Self Love And God Quotes & Sayings

God is forbearing, gracious, and longsuffering, but he is also a God of holiness, wrath, and judgement.57 The wrath of God, unlike the love or holiness of God, should not be thought of as an intrinsic perfection of God; rather it is a function or expression of God's holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath, but there will always be love and holiness. Where God in his holiness confronts his image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath, otherwise God is not the jealous and self-sufficient God he claims to be, and his holiness is impugned.58 — Peter J. Gentry

You are precious and special possession of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Accept me for who iam or leave me the way iam, for a true image of God needs no Photoshop and the core of who i really am has no settings — Morgan Chabane

Is religion subjective? Nay, its soul is in objectivity, in an Other whose Life is our true life, whose Love is our love, whose Joy is our joy, whose Peace is our peace, whose burdens are our burdens, whose Will is our will. Self is emptied into God, and God in-fills it. — Thomas Raymond Kelly

May you know, love, obey and serve the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind. — Lailah Gifty Akita

there has to be somebody whom you adore who adores you. Someone whom you cannot but praise who praises and loves you - that is the foundation of identity. The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.3 However, if we put this power in the hands of a fallible, changeable person, it can be devastating. And if this person's regard is based on your fallible and changeable life efforts, your self-regard will be just as fleeting and fragile. Nor can this person be someone you can lose, because then you will have lost your very self. Obviously, no human love can meet these standards. Only love of the immutable can bring tranquillity. Only the unconditional love of God will do. — Timothy J. Keller

And what is justice? The princess thought of that proud word 'justice'. All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and simple law - the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do with justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did. — Leo Tolstoy

If we have a relationship with Jesus Christ and believe the Bible to be the Word of God, then we have no room for wallowing in the swamp of self-pity. — Lois Mowday Rabey

Participants in the kingdom of the world trust the power of the sword to control behavior; participants of the kingdom of God trust the power of self-sacrificial love to transform hearts. The kingdom of the world is concerned with preserving law and order by force; the kingdom of God is concerned with establishing the rule of God through love. The kingdom of the world is centrally concerned with what people do; the kingdom of God is centrally concerned with how people are and what they can become.The kingdom of the world is characterized by judgment; the kingdom of God is characterized by outrageous, even scandalous, grace. — Gregory A. Boyd

There is a fine line between humility and humiliation, and when Augustine's critics, both loyal and disloyal, fault him for morbid self-criticism, they generally mean to imply that he has crossed the line. You can have a relationship with another person only if you know something of humility; otherwise your ego gets in the way. If, however, you are humiliated instead of humbled, there is no 'you' to enter into a relationship. Massilians and Pelagians had differing understandings of when humility before God became too much of a good thing, but they had common cause in not liking Augustine's scruples about the human will to relate to God. If everything about the soul's relationship to God is God's doing, including the very desire to be in relation, where exactly does the soul surface in its redemption? The Word seems to have become a monologue. — James Wetzel

We assure you there is no separateness between you and God/Goddess/The All That Is other than your perception. — Rene Gaudette

Don't harden your heart. Return to the Lord. He will revive and restore you. — Lailah Gifty Akita

And if the object of one's desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and love, then the struggle cannot fail but ends in that self-giving to God, in recognition of one's own weakness, which is overcome only by giving oneself over into God's merciful hands. — Benedict, Pope XVI

Revelation is purposive. Its end is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. In short: revelation is reconciliation. — John B. Webster

We are all children of a God who knows us, loves us, and is there for us, especially in our sorrow and suffering. To be separated from Him is to be lost. — Toni Sorenson

In his self-offering on the Cross, Jesus, as it were, brings all the sin of the world deep within the love of God and wipes it away. — Pope Benedict XVI

Although the sovereignty of God is universal and absolute, it is not the sovereignty of blind power. It is coupled with infinite wisdom, holiness and love. And this doctrine, when properly understood, is a most comforting and reassuring one. Who would not prefer to have his affairs in the hands of a God of infinite power, wisdom, holiness and love, rather than to have them left to fate, or chance, or irrevocable natural law, or to short-sighted and perverted self? Those who reject God's sovereignty should consider what alternatives they have left. — Loraine Boettner

The gospel of the kingdom is an invitation to a different reality, a different way of living. The kingdom is a new way of relating as people. Where ordinary human life is based on competitiveness and defensiveness, domination and subjugation, treachery and violence, the kingdom is based on the self-giving love of God. — J.P. Moreland

