Quotes About Faith

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.)

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

When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He's like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone's pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can't sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul.

Life is a dance toward God, I began to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing out practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign.

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.

You're assuming that love is a feeling. It isn't. It can involve feelings, but often it doesn't. Love acts out of faith, which rarely involves feelings. Love is action; it's deciding something is true and living out of that belief.

I read through the book of Matthew this evening. I was up all night. I couldn't stop reading so I read through Mark. This Jesus of yours is either a madman or the Son of God. Somewhere in the middle of Mark I realized He was the Son of God.

Ultimately, I believe that God loves and wants a relationship with every human being, but with Laura I could feel God's urgency.

I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.

I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy. When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it. Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

I guess what I am saying is, I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn't God wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching the people around us that life just isn't worth living.

Your problem is not that God is not fulfilling, your problem is that you are spoiled.

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 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 don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway?

Jesus had no regard for the lifeboat politics you and I live within every day.

There is no conflict man can endure that will not produce a blessing.

I don't believe we are accidents in the world, and I don't believe we were supposed to be actors either. I think we were supposed to be ourselves and we were meant as a miracle.

In church, the rules of the lifeboat don't apply. Church is the refuge where the Kingdom of God is emulated, not mocked.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love.

I kept asking Him to say it again, but He wouldn't. I guess it's because I heard Him the first time, you know.

the great stories go to those who don't give in to fear.

What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell?

Imagine how much a man's life would change if he trusted that he was loved by God.