Favorite Quotes

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

“Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is.”

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

“Leave me alone with God as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
Alone with you, God, holy to you.
Then with the turning of the tide
Prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
The world that rushes in on me,
Till the waters come again and fold me back to you.”

“When we inhale by prayer, we receive the fresh air of the Holy Spirit. When exhaling this air, we announce Jesus Christ risen from the same Spirit. No one can live without breathing. It is the same for the Christian; without praise and mission there is not a Christian life. ”

“The primary business I must attend to every day is to fellowship with the Lord. The first concern is not how much I might serve the Lord, but how my inner man might be nourished.”

“Even though we are not handed a road map for this journey with Jesus, we can still create some guidelines to help us stay on course. I have found that a plan for growing in Christlikeness helps and I am hardly the first to make this discovery. Originating in the monastic tradition in the fifth century, the practices of living by a rule of life has sustained Christians throughout the ages. Essentially, in a rule of life, you identify habits, disciplines and practices to keep you moving in the direction of Jesus with your community. . . . Yet I prefer the language of “rhythm for life” over “rule of life.” Life moves along with seasons of rigidity, flexibility, spontaneity, and discipline. What works for six months many not work for the next six months. Life is dynamic, not static.”

“A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.”

“It’s easy to assume that friendship comes easy for some people. But ask anyone with a strong community around them and I guarantee they will say it took effort and intentionality.”

“If you look at the world, you will be distressed. If you look within, you will be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.”

“All around the world, many Christians are running on empty, are on the verge of burnout, and suffer from “SADD” - spiritual attention deficit disorder. One of the reasons for this is that many of us are trying to serve God in our own power and strength. Mission without prayer and worship is dangerous and disembodied. Oftentimes, we falsely divorce missional practices from spiritual practices, as if mission was something non-spiritual and merely pragmatic, dependent upon us - not God. Could anything be further from the truth? If mission is anything, shouldn’t it be spiritual and influenced by the Spirit of the Living God, rather than something that is attempted in our own strength and power? ”

“Increase, O God, the spirit of neighborliness among us, that in peril we may uphold one another, in suffering tend to one another, and in homelessness, loneliness, or exile befriend one another. Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may strengthen one another, until the disciplines and testing of these days are ended, and you again give peace in our time; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Jesus good news is summarized in a single sentence, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” The Greek word for “repent” is metanoia, which means literally, “change your mind.” Most people think repent means “shape up”; thus they think Jesus’ proclamation is a threat. But it is an invitation. The kingdom of God (or the kingdom of the heaven) is an interactive life with God. Jesus is essentially saying, “Change the way you have been thinking- a life of intimacy and interaction with God is now in your midst.” ”

“I can, for example, choose to navigate my life, live as I want and aim at fulfilling all of my desires. This will result in that despair Kierkegaard wrote of, the sickness unto death. Williard called this a “dying self.” The wisest best choice, then is “the surrender of a lesser, dying self for a greater eternal one.” Or to quote the martyred missionary Jim Elliot, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Formation in Christlikeness depends on surrender; failure to surrender is a sickness unto death; I can never find rest until I surrender; I am exchanging a less for a greater; and giving what I cannot keep in exchange for what I cannot lose is wise, not foolish.”

“Contemplation is nothing else but a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which, if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love.”

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

“I write, think, and live with the background of sirens blaring, homeless men pouring into our church building for showers, and neigbhors frantically running to catch the subway. The deeply formed life is not simply for people who have the benefit of environments conducive to silence and solitude. From personal experience, I can assure you that it’s for people of all walks of life who long to be shaped by God’s gracious love. ”

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

“But notoriously, we won’t take time to go deep down within because we have often been discipled into superficiliality- and in Jesus’ name no less. ”

“The value of life does not depend upon the place we occupy. It depends upon the way we occupy that place.”

“Many of us do not fully experience the joy of life, simply because we do not know the immense love that God has for us (as stated simply in Jon 3:16). One of the great markers of spiritual maturity is growing in awareness of the depth of God’s love.”

