Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Understanding is the basis of care. What you would take care of you must first understand, whether it be a petunia or a nation.
When we receive God's gift of life by relying on Christ, we find that God comes to act with us as we rely on him in our actions.
The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.
Make disciples. Surround them in the reality of the Trinity in a fellowship of disciples. Teach them to do everything Jesus says.
I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, I merited this.
I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to Heaven, no one will be able to say, 'I merited this.'
Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?
Those who have been touched by forgiveness and new life and have thus entered into God's rule become, like Jesus, bearers of that rule.
Your mind will really talk to you when you begin to deny fulfillment to your desires, and you will find how subtle and shameless it is.
Spiritual transformation into Christ-likeness in not going to happen unless we act... What transforms us is the will to obey Jesus Christ.
What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.
The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.
My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing -- by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.
It's important to distinguish the soul from the spirit, or will, because the will or the heart or the spirit is the executive center of the self.
The people to whom we minister and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them, but they will never forget the kind of persons we are.
We renovate the heart by, of course, changing it, but we can't do that, really, without changing the other essential parts of the human personality.
Theology is a part of our lives. It's unavoidable. A thoughtless theology guides our lives with just as much force as a thoughtful and informed one.
Sometimes we get caught up in trying to glorify God by praising what He can do and we lose sight of the practical point of what He actually does do.
In accord with his original intent, the heavenly Father has in fact prepared an individualized kingdom for every person, from the outset of creation.
In Spiritual formation we are aiming at a character and life that is so shaped that the deeds of Christ routinely and easily come from what is inside.
The Bible, of course, is not a theology book. It is certainly not a philosophy book. So we have to derive the meaning of terms from the context in use.
It's just stunning to watch churches struggle to get mission statements when there it is, the Great Commission, and they should simply do what it says.
Education (the institution) has now adopted values, attitudes, and practices that make any rigorous understanding of the human self and life impossible.
What is reality? The answer Jesus gives to this question is: God and his kingdom. That is what you can count on and what you have to come to terms with.
Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.
Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.
It is the responsibility of every Christ-centred follower to carve out a satisfying life under the loving rule of God or else sin will start to look good.
We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.
In solitude we find psychic distance, the perspective from which we can see, in the light of eternity, the created things that trap, worry, and oppress us.
The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.
Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith.
The transformation of the social world is at its heart the transformation of personal relations. That's the key to transforming society in the larger arena.
Now, of course, you have guidance devices and all sorts of things. The soul would be more like the way this is all hooked together, a system of coordination.
Actions are not impostions on who we are, but are expressions of who we are. They come out of our heart and the inner realities it supervises and interacts with
If we are right on the inside, we will address these issues straight-forwardly and take a stand on them, and, if necessary, die for them. We will be that committed.
God's aim in human history is the creation of an inclusive community of loving persons, with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.
Feelings too must be renovated: old ones removed in many cases, or at least thoroughly modified, and new ones installed or at least heightened into a new prominence.
In many cases, our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is nothing short of a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work.
Spiritual formation is character formation. Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education; it's just a matter of which one you get.
We cannot handle injustice by finding more ways to impose what is in fact "right" on people. It has to come from the inside. And that's where the church should be working.
In the area of social righteousness we cannot be right on the inside and not do it. We cannot! Of course we have people who pretend that they can, but it simply isn't true.
The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from...Circumcision of the heart.
To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved.
Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.
If we do not make formation in Christ the priority, then we're just going to keep on producing Christians that are indistinguishable in their character from many non-Christians.
Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.
And the God who hears is also the one who speaks. He has spoken and is still speaking. Humanity remains his project, not its own, and his initiatives are always at work among us.
Churches are not the kingdom of God, but are primary and inevitable expressions, outposts, and instrumentalities of presence of the kingdom among us. They are 'societies' of Jesus.
The different parts of the automobile like the ignition switch, the various buttons, the steering wheel - the interfaces between the driver and the machine - is our spirit or heart.
That's the illusion - the idea that you can be all right on the inside and not act it out - and it has affected us in many ways. That's a part of the idea that professing is enough.