Quotes About God

And whatever defines us has power over us. Identity is destiny. If you allow your life to be defined by lies or by people who do not truly know who God created you to be, then you will be robbed of both your true identity and your full destiny. Our identity must come from and be found in the Lord.

you have often said, it is not about religion; it is about a relationship with God.

God hates sin—not because it harms Him but because it hurts us. When sin enters our lives, it seeks to destroy us. When our lives or society surrender to sin, we become like the demoniac—possessed by a self-destructive spirit that brings great pain and shame into our lives.

Genesis 1:1–2 says, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, . . . and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.' Think of Genesis 1:2 like this: 'Shalom hovered over the chaos.

shalom really means God's perfection. Shalom encompasses all the characteristics of God—His righteousness, His justice, His unfailing love, His forgiveness, His holiness, and yes, His peace as well. Shalom is everything that is inherent in the one God and everything He planned for those He created.

Aeschylus. He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

Faith is more than a matter of heart alone. The unique position of Transfiguration Sunday and its beautiful theophanies declares that the mountain is never the end of the journey. God does not gather us together just for a divine fireworks display, God always has something to say, usually something to ask. BRIAN ERICKSON

Isaiah 40:21–31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (vv. 28, 31)

Three things come to mind as we look at this text: (1) we are theological amnesiacs; (2) the psalmist reminds us that God really is in charge; and (3) only when we feel weak and helpless, whether young or old, are we vulnerable enough to experience the power and grace of a God who "raises us up on eagle's wings." So, this text is about us, about God and what God does with us when all we seem to be is down.

Love is love. It is God-given, and a sacrament. It is not for any man to judge.

And whose rules will choose to you follow? God's? Or man's? You say you want to break the outmoded patterns and crate a new model? Then do it. That is part of your destiny, boy.

I am worthy of my healthy, direct relationship with God, and I surrender all my doubt about this.

God always has a reason, Abby. It's just so hard sometimes for us to accept it." She smiled sadly. "Fear gets in the way, doesn't it? Fear of that great unknown, fear that God will require something that we cannot, or don't want, to do. But we can, Abby. God never asks anything of us that He doesn't give us sufficient strength to do. And He never, ever asks it unless it's for our greater good.

Ah, Abby thought, if only they knew and trusted in God's love! It was all the strength and comfort one could ever need. It was a light to guide one through the darkness. It lent purpose and direction when nothing else seemed to matter.

Because we are made in God's image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves.

Might we consider boredom as not only necessary for our life but also as one of its greatest blessings? A gift, pure and simple, a precious chance to be alone with our thoughts and alone with God?

Anger, [Evagrius] wrote, is given to us by God to help us confront true evil. We err when we use it casually, against other people, to gratify our own desires for power or control.

The task, and the joy, of writing for me is that I can play with the metaphors that God has placed in the world and present them to others in a way they will accept. My goal is to allow readers their own experience of whatever discovery I have made, so that it feels new to them, but also familiar, in that it is of a piece with their own experience. It is a form of serious play.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lam 3:21—23).

I had begun to comprehend that the Bible's story is about the relationship of God to human beings, and of human beings to one another, and that this meant that it is our friendships, marriages, families, and even church congregations that best reveal what kind of theology we have, who our God is. Or, as Thomas Merton once put it, "because we love, God is present." That is the story.

Tobacco, banjo playing, and dominoes do not figure in the Decalogue as recorded in the Book of Exodus. But particularly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, Christians have been adept, and remarkably inventive, at interpreting God's commandments to cover just about anything they don't approve of. The effect, of course, is to make the surpassingly large God of the scriptures into a petty Cosmic Patrolman.

With remarkable consistency the prophets, who depict God's anger in painfully vivid ways, allow us to see anger as a proper response to human injustice, the terrible wrongs we inflict on others, especially on those least able to defend themselves.

In our culture, time can seem like an enemy....But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God and seeks to put it to good use rather than allowing us to be used up by it.....Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness, rather than always pushing to get the job done

I believe that where local congregational life is concerned, it is best to give the Holy Spirit all the room we can, because the Spirit has a way of reminding us that what we think is right—even what we think the Bible spells out as right—is not necessarily letter-perfect in the sight of God. If God did not choose to work in ways that confound us, grace would not be amazing. It would not be grace.