Quotes About Faith

What is my end goal in raising each of the children God has entrusted to me, and then how will I parent them with that end in mind?

What you believe and where you aim your heart determines the direction and outcome of your entire life for eternity.

The single most important concern we should have as parents should be the same primary concern Jesus has for us: We must make it our ultimate goal to help our children know and love God with all their heart. How do we do that? One of the simplest and most powerful ways … is to give them a daily, concrete encounter with His power and favor by laying hands on them and speaking a blessing. Rolf Garborg, The Family Blessing

While far from perfect, the Spiritually Healthy parent is a parent who walks each day, step by step, with God as his or her guide.

We stop living the life that He planned for us, and we start living out of dysfunction instead.

Because you realize you are a work in progress yourself, you offer your children grace when needed, while helping them see the correct path that God desires all His children to follow.

Children raised by the Spiritually Healthy parent often grow up knowing God, loving others, living a life of meaning, and recognizing that this world is not their ultimate home.

It's the pressing on toward the goal that is important, not simply trying to look perfect or be perfect. And it's also important to forget what is behind us, because we cannot change our pasts. We can, however, look forward and fix our eyes on Jesus as we listen to His direction.

Children raised by the Double-Minded parent will often grow up having codependent tendencies, seeking acceptance from others, being unrealistic in their view of "self," and feeling insecure. They are confused about what it means to follow Christ, and might avoid their parents in adulthood.

Our children need to see that faith matters, that it's relevant to our daily situations, that it's real.

Our goal as parents should be to endeavor to pass down our faith to the next generation in such a way that they will be able to pass down their faith to the following generation in our absence.

When we start to realize how amazing God's story is, a question naturally arises: "Who am I that I should get to be a part of the greatest story ever told?

One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along ,that while we need to be reassured of God's arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is God's grace that gives us that faith. As with all spiritual knowledge, two things are true, and equally true, at once. The mind can't grasp paradox; it is the knowledge of the soul.

Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.

I didn't blame Curtis for coming to what was nominally a Protestant church and expecting to hear about the Bible. I'd also had to adjust to the AUUCC's staunch secularism. Having been drawn there to grieve my mother, I would have loved some divine reassurance, but during my very first visit Sparlo said, "There are no answers, only the eternal questions," and I remember thinking, Damn, one more time, nobody's offering any certainty.

Here was a minister who understood the connection between spirituality and food!)

I never knew there was a whole denomination as full of questions as I was.")

One great thing about church friends: they buy and read your books.

But I have nothing for her. Not a single idea. I'm not sure I have another book in me. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't." "You said that after the last book." Tom took a big bite, chewed until he could talk again. "Maybe you should come back to church. Lots of ideas there.

What I'd like to know"—Tom set down his eggroll and drew himself up—"is why every time I make a friend in the congregation, they stop coming to church?" The anguish in his voice surprised me. "That is weird," I said. Apparently, I was caught in yet another pattern larger than myself.

The church will be fine," said Tom. "The church is fine." "Sparlo always said, 'Ministers come and go but the church endures.

You know, I always think about going back to college. Just to catch up on all those books that supposedly shape our lives but nobody ever reads." "Yeah? Like what?" . . . "Well, there's the Bible. You ever read it?" "Parts," said Lewis. "Well, this whole wrecked civilization is based on a book most people have only read parts of.

I think there are many church members and churches in general that spend too much time policing the behavior of others than to pray for them that God helps them to make the changes they need to in their lives.

A lie, when believed, became the truth.