Quotes About God

When cultures reject God, they cut themselves off from the ultimate ground of reality

The opposite of the weightlessness that leads to a nation's collapse is revival, a return to the glory and therefore the reality and weightiness of God.

To flout the will of God openly will therefore be the fast track to social and national failure for Western nations.

What is the difference between God disguising himself and deceiving us? That is where the principle of suspended judgment operates. Face to face with mystery, and especially the mystery of evil, the faith that understands why it has come to trust must trust where it has not come to understand. Faith does not know why in terms of the immediate, but it knows why it trusts God who knows why in terms of the ultimate.

Love is "the alpha and the omega of apologetics," in the sense that all we say must come from love, and it must lead to love and to the One who is love—in

Christian advocacy always goes wrong when we become the focus of our efforts, rather than the Lord. For when we are the focus, we subtly come to believe that God is no more certain than our defense of him. Argue and defend God well, and the world of faith appears unshakable. Defend him badly, and doubts creep in or crash down on top of us.

The first level of understanding necessary to faith is becoming critically aware of our dilemma in life without God.

If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, we were believing what clearly was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith has grown stronger. It knows God more certainly and it can enjoy God more deeply.

Don't trust anyone over thirty," the 1960s radicals cried. "Don't trust anyone under three hundred," came Thomas Oden's wise reply. "Vox temporis" (the voice of the times) is no more trustworthy than "vox populi" (the voice of the people) when set against "vox dei" (the voice of God).

Faith desires to let God be God. Sin has framed God, whether by the ultimate insults that he, the creator of all things, does not exist, or that he, the white-hot holy One, is responsible for the evil and suffering that humans have introduced into his good creation.

all human desires, longings and aspirations point beyond themselves and toward God. The full range and depth of our desires are simply not fully covered by our unbelieving faiths and philosophies; and therefore they are not fully satisfied by what our unbelieving minds insist is true.

To make the choice of career or profession on selfish grounds, without a true sense of calling, is "probably the greatest single sin any young person can commit, for it is the deliberate withdrawal from allegiance to God of the greatest part of time and strength.

Calling is the truth that God calls us to

If we truly know why we trust God—and that crucial if must be answered with full intellectual and spiritual assurance—if we truly know why we trust God, then God is greater than all, and God may be trusted in all situations, despite everyone and everything.

The deep logic of God's truth can be expressed in both stories and arguments, by questions as well as statements, through reason and the imagination, through the four Gospels as well as through the book of Romans.

As Pascal observed, when God addresses our human hearts, there is always enough light for those who desire to see, yet enough obscurity for those who do not wish to see. What makes the difference is the heart.

Time and history have meaning. Under the twin truths of God's sovereignty and human significance, time and history are going somewhere, and each us is not only unique and significant in ourselves, but we have a unique and significant part to play in our own lives, in our own generation, and therefore in the overall sweep of history.

As Origen stated in answer to Celsus long ago, the gospel is not a matter of natural religion. It is not about the ascent of man but about the descent of God.

In a post-Christian era many of our friends, neighbors, and colleague will reject God for a score of reasons, but we must live and speak that they reject God for God's sake and not because of what we have said or done that has framed God wrongly.

Love is "the alpha and the omega of apologetics," in the sense that all we say must come from love, and it must lead to love and to the One who is love—in other words, Christian advocacy must move from our love for God and his truth and beauty, to our love for the people we talk to and work right up to their love for God and his truth and beauty in their turn.

Outrage is appropriate in response to genuine wrong, tears in response to grief, shock in response to unexpected disaster. We mustn't force ourselves to thank God for these things or we will be harder on ourselves and softer on evil than God is. It is not that even Christians need not give thanks for these things, but that Christians especially should not give thanks for them. We should always be as human as God made us.

the truth is this: We always have sure and sufficient reasons for knowing why we can trust God, but do not always know what God is doing and why.

We are never more completely ourselves than when we make that decision to trust in God.

The heart of the life of faith in answer to the call of God is a call to a relationship, and a relationship of love.