Quotes About God

He has created the Church to be a dynamic, growing, changing movement, not a static doctrine. The Spirit of God calls each generation to re-imagine church for its own context and culture. The Holy Spirit invites every generation into the struggle to discover answers and approaches for themselves about church-answers that bring them into fresh partnership with God and fresh contact with their culture.

They feared the giants instead of God. They focused on the problems instead of the promises. They saw walled cities instead of the will of God. And because they missed what the Spirit was saying, they wandered in the desert 40 years. They died there and their bones bleached in the wilderness.

Face the facts. If you do not begin to pray, you will not be any further along with the Lord next year than you are right now. There is always the agony of choice before the promise of change. So what will it be: business as usual or are you ready to take your next step with God? Jesus is waiting for you to pray, "Lord, make my temple a house of purity, prayer, power and perfected praise for Thy glory." He is ready to begin that divine progression in your temple right now. Are you?

The tell-tale mark of religion is easy to spot. It's a one-size-fits-all approach to spirituality: "Follow our rules, fulfill our rituals, and God (or the gods) will be pleased and placated.

Their faith and trust in God wasn't shown in a buoyant confidence that God would come through. It was shown in the trusting act of obedience—gathering to pray even though they were sure it was a lost cause.

We can't earn our way into God's favor by meticulously following a moral code — even a biblical one. Our deeds will never be righteous enough. God's standard of holiness is way beyond our best efforts.

DON'T MISS THIS. Peter and his prayer-meeting friends seem to have had absolutely no expectation that God would really answer their prayers. Their doubts were so great that when God did answer, they didn't believe it. They had exactly the kind of faith that many of us have been told God won't honor. But he did.

Asking for volunteers always surfaces a number of folks who love God but don't have the relational skills needed to lead a group. That's because when it comes to self-awareness, socially challenged people don't have any. Most think they're pretty good at getting along with others. Couple that with their high need for attention and affirmation, and you have a bunch of people who are quick to volunteer and hard to turn away.

Without perspective, everything gets blown out of proportion. We catastrophize. The loss of privilege becomes harsh persecution. Opposition becomes hatred. And every legal or electoral setback becomes cause for anguish and despair. In short, we evaluate and extrapolate without putting God into the equation.

In response, Habakkuk wrote one of the greatest expressions of faith in all of Scripture. He finally grasped what God was up to. He was using the wicked to discipline those who were his own in order to bring about godly sorrow and full repentance.

Leadership boards and staff members who fill executive roles tend to make two mistakes when it comes to policy: (1) they have too many policies, and (2) they treat every policy as if it were a law from God himself.

There was no getting around it. Whether it was a chronic deceiver like Jacob, a horn-dog like Samson, a never-believe-God-the-first-time warrior like Gideon, or a zealous persecutor like the apostle Paul, God had a way of blessing and using the wrong people.

Jesus was making it clear that the most important thing in pleasing God is not a particular approach to spirituality or style of ministry; it's the fruit that matters, the end results produced by our life and ministry.

We need to realize that God is an intensely social Being. He is constantly working to bring the lost and the least to feast at his table. He is perpetually connecting his followers with those who need to experience his love.

Paul portrays "God's" redemptive purpose as the conforming of the elect to "the image of his Son, in order that he [Jesus] might be the first-born [pr?totokos] among many brothers" (Rom 8:29).

These are all theological claims that arose as reflective responses to the acts of this God that exhibit these qualities and attributes.

Moreover, this living God is also supremely the one who created life and continues to give life.

In keeping with this, the human knowledge of this God advocated in the NT is to be exhibited primarily by participating in this relationship and not simply by ritual performance.

example, in Romans 6 and 8, Paul presents Jesus' death as able to have mortifying effects on the sinful tendencies of believers and Jesus' resurrection as able to provide powerful new moral resources to live changed lives that please "God.

In the OT the divine Spirit is typically manifested as a special power from "God" given to individuals to enable them for particular tasks or roles.

pattern of devotion in which "God" and Jesus feature as distinguishable and yet uniquely linked subjects and recipients of reverence in the setting of corporate worship.

Indeed, in Revelation there is also a particularly notable emphasis that proper worship of and allegiance to "God" includes Jesus ("the Lamb") as well, the divinely

In Revelation there is still another distinctive emphasis on God as "the one who sits on the throne" in heaven, the all-powerful cosmic ruler (e.g., 1:4; 4:2, 9-10; 5:1, 7, 13; 6:16; 7:10, 15; 19:4; 21:5).

where Paul first refers to "the Spirit of holiness" as involved in Jesus' resurrection (v. 4), and then to serving God "with my spirit [in] the gospel of his Son" (v. 9 NRSV).