As long as you as an individual... can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as 'one of the faithful,' one of those people who can say, 'Well, look, something's going to happen...
My faith survived because I realized God didn't want this for us, He never had. I'm passionately looking forward to a new Heaven and Earth where only good exists once more.
What if we saw differences in cultures, in moral choices, and in belief as reasons to engage people instead of excuses to disengage and quickly exit?
We must make decisions as if they affect those we've not even met because we realize they do. We must live respective of world family.
If we allow our American mindset of consumption to spill into our understanding of what a Christian is, we are in danger of living irrespective of world family.
We can make our own plans and judge them by our narrow expectations, or we can experience life as the boundless reality of the One who created it.
Compassion doesn't arise from the belief that the evil in the world is somebody else's fault or that it is a result of poor choices a suffering person has made.
What believer of faith among us can claim to understand the exact mechanistic structure of a world created by a god/God.
Mindfulness is the agent of our freedom. Through mindfulness we arrive at faith we grow in wisdom & we attain equanimity.
Then the Lord said: "If you had the faith the size of a mustard grain, you would say to this black mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea!' and it would obey you. Luke 17:6 New World Translation of the World Scriptures
What we really need is only a heart of surrender & always trust what God has plan for our life. So we do our best, God shall take the rest. That's what I called FAITH.
We r u used 2 thinkin' that what we give is the same as what we receive, but ppl who love expecting 2 be loved in return r wastin' their time.. Love is an act of faith, not an exchange...
Only if God IS ultimate reality, can he be our unconditional concern; only then can he be the object of surrender, obedience, and assent. Faith in anything which has only preliminary reality is idolatrous.
Philip Yancey sees our blasé attitude toward the faithfulness of God in the waitstaff At Yellowstone. Even when they are finished their chores, they don't look up and marvel at the geiser going off. After all, they see it so often.
It is the image of physical brawn, sheer force, and commanding volume we so often associate with might. But I have found the might of an army exists in the faith of a child and in quiet, earnest prayers as well as in the heart of one who loves.
Noble and great. Courageous and determined. Faithful and fearless. That is who you are and who you have always been. And understanding it can change your life, because this knowledge carries a confidence that cannot be duplicated any other way.
I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do.
I liked Latin, I like languages, I liked all the myths, and the Roman tales that we were required to translate in Latin, and all these interesting people who were never quite what they thought they would be or seemed to be.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worsh...
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.
A Christian is supposed to be in the world, and yet not of the world--a Both/And as perplexing and demanding as the Either/Or that precedes the life of faith. I'm at once a pure, beautiful, genderless soul, but at the same time a gendered body full o...
