Quotes About God

The value of our exegesis and hermeneutics will be tested by their capacity to produce persons and communities whose character is commensurate with Jesus Christ and thereby pleasing to God.22

this means—in the Apocalypse just as in the prophetic visions upon which it draws (Isa. 65:17–25, 66:22)—that God will have redeemed and transformed the creation, not abolished it.

But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so [literally "let him/her separate"]; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called us.37 (7:15) This declaration implies a crucial claim: participation in the community of faith is the most fundamental commitment, more basic than marriage. The line that divides the new creation from the old can run right through a marriage.

The children of God (you know) are heirs of the world, and these things which the wicked have they enjoy by usurpation.

True it is that Almighty God, if it had stood with His good pleasure, could easily have brought it to pass, in spite of the Devil, that there should never have been any such false prophets or heresies amongst us. But He saw it not to be expedient; for, as the Apostle saith, by His directions, "There must be heresies in the Church ... that faith, by having temptation, might also have probation."

His task is to proclaim the fulfilment of what God had revealed to the prophets of the past. The whole book is saturated with allusions to Old Testament prophecy, though there are no formal quotations. As a prophet himself, John need not quote his predecessors, but he takes up and reinterprets their prophecies, much as the later writers in the Old Testament prophetic tradition themselves took up and reinterpreted earlier prophecies.

Thereafter, the enduring form of God's presence with his people is as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, present and active within believers.

Always it refers to God's favor and care for those he chooses to be "with." It makes all the difference to their lives.

If Jacob is now to find himself apart from his family, if he is to find who he can be in this newly uncertain world in which he is alone, he must also now find God as his own God. Not that he thinks of this for himself. It is not Jacob who turns to God but God who turns to Jacob.

What is remarkable about Jacob's dream is that he sees God not, as one would expect, at the top of the stairway but at the bottom.

As the fire doth mount upwards, and the needle that is touched with the loadstone still turneth to the north, so the converted soul is inclined to God. Nothing else can satisfy him, nor can he find any content and rest but in his love. In a word, all that are converted do esteem and love God better than all the world; and the heavenly felicity is dearer to them than their fleshly prosperity.

If God be not enough for you, you will never have enough. Turn to him more, and know him better, if you would have a satisfied mind. -Directions Against Sinful Desires and Discontent.

The most dangerous mistake that our souls are capable of, is, to take the creature for God, and earth for heaven (374).

Till you can rest in God's will you will never have rest.

Believe it, brethren, God looks for more from England, than from most nations in the world; and for more from you that enjoy these helps, than from the dark, untaught congregations of the land (271).

What an excellent life it is to live in the studies and preaching of Christ. How excellent to be still searching into his mysteries or feeding on them, to be daily in the consideration of the blessed nature, works, or ways of God!

You come hither to learn to die, I am not the only person that must go this way: I can assure you, that your whole life, be it ever so long, is little enough to prepare for death. Have a care of this vain deceitful world and the lusts of the flesh: Be sure you choose God for your portion, heaven for your home, God's glory for your end, his word for your rule, and then you need never fear but we shall meet with comfort.

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all.

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We

The sanctification of your studies is when they are devoted to God and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.

If anything keep thy soul out of heaven, which God forbid, there is nothing in the world liker to do it, than thy false hopes of being saved, while thou art yet out of the way to salvation(234). (III.III)

Woe to the soul which God rejoiceth to punish! . . . . Is it not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shal lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when they shall cry out for mercy, yea, for one drop of water, and God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when non in heaven or earth can help them but God, and hell shall rejoice over them in their calamity(244)?

What if you had once seen hell open, and all the damned there in their easeless torments, and had heard them crying out of their slothfulness in the day of their visitation, and wishing that they had but another life to live, and that God would but try them once again; one crying out of this neglect of duty, and another of his loitering and trifling, when he should have been labouring for his life; what manner of person would you have been after such a sight as this ? (284)

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied.