Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
... many Hindus are willing to consider Jesus as a legitimate manifestation of the divine... many Buddhists see Jesus as one of humanity's most enlightened people.... A shared reappraisal of Jesus' message could provide a unique space or common ground for urgently needed religious dialogue - and it doesn't seem an exaggeration to say that the future of our planet may depend on such dialogue. This reappraisal of Jesus' message may be the only project capable of saving a number of religions.
You mark my words: Whenever a cult attacks Christianity, the first place they're going to go is they're going to attack the deity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; is that not true? They are going to attack His deity. Throughout 2000 years of Christian history, we have had to build walls to keep them out. We have had to fight, we have had to amass arms, we have had to do apologetics, we have had to do it all. It is our purpose and our responsibility to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God.
The underdog is a person that's at-risk, a person that has a lot of big trials you have to overcome. I mean that was my life. Me - coming from a single parent home. I didn't have offers coming out of high school. So I had to really have faith and lean on Jesus for everything because nothing was given to me. I had to really work for everything. I'm definitely an underdog. I think Jesus made me be in that situation to be able to relate to more people. That's why give back to the at-risk kids.
One thing we may be sure of, however: For the believer all pain has meaning; all adversity is profitable. There is no question that adversity is difficult. It usually takes us by surprise and seems to strike where we are most vulnerable. To us it often appears completely senseless and irrational, but to God none of it is either senseless or irrational. He has a purpose in every pain He brings or allows in our lives. We can be sure that in some way He intends it for our profit and His glory.
I am convinced that there is no simple formula or technique that would immediately allow you to master the ability to be guided by the voice of the Spirit. Our Father expects you to learn how to obtain that divine help by exercising faith in Him and His Holy Son, Jesus Christ. Were you to receive inspired guidance just for the asking, you would become weak and ever more dependent on them. They know that essential personal growth will come as you struggle to learn how to be led by the Spirit.
It's just that for so many people that I know, Christianity's this matter of... it has everything to do with morals. Christianity is a religion about morals. And they will even talk about Jesus. And they will say kids need to know about Jesus so they won't smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls that do, and all that kind of thing. And I kinda go, 'That's not why people need to know about Jesus. The only reason - The only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because we need a Savior.'
All our language about the future ... is like a set of signposts pointing into a bright mist ... the New Testament image of the future hope of the whole cosmos, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, gives as coherent a picture as we need or could have of the future that is promised to the whole world, a future in which, under the sovereign and wise rule of the creator God, decay and death will be done away with and a new creation born, to which the present one will stand as mother to child.
He becomes your Teacher. Jesus said when the Spirit of truth comes, He shall teach you all things. He didn't say 'some things,' but ALL THINGS. Glory to God! Anything in this life, anything about life, anything about God, ANYTHING at all, the Holy Ghost can teach you if you will ask or let Him. He will open up the Word of God to you and unveil the realities of God to you. He will be your Teacher. He will let you know what to do. When the Holy Ghost takes over your life, you will be different.
Jesus came to reveal God to us. He is the defining word on God—on what the heart of God is truly like, on what God is up to in the world, and on what God is up to in your life. An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence. To know him as he is, is to come home. To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness. To be mistaken about him is the saddest mistake of all.
The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny himself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God.
Patience is more than endurance. A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says--'I cannot stand anymore.' God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God's hands. Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ by the patience of faith. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.
In Matthew 16:19, Jesus said that He would give us the keys to the Kingdom. Faith is the major key that opens every door in the Kingdom. It is a master key. Therefore it is imperative that we understand the ways of faith. Because these keys are the ways of God the natural man cannot receive them. They are spiritually understood. They are foolishness to the natural man. When a gift of the Spirit operates. Then we are able to impart that gift to others and teach them how to function in it also.
For more than 160 years, through the initiative of the French bishop Charles de Forbin Janson, the childhood of Jesus has become the icon for the commitment of Christian children who help the Church in her task of evangelization by prayer, sacrifice and gestures of solidarity....Thousands of children meet the needs of other children, driven by the love that the Son of God, become a child, brought to the earth. I say thanks to these little ones and I pray that they will always be missionaries.
