The Living Church Quotes & Sayings

Since the church life is the proper life, it brings in God's blessing. Peace, joy, love, sympathy, kindness, normal living - all are signs of such a blessing of life which comes by the experience of Christ through the cross. — Witness Lee

I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living - they've been making a living for 2,000 years - preaching that we're in the last days. — Charles M. Schulz

To build a church when a school house is needed is to perpetrate a theft upon education.
To build a church when a hospital is needed is to take from the parched lips of the sick the cup of relief and from the suffering the merciful hand of help.
When the object of man's conduct will be to improve the conditions of his fellow man and not the appeasement of a mythical God, he will become more understanding and more indulgent of the frailties, mistakes, and action of others, and by the same token he will become more appreciative of their efforts.
He will develop a greater consciousness to avoid mistakes and to prevent injury. Life and its living will take on a greater significance, and our efforts and energies will be devoted to creating as much joy and happiness as possible for all living creatures. — Joseph Lewis

The death of 'the god of western theism', the destruction of the idol, is opening the way to a rediscovery of the acts of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the living God of the worship and confession of the Fathers of the Church, he who makes himself fully known in Jesus Christ, and who in his Word and his Spirit is present and at work throughout the whole of what he has made. — A.M. Allchin

Lionel was filled with awful remorse. He asked where had Thomas been last seen, and the boy told him he was headed for the church. Lionel nodded and went home to fetch his shotgun. Throughout the crisis he had done no violence, preferring to preach the sanity of pacifism to the flock. This was different. This was a requirement of the father to the son. He prayed over the shotgun while Darla wailed with the children in the living room. He got in his truck and drove to the church. -- From "The South Fork Penance — L. Joseph Shosty

I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them, church is on Sundays, and we have an awesome band...if the found out 1/6th of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess...

But listen, early church, we have a monthly event called 'Mocha chicks', we have choir practice every Wednesday, we organize retreats with door prizes, we're raising $3 million for an outdoor amphitheater, we have catchy t-shirts, we don't smoke or say the f-word, we go to bible study every semester...

the local church would be the heartbeat of the city. — Jen Hatmaker

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

The preeminent job of the church is to equip Christian for life's challenges. This requires the emphasis on being fitted with tested armor. He is tutored in the Word of God. He is encouraged to rely on the Lord alone through faith in His promises and providence. He is drilled in the doctrines of salvation and is encouraged to allow these truths to work themselves deep into his soul. He is encouraged to live righteously by having within him a righteous mind soaked in Scripture and demonstrated in right living. He is taught how to pray. He is encouraged to share his faith with those who do not have peace with God.
Chapter — John Bunyan

I truly believe that a dirty church is a powerless church. Sin absolutely steals our confidence and our boldness in Christ. Absolutely, without a doubt, living a sinful life quenches the great Holy Spirit, who is the power of this gospel. — Mark T. Barclay

Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. — Eugene H. Peterson

We live in a culture of reductionism. Or better, we are living in the aftermath of a culture of reductionism, and I believe we have reduced the complexity and diversity of the Scriptures to systematic theologies that insist on ideological conformity, even when such conformity flattens the diversity of the Scriptural witness. We have reduced our conception of gospel to four simple steps that short-circuit biblical narratives and notions of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven in favor of a simplified means of entrance to heaven. Our preaching is often wed to our materialistic, consumerist cultural assumptions, and sermons are subsequently reduced to delivering messages that reinforce the worst of what American culture produces: self-centered end users who believe that God is a resource that helps an individual secure what amounts to an anemic and culturally bound understanding of the 'abundant life. — Tim Keel

The Church has a special duty to safeguard and strengthen the sacredness of the Eucharist. In our pluralistic and often deliberately secularized society, the living faith of the Christian community - a faith always aware of its rights vis-a-vis those who do not share the faith - ensures respect for this sacredness — Pope John Paul II

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies. — Stephen Fry

Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, living the life of ordinary men, sharing their difficulties and understanding their trials by close personal experience. — Roland Allen

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway ... We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking ... The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. — Richard Rohr

Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she'd started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn't become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she'd be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she'd started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all! — Elizabeth Stuckey-French

The kingdom of God works in all spheres of culture, whether church, family, education, government, arts, business, or media. It is time to stop operating under the mindset that these spheres ought to be separated into secular and Christian, hoarding all the 'sanctified spheres' into the church, thereby leaving the world struggling in a vacuum of death. When we suck all the living water into the church, the world is left to die of thirst. — Karla Perry

