RICH SPIRITUAL INSIGHT
Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (The Jesus prayer)
Ministry
that costs nothing accomplishes nothing. (
I'm using my Bible as a road map
There'll be no detours along the way
My last stop is in heaven some day
You have come down to the lake shore
Seeking neither the wise or the wealthy
But only asking for me to follow
You
know full well what I have, Lord
Neither treasure nor weapons of
conquest,
Just these fish nets and will for
working
You
need my hands, my exhaustion
Working love for the rest of the weary
A love that's willing to go on loving
You
who have fished other waters
You the longing of souls that are
yearning
O loving Friend, you have come to call
me
Sweet
Lord, you have looked into my eyes
Kindly smiling, you've called out my
name
On the sand I have abandoned my small
boat
Now with you, I will seek other seas
(Cesareo Gabarain)
Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary. (St.
Francis of
Prayer helps us become what God wants us to be.
Every
act of worship is an act of participating in an eternal worship service, in the
service of all souls of all ages.
(Abraham Heshel)
Our purpose is not to discover what we
are, but to refuse what we are. (Michael
Foucault)
Two thousand years and half a world
away
Dying trees still grow greener when you
pray (Bruce Cockburn)
What is the alternative to changing
Jesus into something we can understand?
It’s to change us into something that can understand Him.
(Frederica Mathewes-Green)
Know
that only after sorrow's hand has bowed your head will life become truly real
to you. For only then will you acquire the noble spirituality that
intensifies the reality of life. I know that I go toward an all powerful God
whomever he may be. I know that he is a personality who created man in
his image. Beyond that I have no knowledge, no fear--only faith. (Samuel
Palmer Brooks)
You
call me master and obey me not. You call me light and see me not. You
call me way and walk me not. You call me life and choose me not.
You call me wise and follow me not. You call me fair and love me
not. You call me rich and ask me not. You call me eternal and seek
me not. You call me noble and serve me not. You call me gracious
and trust me not. You call me mighty and honor me not. You call me
just and fear me not. If I condemn you, blame me not. (Inscription on the
cathedral in
When I have no books or when my thoughts, torturing
me like thorns, do not let me enjoy reading, I go to church, which is the cure
for every disease of the soul. The freshness of the images draws my
attention, captivates my eyes, and slowly leads my soul to divine praise. (John
of
I
, the Lord of sea and sky
I have heard my people cry
All who dwell in deepest sin
My hand will save
Here
I am, Lord
is it I, Lord
I have heard you calling in the night
I will go, Lord, if you lead me
I will hold your people in my heart
I,
the Lord of snow and rain
I have borne my people's pain
I have wept for love of them
They turn away
I will break their of stone
Give them hearts of love alone
I will speak my word to them
Whom shall I send
Here
I am, Lord
is it I, Lord
I have heard you calling in the night
I will go, Lord, if you lead me
I will hold your people in my heart
I,
the Lord of wind of flame
I will tend to the poor and the lame
I will set a feast for them
My hand will save
Finest bread will I provide
Till three hearts be satisfied
I will give my life to them
Whom shall I send?
Here
I am, Lord
is it I, Lord
I have heard you calling in the night
I will go, Lord, if you lead me
I will hold your people in my heart
(Daniel Schutte)
Time like an ever rolling stream
Soon bears us all away
We fly forgotten as a dream
Dies at opening day
O
God our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come
Be our guard while troubles last
And our eternal home
(Isaac Watt)
The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is
service for Him. The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of
God, not a call to do something for Him. (Oswald Chambers)
Instead of, “you are what you do,”
God’s calling says: “Do what you are.” (Os
Guinness)
The worship
is over, the service begins.
Win an argument, lose a soul. (J. Fulton Sheen)
For all the saints who from their
labors rest
All who by faith before the world
confessed
Your name, oh Jesus, be forever blessed
You were their rock, their fortress and
their might
You, Lord, their captain in the
well-fought fight
Oh, may your soldiers, faithful, true,
and bold
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of
old
And win with them the victor’s
crown of gold
Oh, blessed communion, fellowship
divine
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine
Yet all are one within your great
design
And when the strife is fierce, the
warfare long
Steals on the ear the distance triumph
song
And hearts are brave again and arms are
strong
The golden evening brightens in the
west
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes
their rest
Sweet is the calm of paradise the
blessed
But then there breaks a yet more
glorious day
The saints triumphant rise in bright
array
The king of glory passes on his way
From earth’s wide bounds, from
ocean’s farthest coast
Through gates of pearl streams in the
countless host
Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost
(William W. How)
I live before the Audience of One. Before
others I have nothing to prove, nothing to gain, nothing to lose.
