Services To God Quotes & Sayings

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

Thus his belief was that in a service where feeling could be restrained it ought to be restrained. The power of God was more likely to be known in a solemn stillness than amid noise and excitement. Silence and an expectant seriousness, born of a realisation of the nearness of God, were striking characteristics of the services at Sandfields. — Iain H. Murray

Originally," Langdon said, "Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan's veneration day of the sun." He paused, grinning. "To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god's weekly tribute - Sunday. — Dan Brown

The charge of blasphemy is loaded. The point is to pack a wallop behind the charge that in our worship services God simply doesn't come through for who he is. He is unwittingly belittled. For those who are stunned by the indescribable magnitude of what God has made, not to mention the infinite greatness of the One who made it, the steady diet on Sunday morning of practical how-to's and psychological soothing and relational therapy and tactical planning seem dramatically out of touch with Reality - the God of overwhelming greatness. — John Piper

Thanks to the competence, love of God, our country's security and stability, endowed wealth, integrated infrastructure and quality services, the U.A.E. turned into the world's renowned destination for tourism, investment and business management: the interface of choice for hosting major cultural events, artistic and sports, in the world. — Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Unavoidably, the life of contemplation is an everyday life, a life of fidelity in small matters, small services rendered in the spirit of warmth and love which lightens every burden. The sun's brightness can from time to time (and perhaps often) be hidden in mist and cloud, but that is no reason for laying aside one's daily work. Contemplation is work, and it goes on working even when the person praying derives no apparent satisfaction from it. Contemplation is a conversation in which I am at pains not to be boring, not to say and think the same thing every day; I use my imagination and creativity to offer God at least something of myself. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

I don't believe God wants our church life to be centered on buildings and services. Instead, God wants our churches - whatever specific forms our gatherings take - to be focused on active discipleship, mission, and the pursuit of unity. — Francis Chan

Iowa, to be on the safe side, outlawed conversations in any language other than English in schools, at church, or even over the telephone. When people protested that they would have to give up church services in their own languages, Governor William L. Harding responded: There is no use in anyone wasting his time praying in other languages than English. God is listening only to the English tongue. — Bill Bryson

Generally, I've observed, we seek changes that fall into the "Essential Seven." People - including me - most want to foster the habits that will allow them to: 1. Eat and drink more healthfully (give up sugar, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol) 2. Exercise regularly 3. Save, spend, and earn wisely (save regularly, pay down debt, donate to worthy causes, stick to a budget) 4. Rest, relax, and enjoy (stop watching TV in bed, turn off a cell phone, spend time in nature, cultivate silence, get enough sleep, spend less time in the car) 5. Accomplish more, stop procrastinating (practice an instrument, work without interruption, learn a language, maintain a blog) 6. Simplify, clear, clean, and organize (make the bed, file regularly, put keys away in the same place, recycle) 7. Engage more deeply in relationships - with other people, with God, with the world (call friends, volunteer, have more sex, spend more time with family, attend religious services) — Gretchen Rubin

I want the services to look and sound like the Grammys. It's not showy, but we represent God, and it should be first class. — Joel Osteen

I don't believe that God is concerned with whether or not we show our love by building magnificent edifices for worship, by attending services, or through practicing rules laid down by religious organizations. It seems to me that if God were to speak to us, the message would simply be to love each other and offer reverence rather than enmity toward all of life. — Wayne W. Dyer

Christianity isn't looking for a rainbow. If it were ... we'd pass out opium at services. We're trying to serve God, not be God. — John Updike

Tayla stole a peek at the report. "What's fucked up? The Smurfette?"
"The what?"
"Smurfette." Tayla rolled her eyes. "You've never watched cartoons, have you?"
Wraith came around the corner, his leather duster flapping around his boots. He shot Tay a look drenched with sympathy. "E's way too starched to watch cartoons. That's so not happening to Stewie. He's already digging The Simpsons."
"He's three weeks old!" Tayla gaped at Wraith in outrage.
"Almost four."
Tayla huffed. "Good God. I can't believe you are raising a child. Isn't there some sort of demon equivalent of Child Protective Services ?"
"Hey. I have as much right to screw up a kid as anyone else. — Larissa Ione

I believe certain doctrines because God says they are true; and the only authority I have for their truth is the Word of God. I receive such and such doctrines, not because I can prove them to be compatible with reason, not because my judgment accepts them, but because God says they are true. Now this is one of the best services we can render to God,-to submit ourselves to him in our belief of what he has revealed, and ask him to fix his truths in our hearts, and make us obey them. — Charles Spurgeon

If we're not careful, our individualistic assumptions about church can lead us to think of the church as something like a health club. We're members because we believe in the mission statement and want to be a part of the action. As long as the church provides the services I want, I'll stick around. But when I no longer approve of the vision, or am no longer "being fed," I'm out the door. This is not biblical Christianity. Scripture is clear that when we become Christians, we become-permanently and spiritually-a part of the church. We become part of the family of God, with all the responsibilities and expectations that word connotes in the non-Western world. — E. Randolph Richards