Oments of transport, and of comfort, and of a bracing vastness of possibility. That was all there for me sometimes when I plunged my mind into the Bible's puzzles; and it was always there in the music of church. I wouldn't have said it this way then. But I would feel all the cells in my body as I sang hymns that connected my little life with the grandeur of the cosmos, the Christian drama across space and time. This was my earliest experience of breath and body, mind and spirit soaring together, alive to both mystery and reality, in kinship with others both familiar and unknown. That's one way I'd define the feeling of faith now. — Krista Tippett

We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church. — Charles Caleb Colton

Nowhere in the Word of God is there any text or passage or line that can be twisted or tortured into teaching that the organic living church of Jesus Christ just prior to His return will not have every right and every power and every obligation that she knew in that early part of the book of Acts. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Bob and I talked occasionally about the Church and religion, and once both expressed our amazement that we had somehow been born into the one group of people who were living as true Christians should. After all, we could just as easily have been born into a family that watched TV or, heaven forbid, into a family of Baptists! — Craig A. Hart

There's one more serious risk for America that I want to mention here - the risk we have created by shouting down and shutting up any discussion of faith in the public square. It's as if we've decided expressions or discussions of faith shouldn't qualify as free speech. What's even stranger is the way it has somehow been tied to the concept of separation of church and state, even though that concept has nothing to do with people living by or publicly discussing their faith. — Ben Carson

Eyes, golden-brown curls and crimson cheeks. She laughed too much to please her father's congregation and had shocked old Mrs. Taylor, the disconsolate spouse of several departed husbands, by saucily declaring - in the church-porch at that - "The world ISN'T a vale of tears, Mrs. Taylor. It's a world of laughter." Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter. Her braids of straight, dead-black hair betrayed no lawless kinks, and her almond-shaped, dark-blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them. Her mouth had a trick of falling open over her tiny white teeth, and a shy, meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face. She was much more sensitive to public opinion than Faith, and had an uneasy consciousness that there was something askew in their way of living. She longed to put it right, but did not know how. Now and then she dusted the furniture - but it was so seldom she could find the duster because it was never in the same place twice. And when — L.M. Montgomery

If the first mark of a true and living church is love, the second is
suffering. The one is naturally consequent on the other. A
willingness to suffer proves the genuineness of love. — John Stott

How catastrophic is it when the church herself becomes secularized and expressive individualism sits in the driver's seat in the church's life and mission. When the church has lost connection with Christ her living head, she loses her soul. — Harold L. Senkbeil

He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead. It came from his contemplation of the church, but it had its own clarity: the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them, while the efforts of the living, with all their works and wars and great buildings, were no more than the beat of a wing against the weight of time. — Sebastian Faulks

Marriage is a living sign that truly communicates the love of Christ and the Church. — Christopher West

I guessed that only at the last possible minute did the soul in a determined fashion flee the dying flesh. Who could blame it for its reluctance? We loved our lives more than we ever knew, and at the end felt the bounty of them, as one would say in church, felt even the richness of their missed opportunities, or just understood that they were more than we had realized during the living of them and a lot to give up. — Lorrie Moore

The stranger in ancient Israel did not serve as a judge, although he received all the benefits of living in the land. The political question is this: By what biblical standard is the pagan to be granted the right to bring political sanctions against God's people? We recognize that unbelievers are not to vote in Church elections. Why should they be allowed to vote in civil elections in a covenanted Christian nation? Which judicial standards will they impose? By what other standard than the Bible? — Gary North

I am accountable.
I am correctable.
I am transformable.
Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God.
By the love of God.
By the word of God.
Completely supplied in Christ Jesus.
Unto all good works. — Carlton T. Brown

What Francis heard on February 24, 1208, was this: go and preach, even without formation or ordination! No gold, no silver, no money not even for alms! No bag for provisions! One habit only! No shoes, no staff! It was an amputation of every superfluous item, of every precaution for life, and, at the same time, of every protection that an institution like the church could provide at the time. It was also a refusal to he recognized as a regular order, a refusal of the legal privileges associated with such status, and a refusal of priestly ordination. Poverty in the institutional sense means to he excluded from privileges.

