Quotes About Belief

Their faith and trust in God wasn't shown in a buoyant confidence that God would come through. It was shown in the trusting act of obedience—gathering to pray even though they were sure it was a lost cause.

DON'T MISS THIS. Peter and his prayer-meeting friends seem to have had absolutely no expectation that God would really answer their prayers. Their doubts were so great that when God did answer, they didn't believe it. They had exactly the kind of faith that many of us have been told God won't honor. But he did.

I believe the primary reason for our long run of spiritual and cultural setbacks is something else. It's sin in the camp.

Spiritual urban legends aren't just harmless misunderstandings. They're spiritually dangerous errors that will eventually bring heartache and disillusionment to all who trust in them.

For most of us, beliefs are intellectual. Acting upon them is optional.

He could clearly see what was happening right in front of him. But he couldn't see what God was doing off in the distance. As

When they prayed for rain, they carried an umbrella.

Separation of church and state' meant freedom to worship, not freedom from worship.

And what about the willingness of the disciples to die for their belief that Jesus was alive – even after He had been murdered as a criminal? Some have claimed that Elvis Presley rose from the dead, but how many would be willing to die for such a teaching?

The statement in Daniel 12:1-4 (NRSV) that "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" is usually cited as the earliest clear expression of this hope in the Bible.

In sum, it appears that the sort of Jesus-devotion reflected in Paul's letters was shared among Jewish believers in Roman Judea as well as among Paul's churches.

from Jesus' resurrection onward, "God" in some profound way now includes a glorified human. That, I believe, represents quite a significant alteration!

how important it is that these convictions about Jesus and "God" found expression in devotional practices,

The obvious adaptation of Isaiah 45:23 (one of the most emphatically monotheistic passages in the Bible) to describe this universal acclamation of Jesus is a remarkable indication of the belief that this acclamation is now the required way in which "God" is to be glorified by the creation.

efforts to develop and defend his faith were convictions and devotional practices such as those already reflected in the NT.16

Paul's understanding of God was functionally Trinitarian."20 Indeed,

Earliest Christians believed that they were experiencing the fulfillment of biblical prophecies of an eschatological outpouring of "God's" Spirit (e.g., Acts 2:14-33). So it is little wonder that in their religious discourse reference to the Spirit of "God" features prominently.

and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3 NRSV). The basic thrust of the statement is that the divine Spirit

Jesus is Lord," which seems to be the earliest extant creedal formulation, reflected in Rom 10:9-10; 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:9-11 (in this last passage the slightly fuller form, "Jesus Christ is Lord").

Paul identifies "those who belong to Christ" as summoned and enabled now to live and be guided by the Spirit (Gal 5:24-25).

Jesus is pictured as warning his followers that they will be hated by all "because of my name" (Mark 13:13) and will suffer persecution "on my account" (Matt 5:11). First Peter 3:13-16 urges believers to be unafraid of suffering for their faith, to "reverence Christ as Lord" and

Thomas in John 20:28, "my Lord and my God," must be read in the larger context of GJohn, including the statement by the risen Jesus just a bit earlier in the narrative that he ascends to "my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (20:17 NRSV).

17:3 defines eternal life concisely as knowing two figures: "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

it is in sayings of Jesus that "God" is referred to as "the Father" (e.g., 4:21-23).