(General Charles Gordon)
Passing from a biological life into the spiritual
life is as big a change as though a statue carved from stone changed into a
real man. We are statues and there is a rumor going around the
sculptor’s shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.
(C. S. Lewis)
The central message of Christianity is light out of
darkness, life out of death, life by means of death.
(Philip. H. Pfatteicher)
Whenever I meet a Buddist leader, I meet a holy
man. Whenever I meet a Christian
leaders, I meet a manager. (quoted by Os Guinness)
Lord, I pray that you would bring Jews to know Jesus
Christ. I pray that you would bring Muslims to know Jesus Christ.
Finally, Lord, I pray that you would bring Christians to know Jesus
Christ. Amen. (Arthur Burns)
It is tragedy that when people reject
our approach or attitude, we conclude that they’re rejecting Christ and
His message. (Erwin Rafael McManus)
Through centuries, Christians have cunningly sought
little by little to cheat God out of Christianity. (Soren Kierkegaard)
You don’t find God; you lose yourself until God
finds you. (jazz musician Lester Young)
Lord, help safeguard us against the slippage from
Christ to Christian to Christianity. (Os Guinness)
The Eucharist or Holy Communion is a taste of
God. How God is present in the bread and wine of this central Christian
sacrament is less important than that God is present. Belief is needed to
fully embrace the presence of God in any sacrament, official or informal.
(Chris Glaser)
Midway on our life’s journey I found myself in
a dark wood. (Dante)
The
Daily prayer lifts us out of our selfish concerns to
a grander view of the purpose and will and work of God. It invites us to let
God work in us as God wills. (Philip. H. Pfatteicher)
The true city of the saints is in heaven. Here
on earth Christians travel as on a pilgrimage through time looking for the
Just imagine what we might have been without
Christ. (Os Guinness)
Lord, you have given so much to me. Give me one
thing more—a grateful heart. (George Herbert)
Lord, you show us love's true measure Yet
we hoard as private treasure all that you so freely give. (Jeffery Rowthorn)
The liturgy of the church provides a framework within
which the deepest mysteries of Christianity await discovery. (Philip Pfatteicher)
With mighty
arm you dash the proud, their scheming hearts expose
The
ruthless you have cast aside, the lowly throned instead
The hungry
filled with all good things, the rich sent off unfed.
(From the
hymn, My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness)
The
dominant script of our time is therapeutic consumerism. It has been adopted by liberals and
conservatives alike. The script has
failed and the health of society depends on society’s disengagement from
that script. An alternate script is
rooted in the Bible and the key character is God. This alternate script is ragged and cannot be
made seamless; it is not about certitude. The entry into this counter-script is
by baptism. Pastors need to demonstrate
that the church is a safe place for people with uncertainties. We’re not primarily in the growth
industry, but rather in little communities of obedience. We all hunger for certitude, but the problem
is that God is not about certitude; God is about fidelity. (Walter Brueggemann)
In the
evangelical world, I think there’s been a sense that the purpose of the
church is to extract as many people from the world as possible, so you can
warehouse them and keep them pure.
(Brian McLaren)
If
on our daily course our mind
Beset to hallow all we find
New treasures still, of countless price
God will provide for a sacrifice.
Old
friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,
As more of heaven in each we see;
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care.
The
trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.
(John Keble)
I could no more make someone else a Christian by my
own influence
than I turn a sawdust doll into a
pretty child of six.
(J. Fulton Sheen)
To be a Christian means becoming a
xenophiliac. Your love people who think
differently, You promote people who don’t use your familiar jargon; you
hire an outsider to be your pastor; and you throw parties at which many
languages are spoken, many flavors tasted, many stories are told, and many
color smile and laugh and learn one another’s dances and ways in a
foretaste of another party called “heaven.” (Leonard Sweet, Bryan D. McLaren, Jerry Haselmayer)
We
never pray as individuals set apart from the rest of the world. The
liturgy is an order which we can enter only as a part of the community.
Every act of worship is an act of participating in an eternal service in the
service of all souls of all ages. Every act of adoration is done in union
with all of history, and with beings above and below. (Abraham Heschel)
In
praying the Psalter we participate in the sacred story, we appropriate it as
our own. (Philip Pfatteicher)
Only the man whose final standard is
not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but
who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and
responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God—the
responsible man who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and
call of God. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
The big challenge for all denominations
is the growing number of people who see themselves as religious but have very
little to do with any organized religious community. (Robert Bacher and Kenneth
Inskeep)
Churches should strive to create an
alternative community, deeply placed in risk, summoned in baptism to a world in
which God is a pivotal player. (Walter
Brueggemann and Patrick Miller)
If safe is what you want, forget
religion and find yourself a conservative investment counselor. The religious sense of life has to do with
exposing one’s self to the radical uncertainly and the open-endedness of
life, with what we are calling the absolute future, which is meaning-giving,
salt-giving, risk taking. The absolute
future is a risky business, which is why faith, hope, and love have to kick
in. (John Caputo)
Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness
without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is
the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without
personal confession. Cheap grace is
grace without disciplineship, grace without the cross, grace without the living
incarnate living Christ. (Dietrich
Bonhoeffer)
Postmodernism is the culture in which Sesame Street
is considered educational; sexy is the term for everything from jeans to
doctoral theses; watching sitcoms together is called family time; abortion is
considered choice; and a barrage of images and sound bites selected for their entertainment
and commercial value is called news.
(Michael Horton)
Beyond the lines of steel and stone
Beneath the thorns of flesh and bone
Beyond the curve of time and space
Show us the wonder of your face.
(Royce Scherf)
Immortal, invisible God only wise
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes
Most blessed, most glorious, the
Ancient of Days
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we
praise!
Unresting,
unhasting, and silent as night
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest
in might
Thy justice like mountains, high
soaring above
They clouds which are fountains of
goodness and love.
To
all, life thou givest to both great and small
In all life thou livest, the true life
of all.
We
blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree
And wither and perish, but naught
changeth thee.
Thou reignest in glory, thy dwellest in
light
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling
their sight
All laud we would render; oh, help us
to see
‘Tis only the splendor of light
hideth thee!
(W. Chalmers Smith)
Come
down, O, Love divine
Seek thou this soul of mine.
And visit it with thine own ardor
glowing
O Comforter, draw near
Within my heart appear
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing
Oh,
let it freely burn
Til worldly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight
And clothe me round, the while my path
illuming
Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be
And lowliness become mine inner
clothing
True lowliness of heart
Which takes the humbler part
And o’er its own shortcomings
weeps with loathing.
And
so the yearning strong
With which the soul will long
Shall far out pass the power of human
telling
No soul can guess his grace
Til it become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his
dwelling. (Bianco da Siena)
Many
Christians like to think that they take the Bible as it stands, but in reality
they take the Bible as they understand it.
What we get out of the Bible often has as much to do with what we bring
to the text as with the text itself.
Differing biblical interpretations often arise from the different
theological grids that are imposed on scripture. (The Christian Century magazine)
To reach satisfaction in all, desire its possession
in nothing. To come to possess all, desire the possession of
nothing. To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing. To come to
the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing.
(John of the Cross)
Prayer is continual abandonment to God. (Sadhu
Sundar Singh)
When you start thinking about it, the
poverty of our goodness is truly appalling.
We spend our intellect and energies shoring up our own financial
security and give only a pittance away to those who do not have enough food to
keep their children alive. We say we care
about corporate justice, but continue to buy cheap goods even though we have no
idea who might have been grossly underpaid to make or grow them. We use each other socially by maneuvering to
sit with the successful people at a conference, asking after their family when
honestly we only care about selling the deal.
We use another person sexually in the name of self-expression and a
shallow-temporary intimacy. We avoid
even our own friends and family when they need us because helping them might
interrupt our all-important work schedule.
(Debra Rienstra in So Much More:
An Invitation to Christian Spirituality, Jossey-Bass)
A Christian worker never touches reality until he
touches a soul. (J. Fulton Sheen)
Evangelicals
have seen social action as a distraction from evangelism. Mainline Protestants have viewed evangelism
almost as an embarrassment until it is taken up for sake of institutional
survival. (Brian McLaren)
Thomas
Merton linked consumerism to what he saw as a feeding of the false self, the
self of ego gratification, rather than the true self, which has very few needs
and very simple needs. People purchase
goods that they do not need as a way to divert themselves from experiencing the
presence of God. Even religion can be
turned into a way to seek gratification.
