Quotes About Faith

It's in that place that we're reminded that true life comes when we're willing to admit that we've reached the end of ourselves, we've given up, we've let go, we're willing to die to all of our desires to figure it out and be in control. We lose our life, only to find it.

In a letter, Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, wrote to Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 about the possibility that people could turn to God after death, asking: Who would doubt God's ability to do that?

For Jesus, the question wasn't, "How do I get into heaven?" but "How do I bring heaven here?

The Bible tells a story. A story that isn't over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.

I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.

I can't find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identity ourselves first and foremost as sinners.

God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2). So does God get what God wants?

It is possible for music to be labeled Christian and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That Christian band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a Christian movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft.

If your faith is threatened by something that's true, then it wasn't much of a faith to begin with, was it?

when people debate faith vs. science they've already missed the point. Faith is about embracing truth wherever it's found, and that of course includes science.) He's

One of the great "theologians" of our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: "When everything gets answered, it's fake. The mystery is the truth."21

Sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting 'the gospel' is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn't safe, loving, or good. It doesn't make sense, it can't be reconciled, and so they say no.

Whatever those things are that make you feel fully alive and like the universe is ultimately a good place and you are not alone, I need a faith that doesn't deny these moments but embraces them.

But it isn't a choice, because Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, the life." If you come across truth in any form, it isn't outside your faith as a Christian. Your faith just got bigger. To be a Christian is to claim truth wherever you find it.

He writes to his friends in Ephesus: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. When people ask you what the Bible is about, do you answer: It's about becoming more enlightened? Because that's how Paul puts it.

Often times when I meet atheists and we talked about the god they don't believe in, we quickly discover that I don't believe in that god either.

Catherine of Aragon said,"None get to God but through trouble.

But the first Christians didn't see Jesus this way, as if God were somewhere else and then cooked up some way to solve the sin problem at the last minute by getting involved as Jesus. They believed that Jesus was somehow more, that Jesus had actually been present since before creation and had been a part of the story all along.

So as a Christian, I am free to claim the good, the true, the holy, wherever and whenever I find it. I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it.

But it's in that disappointment, in that confusion, in that pain—the pain that comes from things not going how I wanted them to—that I find the same thing happening, again and again. I come to the end of myself, to the end of my power, the end of my strength, the end of my understanding, only to find, in that place of powerlessness, a strength and peace that weren't there before.

This is how you remember God: you bless those who need it the most in the same way that God blessed you when you needed it the most.

Which leads to another question: When Matthew tells us that some of Jesus's followers doubted, does this undermine the story, or is this the exact kind of honesty that reflects how people actually are? When each of the Gospel writers includes the part about the women being witnesses, why risk it? What a strange thing to include knowing it would discredit their story, unless women actually were the first witnesses.

A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth.

To fully appreciate the Bible, you have to let it be what it is.