Quotes About Faith

Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort.

I wanted it to be an easy story. But nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That's what makes a story good. If you think about the stories you like most, they probably have lots of conflict. There is probably death at stake, inner death or actual death, you know. These polar charges, these happy and sad things in life, are like colors God uses to draw the world.

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.

How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other?

Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me.

Those who can't accept their imperfections can't accept grace either.

I was talking to a homeless man at the laundry mat recently, and he said that when we reduce Christian spirituality to math we defile the Holy. I thought that was very beautiful and comforting because I have never been good at math.

We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people... That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.

Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.

I believed if word got out about grace, the whole church was going to turn into a brothel.

After a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as a kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given so easily to false hope, couldn't handle the full brunt of reality.

For so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn't a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.

The problem with Christian belief–-I mean real christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell--is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.

I told her how frustrating it is to be a Christian in America, and how frustrated I am with not only the church's failures concerning human rights, but also my personal failure to contribute to the solution.

God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community.

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away. I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved

He wasn't just calling them into a life of sacrifice. He was calling them into a life of meaning, even the kind of meaning that would involve suffering. Suffering for a redemptive reason is hardly suffering, after all.

About the time I told God that He didn't exist, I was desperate for an identity.

All great stories are about survival—either physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual.

If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe.

The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is "Do not fear." It's in there over two hundred times.

Our 'behavior' will not be changed long with self-discipline, but fall in love and a human will accomplish what he never thought possible. The laziest of men will swim the English channel to win his woman. I think what Rick said is worth repeating that by accepting God's love for us, we fall in love with Him, and only then do we have the fuel we need to obey.

Perhaps if we stop reducing the text to formulas for personal growth, we can read it as stories of imperfect humans having relations with a perfect God and come to understand the obvious message He is communicating to mankind.

I think that story about Jesus and the rich man also means that while everybody is invited, not everybody is willing.