“Christianity is unashamedly a religion of the heart: the entirety of our inner lives. And Scripture speaks of our innermost self. David declared to God in prayer, “Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place” (Ps 51:6). The apostle Paul rejoiced that even though our physical bodies slowly decay, “inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16). Jesus expressed deep concern for our heart—the center of who we are (Mk 7:14-23). It’s from the heart that sin originates and it is from within that Christ begins our transformation. As Paul asked, “Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you?” (2 Cor 13:5).”

“Mercy is one of my favorite words. It’s beautiful to say the word, even more glorious to hear…and see…and receive. . . . Mercy means “compassionate or kindly forbearance” shown toward an offender, an enemy; it means compassion, pity, or benevolence. It’s synonym is forgiveness. It’s a strong word for mighty people…showing kindness, favor, compassion, faithfulness…to bend or stoop in kindness toward another. It begins with God; fulfilled in God’s people. That’s mighty! Wow. Where do we see this evidenced today? . . . Mercy is the commodity most needed today. And, most missing today. I don’t see much mercy on the daily news. I don’t hear much mercy on the streets of our cities. I don’t notice it when I see pettiness of heart or smallness of mind. But, I do hear it when I listen to voices of compassion for the lost, the least, the left behind. I see it when I notice life change because of unmerited kindness, patience, grace, and forgiveness. Yes, mercy is all around us, if we look in the right places.”

“When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.”

“In the Old Testament, talk of God is characterized by dialogical thinking. Lament creates space for this dialogue and moves the theology of suffering into interaction with the theology of celebration.”

“God is committed to our transformation. He is not in the business of simply improving our lives; he wants to infuse them with his life.”

“But the lament psalms aren’t about letting emotions go wild. They are a means of bringing these wild emotions to God Himself. ”

“We seldom talk about virtue these days, but [John] Wesley knew virtue was central to developing a vibrant, joyful life. How do people become virtuous? Wesley understood that the Christian gospel is the fundamental building block of the life we long for. We yearn to know and be known by God. But not just any understanding of God will do. Wesley describes God as the judge - God is holy - and yet he also calls God “the lover of all”. We were designed to be in fellowship with a loving and holy God. Yet we cannot merit this on our own, so Wesley says he would lead his hearers to Jesus, the mediator of the New Covenant, a covenant of forgiveness and regeneration through which we become people in whom Christ dwells and delights.”

“God calls people. . . . A calling is always a demonstration of the love of God and the initiative of God; but more, it is through vocation that we come to an appreciation that God takes us seriously. We can understand the call of God in three distinct ways. . . .
1. The general call: the invitation to follow Jesus, to be Christian
2. The specific call: a vocation that is unique to each person, and individual’s mission in the world
3. The immediate call: the tasks or duties to which God calls each person an the present time.”

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

“Our true self is found clasped in God’s love. God has created us to be partakers of the divine nature, as Peter puts it (2 Pet 1:4), to find our wholeness in the very being of God, to be restored to fullness in the image of God, to live in loving union with God. How then does our false self, the hand separated from God in the self-referenced life, get back into the clasp of God’s love? Here is where we discover the radical nature of our lostness, our alienation, our separation from God. The very essence of our false self is that we are a self-referencing being. Any effort we make to try to get back into the clasp of God’s love is a self-generated effort . . .. The point is that the very essence of our false self makes us totally, utterly incapable of moving our self back to our true center . . .. Here is where we begin to understand the depth of God’s cruciform love, grace, and mercy towards us: “While we still were sinners [while we were still false selves] Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8 NRSV). Paul is saying that God comes to us in our false self in order to offer God’s self to us to be our true life.”

“Christianity is not merely a philosophical theory or a moral code, but involves a direct sharing in divine life and glory, a transforming union with God ‘face to face.’”

“As we become more intentional about living according to our deepest desires, it becomes increasingly important to notice the effects of technology on our mind, our soul, and our relationships. The effects of technology are so pervasive and have sneaked up on us in such subtle ways that most of us have little awareness of how deep and far-reaching those effects really are. . . . . Technology is not evil; it is how we use technology that determines whether it is a force for good or ill in our lives. As we seek to cultivate spiritual rhythms, we do well to consider disciplines that correspond to the temptations arising from technology so that we can protect the elements of our lives that we value most. ”

“In meditation, we should not look for a “method” or a “system” but cultivate an “attitude,” and “outlook”: faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy. All these finally permeate our being with love in so far as our living faith tells us we are in the presence of God, tht we live in Christ, that in the Spirit of God, we “see” God our Father without “seeing.” We know hin in “unknowing.” Faith is the bond that unites us to him in the Spirit who gives us light and love.”

