Quotes from Marva J. Dawn

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.

we are to be lights in the world. It is God's business to light us, to set us on the lampstand, and to bring the people into the house. Our only duty is to shine forth with the gospel.

God's revelation... unmasks our illusions about ourselves. It exposes our pride, our individualism, our self-centeredness - in short, our sin. But worship also offers forgiveness, healing, transformation, motivation, and courage to work in the world for God's justice and peace - in short, salvation in its largest sense.

The goal of the Christian life is that for more and more seconds of each day what we think and do and say is to God's glory, that every moment is worship of the true God instead of various idolatries of our making or of our culture's.

One of the greatest gifts for my life as one who serves God is observing the Sabbath. Celebrating a holy day and living in God's rhythm for six days of work and one of rest is the best way I know to learn the sense of our call - the way in which God's Kingdom reclaims us, revitalizes us, and renews us so that it can reign through us. Before we can engage in the practice of our call, we need to be captured afresh by grace, carried by it, and cared for.

If we lived more simply most of the time, our feasts would be distinctive events. As it is, since most Americans have all kinds of special things to eat every day, for many the only way to make Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts uncommon is by eating more. It would be good if we could restore the concept of feasting not as something to regret (don't we all have to lose a few pounds after the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's season?), but as a delight.

Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

Our negative ceasing to possess must be accompanied by a positive choosing to be generous.

We definitely do not conform to our culture if we choose not to be dominated by possessions or by the anxiety to acquire more of them, but decide instead to give away much of what we have and use what we have been given as good stewards who desire to enjoy the things of God for the purposes of God.

The important point in all our imitation [of God] is its deliberate intentionality. We don't just think God's values are good. We embrace them wholly.... To embrace is to accept with gusto, to live to the hilt, to choose with extra intentionality and tenacity. —Marva Dawn

To say "I am going to church" both reveals and promotes bad theology.

Joy born of deep suffering is nourished by moments of celebration.... Celebration properly understood is the acceptance of life in an ever growing recognition that it is so precious.

Praise" that uses only "upbeat" songs can be extremely destructive to worshipers because it denies the reality of doubts concerning God, the hiddenness of God, and the feelings of abandonment by God that cloud believers going through difficult times.