Quotes About Belief

Who your characters are, how they behave, what they believe, how they think, what they do, and the ways in which they feel are in your control. Why create characters who only raise shrugs? In

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.

My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and there are some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care.

I can't do it. It would be like, say, trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself that your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me.

I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.

At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder.

When a relationship is right, it is no more possible to wake up and want out of the marriage than it is to wake up and stop believing in God. What is, is what is.

I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.

He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.

Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will.

It's all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn't conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it's just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.

It is when people do not allow God to show up through them ... that the world collapses in on itself.

The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything. And it isn't cool.

I DON'T KNOW WHY IT IS, EXACTLY, BUT THE PEOPLE with the healthiest self-esteem are also the greatest at intimacy. I'm not talking about arrogant people. I'm talking about people who know they are both good and bad yet believe at the deepest level they are really good for people. It's a beautiful moment when somebody wakes up to this reality, when they realize God created them so other people could enjoy them, not just endure them.

if I do not introduce people to Jesus, then I don't believe Jesus is an important person. It doesn't matter what I say.

When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every 10 years because I am a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story.

So I wrote. I wrote as though God thought my voice mattered. I wrote because I believed a human story was beautiful, no matter how small the human was. I wrote because I didn't make myself, God did. And I wrote like he'd invited me to share my true "self" with the world.

I was starting to believe I was a character in a greater story, which is why the elements of story made sense in the first place.

THE STUFF IT TAKES TO BE INTIMATE IS AUTHENTICITY, vulnerability, and a belief that other people are about as good and bad as we are.

I felt a long way from the pre-me, the pawn-Christian who was a Republican because my family was Republican, not because I had prayed and asked God to enlighten me about issues concerning the entire world rather than just America.

Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn't Jesus' fault.

You can call it God or a conscience… but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character. I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.

God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken.