Quotes About Faith

She knew that it was better to have a dream and pay a price for it than to be lukewarm. - regarding St. Teresa of Avila

We hang suspended in His love. When one heart moves the whole web trembles.

I must warn you against the impression that mine is the final word on nonviolence. All I claim is that every experiment of mine has deepened my faith in nonviolence as the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.

Consider it: Who but God could have dreamed a tale so absurd and so heartless?

like a small stone deflected off a larger one, my brother had spun off toward the Almighty, though to my mind the events of that morning could just as well have cast him the other way.

I was a boy, and I believed deeply in the sightedness of horses. I believed that there was nothing that they did not witness. I believed that to have a horse between my legs, to extend my pulse and blood and energy to theirs, enhanced my vision. Made of me a seer. I believed them to be the dappled, sorrel, roan, bay, black pupils in the eyes of God.

How did we take this life picture and somehow misconstrue it to mean that if we just believed in Jesus, our lives would be wealthy, prosperous, and happy? Jesus doesn't promise that. Jesus says that many great things will come to those who follow Him, but He also promises a whole lot of lousy. And here's the key: The lousy isn't rotten. The lousy isn't sin. The focus of your life is not supposed to be dodging lousy. Because lousy is life. And lousy is important.

We still worship what we want our lives to feel like more than we worship Jesus.

We have a bad habit of presenting ourselves in a manner that seems to believe that righteousness is a change agent. It is not. Righteousness is the goal. Jesus is the only change agent.

Life following Christ is not supposed to be a ride. It's supposed to be a fight because there is a very specific villain—and if we don't fight, he wins. If our Christianity aims only for pretty and pleasant and happy and rich, the Enemy becomes the victor.

In modern faith our certainty has replaced love. A healthy faith walk is a collision of both. Enough certainty and conviction to walk out life pursuing Christ and holiness—but enough love to draw others (even those who do not agree with our conviction) to Christ. Conviction without love is just an angry opinion.

It freaks me out a little bit. In my humanness, if I had been challenged in such a manner, with Satan saying, "If you believe your God is strong enough to save you, why don't you just jump," I would have felt an obligation to prove God accurate. But that is not what Christ did. Because Christ did not lean on a few choice Scriptures that supported His life perception.

I knew that I loved Jesus and that the Pharisees betrayed Jesus. Therefore a Pharisee must be anyone who has betrayed me. Also—beards.

the tangible benefits of prayer are mere by-products of a healthy prayer life.

Not-so-fun-fact: If the people who work most closely with your ministry end up wanting nothing to do with Jesus, it is no longer a ministry.

We think, "Hey. The Bible is holy, so quoting it must make my choices correct." But someone else tried that tactic before. Yeah. His name was Satan.

I stopped being a little Christ and instead began filling out the application that I had labeled Christian. It was not a definition based on the actual namesake, but rather on those who frequent the clubhouse. And in the midst of being an American Christian among all the other American Christians, I stopped truly searching the nuances of who Christ was and is in order to fully grasp what a little Christ might, indeed, act like.

I pursued Christian success instead of pursuing Christ.

that is what is tremendously missing from modern Christianity: Tangible gratitude for God's grace.

The natural act of tangible gratitude to God's grace is to love Him back—to receive His love in the form of forgiveness of our sins—but to choose diligence in overcoming those sins as a loving statement of gratefulness.

A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it's dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us?

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts

I believe That someone is already there and is waiting For the pale appearance of another.

This is a nation that professes to be a Christian nation," [Suelo] tells me, surveying his temporary kingdom. "And yet it's basically illegal to live according to the teachings of Jesus.