RICH SPIRITUAL INSIGHT

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. (The Jesus prayer)

Ministry that costs nothing accomplishes nothing. (Hudson Taylor)

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 Assisi)

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 Lubeck, Germany)

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 Damascus)

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 church of Luther’s time was an experience.  It’s sheer physical presence surrounded life from birth to death. Its bells sounded the hours.  Its great cathedrals sent spires and domes heavenward on almost every street in large cities, and the parish church threw its protective shadow over tiny villages in remote places.  Its chapels dotted the wilderness.  The familiar old rituals of its liturgies channeled people along the difficult pathway of life from birth, through happiness, suffering, and death, providing ceremonial enrichment to daily existence.  Its music—its chants, its choirs, its organs, its trumpets, and its developing harmonies—could wrap worshipers in a mystical bond that united them with each other and with the invisible God.  The church was in itself the grandest of the sacraments, a divine power animating the physical reality of the institution.  Its connections with government were close and ubiquitous, even when the individual secular leaders and individual popes or lesser clergy might fall out with one another.  Scarcely anyone alive in the Middle Ages could imagine an orderly society without the restraints imposed by religion. (Richard Marius)

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 Kingdom of Eternity.  (Augustine)

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! (7^th 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

Sermone ditans guttura

Accende lumen sensibus,

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 Chester Cathedral, England)

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 Chichester)

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