All throughout Scripture we see Jesus loving people whom others deemed foul, broken, dirty, and unworthy...People may criticize you for giving your time and attention to people who are ostracized or considered permanently broken. They may say it's not safe, that they're not worth your time, and that these people gave up the right to be treated well when they made their bad decision. They said that to Jesus too. But while many self-proclaimed followers of God sat back and criticized the openness of Jesus' love for people, he called them out for their lack of it: (Mark 2:14-15). — Jarrid Wilson

It's an unholy crusade against good people everywhere, all in my name. If I had a stomach, I'd be sick to it. You see now why so many good people just give up out there? You can only take so much evil pretending to be good. You can only handle so many broken souls acting as if good people are the evil ones, before you raise your hands and claim defeat. But I want you all to understand something. There is evil happening. There are spirits from Hell demonizing. There are even wars planned, and dark judgments justified by the self-righteous fanatics. But none of that means good can't also triumph. None of that means good cannot rise up against hatred, against judgment, against the armies of Hell itself, and bring about a tidal wave of joy and love. Evil does, but good always is. — Sean Patrick Brennan

A pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation; sober counsels and ingenuous actions; open deportment and sweet carriage; sincere principles and unprejudiced understanding; love of God and self-denial; peace and confidence; hol — Jeremy Taylor

There is a God and He is good, and his love, while free, has a self imposed cost: We must be good to one another. — George H. W. Bush

My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God's love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

If only you could be yourself." they shouted. So, she did. "You are not like me or anyone I have met!" they screamed. So, she blended. "You are so fake." they laughed. So, the caterpillar retreated to her cocoon to find peace alone. One day, they came to find her gone. She left a message, "God knew I was different and gave me these beautiful wings because he meant for me to fly. You see ... I wasn't meant to be like you. I was meant to be me
better. — Shannon L. Alder

Above all else, he was afire with heavenly love, unassumingly patient, devoted to unceasing prayer, and kindly to all who came to him for comfort. He regarded as equivalent to prayer the labour of helping the weaker brethren with advice, remembering that he who said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God', also said, 'Love thy neighbour'. His self-discipline and fasting were exceptional, and through the grace of contrition he was always intent on the things of heaven. Lastly, whenever he offered the sacrifice of the Saving Victim of God, he offered his prayers to God not in a loud voice but with tears welling up from the depths of his heart. — Bede

Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear, so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence, and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation, passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions? — Voltaire

To begin with, you have to grasp the fact that Christian virtue isn't about you - your happiness, your fulfillment, your self-realization. It's about God and God's kingdom, and your discovery of a genuine human existence by the paradoxical route - the route God himself took in Jesus Christ! - of giving yourself away, of generous love which constantly refuses to take center stage. — N. T. Wright

Even Annie did not then know that it was the soul's hunger, the vague sense of a need which nothing but the God of human faces, the God of the morning and of the starful night, the God of love and self-forgetfulness, can satisfy, that sent her money-loving, poverty-stricken, pining, grumbling old aunt out staring towards the east. It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their own hopes. How little they know what they look for in reality is their God! This is that for which their heart and their flesh cry out. — George MacDonald

Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering. — Leo Tolstoy

Just as God, above all, is free of every need and self-interest, the spiritual man who has the Spirit struggles and becomes perfected in the love according to Christ, love that is delivered of all need and self-interest. — John Romanides

But I can tell you this: that I am deeply proud of Rebecca. That she made a split-second decision to save the life of her son, turning the wheel of her vehicle so that her side of it would be impacted by an oncoming car instead of his. She gave her life in the exercise of the greatest gift that God grants us - the ability to change the trajectory of history. — Dexter Palmer

Peacemaking contains all the elements of the Christian faith. Peacemaking is the result of not only taking the beatitudes seriously, but living them. It involves right relationships. Right relationships with God, right relationships with God's people and right relationships with God's creation. It involves love. Proper love of self, love of God and creation, and love of all people - even our enemies. It is not passive, it is active; it is peacemaking not peacekeeping. Above all, it is following the way of Jesus, which was the way of the cross, where his power was 'made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:9). — Donald R. Clymer

But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of any body or the rhythm of time in its movement; not the radiance of light, so dear to our eyes; not the sweet melodies in the world of manifold sounds; not the perfume of flowers, ointments and spices; not manna and not honey; not the limbs so delightful to the body's embrace: it is none of these things that I love when I love my God. And yet when I love my God I do indeed love a light and a sound and a perfume and a food and an embrace - a light and sound and perfume and food and embrace in my inward self. There my soul is flooded with a radiance which no space can contain; there a music sounds which time never bears away; there I smell a perfume which no wind disperses; there I taste a food that no surfeit embitters; there is an embrace which no satiety severs. It is this that I love when I love my God. (Confessions 10.6.8) — Timothy J. Keller

