Difficulties and obstacles are God's challenges to faith. When hindrances confront us in the path of duty, we are to recognize them as vessels for faith to fill with the fullness and all-sufficiency of Jesus.
One has a feeling that one has a kind of home in this timeless community of human beings that strive for truth. ... I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people.
I think we as believers can be secure in our relationship with Christ. I'm not saying that sin isn't sin. I'm not saying that people should live in unrepentant sin. I'm not saying that that's a mark of a mature believer at all. Certainly if someone looks at my life, they will see that I have surrendered my heart, my life to Jesus Christ. I'll be very glad to tell them what my faults and my weaknesses are and the areas that I pray about in my life every day.
Interestingly, it's as though the gospel story of Jesus is the archetypal heroic journey, the embodiment of the very adventure that all people in every epoch have desired.
When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.
Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.
Shall it be a religion or shall it be Christ? Shall it be churchianity or shall it be Jesus Christ? Shall it be pride or shall it be humility in Jesus Christ?
Jesus' own witness of sacrificial love and forgiveness, and his work to heal the sick and care for those in need, represent God's ways and vision for us.
People have faith in 'faith' and largely forget that our confidence is not in the power of faith but in the Person and work of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
Faith is walking by faith, not by what you feel. You are not always going to feel that Jesus loves you or that God is good, but you know He is. It is the up and down of the journey.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This sentence alone would save mankind, if all books and prophets were lost. This purity of heart will bring the vision of God. It is the theme of the whole music of this universe. In purity is no bondage. Remove the veils of ignorance by purity; then we manifest ourselves as we really are and know that we were never in bondage. The seeing of 'many' is the great sin of all the world. See all as Self and love all; let all idea of separateness go.
Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. Believing, then, is directing the hearts' attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to 'behold the Lamb of God,' and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives.
You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.
Give up the struggle and the fight; relax in the omnipotence of the Lord Jesus; look up into His lovely face and as you behold Him, He will transform you into His likeness. You do the beholding - He does the transforming. There is no short-cut to holiness.
This perfection is the restoration of man to the state of holiness from which he fell, by creating him anew in Christ Jesus, and restoring to him that image and likeness of God which he has lost.