“Patience is not the toleration of what is wrong.”
“everything is needful that He sends; nothing can be needful that He withholds.”
“To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
“Aslan said Lucy you re bigger . That is because you are older, little one answered he. Not because you are? I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
“It is an historical fact that you and I have a problem doing the right thing, for others and for ourselves. Yet, we deny it fiercely or wallow in shame, neither of which God wants for us.”
“Believing doesn t make God real. Unbelief doesn t make Him disappear. Your opinion doesn’t change reality.”
“If you are offended by a belief that says you can’t have your own definition of God, be alarmed at yourself! The implications are humbling, if not embarrassing.”
“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”
“You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”
“I considered myself a Christian. But looking back on it, I guess I was more of a Kluggist. I was klugging my own spirituality. It was years before I would find out how dangerous that was.”
“But first I want you to tell me this: do you know the power of love? Christ passed over all the marvellous works which were to be performed by the apostles and said, By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.”
“Only a dry as dust religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an Earthly hell.”
“By the middle of the eighteenth century the black slave had sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new economic system, and was unconsciously ripe for a new philosophy of life. Nothing suited his condition then better than the doctrines of passive submission embodied in the newly learned Christianity. Slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious propaganda within certain bounds. The long system of repression and degradation of the Negro tended to emphasize the elements of his character which made him a valuable chattel: courtesy became humility, moral strength degenerated into submission, and the exquisite native appreciation of the beautiful became an infinite capacity for dumb suffering. The Negro, losing the joy of this world, eagerly seized upon the offered conceptions of the next; the avenging Spirit of the Lord enjoining patience in this world, under sorrow and tribulation until the Great Day when He should lead His dark children home,—this became his comforting dream.”
“Christians must not be slothful. Idleness is the devil’s bath; a slothful person becomes a prey to every temptation. Grace, while it cures the heart, does not make the hand lame. He who is called of God, as he works for heaven, so he works in his trade.” - Thomas Watson”
“The point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible. For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ”
“Jesus Christ is closer to you today than he was to the sinners and sufferers he spoke with and touched in his earthly ministry. Through his Spirit, Christ s own heart envelopes his people with an embrace nearer and tighter than any physical embrace could ever achieve. His actions on earth in a body reflected his heart, the same heart that now acts in the same ways toward us, for we are now his body. (p. 33)”
“Jarret was inaugurated today. We listened to his speech—short and rousing. Plenty of America, America, God shed his grace on thee, and God bless America, and One nation, indivisible, under God, and patriotism, law, order, sacred honor, flags everywhere, Bibles everywhere, people waving one of each. His sermon—because that s what it was—was from Isaiah, Chapter One. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. And then, Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they will be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Then, he spoke of peace, rebuilding and healing. A strong Christian America, he said, needs strong Christian American soldiers to reunite, rebuild, and defend it. In almost the same breath, he spoke of both the generosity and the love that we must show to one another, to all of our fellow Christian Americans, and the destruction we must visit upon traitors and sinners, those destroyers in our midst. I d call it a fire-and-brimstone speech, but what happens now?”