. . . "No brother is to hold a position of power or a ruling office, especially not among the brothers themselves. No one in this way of living is to be called prior; instead all are to be known simply as minor brothers. And all are to wash one another's feet" (rule of 1221). — Dorothee Solle

It's no accident that the church and the graveyard stand side by side. The city of the dead sleeps encircled by the city of the living. — Diane Frolov

What time do we start?" I resisted the urge to grin. "Show up at the New Living Hope Revival Church at ten tomorrow morning." His eyes flew open. "Ten? That early?" "Half the world's awake by ten, and the other half is sleeping in China. — Denise Grover Swank

We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything so as you do not claim it a better way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best represents - a mood. — Ravi Zacharias

There are a surprising number who get their spiritual uplift week by week only from the comfort of their own living rooms or from their computers. They never go to church. Well, they "go" to church but do so in their own way. — David F. Wells

When the kingdom leaves the church, the church stops living for herself — Sunday Adelaja

Love is the most easily dismissed of God's commandments and characteristics. Christians sometimes seem to say, "Of course we should love people, we all know that. So now let's get on with what we really want to do - fight about theology!" But love is the central Christian ethic, it's the heartbeat of the church. It's central to us because it's essential to God. "God is love," says the Bible (1 John 4:8, NIV). At the core of the Trinity is a love relationship between three Persons. God cannot be separated from love. Love is his nature. Unless the church is actively living out the reality of love, there is little reason to debate theology. And unless the church has a healthy theology we won't recognize true love when we see it. — Thomas McKenzie

Religion is, in reality, living. Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think - all these things - twenty-four hours a day. One's religion, then, is ones life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived.
Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what white people call "religion." It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion. — Jack D. Forbes

The filling of the Holy Spirit brings a sharp separation between the believer and the world.
Actually, after Pentecost, they were looking at another world. They really saw another world.
Nowadays, we perceive that even a large part of evangelical Christianity is trying to convert this world to the church. We are bringing the world in head over heels
unregenerated, uncleansed, unshriven, unbaptized, unsanctified. we are bringing the world right into the church. If we can get some big shot to say something nice about the church, we rush into print and tell about this fellow and what nice things he said. I don't care at all about big shots because I serve a living Saviour, and Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings. I believe every man ought to know this ability to see another world. — A.W. Tozer

It follows, therefore, that the church's evangelism ought to be one in which all the counsel of God is made known to men. We need a recovery of belief in the converting and sanctifying power of the living Word of God in the teaching of the pulpit, and its ability to transform the lives of men and produce in them the lineaments and fruits of mature Christian character. — William Still

"If any man thirst, let him come and drink from the rivers of living water" (cf. John 7:38). Where shall he who thirsts come? To heretics where the fountain and river of water is in no way life-giving? Or to the Church, which is One? — Cyprian

O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; I believe that your Divine Son became man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths the Holy Catholic Church teaches because You have revealed them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. An — E. Paige

It should be recognized that this Church is not a social club. This is the kingdom of God on the earth. It is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Its purpose is to bring salvation and exaltation to both the living and the dead. — Gordon B. Hinckley

If the Church is a living body united to the same head, governed by the same laws, and pervaded by the same Spirit, it is impossible that one part should be independent of all the rest. — Charles Hodge

If we talk about the living oracles and want to pay respect to them, how shall we do this? Shall we do it by never reading their words-by paying not attention to that which they say? That is a very poor way of doing.
We ought to listen to their words. When we cannot hear their words, we should read them; for they are the words of the authorized servants of God. I feel that there is a great neglect among us in this respect.
CR, 1897, 38, George Q. Cannon (CR is Reports of the General Conferences of the Church) — John Andreas Widtsoe

If you are established in the church and focused on Jesus, then you are still among the living — Sunday Adelaja

Lord Emsworth was a man with little of the aggressor in his spiritual make-up. He believed in living and letting live. Except for his sister Constance, his secretary Lavender Briggs, the Duke of Dunstable and his younger son Frederick, now fortunately residing in America, few things were able to ruffle him. Placid is the word that springs to the lips. But the Church Lads had pierced his armour, and he found resentment growing within him like some shrub that has been treated with a patent fertilizer. He brooded bleakly on the injuries he had suffered at the hands of these juvenile delinquents. The — P.G. Wodehouse

I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism. — Muhammad Iqbal

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. — G.K. Chesterton

The church is about life-giving relationships that come together in gatherings. When we gather, we don't primarily assemble in the style of the synagogue: to learn, to receive, to evaluate, and to contemplate. Rather, we assemble in the style of the temple: to worship, to pray, to encounter God, and to bring our offering. We come as living stones, fitted together in the house of God as a collective dwelling place. — Mark Perry

The world does not owe us a living, we owe the world a living, our own. — Forrest Church

