Quotes from Geoffrey Wood

Teach them the shame that tells the lie, "I am unforgivable," when the truth is, "I feel unforgivable, but it was out of my control." Never let them switch those round right or The Adversary will liberate them in a heartbeat, like a bird flying from a cage.

Somehow they fail to see that for someone aggravated by depression, self-help will be useless, indeed, it is precisely the self that needs to be forgotten.

They scold their own hearts but it actuates no real change, only deepens the wound. But they can't look away from it. Thus, by paralyzing their Present, we beat The Adversary on His home turf. And loop after loop, the depressed haunt and harrow themselves, sometimes for years, when they have only, for a brief moment, to look away from themselves, to look up.

I don't even like the phrase 'opportunity to sin' because it implies the opportunity to obey.

Once a man discovers that his obedience is primarily for others' sake, that every miracle that ever amazed happened because of someone's obedience somewhere, that properly understood, his obedience prepares the way for His visitation, well, then we run up against the appalling result of attentive servants gladly going about His bidding without the slightest hesitation. Indeed, in the worse cases, they run where He says run with reckless abandon.

You see my point? The average person has a very average notion of goodness to which they aspire averagely. To aspire to goodness in any remarkable way would be 'undemocratic'.

In every human act of charity, something larger, greater, divine has come down to visit the act.

I have witnessed the pleasant result of producing a human who faithfully claims to be a Christian, but who on some fundamental level does not think Christianity actually works. And just one Christian of this type turns off dozens from trying out Christianity for themselves.

Even if their guilt actually does produce a good action, it will be the saddest good action you'll ever see, and it will be of no use to them because their goal is not to obey, but to feel less guilty, thus nothing about their souls will be reshaped.

When their minds mingle with His magnanimity, something of eternity rubs off on their imaginations.

As a motivation —for humans, but Christians especially— guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.

If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls them out, they fall back in, etc... That way they never get anywhere; they're always either standing next to a hole or down in it.

Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they'd have no relationship with Him at all. And, of course, no relationship can be based on guilt and survive.

I've seen a disobedient client simply turn his attention toward The Adversary and ask "Are You still there?" and suddenly all was made well between them.

If God's suggesting that I am expected to do good and also obligated to manufacture a genuine desire for it, this boat's sunk, still sitting on the trailer in the driveway. A stack of things need to happen before I desire to be good…

It seems The Adversary needs neither their guilt nor their request, but simply their return. In other words, since repentance is the process whereby guilt is turned into gratitude, He doesn't mind if they skip a step and go directly to gratitude.

That dusty hill we can scarcely look upon and then only with pain, The Adversary, also with pain, does and must ever witness The Crucifixion.

The more we train a man to labor, deliberate, dictate and demand over the inconsequential, the less capable his mind becomes of holding that of consequence.

I shouldn't need to remind you that it was words that created the universe and The Word that now holds it together. While your man was simply reading one little book, something not unlike Genesis was stirring in his skull, and you didn't think to stop it?

The Bible is the one book we've most succeeded in having them never read as a book. Keep it that way.

Joy is that paradox where a man so trusts, is so enraptured, as to be caught up and lost in the other, while at the same time, being utterly known by the other, thus utterly himself.

Make them imagine repentance more like an appearance in court before a cranky old judge, less like a child knocking on his father's study door to have a chat.

In Joy, to lose one's life is to gain it, and Joy never loses an opportunity to be lost in the other.