A paradox of the soul is that it is incapable of satisfying itself, but it is also incapable of living without satisfaction.
People would rather debate doctrine or beliefs or tradition or interpretation than actually do what Jesus said. It’s not rocket science. Just go do it. Practice loving a difficult person or try forgiving someone. Give away some money. Tell someone thank you. Encourage a friend. Bless an enemy. Say, “I’m sorry.” Worship God. You already know more than you need to know.
I was practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.
Our soul’s problem, however, is not its neediness; it’s our fallenness. Our need was meant to point us to God. Instead, we fasten our minds and bodies and wills on other sources of ultimate devotion, which the Bible calls idolatry.
Francis Fenelon reminds us, “God is merciful, showing us our true hideousness only in proportion to the courage he gives us to bear the sight.
Underneath the surface of the skeptic is fear – fear of being disappointed.
God designed us so that our choices, our thoughts and desires, and our behavior would be in perfect harmony with each other and would be powered by an unbroken connection with God, in perfect harmony with him and with all of his creation. That is a well-ordered soul.
If you have a positive attitude, you are likely to live a decade longer than people with a negative attitude.
Our world has replaced the word soul with the word self, and they are not the same thing. The more we focus on our selves, the more we neglect our souls.
Work is a form of love. We cannot be fully human without creating value.
The child in Bethlehem would grow up to be a friend of sinners, not a friend of Rome. He would spend his life with the ordinary and the unimpressive. He would pay deep attention to lepers and cripples, to the blind and the beggar, to prostitutes and fishermen, to women and children. He would announce the availability of a kingdom different from Herod’s, a kingdom where blessing – of full value and worth with God – was now conferred on the poor in spirit and the meek and the persecuted.
We are not the passive victim of others’ opinions. Their opinions are powerless until we validate them.
Japan knows the horror of war and has suffered as no other nation under the cloud of nuclear disaster. Certainly Japan can stand strong for a world of peace.
Your first ministry is your family.
The people who love you learn you.
Men will act as nobly as women will collectively demand.
If a society normalizes indecencies, then indecencies will be the norm, without countermeasures.
Past Tyrants have tried to imprisoned, detained, or hang the preachers who preach truths, but the truths are ideas. These oppressors from history who wanted to kill ideas have never been triumphant. A man can try his possible physical best to silence truths, but truths have always lived.
Investing has the best results when you learn from nature.
In business, efficiency is a prerequisite to profit.