Quotes About Faith

I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God's family.

Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near.

We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God's name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)

I have found that living with faith in an unseen world requires constant effort.

God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.

Whatever else it is, the kingdom of God is decidedly not a call to violent revolution.

Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant.

Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no opportunity for faith either.

What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change.

Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.

People on sinking ships do not complain of distractions during their prayer.

Maybe God isn't trying to tell us anything specific each time we hurt. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of our planet, and Christians are not exempt.

Faith in God offers no insurance against tragedy. Nor does it offer insurance against feelings of doubt and betrayal. If anything, being a Christian complicates the issue. If you believe in a world of pure chance, what difference does it make whether a bus from Yuba City or one from Salina crashes? But if you believe in a world ruled by a powerful God who loves you tenderly, then it makes an awful difference.

I believe Christians walk a mental tightrope and are in constant danger of falling in one of two directions. On this subject, errors in thinking can have tragic results. The first error comes when we attribute all suffering to God, seeing it as his punishment for human mistakes; the second error does just the opposite, assuming that life with God will never include suffering.

Frederick Buechner writes, "Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.

True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.

God. Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more —no amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries and divinity schools, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less —no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self. You become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet?...He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan...the motive behind all human history, is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers in the universe that restoration is under way. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, and a faith like Job's reverberates throughout the universe.

We human beings instinctively regard the seen world as the "real" world and the unseen world as the "unreal" world, but the Bible calls for almost the opposite.