Quotes About Spirituality

Of course God went after Jonah, inquiring gently, "Do you do well to be angry?"10 However, insane from isolation, Jonah answers remarkably, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die."11 Wow!

Wayne Grudem, my friend and seminary professor, put it well: "God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with His whole being, yet God acts differently in different places."19

Pride rises above and against the knowledge of God, acting as if He is unworthy to be retained in our thoughts.

You would think that the more a man knows and loves God, the deeper he gets into understanding His Word, and the further he progresses in personal holiness, the better he would be at being a watchful man,

We preach so that people can hear the voice of God, period.

No personal quiet time, no Christian book, no community or small group or service can substitute for the absence of God coming down to meet with His church corporately.

Eventually everyone vacates church where God is not obviously present and working. Getting people back to church is pointless unless God comes back first—that's what Vertical Church is all about! Ritual church, tradition church, felt-need church, emotional-hype church, rules church, Bible-boredom church, relevant church, and many other iterations are all horizontal substitutes for God come down, we all get rocked and radically altered, Vertical Church.

Instead of seeing ourselves as people trying to connect with people, let's see the church as people trying to connect with God and help others do the same.

God shows up powerfully when our worship is sincere and fervent in spite of whatever difficult circumstance we might be experiencing.

We don't worship so that preaching will be more impactful for us; we preach so that worship will be more impactful for God.

Criticism plugs the flow of God's blessing.

Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain.

A continual diet of the Word satisfies, and it builds an appetite for more.

Reality is God-centered and all human beings are worshipers, whether or not they are conscious of this reality and its implications.

You would think that the more a man knows and loves God, the deeper he gets into understanding His Word, and the further he progresses in personal holiness, the better he would be at being a watchful man, but that is sadly not the case.

A real encounter with the living God changes everything. First, it magnifies the Lord, and then it puts me and my ego and my sin and my burdens all in their rightful place.

Because in prayer I expand my sense of how I have offended God. And I thereby lower my sense of how much others have offended me. Prayer is changing me.

I've never seen the Holy Spirit, but I've seen His powerful wind blowing through people's lives.

Why has the Kingdom of Heaven within ourselves that Jesus preached been so sorely neglected and even ignored? It has happened for one simple and obvious reason: the vast majority of our Christian elders, ministers, priests, bishops, popes, and other teachers, just like the religious leaders of Jesus' time, have themselves not yet grown enough spiritually to "see" the Kingdom Jesus saw.

In our deepest longings we hear echoes of God's longing for us. And the more we can follow these deep-down desires, those that God places within us for our happiness, the more joyful we will find ourselves.

When John O'Malley was a Jesuit novice, an older priest told him three things to remember when living in community: First, you're not God. Second, this isn't heaven. Third, don't be an ass.

define Ignatian spirituality in a few words, you could say that it is: Finding God in all things Becoming a contemplative in action Looking at the world in an incarnational way Seeking freedom and detachment

Finding God often happens in the midst of a community—with a "we" as often as an "I.

Overall, being spiritual and being religious are both part of being in relationship with God. Neither can be fully realized without the other. Religion without spirituality can become a dry list of dogmatic statements divorced from the life of the spirit. This is what Jesus warned against. Spirituality without religion can become a self-centered complacency divorced from the wisdom of a community. That's what I'm warning against. For St. Ignatius