I know that God our Father is in this work in great congregations ... and in the smallest branch and the smallest congregation. — Loren C. Dunn

We are Christians because we find our identity, life, and purpose in Christ. We are evangelical because we believe the gospel and esteem it as the great central truth of God's revelation to men. — Paul Washer

Everyone works in the service of man. We doctors work directly on man himself ... The great mystery of man is Jesus: 'He who visits a sick person, helps me,' Jesus said ... Just as the priest can touch Jesus, so do we touch Jesus in the bodies of our patients ... We have opportunities to do good that the priest doesn't have. Our mission is not finished when medicines are no longer of use. We must bring the soul to God; our word has some authority ... Catholic doctors are so necessary! — Gianna Beretta Molla

It seems to rise again when the crisis times come, and this is a time of most severe crisis, as we all know, not just for the history of the United States and the survival indeed of our democracy, but for the future peace of the world. And never before probably has the need for interfaith commitment been nearly as great as it is at this very moment. — Walter Cronkite

If one has the answers to all the questions - that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. — Pope Francis

Music, great music, distends the spirit, arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer. — Pope Benedict XVI

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

I guess God can be whatever God wants to be. Maybe God's so great that even our little rules about material reality and our tiny little universe don't mean anything to God. You ever think of that? — Donna Leon

One altar forever is preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,
ourselves, our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make sacrifice to him; we boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is matter that has forever enslaved us. — Okakura Kakuzo

God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object. — Richard Rohr

you were to ask Christians around the world what God wants from the people he has saved, most would probably answer "obedience." There is great truth in that answer, but it is not enough. If the sovereign God's primary goal in sanctifying believers is simply to make us more holy, it is hard to explain why most of us make only "small beginnings" on the road to personal holiness in this life, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it (see Catechism Q. 113). In reality, God wants something much more precious in our lives than mere outward conformity to his will. After all, obedience is tricky business and can be confusing to us. We can be obedient outwardly while sinning wildly on the inside, as the example of the Pharisees makes clear. In fact, many of my worst sins have been committed in the context of my best obedience. — Barbara R. Duguid

We pray because our life comes from God and we yield it back in prayer. Prayer is a great antidote to the illusion that we are self-made. — Walter Brueggemann

DECEMBER 4 Use Your Authority Well Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever desires to be first among you must be your slave - just as the Son of Man came not to be waited on but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many [the price paid to set them free]. MATTHEW 20:26- 28 God desires to restore us to our rightful position of authority in Christ. But first, we must learn to respect authority before we are fit to be in authority. We all have authorities to whom God expects us to submit. Our government, our law officers, and even our merchants have the right to set rules for us to follow. If we are not submitting to God's appointed authority, it will soon be revealed. Keep a submissive attitude in your heart, and enjoy the authority you have been given to spend time in God's presence today. — Joyce Meyer

Like the Israelites, you and I have been promised spiritual ground for great and abiding victory on a turf where our enemy stands in defiance. If you're not presently occupying your Promised Land, rest assured the devil is. Are you going to stand by and let him get away with that? God has given you land, Beloved, but He's calling you to go forth and take it. Your enemy is standing on your God-given ground, just daring you to take possession of it. Are you going to let him have it? Or are you going to claim your inheritance? Possession is the law of the Promised Land. — Beth Moore

By bravely enduring our trials, we learn humility, compassion for others, and a great reliance on God. We also learn that our happiness and progress depend much less upon what challenges life may bring and infinitely more on how we face and overcome those challenges. — Lloyd D. Newell

Yes, brothers and sisters, the mission of the Church is glorious-to invite all of us to come unto Christ through proclaiming the gospel, perfecting our lives, and redeeming our dead. As we come unto Christ, we bless our own lives, those of our families, and our Father in Heaven's children, both living and dead ...
"I pray that we will be obedient to God, learn His will and do it, and, above all, that we will keep the first and great commandment-to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength" ("Come Unto Christ," April 1988 General Conference). — Ezra Taft Benson

The massive interest in self-esteem and self-worth exists because it is trying to help us with a real problem. The problem is that we really are not okay. There is no reason why we should feel great about ourselves. We truly are deficient. The meager props of the self-esteem teaching will eventually collapse as people realize that their problem is much deeper. The problem is, in part, our nakedness before God. — Edward T. Welch

God loves the lowly. When we live humbly, he takes our small efforts and creates great things. — Pope Francis

We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God's great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer. — Peter Forsyth

Prayer is an act of faith. Just by praying to God, you are declaring our trust in someone other than yourself. Your faith is increased as you pray and watch how God answers your prayers. God says in Jeremiah 33:3, Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know. God is awesome in power and there is never a time when He is not beside you. He is faithful and holy. — Charles Stanley

In the midst of Our great grief,' announced Alexander III, 'the voice of God bids Us to stand staunchly for government relying on God's design with faith in the truth of autocratic power. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

