Quotes About Spirituality

All that we have and are is one of the unique and never-to-be-repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time.

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots, and wandered into a far country. Yet they kept coming back to Jesus.

the real dichotomy in the Christian community today is not between conservatives and liberals or creationists and evolutionists but between the awake and the asleep.

In days long ago when there were no spiritual directors or brilliant commentaries on Scripture, fidelity to God's will was the whole of spirituality.

No one, it seems to me, who has fully grasped the Crucifixion can ever again take seriously any expression or instrument of worldly power, however venerable, glittering, or seemingly formidable. MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

Dear Abba, I'm starting out free today, free from the advertised lies that promise me everything from four-doors of turbo-charged happiness to some contraption that will shake, rattle, and roll my abs back into a pack I never had even in my twenties. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad: all of our desires to make ourselves worthy of this world but unfit for the world to come. I want to be a follower of the sacred dream, and one day arrive fully free, free at last.

From that moment on, no Christian can ever say one form of prayer is as good as another or one religion is as good as another.

Young Christians are sick of pablum. It doesn't work anymore. They are tired of rabbinical hair-splitting, empty liturgical apparatus, Sunday school minutiae, the ghostly voices of the old regime; they reject stuck minds and methods and by their indifference to structures and traditional authorities

Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober, and respectable, nor in churchgoing, Bible-toting, and Psalm-singing, but in our deep and delicate respect for one another.

The spiritual future of ragamuffins consists not in disavowing that we are sinners but in accepting that truth with growing clarity, rejoicing in God's incredible longing to rescue us in spite of everything

To the extent that we allow the relentless tenderness of Jesus to invade the citadel of self, we are freed from dyspepsia toward ourselves.

We can only sense ourselves and our world valued and cherished by God when we feel valued and cherished by others '.

Pray as you can; don't pray as you can't.

The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.

Secondly, if we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image. In

Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time.

As I drained the cup of grief, a remarkable thing happened: In the distance I heard music and dancing. I was the prodigal son limping home—not a spectator but a participant. The impostor faded, and I was in touch with my true self as the returned child of God. My yearning for praise and affirmation receded.

Quem sou?", perguntou Merton, e respondeu: "Sou aquele que é amado por Cristo".

And I have learned to pray.

To open yourself to another person, to stop lying about your loneliness and your fears, to be honest about your affections, and to tell others how much they mean to you—this openness is the triumph of the child over the pharisee and a sign of the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17).

When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian."[2]

After reading Brodie, I've decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn't only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.

Into this rushing stream, Brennan's plea is evergreen: Live by grace and not by performance. In other words—let God love you. And should you see me out and about somewhere and ask me how I'm personally doing with that, I would answer as my friend so often did: I'm trying.