See the Divinity in others and you will find it within yourself. — Ka Chinery

Authentic Christianity and the world are by definition at odds. For most Americans, Christianity has been watered down and rendered innocuous, like so much fast food. It has become easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, and otherworldly outlook, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love of God. There is little guilt and no punishment, and the payoff in heaven is virtually certain. — Thomas Reeves

For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, "Christ's love compels us" (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I'd tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother's beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this. — Gregory A. Boyd

The humble woman is surprised by all the good that she sees around her rather than scandalized by what she cannot judge anyway. The humble woman is grateful for her successes but not disheartened by her failures. She enjoys her gifts and readily admits her mistakes. She maintains a sense of humor, whether the news from Wall Street is giddy or glum. She faces her character defects without getting discouraged. Her humble confidence in God's love and her enchantment with the kabod Yahweh shape a hedge of thorns against self-absorption and frees her for an unselfconscious presence to others. — Brennan Manning

Two Extremes Scripture and experience warn us that here we have to steer our course between two opposite extremes of disaster. On the one hand, there is the legalistic hypocrisy of Pharisaism (God-serving outward actions proceeding from self-serving inward motives), and on the other hand there is the antinomian idiocy that rattles on about love and liberty, forgetting that the God-given law remains the standard of the God-honoring life. Both Pharisaism and antinomianism are ruinous. — J.I. Packer

The Jesus Trajectory Love is recklessness, not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Loves comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering, Love proceeds like a millstone, hard-surfaced and straight forward. Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing. Love gambles away every gift God bestows. The words above were written by the great Sufi mystic Jalalludin Rumi.6 But better than almost anything in Christian scripture, they closely describe the trajectory that Jesus himself followed in life. — Cynthia Bourgeault

Self knowledge puts us on our knees, and it is very necessary for love. For knowledge of God gives love, and knowledge of self gives humility — Mother Teresa

Many Christians still at bottom look upon God as one of the most selfish, self-absorbed Beings in the universe, far more selfish than they could think it right to be themselves, -intent only upon His own honor and glory, looking out continually that His own rights are never trampled on; and so absorbed in thoughts of Himself and of His own righteousness, as to have no love or pity to spare for the poor sinners who have offended Him. — Hannah Whitall Smith

Purge me from every sinful blot;
My idols all be cast aside:
Cleanse me from every evil thought,
From all the filth of self and pride.
The hatred of the carnal mind
Out of my flesh at once remove:
Give me a tender heart, resigned,
And pure, and full of faith and love. — John Wesley

The love of God uplifts and enlarges us. I can never think of myself anymore as exclusively in this body; I feel that I am present in all bodies. I have no awareness of race or other distinctions at all. In my perceptions, just as I feel my own consciousness in every part of my physical form, I feel you all to be a part of me. Everything that is living I feel within this body. I know the sensations of all. It is not imagination; it is Self-realization. This consciousness is far beyond telepathy. It is awareness of the perceptions of every being. That is the meaning of Christ Consciousness. — Paramahansa Yogananda

As with every aspect of our sanctification, the renewal of the mind may be painful and difficult. It requires hard work and discipline, inspired by a sacrificial love for Christ and a burning desire to build up His body, the Church. Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him. — Nancy Pearcey

The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one's own life in order to make room for God's life. — Edith Stein

This shows that history is not simply a fixed progression towards what is better, but rather an
event of freedom, and even a struggle between freedoms that are in mutual conflict, that is,
according to the well-known expression of St. Augustine, a conflict between two loves: the love of
God to the point of disregarding self, and the love of self to the point of disregarding God. — Pope John Paul II

God's love sets us free from the need to seek approval. Knowing that we are loved by God, accepted by God, approved by God, and that we are new creations in Christ empowers us to reject self-rejection and embrace a healthy self-love. Being secure in God's love for us, our love for Him, and our love for ourselves, prepares us to fulfill the second greatest commandment: To love our neighbor as ourselves. — Myles Munroe

The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours. — Albert Camus

God made you the way He wanted you to be and He does not make mistakes. He has a plan for your life that is much bigger than you can imagine. — Michele Woolley