Has God no living church? He has a church, but it is the church militant, not the church triumphant. We are sorry that there are defective members ... While the Lord brings into the church those who are truly converted, Satan at the same time brings persons who are not converted into its fellowship. While Christ is sowing the good seed, Satan is sowing the tares. There are two opposing influences continually exerted on the members of the church. One influence is working for the purification of the church, and the other for the corrupting of the people of God ... — Ellen G. White

The bible is not a blueprint for every day of your life, it is an inspiration not a blueprint. That requires that we listen to one another and get challenged and grow by living with difference within the body of the church. — Alan Green

God has left a trail of language behind a stormy path of historical activities. That language is primarily the evidence with which theology has to deal - first with Scripture, then with a long history of interpretation of Scripture called church history and tradition, and finally with the special language that emerges out of each one's own personal experience of meeting the living God — Thomas C. Oden

The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of the living spirit, not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. Yet his words and deeds are recorded by as honest and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to paper. — Philip Schaff

There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what our Church teaches ... We are living in a world saturated with all kinds of voices. Perhaps now, more than ever, we have a major responsibility as Latter-day Saints to define ourselves, instead of letting others define us. — M. Russell Ballard

When I look back upon my own religious experience," says Andrew Murray, "or round upon the Church of Christ in the world, I stand amazed at the thought of how little humility is sought after as the distinguishing feature of the discipleship of Jesus. In preaching and living, in the daily intercourse of the home and social life, in the more special fellowship with Christians, in the direction and performance of work for Christ - alas! how much proof there is that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue, the only root from which the graces can grow, the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Jesus. — D.L. Moody

For the church as we know it is a tragically dysfunctional family, in which some children are starving while others have food stashed in their closets. Some of us are living on the street while others have empty rooms in our homes. And, of course, there are all sorts of things being done that bring great dishonor and embarrassment to the family name. — Shane Claiborne

Our living within and enjoyment and use of space, time, and matter must constantly be measured against the story of Jesus, in his sharing of space, time, and matter as the Incarnate Son; in his death, which passes judgment on all idolatry and sin; and in his resurrection, in which space, time, and matter are renewed in his body, anticipating the final renewal of all things. The danger of idolatry and the proper response to it stand as a rubric over what is now to come. The church is called to a mission of implementing Jesus's resurrection and thereby anticipating the final new creation. — N. T. Wright

He did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been shortlived, whereas adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. — George Orwell

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

My greatest fear is that the spirit of religion is lurking in so many churches today. Instead of men and women of God preaching about and applying Kingdom principles to everyday living, they have given the spirit of religion the power to cloud the path of others. — Myles Munroe

But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of Him. How they have turned every word He spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today. — Carson McCullers

Whenever we give our hearts in love, the burden of our vulnerability grows. We risk being rebuffed or embarrassed or inadequate. Beyond these things, we risk the enormous pain of loss. When those we love die, a part of us dies with them. When those we love are sick, in body or spirit, we too feel the pain. All of this is worth it. Especially the pain. If we insulate our hearts from suffering, we shall only subdue the very thing that makes life worth living. We cannot protect ourselves from loss. We can only protect ourselves from the death of love, we are left only with the aching hollow of regret, that haunting emptiness where love might have been. — Forrest Church

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that the truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to - then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God's promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin's consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things. — Oscar A. Romero

I'll not forget that day nor the message of the Christian church that we celebrate each death as an Easter, each dying as a living, each soul, no matter how poor or sinful, as the child of royalty. At its best, the church treats people as beings of eternal worth, no less at their dying than at their birth, no less in their sins than in their virtue, no less for one than for another. — Carl Scovel

We stink more of the world than we stink of sack cloth and ashes. A lot of contemporary churches today would feel more at home in a movie house rather than in a house of prayer, more afraid of holy living than of sinning, know more about money than magnifying Christ in our bodies. It is so compromised that holiness and living a sin-free life is heresy to the modern church. The modern church is, quite simply, just the world with a Christian T-shirt on! — Nicky Cruz

Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as "a place where the person you least want to live with always lives." His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?) — Philip Yancey

Remember again the principle: We will never be over those things that God has set under us until we learn to be under those things that God has placed over us. There is strength through surrender. Are you under the Word of God? Is the Bible your mandate for life? Are you loving it, reading it, obeying it, and living it? Are you consciously filled with the Holy Spirit? Have you yielded every part of the temple of your body to him? Are you grieving him in any way? Are you graciously submitting to those human authorities that God has set over you: in the home, in the church, in civil government, and in the workplace? Have you made Jesus Christ the absolute Lord over everything in your life? — Adrian Rogers

