Quotes About Spirituality

O, this persevering is a hard word! this taking up the cross daily, this praying always, this watching night and day, and never laying aside our clothes and armour, I mean indulging ourselves, to remit and unbend in our holy waiting on God, and walking with God. This sends many sorrowful away from Christ, yet this is a saint's duty, to make religion his every-day work, without any vacation from one end of the year to the other.

A soul castled with these walls is impregnable.

Of this psalm Luther would say, in times of great confusion in the church, 'Let us sing the six and fortieth psalm, in spite of the devil and all his instruments.

You see when a soul comes over from Satan's quarters unto Christ, and has but once the experience of that sweetness which is in his service, there is no getting him back to his old drudgery; as

Great ships cannot sail in narrow rivers and shallow waters, neither can minds truly great with the knowledge of God and heaven, find room enough in the creature to turn and expatiate[12] themselves in.

First.—The Christian is to proclaim and prosecute an irreconcilable war against his bosom sins; those sins which have lain nearest his heart, must now be trampled under his feet.

The evil day is not such a scareful thing to thee that art a Christian, as that thou shouldst start for it. Bring up thy heart close to it. Show thy soul what Christ hath done to take the sting out of it, what the sweet promises are that are given on purpose to overcome the fear of it, and what thy hopes are thou shalt get by it. These will satisfy and compose thy spirit; whereas the shunning the thoughts of it will but increase thy fear, and bring thee more into bondage to it.

The Christian's armour will rust except it be furbished and scoured with the oil of prayer.

But, as the father hath it, manducant in terris quod apud inferos digerunt—they devour on earth those morsels that will lie heavy on their stomachs in hell to be digesting to eternity.

He is the best student in divinity that studies most upon his knees[26]

God hath ap pointed prayer as a help to our diligence, not as a cloak for our sloth.

This indeed makes it easy for Christ's sheep to be infected with the scab of error, because that weed which breeds the rot is so like the grass that nourisheth them.

As it is impossible to please God without faith, so it is impossible not to desire to please God with faith.

It is faith on Christ that alone can purify thy heart. Without it thy washed face and hands—external righteousness I mean— will never commend thee to God.

Had I not best look up to him, by whose blessing I live more than by my bread?

so to make a good Christian, there is required a conscientious care to use all appointed means.

There are three things consid ered in the nature of a holy righteous life, that are enough to demonstrate it to be the only pleasant life. It is a life from God; it is a life with God; it is the very life of God.

Dost thou not betray some of this spiritual pride working in thee? O, if thou couldst pray without wandering, walk without limping, believe without wavering, then thou couldst rejoice and walk cheerfully.

Never can we truly recover our courage, till we recover our holiness—'If

O guilt is an embit tering thing! It keeps the soul in a continual fear of hearing ill news from heaven; and a soul in fear is not in case to relish the sweetness of a mercy.

I was a dog in a past life. Really. I'll be walking down the street and dogs will do a sort of double take. Like, Hey, I know him.

God works in history, therefore a contemplative who has no sense of history, no sense of historical responsibility, is not fully a Christian contemplative.

The mystic possesses his or her knowledge of God not from books or academic study, but from experience, from the experience of being loved intimately, intensely, by God.

Gerson recognized what has become obvious to us: that scholastic theology, in its efforts to be scientific, unwittingly severed the intimate link between theology and spirituality, between theologians' public thinking about what the Church believes and believers' personal encounters with God in prayer and worship.