As gentle a man as he was, as tender as was his heart, there was nothing weak about Michael Hosea. He was the strongest-minded man Joseph had ever met. A Man like Noah. A Man like the Shepherd-king David. A man after God's own heart.
We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.
Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking.
A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.
Can you imagine those poor bastards grappling their prey, leaping over the rails, swords in hand, screaming 'Your cats! Give us all your god-damned cats!
...we are to be lights in the world. It is God's business to light us, to set us on the lampstand, and to bring the people into the house. Our only duty is to shine forth with the gospel.
You would think the fury of aerial bombardment would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces. History, even, does not know what is meant.
The anxious heart, in its flailings, loses its hold on whatever grace God has bestowed upon it, and is sapped of the strength to "resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to fish...in troubled waters.
The novel comes from a long shamanic tradition wherein the shaman-storyteller himself is transformed, no longer storyteller but a character, an animal, a god, a goddess, or a natural force that is not his everyday identity. And these moments, when th...
The devil sought to destroy me and discredit my testimony. But God wanted me where I would testify to others about his saving power.
But he looks no more than thirty. He's very handsome-- so much you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very powerful; the greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a great lady.' 'God made you that, Aline.
Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.
But what of faith? What of fidelity and loyalty? Complete trust? Faith is not granted by tangible proof. It comes from the heart and the soul. If a person needs proof of god's existence, then the very notion of spirituality is diminished into sensual...
In this journey called "Life" I've learned that God never consults our past to determine our future" ~Lá Tanyha Boyd
For a God whose heart is supposed to be as cold as his realm, you are so warm and kind. You make it hard to resist, she murmured. Why should you resist? You know how much you are enjoying yourself. Much as I hate to admit it, she sighed
The music, the prayers, the bowing and rising, the incense--all of it was breaking down my defenses. That's what good liturgy does. It breaks your heart open and turns you toward God.
When we start to realize how amazing God's story is, a question naturally arises: "Who am I that I should get to be a part of the greatest story ever told?
What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.
The demon got up. The demon said Fool. To think you can eat their food and not talk to them. To think you can take their money and not be afraid of them. To think you can depend on their company and not suffer from them.
The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.
It is by doctrine (through the power of the Spirit) that believers are nourished and edified, and where doctrine is neglected, growth in grace and effective witnessing for Christ necessarily cease. How sad then that doctrine is now decried as "unprac...