Consider the generosity of our Savior: what He acquired by dying becomes ours by eating. As often as we receive this Sacrament with proper dispositions, we make our own the fruits of all the labors, injuries and sufferings of His life, especially those borne at the time of His passion and death. Just as the power and the sensations of the head reach all the members of the body, in the same way, because Christ is "the head of the Church which is His Body" (Eph. 1:23), the treasures of His grace are made abundantly available to all who through charity are one with Him as living members. — Louis Of Granada

Within a few weeks, she was a full-blown hippie Christian, living at the House of Zaccheus and attending St. Luke's Episcopal Church, which struck her as "so cool" because they could be "dressed like hippies" and yet "come to church."30 — Larry Eskridge

The sacred rites, although not instituted specifically for proving the truth of the dogmas of the Catholic Faith incontrovertibly, are effectively the living voice of Catholic Truth, the oft-sounded expression of it. For that very reason the true Church of Christ, even as she shows great zeal to guard inviolate those forms of divine worship - since they are hallowed and are not to be changed - sometimes grants or permits something novel in the performance of them in certain instances. This she does especially when they are in conformity with their venerable antiquity. — Pope Leo XIII

I think it was a sense of being completely swallowed up by nature that gave the prairie its powerful attraction.There is nothing like it in all of Europe. Even high up on a Swiss glacier one is still conscious of the toy villages below, the carefully groomed landscape of multicolored fields,the faraway ringing of a church bell. It is all very beautiful, but it does not convey the utmost escape. I believe, with the Indians, that a landscape influences and forms the people living on it and that one cannot understand them and make friends with them without also understanding, and making friends with, the earth from which they came. — Richard Erdoes

The Church is like a great tree whose roots must be energetically anchored in the earth while its leaves are serenely exposed to the bright sunlight. In this way, she sums up a whole gamut of beats in a single living and all-embracing act, each one of which corresponds to a particular degree or a possible form of spiritualisation. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Until the Second Coming, sin will remain a part of earthly existence. And as long as there is sin, there will be suffering and pain. But suffering by persecution is not a sine qua non of the church. If it is, there are few if any true churches in North America today. — Keith A. Mathison

Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization - The safe men. The compromisers. The moneymakers. The muddlers-through.
Politics is full of them ... so is businesses ... so is the church. They're popular. Successful. Some of them work hard, other are slack, but all of them could tell a good story.
Never where there such charming gravediggers in the world's history. — James Hilton

Marriage is not mainly about prospering economically; it is mainly about displaying the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Knowing Christ is more important than making a living. Treasuring Christ is more important than bearing children. Being united to Christ by faith is a greater source of marital success than perfect sex and double-income prosperity. — John Piper

"Do you love me?"; "Are you my friend?". The One who scrutinizes hearts (cf. Rom 8:27), makes himself a beggar of love and questions us on the one truly essential issue, a premiss and condition for feeding his sheep, his lambs, his Church. May every ministry be based on this intimacy with the Lord; living from him is the measure of our ecclesial service which is expressed in the readiness to obey, to humble ourselves, as we heard in the Letter to the Philippians, and for the total gift of self. — Pope Francis

When Christ comes, the members of His Church must look and act like members of His Church are supposed to look and act if we are to be acceptable to Him. We must be doing His work and we must be living his teachings. He must recognize us quickly and easily as truly being his disciples. — Jeffrey R. Holland

In the church we call that the power of the Living Word. In the same way that God creates by speaking God's word, we too co-create (although on a much smaller scale) our church and the world around us by how we perceive it and the kinds of stories we tell about it. — Andrew Doyle

It doesn't really matter how much of the rules or the dogma we accepted and lived by if we're not really living by the fundamental creed of the Catholic Church, which is service to others and finding God in ourselves and then seeing God in everyone - including our enemies. — Martin Sheen

You will live in the midst of economic, political, and spiritual instability. When you see these signs
unmistakable evidences that his coming is nigh
be not troubled, but, "stand ... in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come" (D&C 87:8). Holy men and holy women stand in holy places, and these holy places include our temples, our chapels, our homes, and the stakes of Zion ...
"This preparation must consist of more than just casual membership in the Church. You must learn to be guided by personal revelation and the counsel of the living prophet so you will not be deceived. — Ezra Taft Benson