“Laments are prayers of petition arising out of need. But lament is not simply the presentation of a list of complaints, nor merely the expression of sadness over difficult circumstances. Lament in the Bible is the liturgical response to th reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble. The hope of lament is that God would respond to human suffering that is wholeheartedly communicated through lament. Unfortunately, lament is often missing from the narrative of the American Church. . . . The American church avoids lament. The power of lament is minimized and the underlying narrative of suffering that requires lament is lost. But absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forget. The absence of lament in the liturgy of the American church results in the loss of memory. We forget the necessity of lamenting over suffering and pain. We forget the reality of suffering and pain. ”

“It is generally assumed today that devotion means a series of religious duties to add to an already overcommitted schedule. But such is simply not the case. By themselves, the externals of religion are dry, dead, dusty stuff. No, we all need the heartfelt habit that Francis calls “charity” by which he simply means the ability to do good to all people. Frances de Sales reminds us that on the vertical plane “true devotion” means a head over heals, white-hot love of God. On the horizontal plane it means a strength free of guile to serve others.”

“There are very few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands, and let themselves be formed by his grace. A thick and shapeless tree-trunk would never believe that it could become a statue, admired as a miracle of sculpture, and would never submit itself to the chisel of the sculptor, who sees by its genius, what he can make of it. - Ignatius of Loyola”

“Perhaps one of the most basic things we need to understand about spiritual transformation is that it is full of mystery. We can be open to it, but we can’t accomplish it for ourselves. Paul alludes to this in his writings by using two metaphors. The first is the process by which an embryo is formed in its mother’s womb. . . . It is the same with the process of metamorphosis. . . . Both of these metaphors place the process of spiritual transformation squarely in the category that we call mystery: something outside the range of normal human activity and understanding that can be grasped only through divine revelation and brought about by divine activity. What does this mean for those of us who are seeking to give ourselves more fully and concretely to the process of spiritual transformation? One thing it means is that whatever we think we might know about it, the decision to give ourselves to the experience of spiritual transformation brings us to the very edge of what we know and leaves us peering into the unknown. ”

“Always remem­ber that it is not knowl­edge of the way that God desires of us, but the prac­tice of it. Not light, but love. For though I under­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge — but have not love — I am noth­ing (1 Corinthi­ans 13:2).”

“Fur­ther­more, we need to main­tain a bal­ance between learn­ing and doing. We ought to spend much more time in doing. If we are not care­ful, we will spend such a large seg­ment of our lives in gain­ing knowl­edge that we shall need anoth­er life­time to put our knowl­edge into prac­tice. We are in dan­ger of eval­u­at­ing our spir­i­tu­al matu­ri­ty on the basis of the amount of knowl­edge we have acquired. But the fact is that edu­ca­tion, instead of help­ing self to die, only nour­ish­es the old man by mak­ing him proud of his intel­lec­tu­al attain­ments. So if you want to make some great strides toward spir­i­tu­al matu­ri­ty, then do not trust in your own pow­er or your own knowl­edge. Humil­i­ty before God and dis­trust of your old self, with an open sim­plic­i­ty, are fun­da­men­tal virtues for you.”

“God has not called me to be successful. He has called me to be faithful.”

“Every time we see someone in pain and we wonder how that person is going to live through it, know that God suffered that pain and is suffering that pain with that person. In a way, the whole of human history is the showing of the depths of God’s suffering. From a Christian perspective, history is the unfolding of the intensity and immensity of God’s suffering, but also of God’s resurrection, because in the midst of all the suffering, you can see signs of hope again and again and again.”

“. . . of the three descriptors in John 14:6, I think Jesus as way get the least attention. We often focus on the teachings of Jesus (“the truth”) and the gift of eternal life in Jesus (“the life”), but not as much on how Jesus does what he does or how Jesus actually lives his life (“the way”). Jesus as way speaks to me of a journey we take, a path on which we walk, a companionship that we cultivate, and an ongoing interactive experience. Day by day, moment by moment, we are on the way with Christ. ”

“In the act of silence you’re not waiting for God to make a move. You’re becoming aware of the moves he is making”

“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone... Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.”