When you're calling for God,
whom you are calling?
When you trying to find the God
whom you're looking for?
When you're thinking about God
whom you're thinking of?
When you're praying for God,
for whom are you praying for?
You're calling for your true self.
You're looking for your true self.
You're thinking of your true self
and you're praying to you to reveal your true self.
You're the truth, you're the God, you're eternal. — Debasish Mridha

I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife. I call education not that which is made up of the shreds and patches of useless arts, but that which inculcates principles, polishes taste, regulates temper, cultivates reason, subdues the passions, directs the feelings, habituates to reflection, trains to self-denial, and, more especially, that which refers all actions, feelings, sentiments, tastes, and passions, to the love and fear of God. — Hannah More

Accept me for who iam or leave me the the way iam, for a true image of God needs no Photoshop and the core of who i real am has no settings — Morgan Chabane

When someone tells you, "I love you," and then you feel, "Oh, I must be worthy after all," that's an illusion. That's not true. Or someone says, "I hate you," and you think, "Oh, God, I knew it; I'm not very worthy," that's not true either. Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, "I love you," he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, "I hate you," she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views - literally — Adyashanti

God gifted a Zoo; with a paralyzed care taker. — Durgesh Satpathy

Self-protection keeps you from love, Mr. Knightley-all love. I am so sad at how I've kept them at a distance-the Muirs, Alex, Father John, Kyle, Hannah ... Anyone and everyone who has ever stood by me. I played God in our relationships. I determined their value by how much I let them in, by how much I let them determine my worth. I'm not God. And I don't need to work so hard anymore ... — Katherine Reay

The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning - to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That's not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Yet — Paul Kalanithi

Thus God and nature linked the gen'ral frame, And bade self-love and social be the same. — Alexander Pope

Father Michaels' sermon was mercifully short. He had a reputation for three-minute homilies, tightly written, provocative and insightful. His words centered on the true meaning of Christianity. That is was all about love. Love of God, love of self, love of family, love of community.
Love was a gift. — Dorothea Benton Frank

Everyone deserves to feel beautiful. It is your God-given right to look in the mirror and love what you see. Never mind the imperfections -we're all imperfect, after all. But people tend to get so caught up in what they are lacking, they forget to appreciate all that they have. — Jenna Moreci

Why shouldn't you strengthen your own vibrations through fellowship with people seeking Self-realization, and by group meditation with them? This practice will fortify your own spiritual convictions you will find that many seemingly insuperable barriers in your life will crumble and dissolve in the waters of meditation. Your devotion and love for God will commingle with the devotion and love of others. Divine bliss will radiate from you, helping all persons you meet. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worthwhile or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son. — W. Somerset Maugham

Technology does make possible advance toward shalom; progress in mastery of the world can bring shalom nearer. But the limits of technology must also be acknowledged; technology is entirely incapable of bringing about shalom between ourselves and God, and it is only scarcely capable of bringing about the love of self and neighbour. — Nicholas Wolterstorff

We are all made from the same seeds. It makes sense to say that compassion, love sunshine, water and nourishing seeds will grow into healthy, happy, fulfilled plants. You don't have to like a certain kind of bread or be a bread maker to have faith. God invented more than brand of toasters to spread the seeds of faith. Those who become self-righteous bread makers shall have self-righteous toaster consciousness.
If our belief system excludes us from sharing bread with those who do not believe the exact same manner as we do, that's when its time to re-evaluate our belief system. — Sadiqua Hamdan

Folks who thrive in God's grace give grace easily, but the self-critical person becomes others-critical. We "love" people the way we "love" ourselves, and if we are not good enough, then no one is. We keep ourselves brutally on the hook, plus our husbands, our kids, our friends, our churches, our leaders, anyone "other." When we impose unrealistic expectations on ourselves, it's natural to force them on everyone else. If we're going to fail, at least we can expect others to fail; and misery loves company, right? — Jen Hatmaker

To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse ("The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them"). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit "or else" is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust "charity," just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state. — Christopher Hitchens

The call to faith, in this light, is not some test of a coy god, waiting to see if we "get it right." It is the only summons, issued under the only conditions, which can allow us fully to reveal who we are, what we most love, and what we most devoutly desire. Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts ... The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not. — Terryl L. Givens

What victims need are not self-produced positive statements but God's statements about his response to their pain. How can you be rid of these dysfunctional emotions and their effects? How can you be rid of your disgrace? God's grace to you dismantles the beliefs that give disgrace life. Grace re-creates what violence destroyed. Martin Luther writes that "the love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it." One-way love is the change agent you need. Grace transforms and heals; and healing comes by hearing God's statements to you, not speaking your own statements to yourself. — Justin S. Holcomb