The next morning, between services, in an alcove space used for private prayer, Heinrich confessed to an elder that he had succumbed to the temptation of lust and could no longer be of service to the church. He said that he had seen more of God's glory in the body of a half-naked girl than in the worship services of thirty years combined. That he would like to continue mediating on the glory of God in this fashion. — Jamie Quatro

Among the greatest of all great services is the education of children, and promotion of the various sciences, crafts and arts. Praised be God, ye are now exerting strenuous efforts toward this end. The more ye persevere in this most important task, the more will ye witness the confirmations of God, to such a degree that ye yourselves will be astonished. — Abdu'l- Baha

Everything which relates to God is infinite. We must therefore, while we keep our hearts humble, keep our aims high. Our highest services are indeed but finite, imperfect. But as God is unlimited in goodness, He should have our unlimited love. — Hannah More

Cold prayers shall never have any warm answers. God will suit His returns to our requests. Lifeless, services shall have lifeless answers. When men are dull, God will be dumb. — Thomas Brooks

Money is the "god of this world," and it empowers millions of people to enjoy life by living on substitutes. With money, they can buy entertainment, but they can't buy joy. They can go to the drugstore and buy sleep, but they can't buy peace. Their money will attract lots of acquaintances but very few real friends. Wealth gains them admiration and envy but not love. It buys the best in medical services, but it can't buy health. — Warren W. Wiersbe

God has seen fit that, since our services are useful to many persons, everyone approves them, but only when they are carried out in the spirit of Our Lord. — Vincent De Paul

An all-loving god would surely not damn his children to an eternity of torture simply for being born into a culture that believes in the wrong deity, follows the wrong holy book or attends the wrong type of church services. — Armin Navabi

Gods also remain important because of their functions. We can turn to places with relatively less religiosity to see why gods are so important everywhere else. In Sacred and Secular (2004), the political scientists Pippa Norris of Harvard and Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan show that, in prosperous regions where secular forms of social services and justice become really effective, religiosity dwindles. This inverse relationship between secular justice and economic equality and religious adherence suggests that the social functions of religion can be co-opted by secular institutions, thus rendering our obsession with what God knows and cares about more or less irrelevant. — Anonymous

For my own Part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have received much Kindness from Men, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho' repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator. — Benjamin Franklin

Christ's mighty prayers are as vocal to God as His daily services. He witnesses under all circumstances. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

It is quite likely that the modern contrivances for making Sunday-schools amusing have given them a distate for the more solemn services of the sanctuary. If so, the amusement is a sin. The schools should feed the church. Children ought to be led by one into the other, exposed to the preaching of the gospel, taught the ways of God's house, and brought up under its influence, with all its hallowed and elevating influences. — Samuel I. Prime

The way that Russian Orthodox services work generally, and certainly the way that this worked, is that it goes on for hours and hours, and people wander in and wander out, and people talk the whole way through. One of the American women said to the other, "This is so beautiful. I can actually imagine maybe even becoming Orthodox." She went on and on, and finally a Russian seated just in front of her turned and said, "You are not member of church because it is beautiful; you are member of church because it is the single truth of God!" — Andrew Solomon

This is the prime way of honoring God. We do not so glorify God by elevated admirations, or eloquent expressions, or pompous services for Him as when we aspire to a conversing with Him with unstained spirits, and live to Him in living like Him (S. Charnock). — Arthur W. Pink

Seeking God? We have totally revised corporate worship services to be sensitive to "seekers." If worship were to be tailored for seekers, it would be directed exclusively to believers, for no one except believers ever seeks God (Rom. 3:9-12). — R.C. Sproul

They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil ... Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added. — Leo Tolstoy

My mother took us to services at the Episcopal church. Yet she always said that God was not just inside the four walls of a house of worship, but everywhere - in the rising sun over Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, a splash of water along the nearby Salt or Verde rivers, or clouds driving over the Estrella Mountains, south of downtown. I've always thought of God in those terms. — Barry Goldwater

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

Do you know," he said, "there are men who would like very much to see me dead. Powerful men. Obscenely wealthy me. Men who can afford to be patient and engage the services of large, ruthless brutes. I've managed to evade them all. But you ... God's truth, I think you'll be the very death of me. — Tessa Dare

we must not miss the fact that Paul directly tells a local congregation to adapt its worship because nonbelievers will be present. It is a false dichotomy to insist we must choose between seeking to please God and being concerned with how unchurched people feel or what they might be thinking about during our worship services. — Timothy J. Keller

There is no better feeling that is greater than the feeling you get offering your time and services to doing God's work". — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

In my present life from day to day, I attempt to improve my understanding of God by responding to Him in three basic ways: by moving outwards into positive action, by exercising my ability to choose positive thoughts, and by allowing myself to be drawn inwards to positive being. — A.A. World Services Inc.

