Quotes About Belief

The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.

Every man knows that he will die: and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of a sane being.

Every man knows he will die; and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of sane being.

Everybody has an idea of himself which augments, aggravates, or modifies the actuality.

John Neville Figgis

If we seem to get no good by attempting to draw near to Him, we may be sure we will get none by keeping away from Him.

when we have been brought very low and helped, sorely wounded and healed, cast down and raised again, have given up all hope--and been suddenly snatched from danger, and placed in safety; and when these things have been repeated to us and in us a thousand times over, we begin to learn to trust simply to the word and power of God, beyond and against appearances[....]

But that we are so totally depraved, is a truth which no one ever truly learned by being only told it.

Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines—as well as upon works!

It is a great thing to die; and, when flesh and a heart fail, to have God for the strength of our hearts, and our portion forever. I know whom I have believed, and he is able to keep that which I have committed against that great day. Hence forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, shall give me that day.

The appearance of an angel from heaven could add nothing to the certainty of the declarations he has already put into our hands.

There is nothing as un-neutral as a home. Even the most ordinary home is an implicit theater to subversive inner happenings. It is the most self-effacing laboratory of consciousness quietly shaping belief, expectation, and life direction.

In some ways, "waiting on the Lord" is the hardest part of trusting. It is not the same as "waiting around." It is putting yourself with utter vulnerability in his hands.

When God calls people to do something, their initial response is almost always fear. If there is a challenge in front of you, a course of action that could cause you to grow and that would be helpful to people around you, but you find yourself scared about it, there's a real good chance that God is in that challenge.

eschatological thinking.

The Bible's teaching on prayer leads overwhelmingly to one conclusion: Prayer changes things.

Not knowing doesn't mean you're condemned to anxiety; rather, not knowing calls for trust, and trust is crucial to good performance. Uncertainty is essential to the game.

Etty spent her last days giving hope and care, "with a kind word for everyone she met on the way." Her final words were written on a postcard and thrown off Wagon No. 12, the railroad car she rode to what she knew would be her death in Auschwitz. "We left camp singing," she wrote. The Nazis took control of her possessions, her mobility, her work, her family, her body, and finally her life, yet she believed that they did not truly take anything at all.

Dostoyevsky, who was a believer, wrote that the "death of a single infant calls into question the existence of God."1

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

It was around Clifford's era that Thomas Huxley coined the term agnostic, which did not exist before the nineteenth century. Agnostics, Huxley said, "totally refuse to commit" to either denying or affirming the supernatural.

But a philosopher named William James responded that sometimes Clifford's advice is bad strategy. He said doubt is the wrong alternative when three conditions are met: when we have live options, when the stakes are momentous, and when we must make a choice.3

Theologian Lesslie Newbigin writes that we live in an age that favors doubt over faith.4 We often speak of "blind faith" and "honest doubt.

Christians can be confident about their growth in sanctification and eternal security because they are confident in the God who promises it.