Walt had a way of communicating that was just magical," composer Richard Sherman told me. "Simple, but magical. He would give you a challenge and say, 'I know you can do this.' He made you believe anything was possible. He made you proud to be on his team. And it really was a team effort - Walt would roll up his sleeves and go to work alongside the rest of us. "He saw potential in people who had never really done anything great. My brother Robert and I really had no track record in the music industry, but Walt heard a few of our songs and he gave us an opportunity and inspired us to keep topping ourselves. Without Walt to inspire us, I don't know where we'd be today. "Walt always wanted you to find something wonderful in yourself, to believe in it and consider it God's gift to you. God gives you the gift, and the rest is up to you. Walt taught me that what you do with that gift is your gift back to God. — Pat Williams

Through His Spirit, the Spirit of prayer, our life may be one of continual prayer. The Spirit of prayer will help you become an intercessor, asking great things of God for those around you. — Andy Murray

Thus, we may observe, it is usual with God to smite us in those very comforts which stole away too much of the love and delight of our souls from God; to cross us in those things from which we raised up too great expectations of comfort. — John Flavel

Only when we try to love God will we see our utter inability to do so. And only when we understand that inability, will we begin to be in awe of His great love toward us. — Mike Donehey

Be faithful in the little things, for in them our strength lies. To the good God nothing is little, because He is so great and we are so small. — Mother Teresa

Indeed, I believe that in our own day, after all the efforts of critical exegesis, we can share anew this sense of astonishment at the fact that a saying from the year 733 B.C., incomprehensible for so long, came true at the moment of the conception of Jesus Christ - that God did indeed give us a great sign intended for the whole world. — Pope Benedict XVI

The habit of quietly absorbing the shocks will be quite a great help to stabilize pure awareness.
The technique is: Just feel not disturbed.
The disturbing influence could be a blessing of Mother Nature to develop the habit to make
best use out of every situation.
Every situation is God Sent. With this supreme wisdom of life any situation can be used
to our advantage and regarded as a blessing of Mother Nature. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

the moment when the kingdom of God overcomes the kingdoms of the world. It is the moment when a great old door, locked and barred since our first disobedience, swings open suddenly to reveal not just the garden, opened once more to our delight, but the coming city, the garden city that God had always planned and is now inviting us to go through the door and build with him. The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. Its — N. T. Wright

But if we abide in Him and He abides in us, we will bear much fruit in oneness with other believers. He will give us the glory to come into unity. And when we receive love from God, we will be able to love others as He loves us. This twofold unity - with the triune God and with each other - is the key to evangelism. Indeed, our intimacy with God has everything to do with His great harvest. Jesus said, "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:23, emphasis mine). It is through our oneness with God and His people that His glory is revealed through us, leading the world to believe in Him. — Che Ahn

That we should feed and nourish our souls with high notions of GOD; which would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him. — Brother Lawrence

Our first postulate is that because God is God, He does as He pleases, only as He pleases, always as He pleases; that His great concern is the accomplishment of His own pleasure and the promotion of His own glory that He is the Supreme Being, and therefore Sovereign of the universe. — Arthur W. Pink

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,-diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness. — Joseph Hall

We see now why the great target of Satan is to break down our faith. He knows all too well that the righteous live by faith, so he aims at cutting our lifeline to God. Faith is like the hand that reaches up to receive what God has freely promised. If the devil can pull your hand back down to your side, then he has succeeded. All of God's intended supply will just stay where it is in heaven. — Jim Cymbala

Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here . . . we have to sin. . . . It is enough that by the riches of God's glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. So you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly - you too are a mighty sinner. — Mark A. Noll

Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to him, and of our dependence upon him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to him. — Philip Doddridge

Intercession is God's brilliant strategy for including the saints in ruling with Him in power. Yet, it has such great impact on us as it draws us into intimacy with God, protects with humility, transforms with holiness, anoints with power, unifies in community, releases revelation, and increases our inheritance while it trains us to rule with His wisdom. — Mike Bickle

The night above. We two. Full moon.
I started to weep, you laughed.
Your scorn was a god, my laments
moments and doves in a chain.
The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.
Dawn married us on the bed,
our mouths to the frozen spout
of unstaunched blood.
The sun came through the shuttered balcony
and the coral of life opened its branches
over my shrouded heart.

- Night of Sleepless Love — Federico Garcia Lorca

We can know what the Lord wants us to do - and experience 'the blessing which hath been bestowed upon us, that we have been made instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work' (Alma 26:3). . . .

