Quotes About God

It is the experience of having God look you right in the eye and saying, "I love you! I approve of you!" that is the unshakable ground of our self-worth.

keep a right heart we must remember that the face of God shining upon us in gracious approval is the basis of our value.

when it comes to experiencing the sufficiency of God, we are not talking about what God can do; we are talking about what we need to do. And what we need to do is to turn our minds to God.

Abstinence, then, makes way for engagement. If the places in our blood cells designed to carry oxygen are occupied by carbon monoxide, we die for lack of oxygen. If the places in our souls that are to be indwelt by God and his service are occupied by food, sex, and society, we die or languish for lack of God and right relation to his creatures. A proper abstinence actually breaks the hold of improper engagements so that the soul can be properly engaged in and by God.

heaven is here and God is here, because God and his spiritual agents act here and are constantly available here.

It may seem strange but doing the will of God is a different matter than just doing what God wants us to do. The two are so far removed, in fact, that we can be solidly in the will of God, and know that we are, without knowing God's preference with regard to various details of our lives.

We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds, and our actions are based on the understanding that results from the fullness of that contact. There is nothing mysterious here. This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

giving is not the same as imposition. That is why God does not just give us what we need without being asked. Prayer is nothing but a proper way for persons to interact. Thus

The spirit is able to consider alternatives, and God prompts us to have an interest in what is better and best.

That is the function of the will or heart: to organize our life as a whole, and, indeed, to organize it around God.

God relates to space as we do to our body. He occupies and overflows it but cannot be localized in it. Every point in it is accessible to his consciousness and will, and his manifest presence can be focused in any location as he sees fit. In the incarnation he focused his reality in a special way in the body of Jesus. This

Their desire for such honor was keeping them from believing, because you cannot hold the esteem of others to that degree of importance and at the same time believe that God is who he is. It is not possible. As long as people are hung up on honor from other people—reputation, appearing well—they cannot truly believe and trust God.

In creating human beings in his likeness so that we could govern in his manner, God gave us a measure of independent power. Without such power, we absolutely could not resemble God in the close manner he intended, nor could we be God's coworkers. The locus or depository of this necessary power is the human body. This explains, in theological terms, why we have a body at all. That body is our primary area of power, freedom, and—therefore—responsibility.

We are blessed to live in a world where there is a fully self-sufficient, generous God who wants to provide what is best for us and loves us more than we could ever imagine.

What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe. Then, by inquiry, teaching, example, prayer, and reliance upon the spirit of God, we can work to change the beliefs that are contrary to the way of Jesus. We can open the way for others, Christians or not, to heartily choose apprenticeship in the kingdom of God.

So God uses our self-knowledge or self-awareness, which is heightened and given a special quality by his presence and direction, to search us out and reveal to us the truth about ourselves and our world.

The lessons I taught you, the tradition I have passed on, all that you heard me say or saw me do, put into practice; and the God of peace will be with you (Phil. 4:9, NEB).

God is great enough that he can conduct his affairs in this way. His nature, identity, and overarching purposes are no doubt unchanging. But his intentions with regard to many particular matters that concern individual human beings are not. This does not diminish him. Far from it. He would be a lesser God if he could not change his intentions when he thinks it is appropriate. And if he chooses to deal with humanity in such a way that he will occasionally think it appropriate, that is just fine.

I routinely watched Dallas, like no one I had encountered before or since, wipe clean people's vision of who God was, what his Son did and why, and what the Holy Spirit wishes to do in and through his church and then replace it with an all-consuming, hope-filled, grace-empowered, joy-seeking, love-giving gospel of God's boundless goodness and power. All the while he never manipulated emotions, overcame people's will, or used fear as a motivator.

The right thing would be simply releasing it all and saying, "All right. God knows. I'm living in his world. He can give me what he wants. I will not put these things in the place of God.

Reason functions as a basis of responsibility before God precisely because of its ability to serve in the instigation, nurture, and correction of faith. Because of this ability, we are responsible before God if we do not abide according to its results. To disparage the role of reason in the production and sustenance of faith is to contradict the plain intent of the scriptures, according to which reason provides adequate grounds to support a right worship of God.

Professing to believe has, sadly, played a large role in the practice of religion. It has profoundly stained our understanding of what religion is. Some people seem to profess belief in God "just in case" there is a God. But they neither are committed to nor believe in the idea that God exists.

Satan's constant assault is aimed at our belief in God's goodness and power, that God will supply all our needs, and that we can trust God to be sufficient in all ways. When our minds are on God, and our thoughts are formed by our knowledge of God, such sufficiency will flow to us. Thus Satan's main task is to keep our minds elsewhere, anywhere but on God.

Indeed, for anyone who has a genuine knowledge of God, praise is the only appropriate attitude in which to live. It is the only sane attitude.