Do not sit down and try to pump up repentance from the dry well of a corrupt nature. It is contrary to the laws of your mind to suppose that you can force your soul into that gracious state. Take your heart in prayer to Him who understands it and say, "Lord, cleanse it. Lord, renew it. Lord, work repentance in it." The more you try to produce penitent emotions in yourself, the more you will be disappointed. However, if you believingly think of Jesus dying for you, repentance will burst forth.
Mary lived in the divine Eucharist, the center of her love. All her thoughts, words, and actions sprang from It like the rays from the sun. The Eucharist was the oracle which she consulted, the grace which she followed. But Jesus Christ in His Sacrament lives the same life of love which consumed Him in His mortal days. In His sacramental state He continues to adore His Father by His depthless self-abasement. He is still the Mediator and Interceder with divine goodness for the salvation of men
somehow we have overlooked the fact this treasured called the heart can also be broken, has been broken, and now lies in pieces down under the surface. When it comes to habits we cannot quit or patterns we cannot stop, anger that flies out of nowhere, fears we cannot overcome, or weaknesses we hate to admit--much of what troubles us comes out of the broken places in our hearts crying out for relief. Jesus speaks as if we are all brokenhearted. We would do well to trust His perspective on this.
You know, Sage, Jesus didn't tell us to forgive everyone. He said turn the other cheek, but only if you the one who was hit. Even the Lord's Prayer says it loud and clear: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Not others. What Jesus challenges us to do is to let go of the wrong done to you personally, not the wrong done to someone else. But most Christians incorrectly assume that this means that being a good christian means forgiving all sins, and the sinners.
The Devil's methods of opposition are those of alliance and antagonism, and the only serious one is the first. Let us beware of it. Do not let us imagine that we can take into our fellowship and enlist under one banner men who simply affirm truth about Jesus, unless in their own lives there is an absolute loyalty to the Lord Christ. Antagonism is the creation of force for the kingdom of God. Put a man in prison for Christ's sake, and the earthquake will surely follow, and the work will spread.
Now is the time to become a disciple of Jesus Christ, which means accepting His invitation to 'come, follow me' (Luke 18:22). This is the decision we made in our premortal lives. Now we must make it again here in mortality, every day, in every situation by taking the Savior's name upon us, remembering His atoning sacrifice, and keeping His commandments. This we covenanted to do when we were baptized, and we have the opportunity to renew those covenants each week as we partake of the sacrament.
But these dear boys and girls--there is, something to be made out of them. If now they yield themselves to Christ they may have a long, happy, and holy day before them in which they may serve God with all then hearts. Who knows what glory God may have of them? Heathen lands may call them blessed. Whole nations may be enlightened by them. O brethren and sisters, let us estimate children at their true valuation, and we shall not keep them back, but we shall be eager to lead them to Jesus at once.
We're even going to have sex in Heaven! How about that? Isn't that wonderful? Love all the girls you want to and all the handsome boys you want to and love all you want to and never get tired, never be impotent, never have a headache, never get hungry, never get sleepy, no pains, no VD, no nothin' except joy and praise and Hallelujah and lots of fun with your Bridegroom and all your friends and loved ones and the Family of God, His Family of Love, His children of God in Heaven when Jesus comes!
I’m washed, I’m forgiven, I’m whole, and I’m healed. I’m cleansed and I’m glory bound. I am only a sojourner on the earth. I am but a pilgrim on this planet, on my way to perfection, and I don’t need anybody to tell me who I am, because I know who I am. I am a child of the King, a son (or daughter) of God, born again through Jesus Christ, bought with the price of His blood. I am a new creation, totally new, thoroughly loved and completely accepted as a child of my Father, precious in His sight.
It is so important to see that we are all converted, that we have in our hearts a conviction concerning this great work. It is not a matter of the head only. It is a matter of the heart. It is being touched by the Holy Spirit until we know that this work is true, that Joseph Smith was verily a prophet of God, that God lives and that Jesus Christ lives and that they appeared to the boy Joseph Smith, that the Book of Mormon is true, that the priesthood is here with all of its gifts and blessings.
The humility of Jesus can be seen in the crib, in the exile to Egypt, in the hidden life, in the inability to make people understand Him, in the desertion of His apostles, in the hatred of His persecutors, in all the terrible suffering and death of His Passion, and now in His permanent state of humility in the tabernacle, where He has reduced Himself to such a small particle of bread that the priest can hold Him with two fingers. The more we empty ourselves, the more room we give God to fill us.
A testimony is a most precious possession because it is not acquired by logic or reason alone, it cannot be purchased with earthly possessions, and it cannot be given as a present or inherited from our ancestors. We cannot depend on the testimonies of other people. We need to know for ourselves. President Gordon B. Hinckley said, ‘Every Latter-day Saint has the responsibility to know for himself or herself with a certainty beyond doubt that Jesus is the resurrected, living Son of the living God.
When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter--they are all hell on earth. Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What's disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.
Think, "I am beyond the body. This body is just a water bubble. I am beyond the mind. This mind is just a mad monkey. I am the Atma. I and God are one. Before this body was formed I was there. After this body leaves I am there. Without this body I am still there. I am omnipresent. I am all." To reach this truth you have to do some spiritual practice. You have to inquire, "What is God? Who is God? Who am I?" Jesus spent twelve years in the desert; then he realized. You must also do some Sadhana.
Principles are what people have instead of God. To be a Christian means among other things to be willing if necessary to sacrifice even your highest principles for God's or your neighbour's sake the way a Christian pacifist must be willing to pick up a baseball bat if there's no other way to stop a man from savagely beating a child. Jesus didn't forgive his executioners on principle but because in some unimaginable way he was able to love them. 'Principle' is an even duller word than 'Religion'.
Others of them employ outward marks ... They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted and others formed from different kinds of material. They maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images just like the Gentiles.
There are no unique postures and times and limitations that restrict our access to God. My relationship with God is intimate and personal. The Christian does not go to the temple to worship. The Christian takes the temple with him or her. Jesus lifts us beyond the building and pays the human body the highest compliment by making it His dwelling place, the place where He meets with us. Even today He would overturn the tables of those who make it a marketplace for their own lust, greed and wealth.
Jesus was not a whisperer. No one ever saw Him close to His neighbor's ear, looking stealthily around lest some one should overhear what He was going to say. He stood upright, looked men squarely and kindly in the eye, and spoke what He had to say right out, boldly, frankly, that the whole world might hear; and when He did speak privately to His disciples, He told them to shout it from the housetops. 'Truth fears nothing but concealment,' said an old Church Father, and Jesus spake only the truth.
God made the forests, the tiny stars, and the wild winds-and I think that he made them partly as a balance for that kind of civilization that would choke the spirit of joy out of our hearts. He made the great open places for the people who want to be alone with him and talk to him, away from the crowds that kill all reverence. And I think that he is glad at times to have us forget our cares and responsibilities that we may be nearer him-as Jesus was when he crept away into the wilderness to pray.
It is one of the great ironies of human history that some mortals with incorrect understanding of God and life's purposes sometimes scold God because of the abundance of human misery and suffering-which, indeed, lies all about us. Such individuals almost dare God to demonstrate His existence by straightening things out-and at once! But He is a much different kind of Father than that. Surely it is requisite to eternal life that we come to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (see John 17:3).
Believe in Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer, the Son of God, who came to earth and walked the dusty roads of Palestine - the Son of God - to teach us the way of truth and light and salvation, and who, in one great and glorious act offered an atonement for each of us. He opened the way of salvation and exaltation for each of us, under which we may go forward in the Church and kingdom of God. Be not faithless, but believe in the great and wonderful and marvelous blessings of the Atonement.
It is interesting that liberals don't mind a strong faith at all. When it's their guy with a strong faith - whether it's Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman - that's just great. FDR inscribing Bibles and sending them to the troops. God bless him! But when a Republican president cites Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, as George W. Bush did on a famous occasion, then, well, the liberals cry out that [Tomás de] Torquemada is on the loose and warn gravely of the coming Inquisition.
We Americans commercialize everything. Look at what we did to Christmas. Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Now, I don't know Jesus, but from what I read he was the least materialistic person who ever walked the earth. No bling on Jesus. He kept a low profile and we turned his birthday into the most commercial day of the year. In fact we have a whole Jesus birthday season. And then at the end of it, we have the nerve to have an economist come on TV and say what a horrible Jesus birthday season we had.