"To truly be an instrument in the hands of God, in order to fully have that blessing bestowed upon us in 'the day of this life' in which we 'perform [our] labors' (Alma 34:32), we must, as Elder Maxwell says, 'finally submit ourselves' (Ensign, Nov. 1995, 24) to the Lord. — Anne C. Pingree

I may be wrong but I think nothing needs so much effort as prayer to God. If anyone wants to pray, the demons try to interrupt the prayer, for they know that prayer is the only thing that hinders them. All the other efforts in a religious life, whether they are made vehemently or gently, have room for a measure of rest. But we need to pray till our dying breath. That is the great struggle. — Benedicta Ward

They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? — Anthony Burgess

Man has no ability to repair this damaged planet. The flaw in human nature is too great. God is our only hope! — Billy Graham

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

With God all things are possible, and no conversion ever takes place save by the almighty power of the Holy Ghost. The great need, therefore, of every Christian worker is to know God. — Hudson Taylor

The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go God's love for us does not. — C.S. Lewis

We pay a lot of money to get a tank with a few tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas full of them, which he constantly enjoys. (I can hardly take in these beautiful little creatures one at a time.) We are enraptured by a well-done movie sequence or by a few bars from an opera or lines from a poem. We treasure our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few of them. But he is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right. This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life. — Dallas Willard

The Providence of God is the great protector of our life and usefulness, and under the divine care we are perfectly safe from danger. — Charles Spurgeon

Oh, how great the plan of our God! — Neal A. Maxwell

Do not think, because you experience adversity, that the hand of the Lord is shortened. It is not our prosperity but our holiness that he seeks with all his heart. And to that end, he rules the whole world...He is a big God for little people, and we have great cause to rejoice that, unbeknownst to them, all the kings and presidents and premiers and chancellors of the world follow the sovereign decrees of our Father in heaven, that we, the children, might be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. — John Piper

The great barrier to worship among God's people is not that we are always seeking our own satisfaction, but that our seeking is so weak and half-hearted that we settle for little sips at broken cisterns when the fountain of life is just over the next hill. — John Piper

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'
Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance ...
'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'
But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave. — Neal Shusterman

Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Don't play defense with your life. Play offense with your kids, your wife, your life. Don't look for the path of least resistance. The hard way is the best way! And quit living as if the will of God is an insurance plan. Dare to dream great things for God. — Mark Batterson

How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance, and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don't realize how miraculous our senses are until we lose one. — Malala Yousafzai

The first element in a symmetrical life is work. Three-fourths of our time is probably spent in work. Of course the meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as our worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God three-fourths of life remains unsanctified. The proof that work is religious is that most of Christ's life was spent in work. During a large part of the first thirty years of His life He worked with the hammer and the plane, making ploughs and yokes and household furniture. Christ's public ministry occupied only about two and a half years of His earthly life; the great bulk of His time was simply spent in doing common everyday tasks, and ever since then work has had a new meaning. — Henry Drummond

Preaching is the primary means of growth for the local church. There is a great deal of debate about this in our day, but it is the preaching of the Word that God most uses to build up a church, not only numerically but above all (and far more importantly) in spiritual depth and understanding of the people who make up the congregation. — James Montgomery Boice

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

The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me" (v. 7). Here is staggering confidence in God! No matter what the wicked plot and how powerful they are, God is greater and he will deliver. Is this not the heart of the message of the gospel itself? No matter how great is our opponent - which, among other things, includes the sin and guilt of our own lives - God is greater, and his provision more fully revealed in Jesus Christ for our deliverance cannot fail. In Christ we know that the righteous will surround us, that God will deal bountifully with us. In Christ, we are invincible. — Anonymous

Jesus didn't wait until we got better to die for us. He died when we were in our most unlovely state. The person who doesn't deserve love actually needs love more, not less. If you know someone unworthy of love, that's great! You now have a chance to emulate Christ, because the essence of His love is unconditional. — Tony Evans

9/11/01
Gina:
Especially today, with the enormity of current events, I want to convey to you again, how much you mean to me and how proud I am to be your husband. The hard work that you are engaged in right now is exhausting, invisible and largely thankless in the short term.
But honey, please know that buried at the core of this tedium is the most noble and important work in the world- God's work; the fruits of which you and I will be lucky enough to enjoy as we grow old together. Watching these little guys grow into men is a privilege that I am proud to share with you, and the perfect fulfillment of our marriage bonds.
You are a great mom.
You are a great wife.
You are my best friend.
You are very pretty.
Happy Birthday.

-Matt — Michael Spehn

God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath. — John Ruskin

We're all sinners separated from a holy God. Because of our sin, we're under a death sentence, and we can't fix the problem by simply trying to be good. But out of his great love for us, God sent his Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for our sins. Jesus died on the cross to reconcile us to God, and he was raised from the dead to give us new life in him. If we accept Jesus by faith, God forgives our sins and promises us eternal life. That's good news! And that's the message of the gospel. — Matt Eachus

Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue. — Sadhu Vaswani

Most of us think our lives are too full already. But when, in faith, you start to pray for more ministry, amazing things occur. As your opportunities expand, your ability and resources supernaturally increase, too. Right away you'll sense the pleasure God feels in your request and His urgency to accomplish great things through you. — Bruce H. Wilkinson