Conversion is an offering of self, of love, and of loyalty we give to God in gratitude for the gift of testimony. — David A. Bednar

We seek love in relationships, peace in security, and joy in material things ... but these feelings are divine and not dependent on any outer circumstances. — Vivian Amis

Often, we tend to wrap ourselves around him so tight that we neglect our mission, our purpose, our calling, sometimes our children and even our God — N. Sophronia Crosby

The Path to the Truth is a labour of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide. Not your mind. Meet, challenge, and ultimately prevail over your nafs (false ego) with your heart. Knowing your ego (higher self/soul) will lead you to the knowledge of God. (2) — Various

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet - — Oscar Wilde

So often when people hear about the suffering in our world, they feel guilty, but rarely does guilt actually motivate action like empathy or compassion. Guilt paralyzes and causes us to deny and avoid what makes us feel guilty. The goal is to replace our guilt with generosity. We all have a natural desire to help and to care, and we simply need to allow ourselves to give from our love without self-reproach. We each must do what we can. This is all that God asks of us.
- , God Has a Dream, p. 87-88 — Desmond Tutu

Cynicism places the cynic at the center seat of judgement with the self appointed authority to criticize and condemn. — Jayce O'Neal

Don't go for the ones that know your worth even when you don't.
Even when you call them to pick you up because some fuck boy left you with only a few hickeys and no ride home.
Please don't pay attention to the boys who take your self hate and say 'you really don't see yourself the way others see you, do you?'
Oh god.
just don't fall in love with them.
Please, just don't.
Because it's the ones that kiss your eyelids and stretch marks that fuck you over.
It;s the ones that tell you the truth that bring you to your knees.
It's the good ones that leave you curled up in a ball for months begging for the bleeding in your gut to stop.
And it's all because they're the unforgettable ones.
The boys who leave so many marks of love on you that no one can compare.
God knows they're it.

Fuck.
You were it. — Unknown

Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus' irresponsible love, we decide to make grace "more responsible" by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include). — Mike Yaconelli

When we pray, instead of trying to produce love in our souls toward God, we should be basking in God's love for us. How foolish to stay indoors in the cold, dark little room off the self, trying to turn on the light and turn up the heat, when we can just go outside into God's glorious Sonlight and receive his rays! How silly to fuss with artificial tanning salons and lotions and lights when the Son is out! — Peter Kreeft

LOVE OF THE GOD"
"Love has power, power of Devine
It fills meaning of one life,
Love is the gift, Gift that gets of fortune,
Rather you aren't going for,
but Some divines put you in.
Without love, Life is like blank book,
Like in darkness one tries to look.
There are some shoulder made for each and Everyone,
To let your self lean and get relax.
But when you are shrugged off by own,
God himself comes and give you calmness.
Be believer of God, he will always with you.
Either anyone loves you or not but he will.
We find gains and such things in sake of Love,
But in his way he always just make you feel better even how wrong or bad you are!
He has his own way to spread love in one life, We should have such a trust and would get that we need to have!!!!
-Samar Sudha — Samar Sudha

It is enough if God approves of me and all are against me. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The mystery of the spiritual life is that Jesus desires to meet us in the seclusion of our own heart, to make his love known to us there, to free us from our fears, and to make our own deepest self known to us Each time you let the love of God penetrate deeper into your heart it leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give whole-hearted love to our fellow human beings. In the seclusion of our hearts we learn to know the hidden presence of God; and with that spiritual knowledge we can lead a loving life. — Henri Nouwen

The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.
We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique. — Richard Rohr

May the hope and the light glow today,
May the glory of God, come all along
May the wishes and desires be fulfilled
Let me assume, the Power of God given to me
Not for my own self, but for all those are hungry
For all those who need help, and are in pain
Today, I give you my utmost love and respect
With total care, I will always be with you
Oh my dear child ... ! God blessess you ! ...
God bless you all ... ! — Santosh Kalwar

Knowing ourselves is knowing our worth in the eyes of God. That's why the number one thought we cannot fail to think and believe is that He loves us. Always. No matter what. — Toni Sorenson

Selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, self-indulgence, laziness and pride were all anti-life. Love, heroism, self-sacrifice, sympathy, mercy, integrity and creative faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense. These were the gifts of God to men. With — Ernest Gordon

