The Christian faith, simply stated, reminds us that our fundamental problem is not moral; rather, our fundamental problem is spiritual. It is not just that we are immoral, but that a moral life alone cannot bridge what separates us from God. Herein lies the cardinal difference between the moralizing religions and Jesus’ offer to us. Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive.
Worship very plainly opens up the healing of all of mankind. The struggle of gender, the struggle of race, the struggle of history, the struggle to find political liberation, the struggle of our own contradictions – nothing can be mended until we understand the symbol of Jesus’ breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine.
The world was made for the body. The body was made for the soul. And the soul was made for God.
God doesn’t respond because someone opens up some new insight for Him. No. In persistent, fervent prayer, God prepares the soil of one’s heart to make room for the seed of His answer, from which will flower an alignment with His will.
Chivalry in love has nothing to do with the sweetness of the appearance. It has everything to do with the tenderness of a heart determined to serve. You must not act under the impetus of charm, but out of a commitment to make someone’s life the joy you want it to be.
Truth cannot be sacrificed at the alter of a pretended tolerance. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true.
Redemption precedes morality, and not the other way around.
So do not fear the struggle; rather, embrace it. Embrace it in the knowledge that the Grand Weaver will take all of your struggles, questions, disappointments, and fears and use them to build your faith and increasingly make you into a man or woman who looks like Jesus Christ.
God trained Moses in a palace to use him in a desert. He trained Joseph in a desert to use him in a palace.
Chesterton says, in essence, that there is a dislocation of humility in our times. We have become more confident in who we are and less in what we believe. Our pride has moved us from the organ of conviction to the organ of ambition, when it is intended to be the other way around. In short, our confidence should be in our message and not in ourselves.
Become a man or woman of prayer... Let your heart and mind be kept close to the principal calling of your life, which is to hunger and thirst after God and His righteousness... Let the thoughts and intents of your heart be shaped and guided by time spent in His presence.
Presence, relationship, holiness, trust, beauty, goodness, peace – all were present in the relationship between God and humanity at creation. By playing God and redefining good and evil according to our own discretion, we introduced into the human spirit disobedience, absence, severance, distrust, evil, and restlessness.
The important thing to bear in mind is that you must face your willingness to die to yourself before you choose to walk down the aisle. Is this person the one for whom you are willing to die daily? Is this person to whom you say, “I do” also the one for whom you are willing to say, “No, I don’t” to everybody else? Be assured that marriage will cost you everything.
And so the abnormal is now normal in entertainment, because the normal is treated as subnormal in the world of the media. That, I can assure you, is consciously done.
We are fashioned by God to be thinking and emotional creatures. The emotions should follow reason, and not the other way around.
A calling is simply God’s shaping of your burden and beckoning you to your service to him in the place and pursuit of his choosing.
Thomas Merton once said, “We cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
More than anything else, prayer enables you to see your own heart and brings you into alignment with God’s heart. Prayer is not a monologue in which we imagine ourselves to be communing with God. Rather, it is a dialogue through which God fashions your heart and makes his dream of you a reality. It is truly the treasured gift of the Christian that through direct answers and not-so-direct answers, the follower of Jesus begins to love God for who he is, not for what he may get out of him.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 13:14, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” In other words, do not put yourself in a place where you can fall.
The Bible offers a beautiful passage from the heart of one who knew much, suffered much, endured much, and wrote much: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceivedwhat God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 CORINTHIANS 2:9.