(Albert Raboteau)
The most important difference between
churches is not their doctrinal statements, liturgies, structures, or
architecture, it’s the way they treat people. (Leonard Sweet, Bryan D. McLaren, Jerry
Haselmayer)
Jesus died to gather into one family all the
scattered children of God. (The Liturgy of the Hours)
May our lives be bread for the hungry and streams in
the wilderness, signs of the abundance of your grace in Jesus Christ.
Live near to God, and so all things will appear to
you little in comparison with eternal realities.
(Robert Murray M’Cheyne)
The will
can do all—except one thing: undo that which it has done. The power of undoing is of another order: the
order of grace. (Vladimir Jankelevitch)
We live
with cultural pressures unrelentingly focused upon free market competition and
consumption, as if the meaning of life is compete, consume, and die. (Catherine
Wallace)
The dark
existential truth is that the fate of men and women is to live absurdly,
flogged by categorical imperatives of their own shallow imagining, and to die
insanely, grasping for hands that are not there. (H.L. Mencken)
Our crimes and our sins weigh us down; me are rotting
away because of them. How can we survive? As I live, says the Lord
God, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked men, but rather in the wicked
man's conversion, that he may live. (Ezekiel 33: 10-11) I said: Her I am!
Here I am! to a nation that did not call upon my name. I have stretched
out my hands all the day to a rebellious people who walk in evil paths and
follow their own thoughts--people who provoke me continually to my face.
(Isaiah 65: 1-3)
The devilishness of Pride is that it attacks us, not
in our weakest points, but in our strongest. It is the sin of the noble
mind. (Dorothy Sayers)
Christianity
is not for people who think religion is a pleasant distraction, a nice
alternative, or a positive influence.
Messy Christianity is a good term for the place where desperation meets
Jesus. More often than not, in
Jesus’ day, desperate people who tried to get to Jesus were surrounded by
religious people who either ignored or rejected those who were seeking to have
their hunger for God filled. Sadly, not
much has changed over the years. The church is the place where the incompetent,
the unfinished, and even the unhealthy are welcome. Once we admit how unlovely
we are, how unattractive we are, how lost we are, Jesus shows up
unexpectedly. (Michael Yaconelli)
In the
cross of Christ I glory, towering over the wrecks of time. (John Bowring)
Hell is where sin eventually leads; it
is the endpoint of the path away from God—a state of being outside the
presence of God. When we see the worst
of what goes on in this world, we can see that hell is not only a place people
might go after death, but the condition of destruction and utter misery in
which people can find themselves here and now. (Debra Rienstra in So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality,
Jossey-Bass)
Praise and
honor to the Father, praise and honor to the son, praise and honor to the
Spirit, ever three and ever one; one in might and one in glory while unending
ages run! (7th century Latin hymn)
Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, Come
From thy bright heavenly throne
Come, take possession of our souls
And make them all thy own.
Thou who are called the Paraclete,
Best gift of God above,
The living spring, the living fire,
Sweet unction and true love.
Thou who art sevenfold in they grace,
Finger of God’s right hand;
His promise, teaching little ones
Who speak and understand.
Oh guide our minds with they blest light,
With love our hearts in flame;
And with thy strength, which ne’er decays,
Confirm our mortal frame.
Far from us drive our deadly foe;
True peace unto us bring;
And from all perils lead us safe
Beneath thy sacred wing.
Through thee may we Father know,
Through thee the eternal Son,
And thee the Spirit of them both,
Thrice-blessed Three in One.
All glory to the Father be,
With his co-equal Son;
The same to thee, great Paraclete,
While endless ages run.
Veni, creator Spiritus,
Mentes tuorum visita,
Imple superna gratia,
Quae tu creasti, pectora
Qui diceris Paraclitus,
Donum Dei altissimi,
Fons vivus, ignis, caritas
Et spiritalis unction.
Tu septiformis munere,
Dextrae Dei tu digitus,
Tu rite promissum Patris
Infunde amorem cordibus,
Infirma nostri corporis,
Virtute firmans perpeti.
Hostem repellas longius
Pacemque dones protinus;
Ductore sic te praevio
Vitemus omne noxium
Per te sciamus da Patrem
Noscamus atque Filium,
te utriusque Spiritum
Credamus omni tempore. Amen.
