Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing. The central feature of pride is enmity - enmity toward God and enmity to...
The people I grew up around, almost all of them had been born and raised in the South. And, you know, they didn't always go to church, but they lived their lives as if God were watching everything they did.
God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature - the urge to love and be loved - must reveal His nature in an incredible and impossible way. He must reveal it at a cross.
Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.
Prayer is commitment. We don't merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment.
I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'
Just thinking about that, if that were to really happen, if an alien were to come down and really abduct you, how terrifying and how earth-shattering would that be? Your whole world is just destroyed. God is destroyed. It's kind of a fascinating thin...
I believe in the will. I believe in discipline. I believe in the organization. I believe in the rigor that gives us work. I believe in love as an engine of all things. I believe in the light. I believe in God. I believe in kindness.
As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men, the anguish in our neighbor's soul must break all precept. All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, because God is love.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea, God Bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and paid forward for the next kid who comes along.
My appeal to the rich is, Deal liberally with your poor brethren, and use your means to advance the cause of God. The worthy poor, who are made poor by misfortune and sickness, deserve your especial care and help.
Action gives power. Entire harmony pervades the universe of God. All the heavenly beings are in constant activity; and the Lord Jesus, in His life work, has given an example for every one.
The hope of eternal life is not to be taken up upon slight grounds. It is a subject to be settled between God and your own soul; settled for eternity. A supposed hope, and nothing more, will prove your ruin.
They who are not induced to believe and live as they ought by those discoveries which God hath made in Scriptures would stand out against any evidence whatever, even that of a messenger sent express from the other world.
Happiness is a great power of holiness. Thus, kind words, by their power of producing happiness, have also a power of producing holiness, and so of winning men to God.
The devil's main purpose is not to scare us, in a horror-movie way; when we're scared of him, we're alert to him, and that might undermine his plans. Instead, he wants to quietly, subtly lure us into stepping away from God.
If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.
And now may the blessing of God rest upon all men. I have told unto them the Epic of Kings, and the Epic of Kings is come to a close, and the tale of their deeds is ended.
However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do.
I call God to witness that as a private person I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man, nor, as I bear the place of a public man, have I done anything unworthy of my place.
I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.'
