Quotes About Faith

As we see in Ezra's life, committed study of Scripture can bring about much more than merely head knowledge. It can bring God himself into all the recesses of our being, for "the word of God is living and active" (Heb 4:12). Take

One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don't need to straighten others out.

If we feed our souls regularly on God's word, several times each day, we should become robust spiritually just as we feed on ordinary food several times each day, and become robust physically. Nothing is more important than hearing and obeying the word of God." —David

A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.

Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.

Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different.

Conversion does not make us perfect, but it does catapult us into a total experience of discipleship that affects - and infects - every sphere of our living.

the true test of spirituality [is] in the freedom to live among people compassionately....Prayer frees us to be controlled by God.

The Christian community must live out it's calling in the conscious recognition that secularism is false.

Living for Jesus was the ultimate "thrill," Templeton informed his audiences. He told young men and women that Christ was "the most exciting man who's ever lived ... the most extraordinary man who's ever lived,"63 and not just a man, but God Himself.

there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry 'Mine!

the land of fadeless day lies the city foursquare; it shall never pass away and there is no night there.

The tone of his songs was consistently celebratory: "Isn't it grand to be a Christian, isn't it grand?" singers asked one another. Isn't

God punishes us mildly by ignoring our prayers and severely by answering them.

The early bats are tying the air, the heart, into knots. They fly on the wings of grief. The late butterfly follows them over the edge of the cliff where the earth becomes the air we turn into. It's called mirror vision when we see what isn't here. The kind of faith that fails at unexpected moments the way a climber reaches for a hold that will never in his life, be there. It's called despair when we open the door of a heart that no longer exists.

What escapes you, never leaves you. Everything is a journey of trust. You have to have the kind of faith the flame has for the candle, that the bird has for its wings. Otherwise, our words have no destinations. Otherwise, our words are snakes that swallow our souls. —Richard Jackson, from "Isaac's Consent," Out of Place: Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014)

And this morning, / above us, invisible stars the daylight hides begin to map for us, / secretly, new paths our hearts had seemed to despair of,–those /vapor trails that linger longer than they are supposed to, the wake / of the boat that echoes perhaps endlessly, shore to shore,– if only / we can believe in them without ever seeing where they are. — Richard Jackson, from "Invisible Star Maps," Broken Horizons (Press 53, 2018)

Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.

A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.

When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him.

If you ever need to confirm that a girl is worth coming back from Hell for, show her your monster arm and see what she says.

Maybe that's why Heaven is silent and God doesn't speak to man anymore. Heavenly intervention would blow the point spread.

The lucky among us might get the same deal as Dysmas. Dysmas was one of the thieves crucified next to Christ. When he asked for forgiveness, Christ said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise.' " Candy

They were the understanding eyes of kindly folk who burned witches alive to save their souls.