This is one of the most serious problems with seeker-sensitive churches. I was talking to a pastor at a seeker-friendly church not long ago about his idea that prospective Christians needed to "feel welcome" and "accepted" before anything else: no "threats," no "judgmental baggage." I asked, "If you had a person living in sin come to your church, would you confront him?" He furrowed his brow and shook his head disapprovingly. "Oh, no! We'd want him to feel loved and welcome." My eyes widened. "How long would it be before you would actually say something about that?" "Maybe a year and a half, two years," he said, smiling. "Because then he would really feel a part of things." That was shocking to me. Is there some virtue in leaving a man in his sin for the sake of feeling accepted? "Well, that's the difference between your church and our church," I said finally. "Openly practicing sinners come to our church, and they either get saved or they don't come back. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Do not lower the standard or cater to the worldly laxness of the average Christian by making the way in easy. Make sure that everyone who joins fully understands his duties and obligations and is willing, in Christ's strength, to undertake them. — Isabella MacDonald Alden

I was immersed in comfortable Christianity. Years ago, I found myself living what seemed like the American church dream - pastoring a large church, living in a large house, and surrounded by all the comforts this world has to offer. But inside I had a sinking feeling that I was missing the point. — David Platt

The church is far greater than [a building or denomination]. It includes the whole family of God - that vast unseen fellowship of men and women throughout the ages who belong to Christ. Paul wrote of "God's household, which is the church of the living God" [1 Timothy 3:15 NIV). — Billy Graham

1951. Law is a rule of conduct enacted by competent authority for the sake of the common good. The moral law presupposes the rational order, established among creatures for their good and to serve their final end, by the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. All law finds its first and ultimate truth in the eternal law. Law is declared and established by reason as a participation in the providence of the living God, Creator and Redeemer of all. — The Catholic Church

For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth's glory, believes that in each person is the Creator's image and that everyone who tramples it offends God. As holy defender of God's rights and of his images, the church must cry out. It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers. They suffer as God's images. There is no dichotomy between man and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God's image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom. — Oscar A. Romero

We ate in fret-filled silence until Ophie said, "Okay, enough of that feeling down in the dumps. We are going to put on our best clothes and go to church. We will sing. We will praise the Lord. We will celebrate Miss Delia's life. So you two put a smile on your faces. Well-mannered ladies know that a funeral provides us the opportunity to comfort the living. There'll be plenty of time to mourn the dead for years to come." I — Terrie Farley Moran

I taught Sunday school when I was younger, and ended up an elder in the church, and it just seemed to me that a lot of people who went to church certainly weren't - the rest of the week - living what I would call an Christian life. — Dick Van Dyke

I would like to reconcile the church and the circus. I wanted to transform the theatre ... to get my message across that there is only one God - the living man - the person sitting next to you. That is my religion. I believe that there is a sense to life. — Oleg Kulik

When the church first began, it was a pacifistic movement known for its outspoken criticism of any form of bloodshed or violence. After Constantine legalized Christianity, 'just war' theory emerged, which meant that Christians could participate in wars if certain criteria were satisfied. By the year 1100, Christians were launching Crusades and telling the faithful that killing Muslims would secure them a spot in heaven! What happened? Somewhere along the way we forgot that Jesus intended the Sermon on the Mount to be an actual, concrete program for living. He wanted us to actually live it, not just admire it as a nice but unrealistic ideal. I mean, what would happen if Christians dedicated themselves to peacemaking with the same discipline and focus that armies do for war? What difference could it make? We have to revisit the early church's teachings about reconciliation, peacemaking, and the Sermon on the Mount and ask ourselves if we're living them out or tiptoeing around them. — Ian Morgan Cron

Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune. — Eugene H. Peterson

All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the "big story" that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns - doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship - doxology - and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples. — Michael S. Horton

Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold. — Dwight L. Moody

Let us be bold enough to ask ourselves as Christians whether the Church of the Lord Jesus in the United States has anything to say to our nation and its ideologies of materialism, possessiveness, and the worship of financial security. Are we courageous enough to be a sign of contradiction to consumerism through our living faith in Jesus Christ? Are we committed enough to his gospel to become a countercurrent to the drift? — Brennan Manning

Lord, send Your life throughout the entire church. Visit Your church; restore sound doctrine and holy, earnest living. Take away from professing Christians their love of frivolities, their attempts to meet the world on it's own ground, and give back the old love of the doctrines of the Cross and Christ. May free grace and dying love again be the music that refreshes the church and makes her heart exceeding glad. — Charles Spurgeon

We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician's instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not disciplined? — Aiden Wilson Tozer

A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development
to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.
The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. — John Steinbeck