“The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.”

“I now understand the fundamental truth beneath the spiritual disciplines, that as author and Pastor John Ortberg says, “If a discipline is not producing freedom in me, it’s probably the wrong thing for me to be doing.”
Practicing a spiritual discipline is not about trying to earn something, prove something, or win. Practicing a spiritual discipline is more about receiving power to live in the kingdom. It’s about training my mind and my will to practice what my heart deeply believes. It’s about knowing that each moment is packed with grace but sometimes I need practice to see it. It’s about becoming the person I already am in Christ. Really anything can be a spiritual discipline when we recognize the presence of God with us in it.”

“I don’t expect and I don’t like a God who comes to me in failure, in loneliness, in poverty. Yet God comes to me where I live and loves me where I am. If I am not where I am, God cannot meet me. It’s as simple as that. But when I remain where I am with everything that is moving inside me, salvation comes.”

“The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.”

“The process of dehu­man­iz­ing our neigh­bor is a sin that takes many forms that we prob­a­bly live in igno­rance of. How do we view the per­son cut­ting us off in traf­fic, the rude wait­er, or some­one annoy­ing us with their need­i­ness — as a beloved child of God? An oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice the dis­ci­pline of ​“neigh­bor love?” Or some­thing that keeps me from get­ting my own way? It’s easy to miss see­ing a per­son. Instead we see a dis­rup­tion of our agen­das. Some­thing is rad­i­cal­ly wrong when we are in the habit of reduc­ing a crea­ture bear­ing the very thumbprint of God him­self into an object of dis­rup­tion or per­son­al gain. Every encounter with anoth­er human is a brush with a beloved child of God whom God so ten­der­ly breathed life into.”

“Many of us move through our days knowing intellectually that we are children in God’s kingdom, and yet, during this time of pandemic and racial and political tension, the world’s kingdom is loud and severe. It is tempting for us to lead and react out of our own strength and anxiety. Many of us, perhaps most especially leaders, are experiencing decision-making fatigue from all the choices required of us to move forward through foggy, unfamiliar territory. In this in-between place, we are invited, over and over again, to let what is really real, the greater reality of the kingdom of God, be the loudest voice and the governing rule of our lives. Be still for a few minutes…welcoming the Holy Spirit and surrendering all you are carrying now. Jesus desires to give you His peace, courage and power. Turn your attention toward Jesus. He wants to help you see and experience the deeper realities of his Kingdom. Ask the Lord to show you the things that are drawing you closer to Him and the things that are drawing you away. Ask for His help in renewing your vision for what it looks like to be a daughter or a son in the Kingdom.”

“The nature of human beings is to be inactive unless influenced by some affection: love or hatred, desire, hope, fear, etc. These affections are the “spring of action.” . . . Just as worldly affections are the spring of worldly actions, so the religious affections are the spring of religious actions. A person who has a knowledge of doctrine and theology only - without religious affections - has never engaged in true religion. Nothing is more apparent than this: our religion takes root within us only as deep as our affections attract it. There are thousands who hear the Word of God, who hear great and exceedingly important truths about themselves and their lives, and yet all they hear has no effect upon them, makes no change in the way they live.”

“The [spiritual] dis­ci­plines should nev­er be used to bring self-con­dem­na­tion. Please do not set plans and goals in your spir­i­tu­al life and then end up using your fail­ures as ammu­ni­tion to prove you don’t mea­sure up. That is the way of the world, not the way of Christ. God is ever eager to meet us where we are, not where we think we should be.  The dis­ci­plines are an invi­ta­tion, not an oblig­a­tion. Joy, free­dom, and laugh­ter are where this jour­ney is tak­ing us. Now cer­tain­ly the dis­ci­plines require ener­gies. And, some­times they lead us to suf­fer­ing as self-cen­tered­ness works its way out, but spir­i­tu­al train­ing is large­ly a move­ment of free­dom, a light bur­den, and an easy yoke.”

“I am deeply con­vinced that the Chris­t­ian leader of the future is called to be com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant and to stand in this world with noth­ing to offer but his or her vul­ner­a­ble self.”