Quotes About God

We pass from thinking of God as part of our life to the realization that we are part of his life.

Learn that trust precedes faith. Faith is a little like putting your car into gear, and right now you cannot exercise faith, you cannot move forward. Do not berate yourself for this. But when you are unable to put your spiritual life into drive, do not put it into reverse; put it into neutral. Trust is how you put your spiritual life in neutral. Trust is confidence in the character of God.

It is precisely in the "slop-bucket job"—the work that we abhor—where we will find God the most. We do not need to have good feelings or a warm glow in order to do work for the glory of God. All good work is pleasing to the Father. Even the jobs that seem meaningless and mindless to us are highly valued in the order of the kingdom of God. God values the ordinary.

Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot.

No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). He speaks frequently and unambiguously to economic issues. He says, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" and "Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation" (Luke 6:20, 24).

God wants us to be present where we are. He invites us to see and to hear what is around us and, through it all, to discern the footprints of the Holy.

Life with God will overflow any attempts to compartmentalize or contain it. It is not just for those who are 'spiritually inclined.' We are made to live with God at the very center of our lives, transforming our thoughts, actions, decisions, relationships, vocations, communities, and social structures.

As Richard Foster explains, "Though silence sometimes involves the absence of speech, it always involves the act of listening. Simply to refrain from talking, without a heart listening to God, is not silence."1

The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain. And receiving this message of exquisite love is the great privilege of all who long for life with God.

The water was only parted once they had acted in faith and followed God. They could not count on any plans, because God gave them none. He only gave them himself. God was the plan. As

O how abundant is your goodness that you have laid up for those who fear you, and accomplished for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of everyone! In the shelter of your presence you hide them from human plots; you hold them safe under your shelter from contentious tongues.

John Havel, a seventeenth-century English Puritan, noted that the "greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. . .

Labor to work yourself up into a temper correspondent with what you read, for that reading is useless which only enlightens the understanding without warming the affections. And therefore intersperse, here and there, earnest aspirations to God for his heat as well as his light." —John Wesley, "Advice for Spiritual Reading"3

Simplicity The inward reality of single-hearted focus upon God and his kingdom, which results in an outward lifestyle of modesty, openness, and unpretentiousness and which disciplines our hunger for status, glamour, and luxury

Lord, your way is perfect: Help us always to trust in your goodness, so that, walking with you and following you in all simplicity, we may possess quiet and contented minds, and may cast all our care on you, for you care for us. Grant this, Lord, for your dear Son's sake, Jesus Christ. Amen. —Christina Rossetti

The Spiritual Disciplines in and of themselves have no merit whatsoever. They possess no righteousness, contain no rectitude. Their purpose—their only purpose—is to place us before God.

In Celebration of Discipline Richard Foster makes a distinction between self-righteous service and true service. Self-righteous service flows out of human effort and goals; true service flows out of God and love.6

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.

Solitude is both a "vacation with God" and a "furnace of transformation." "The

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul. When our reply to God is most direct of all, it is called adoration.

Remember that God's intention is that we each come to a fuller knowledge of him as we deepen our personal fellowship with one another." —Richard J. Foster and others, eds., The Life with God Bible 4

Remember, God is working, always working, to form us and conform us and transform us into the image of Christ.

There are two sides to the Prayer of Adoration: thanksgiving and praise. The usual distinction between these two experiences is this: in thanksgiving we give glory to God for what he has done for us; in praise we give glory to God for who he is in himself.

But all authentic prayer is a scraping of the heart whereby the dregs of the soul are offered up to God. Nehemiah's