When I think of the Savior, I often picture Him with hands outstretched, reaching out to comfort, heal, bless, and love. And He always talked with, never down to, people. He loved the humble and the meek and walked among them, ministering to them and offering hope and salvation. That is what He did during His mortal life; it is what He would be doing if He were living among us today; and it is what we should be doing as His disciples and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
You are not called to believe in your love to God, but in God's love to you! Do not argue, 'I cannot love God! I have striven to my uttermost to do so, but have failed in all my endeavors, until in despair I have abandoned the thought and relinquished the attempt.' Be it so- no effort of your own can strike a spark of love to God from your heart. Nor does God demand the task at your hands. All that He requires of you is faith in His love, as embodied and expressed in Jesus Christ to poor sinners.
I think it's for me with regards to this issue I believe in justification at the point of salvation; I believe in sanctification at the point of salvation. That doesn't mean that we don't continue to mature as believers in Christ. But I believe that we are justified and we are sanctified. But sin resides, the power of sin resides in our flesh. It will always try us and it was always tempt us and therefore we always need to be submitting our mind, will and emotions to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Here in the UK, we've now got an evangelical television channel - it's the kind of thing that will be very familiar to everyone in the United States, especially if you've ever turned on your TV set on a Sunday morning, and seen one holy man after another, urging you to send money so that Jesus can buy a new cadillac. Apparently, Jesus can't save the world until he's been properly kitted out with a million-dollar mansion, and a private jet - some small print in the Gospels that we must have missed.
If this understanding of the good news of Jesus prevailed among Christians, the belief that Jesus’s message is about how to get somewhere else, you could possibly end up with a world in which millions of people were starving, thirsty, and poor; the earth was being exploited and polluted; disease and despair were everywhere; and Christians weren’t known for doing much about it. If it got bad enough, you might even have people rejecting Jesus because of how his followers lived. That would be tragic.
We impose our modern worldview on the Bible to make it conform to our intellectual happy place. But we deceive ourselves into thinking this works or is legitimate. We fail to realize that the supernatural things we want to avoid are no more supernatural (or "weird") than the things that define the Christian faith. What's so "normal" about the virgin birth, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the hypostatic union of the incarnation (Jesus was 100% God and 100% man)?
The work of God in salvation is a supernatural work, but in the United States of America and among Baptists it's been reduced down to a few evangelical hoops that if we can get someone to jump through, we declare them popishly to be savedit has been the pulpit that's sending more people to Hell than any liberal organization on the face of the earthnot a liberal Methodist, not a liberal Episcopalian, but a Baptist who claims to know God's word and yet does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew Him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination
You can't go to church without praying ten or fifteen times for God to have mercy on you. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. This self-denigration stuff - Jesus died for my sins - is nothing but a guilt message. That's the thing we've got to get out from under. That's not Christianity. That's sort of fourth-century Christianity that got turned into doctrines and dogmas that we've never been able to escape.
... you... are stones of the temple of the Father, prepared for the Father's building, and drawn up on high by the instrument of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross (cf. Jn. 12:32), making use of the Holy Spirit as a rope, while your faith was the means by which you ascended, and your love the way which led up to God. You, therefore, as well as all your fellow-travelers, are God-bearers, temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, bearers of holiness, adorned in all respects with the commandments of Jesus Christ.
Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Even as we slog through the trials, persecutions, irritations, temptations, distractions, apathy, and just plain weariness of this world, the gospel points us to heaven where our King Jesus — the Lamb of God who was crucified in our place and raised gloriously from the dead — now sits interceding for us. Not only so, but it calls us forward to that final day when heaven will be filled with the roaring noise of millions upon millions of forgiven voices hailing him as crucified Savior and risen King.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Can we see God? Of course not. Can we know God? Of course not. If God can be known, He will be God no longer. Knowledge is limitation. But I and my Father are one: I find the reality in my soul. These ideas are expressed in some religions, and in others only hinted. In some they were expatriated. Christ's teachings are now very little understood in this country. If you will excuse me, I will say that they have never been very well understood.
Every day I get a choice. I can choose to go God's way or I can choose to go my own way or Satan's way or if I walk out of this door I don't know that I blame myself if my choice. .. because the bottom line is I want what I want what I want. ... People ask me what the greatest sin is. I feel the greatest sin is to want to be God: Pride, I want my own way. What it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ - give as much of yourself as you understand to as much of Jesus as you understand at that moment.
