Quotes About God

IF THE DISTANCE BETWEEN God and man is even greater than we imagine," said Ryka, "how do we bridge the gap?" "We must learn how to serve," said Nouri. "But what can a man possibly do that would matter to God?" "It's not what he does that matters. It's how he does it." Nouri paused. "Service wears out our sharp edges. And opens the heart.

Christianity is not a religion at all, but a revelation and a rescue and an ensuing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

I am very grateful for churches I know in many parts of the world, mainly the Two Thirds World, which are seeking to live like the first disciples and, like them, are discovering the power of the Holy Spirit who seems only to be available to us when we make ourselves totally available to God

But as the Everglades continued to wither, a few of their colleagues began to wonder if conservation really should mean development more than preservation. These heretics did not believe that God had created man in order to 'improve' or 'redeem' nature; they found God's grace in nature itself.

The relation of science to metaphysics and theology is not fundamentally a scientific question, nor is it fundamentally an empirical, historical, sociological, or even philosophical question, though of course it is all of these. Rather it is fundamentally a theological question, logically consequent upon the question of the relation between God and the world.

science is intrinsically related to theology because one cannot identify the object of scientific inquiry—namely, nature—without simultaneously distinguishing it from that which is not nature—namely, God—and without giving tacit specification to the character of this "not.

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo, in other words, is not a freestanding cosmology. Rather, it is a function of the doctrine of God and the modifications forced upon that doctrine by the Incarnation, which inaugurated a metaphysical revolution that would take up the Greek inheritance and fulfill it from beyond its own resources.

Conceptions of God and thus metaphysical and theological judgments are an inherent and ineradicable aspect of every conception of reason and nature, not as a matter of historical accident but as a matter of epistemic and ontological necessity.

We live out in our everyday relationships what we believe about God. That is, there is a direct connection between what one believes and how one lives.

I believe that the majority of times the scale tilts toward the good. It's this amazing thing that rolls on and if we get in the flow of it, that's God. And if we fight it, if we swim the other way, we're swimming away from the purest expression of this life.

For Paul, the will of God is known in essence in the obedient death of Jesus. In concrete and specific ways, however, God's will is known only when one offers oneself and one's body daily as a living sacrifice to one's rightful Lord:

This is the consistent witness of the New Testament: that the exalted Lord remains the crucified Jesus.20 And this one is "the true face of God."21 When this witness is neglected or forgotten, trouble follows swiftly.

Faith begins by acknowledging the faith of Jesus and dying with him by no longer relying on the law and the self for right relations with God. Faith continues by daily relying on Christ as the energizing force for all of life, and by allowing the faith of the Son of God, expressed in his self-giving, loving death, to reexpress itself in the life of the believer

It is the vision of a slaughtered Lamb, not a ferocious Lion. "The shock of this reversal," writes Richard Hays, "discloses the central mystery of the Apocalypse: God overcomes the world not through a show of force but through the suffering and death of Jesus, 'the faithful witness [martys]

Revelation is a manifesto against civil religion and a summons to uncivil worship and witness. Revelation is a sustained stripping of the sacred from secular power—military, political, economic—and a parallel sustained recognition of God and the Lamb as the rightful bearers of sacred claims, the only worthy recipients of divine accolades.

Revelation is therefore a prophetic, pastoral, visionary guide to worshiping and following the Lamb, a template for faithful witness against civil religion and for true worship of the true God. It calls us to unlearn and abandon the false but often seductive gospel of empire and civil religion as it calls us to learn and practice, in worship and witness, the truth of the Lamb's eternal gospel.

Moreover, Revelation tells us not only who is really sovereign but also what kind of sovereignty the true God exercises, namely what many have called nonviolent and non-coercive "Lamb power

Revelation imaginatively reveals the nature of any and all systems that oppose the ways of God in the world, especially as revealed in Christ the Lamb who was slaughtered. Those systems are not limited to particular future powers but are found in all places and times.

Together they speak of theopolitical megalomania and of any collaboration of political power and religious sanction—civil religion—that falsely claims to represent the true God and God's will.

We read Revelation as words from a prophet-pastor (and ultimately from God), in order to be formed and transformed, not merely informed

Lamb Christology is inseparable from ethics. Paradoxically, the slaughtered Lamb reveals God and also reveals what it means to be faithful to God. It reveals how God saves humanity and how humanity in turn can serve God.

For Calvin and the Puritans, "everyone was equally base in the sight of God." Since no one was deserving, salvation had to depend on God's grace.

Scripture is not only timely but timeless. Just as God spoke to the original audience, so he still speaks to us through the pages of Scripture. Because we share a common humanity with the people of the Bible, we discover a universal dimension in the problems they faced and the solutions God gave them. The timeless nature of Scripture enables it to speak with power in every time and in every culture.

When I see children, I see the face of God. That's why I love them so much. That's what I see.