Quotes About Spirituality

God's purpose in guidance is not to get us to perform the right actions. His purpose is to help us become the right kind of people.

C. S. Lewis was getting at this idea when he wrote, If your thoughts and passions were directly present to me, like my own, without any mark of externality or otherness, how should I distinguish them from mine?…You may reply, as a Christian, that God (and Satan) do, in fact, affect my consciousness in this direct way without signs of "externality." Yes: and the result is that most people remain ignorant of the existence of both.

It only makes sense to ask God for guidance in the context of a life committed to "seeking first the kingdom.

The problem with people, according to Jesus, is not that we are too happy for God's taste, but that we are not happy enough.

No one can see God's face" (see Exodus 33:20). What do they mean when they say that no one can see God's face? They mean that we cannot see God as he is. We are not capable of this. We inevitably project our own fallenness onto God.

Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes — The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

can be "sitting at Jesus feet" when I'm kneeling in prayer or negotiating a contract or fixing my kids lunch or watching a movie. All it requires is my asking him to be my teacher and companion in this moment.

To mortify a sin is not utterly to kill, root it out, and destroy it, that it should have no more hold at all nor residence in our hearts. It is true this is that which is aimed at; but this is not in this life to be accomplished.

Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.

Clearly the Holy Spirit is not merely a quality to be found in the divine nature … He is a holy intelligent person.

Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things . . . what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed baits, have unto our souls?

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.

It is not to learn the form of the doctrine of godliness, but to get the power of it implanted in our souls.

To be spiritually minded is life and peace. -- Rom. 8:6 Set your affection on things above. -- Col. 3:2

Were any of us asked seriously, what it is that troubles us, we must refer it to one of these heads:— either we want strength or power, vigour and life, in our obedience, in our walking with God; or we want peace, comfort, and consolation therein. Whatever it is that may befall a believer that doth not belong to one of these two heads, doth not deserve to be mentioned in the days of our complaints. Now

It is to be feared that the most of us know not how much of glory may be in present grace, nor how much of heaven may be attained in holiness on the earth.

Our unction, therefore, is the communication of the Holy Spirit, and nothing else.

That the choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

The words of the text explained: to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Rom. 8:6.

I say, then, mortification is not the present business of unregenerate men. God calls them not to it as yet; conversion is their work, -- the conversion of the whole soul, -- not the mortification of this or that particular lust.

2.) Mortification prunes all the graces of God, and makes room for them in our hearts to grow.

I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have formerly judged to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon as to evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this - because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if judge him to be in a swoon, though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.

He not only enableth our minds to apprehend the truth, but he shines into our hearts, the seat of spiritual experience, to "give us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

It is true, our interest in God is not built upon our holiness; but it is as true that we have none without it.