One has to ask what is the goal of life? What is the goal of life? My interpretation of it for myself, a very wise teacher once taught me this, is to meet the needs of the people, places and the times around you and offering those services to God. — Suze Orman

She met a lot of people, and some people who weren't people. The more rural houses occasionally played host to minor demons and lesser fairies and local geo-specific nature spirits and elementals who lent street cred to the establishment in return for God knows what in the way of goods and services, she didn't ask. There was a certain romance to these beings; they seemed to embody the very promise of magic, which was to deliver unto her a world greater than the one into which she had been born. The moment when you walk into a room, and the guy playing pool has a pair of red leather wings sticking out of his back, and the chick smoking on the balcony has eyes of liquid golden fire - at that moment you think you'll never be sad or bored or lonely again. — Lev Grossman

Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it. — Dallas Willard

There is plenty of other evidence, however, that the nominal conversion of the Roman Empire to the Christian religion had effected no visible improvement in the common morals. The world was worse rather than better. Out of its besetting temptations men fled to save their souls. They fled from the world, which in the first century was believed by the Christians to be doomed, and liable to be destroyed by divine fire before the end of the year, and which in the fourth century was believed by the Christians to be damned: it belonged to the devil. They fled also from the church, which they accused of secularity and of hypocrisy. Many of the monks were laymen, who in deep disgust had forsaken the services and sacraments. They said their own prayers and sought God in their own way, asking no aid from priests. They were men who had resolved never to go to church again. — George Hodges

Dear young people, choose God for your portion; love his truth, and be not ashamed of it; choose for your company such as serve him in uprightness; and shun as most dangerous the conversation of those whose lives are of an ill savor; for by frequenting such company some hopeful young people have come to great loss, and been drawn from less evils to greater, to their utter ruin. In the bloom of youth no ornament is so lovely as that of virtue, nor any enjoyments equal to those which we partake of in fully resigning ourselves to the Divine will. These enjoyments add sweetness to all other comforts, and give true satisfaction in company and conversation, where people are mutually acquainted with it; and as your minds are thus seasoned with the truth, you will find strength to abide steadfast to the testimony of it, and be prepared for services in the church. — Benjamin Franklin

Many church leaders don't question the process of making disciples. They lead congregations that meet regularly. They invite non-believers to attend weekend services and occasionally hold community outreach events. They teach the Bible and have small group meetings during the week. The process may have a few more components, but this is a standard model for making disciples. These activities may bring people to God; getting people to make a profession of faith isn't difficult. But — Praying Medic

To preach the gospel is to show people their need for salvation against a backdrop of God's nature and the character of sin, and then present Jesus as the only remedy for what ails them and the world. In my weekly preaching in the worship services I always call people to believe in Christ. — Timothy Keller

Every day before supper and before we went to services on Sundays my grandmother would read the Bible to me, and my grandfather would pray. We even had devotions before going to pick cotton
in the fields. Prayer and the Bible, became a part of my everyday thoughts and beliefs. I learned to put my trust in God and to seek Him as my strength — Rosa Parks

But God will surely punish her, Mma, then had decided that this was not the sort of thing that people said any more, even if it was what they were thinking. The trouble was, she thought, that God had so many people to punish these days that he might just not find the time to get round to dealing with Violet Sephotho. It was a disappointing thought - a lost opportunity, in a sense: she would very willingly have volunteered her services to assist in divine punishment, perhaps through something she would call Mma Makutsi's League of Justice that would, strictly but fairly, punish people like Violet. — Alexander McCall Smith

God's principles of national transformation will give the opportunity to make positive changes in the country, overcoming crisis in politics, economy, social services and other spheres. — Sunday Adelaja

I studied history in college, and I've always enjoyed reading, especially political biographies, and I can state that in all my studies and all my experiences, I have come across just one truly honest politician: my great-grandfather, William Eichner. ... According to my grandmother, when he was elected to the General Assembly, he stopped going to religious services and never set foot in a church during his two terms in office, stating, "You can't serve God and politics at the same time". — John W. Hartmann

Our great need is not ardour to save man but courage to face God - courage to face God with our soul as it is, and with our Saviour as He is; to face God always thus, and so to win the power which saves and services man more than any other power can. We can never fully say "My brother!" till we have heartily said "My God!", and we can never heartily say "My God!" till we have humbly said "My Guilt!" That is the root of moral reality, of personal religion. — Peter Forsyth

I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, "Do you believe in God?"
"Not really," he said. "No."
"Then why do we come here?"
He sucked thoughfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. "I've been wrong before," he said.
And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to find in the Foxman home. — Jonathan Tropper