Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Suffering may be someones fault or it may not be anyones fault. But if given to God, our suffering becomes an opportunity to experience the power of God at work in our lives and to give glory to Him.
For myself I never plan the way I deliver a message. I do prepare the content, and then I open my mouth and give it. And so the expression, the gestures, the emphasis on words, all of that just comes.
I'm living my life for an audience of one. I live my life to please God. And I believe if He's pleased, that people like my mother and my daddy, my grandparents, you know, my husband, my children, they'll be pleased.
Do you sometimes feel that you just can't take one more thing? Even in your misery, be mindful that the very weight of your burdens and the intensity going to use in your life to trigger an experience of personal revival.
The organized church sometimes puts boundaries on us that the Bible doesn't. So I'm living my life for an audience of one. I live my life to please God. Some people won't understand, but I don't give an account to some people.
I felt that one of the things God impressed on me was that I needed to start a nonprofit corporation, so that any money that came my way, whether it was an honorarium, a book sale or a gift, would go into a nonprofit ministry.
I want to take my focus off myself and focus on God. It's like setting your spiritual compass so no matter which way you turn during the day, whatever comes up, then my thoughts go back to Him and whatever He said that morning.
It was when my children were 5, 3 and 10 months old that I just felt the desperate need to get to know God through the pages of my Bible. And as a result, I started a Bible class in my city for the primary purpose of being in it.
One misconception is that if we follow God in the life of faith, and that means obedience - that we read His Word, we're obedient, we pray, we go to church, we do the right things - that somehow His blessing means we're going to be okay.
Abraham is such a fascinating figure. Three world religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - all claim him as a patriarch. He was raised in a religious home. And yet he rejected religion in order to pursue a personal relationship with God.
Abraham wasn't perfect. He failed, made mistakes. But, he would go back, get right with God, and then just keep moving forward. He didn't quit when things got hard. He just kept on going. And everywhere he went, God was there. God was with him.
As burned as I've been by local churches and by people who call themselves in God's name, Jesus gave us the church. It's supposed to be a community of like-minded people who encourage and strengthen each other. But that's not how it always works.
If I can center down and strengthen the core of who I am, and the core of who I am is my relationship with God, then that helps me maintain peace deep down. If I can maintain a healthy spiritual core, I think that's enormous for helping the stress.
The ultimate goal for me in prayer is to draw near to God...to fall in step with him...to discern his will so that my life might be lived accordingly...to discover what burdens are on his heart that I might take them into my own heart, then pray them back to him.
Anything John Stott says is worth listening to. Anything he writes is worth reading. Basic Christianity is not only a classic must-read for every believer; it is truly a blessing preserved on the written page for the enrichment of this generation and those to come.
For years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?
When I put my faith in Jesus Christ as my savior, and I asked him to forgive and to come into my life, and He does - from that moment forward I have established a personal relationship with God that I have to develop, you know, through Bible reading and prayer, and living my life for him.
In the Bible, ordination - I don't see that in the Scripture. In the Bible, it's whether you're filled with the Holy Spirit, whether you're anointed by God, whether you're called by God, whether you're obedient to Him. I want to be those things, but I don't see any purpose for me in being ordained.
The devil resists serious, focused prayer because he's defeated by it. And so the devil will try to attack our concentration in prayer; he will try to confuse or contradict the content of our prayers; he will do his best to distract and/or divert us in prayer so that we're crippled by inconsistency.
Jesus has given me ample resources to meet the spiritual needs of others because He has given me Himself and He has give me His Word. But in order to meet the spiritual needs of the multitude, I have to spend hours alone with Him in the prayerful meditation of His Word so that my spiritual needs are met.
I believe that our heavenly Father, our Savior, saved my mother from loneliness because of her daily walk with the Lord Jesus, He was the love of her life. I saw that in her life. It was her love for the Lord Jesus, with whom she walks every day, that made me want to love Him and walk with Him like that.
My hope is that this life is not all there is. This life is like preparation for what is coming next, and what is coming next is something so glorious that the Bible says minds can't conceive it, eye has never seen, your imagination could never even enter into all that God is preparing for those who love him.
I believe our nation is in deep trouble. We seem to have lost our identity because in many ways we're separated from God. I believe it's imperative that God's people pray as Daniel did, or our nation may unravel morally and spiritually to the point of no return. I believe we desperately need the blessing of God.
Desperation compels us to pray with fervent, focused faith - especially when we have no one else to turn to. God honors our faith when we place it in him alone - with no back-up plan, no other recourse, no other way out. He hears and answers our desperate heart cry, because he loves to show himself strong on our behalf.
Around 1998, I went through lots of pressures and struggles. My children got married within eight months of each other, my son was diagnosed with cancer and went through major surgery and radiation, my mother had five life-threatening hospitalizations where I stayed with her, my husband's dental office burned to the ground.
When I was a teenager, I was trying to please people. I kept changing who I was to please the people I was with. And so once I just decided I wasn't going to do that anymore. I was going to live my life to please God. And so from that day to this, that's been my aim. Some people don't understand, but you can't please everybody anyway.
One of the most effective ways to pray is to ask God to give you a promise from his Word concerning whatever it is you're praying for. Then hold him to his Word as you pray it back to him. It's what has been called "reversed thunder." God keeps his Word, and basing our prayer on his Word gives our prayers strength and confidence because we know we're asking for something God wants to give us.
Communication with God is vital to a vibrant relationship with him. We will never really know God in an intimate, personal relationship if we don't talk to him. Half of our communication with God is listening to what he has to say through his Word, which is why reading our Bibles is so important. The other half of communication is talking to him, which is prayer. Prayer is also important because the Bible commands us to pray.