And yet I do love a kind of light, melody, fragrance, food, embracement when I love my God; for He is the light, the melody, the fragrance, the food, the embracement of my inner self - there where is a brillance that space cannot contain, a sound that time cannot carry away, a perfume that no breeze disperses, a taste undimisnished by eating, a clinging together that no saiety will sunder. This is what I love when I love my God. — Saint Augustine

Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, "What!? all this, and Christ too?" What is "all this," compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, "I have no wish at all about it." "But if you might wish, which would you choose?" "I would not choose at all." "But if God bade you choose?" "I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take." Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Marriage includes a spouse, and often children. But the goal, center, and purpose of marriage is not self, spouse, or children. The ultimate goal of marriage and family is the glory of God. Only when marriage and family exist for God's glory - and not to serve as replacement idols - are we able to truly love and be loved. Remember, neither your child nor your husband (or wife) should be who you worship, but instead who you worship with. — Mark Driscoll

If we are talking about a loving God, we are talking about a God who asks us to trust him, whether we get what we ask for or don't. But he will never force us to trust him. That is entirely up to us. We have free will and we can accept his love or reject it, or claim it doesn't exist at all. We can trust him or distrust him as we like. But if he really and truly is the God of the Bible, who loves me with an unchanging and self-sacrificial love (agape), then I really and truly can trust him in all circumstances, which is tremendously freeing. In fact, I can go one step further than trusting him. To use a biblical phrase, I can rejoice in him. But is only possible if we really do know that God has our best interests at heart at all times. Of course, we have to decide on our own whether we believe that. But if we come to see that, that is true and do allow ourselves to believe it, we are precisely where he created us to be: in his loving hands. — Eric Metaxas

The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living. — David O. McKay

The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes. Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened. I love you. Thou art God.
-Valentine Michael Smith — Robert A. Heinlein

the mystery of love bespeaks another mystery - the mystery of God. If we refuse to ascribe the name of God to the mystery of love, we shall remain in the throes of endless self-deception. Which means that melancholia cannot but be deeply, inherently religious. It has its human players and counterplayers, yet, in the end, it always comes down to one's personal experience of the mystery, the uncanniness of love. And there is nothing more uncanny than a love that has no knowable boundaries. — Donald Capps

When you're connected to a source and to each other through conversation, through making love, through meditation, playing games with your kids, all that stuff, then your self-esteem's going to go up. — Jack Canfield

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 God of the Bible is the God of liberation rather than oppression; a God of justice rather than injustice; a God of freedom and humanity rather than enslavement and subservience; a God of love, righteousness and community rather than hatred, self-interest and exploitation. — Allan Boesak

(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

As he fell asleep he was still thinking of the subject which now occupied his mind all of the time - of life and death.

'Love? What is love?' he mused.

'Love Hinders death. Love is life. Anything at all that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is - everything exists - only because I love. All is bound up in love alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a tiny particle of love, shall return to the universal and eternal source.' These thoughts seemed comforting to him. But they were only thoughts. Something was wanting in them, there was something one-sided and personal, something intellectual. They were not self-evident. And he was prey to the same restlessness and uncertainty. He fell asleep. — Leo Tolstoy

Relationships without a Divine Aim always "break up," for they are based on nothing. Divine Purpose could be described as forgiveness -- the undoing and releasing of the ego. Belief in the ego prevents awareness of True Union and Intimacy. The underlying fear of Intimacy and Union is the ego's fear of loss of itself, the 'personal self' and the 'personal world. — David Hoffmeister

Only in love can I find you, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in you, since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself. — Karl Rahner

Someone has beautifully analyzed the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5: 22, and shown that all the graces there mentioned are but various forms of love itself. The apostle is not speaking of different fruits, but of one fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the various words that follow are but phrases and descriptions of the one fruit, which is love itself. Joy, which is first mentioned, is love on wings; peace, which follows, is love folding its wings, and nestling under the wings of God; longsuffering is love enduring; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in activity, faith is love confiding; meekness is love stooping; temperance is true self-love, and the proper regard for our own real interests, which is as much the duty of love, as regard for the interests of others. — A.B. Simpson

Malice or desire and intention to harm is often rooted in how we think about the persons concerned: our images of them, the inferences we habitually draw about them, and so forth. Perhaps we see them only as an obstacle to our desires, or as less than "human," as worthless. Perhaps we need to take steps toward seeing them as objects of God's love, or as beings of intrinsic value, like our own children or grandchildren or others we delight in. That will, in turn, require changes in how we think about our world and our self. All of this may be helped along by getting to know them, seeing what their life is like, or serving them. — Dallas Willard