In accomplishing anything definite a man renounces
everything else. (George Santayana)
Lord, you make the common holy. (Jeffery
Rowthorn)
Why should God need our prayer? Why should God need
our flattery? How come He is not repulsed by that? God does not need our
prayers. We need them. We need to be able to pray in sincerity and
beauty. And the prayer should not be
against somebody but always for somebody. That is a true prayer, when it is for someone
else, not for yourself. I would like my
prayer to be turned into stories. (Elie Wiesel)
You have nothing to do in life except to live in
union with Christ. (Rufus Mosely)
Jesus accepts you the way you are, but loves you too
much to leave you that way. (Lee Venden)
Loneliness is a gnawing hunger while solitude is to
have one’s hunger satisfied without being stuffed. The more hungry
we are, the less particular we may be about what we eat. The more lonely
we are, the less particular we may be about how we connect with others.
And, just as starving makes people desperate, so loneliness brings out our
desperation. We may act out of our anxiety, seeking a quick fix to our
hunger or our loneliness. This may prompt us to exploit or manipulate
others, or allow ourselves to be exploited or manipulated. No matter what
a televangelist or a pop guru might tell you, the spiritual life is not a quick
fix or drive-through. (Chris Glaser)
Christianity,
which once pervaded the culture practiced by the nation, has slipped to the
status of a subculture—we might even say a counterculture. (Clifford
Orwin)
The fate of
mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and
evil, right and wrong, is superior to all other distinctions. The vision of the
sacred has all but died in the soul of man.
All of our life hangs by a thread—the faithfulness of man to the
concern of God. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
My
God-crazy friends migrated from one teacher to another in the sixties and the
seventies, donning robes and hair styles in search of that indefinable
something that’s still driving people everywhere and nowhere but always
away from wherever they came from. (Andrei Codrescu)
I take God the Father to be my God;
I take God the Son to be my Savior;
I take the Holy Ghost to be my
Sanctifier;
I take the Word of God to be my rule;
I take the people of God to be my
people;
And I do hereby dedicate and yield my
whole self to the Lord;
And I do this deliberately, freely, and
for ever. Amen.
(Act of commitment taught to Matthew Henry by his
father.)
I am never better than when I am on the full stretch
for God. (George Whitefield)
Surely I know the plans I have for you says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
Then you will call upon me and come pray to me and I will listen to you.
(Jeremiah 29:11-12)
Prayer is talking with Someone who’s already talking
to you. (Robert Capon)
Truly, God’s good and gracious will is accomplished
without our prayer. But we pray in this request that is
Prayer is not about results. It’s about being
faithful in circumstances beyond our control. (Phil Heinze)
Pray and let God worry. (Martin Luther)
To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an
uprising against the disorder of the world. (Karl Barth)
We are not made righteous by doing righteous deeds;
but when we have been made righteous we do righteous deeds. (Martin
Luther)
No man has a right to lead such a life of
contemplation as to forget in his own ease the service due to his neighbor; nor
has any man a right to be so immersed in active life as to neglect the
contemplation of God. (Augustine of Hippo)
Afflictions are but the shadow of God’s
wings. (George Macdonald)
When, as a child, I laughed and wept, Time crept.
When, as a youth, I dreamed and talked,
Time walked.
When I became a full-grown man, Time
ran.
And later, as I older grew, Time flew.
Soon I shall find, while traveling on,
Time gone.
Will Christ have saved my soul by
then? Amen.
(Inscription on clock in
Attempt great things for God, expect great things
from God. (William Carey)
If you here stop and ask yourselves why you are not
as pious as the early Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is
neither through ignorance nor through inability, but purely because you never
thoroughly intended it. (William Law)
May I know thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
And follow thee more nearly,
Day by Day.
(Richard of
Oh, how great peace and quietness would he possess
who should cut off all vain anxiety and place all his confidence in God.
(Thomas á Kempis)
A Christ-centered life is like a good watch: open
face, busy hands, pure gold, and full of good works. (Author unknown)
Evil can never create or build, only
twist and destroy what already exists.
It uses human brilliance and creativity as well as folly and ignorance
toward heinous ends. (Debra Rienstra in So
Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality, Jossey-Bass)
No punishment anyone might inflict on them could
possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring
in their own diminishment. (Parker
Palmer)
Forgiving is forgetting in spite of
remembering. (Dag Hammarskjold)
On spiritual growth: Spiritual growth encompasses a lifetime of decisions; spiritual growth looks dif