I don’t ask God to bless what I do. I pray He will help me to do what He blesses.

…Bob Pierce, founder and president, World Vision

He that gives should never remember, he that receives should never forget.

…Talmud

Every time we say, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.

… J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Plain Christianity [1954]

Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin. Sin for him is not a moral failure; it is not even disobedience. Disobedience is a consequence but not the cause. The cause is: turning away from God, and from God as the highest good, as the love with which God loves Himself, through us. For this reason, since sin has this character — if you say “sins”, it is easily dissolved into moral sins; but sin is first of all basically the power of turning away from God. For this very reason, no moral remedy is possible. Only one remedy is possible: return to God. But this of course is possible only in the power of God, and this power is lost. This is the state of man under the conditions of existence.

…Paul Tillich (1886-1965), A History of Christian Thought [1968]

“People say that we’re searching for the meaning of life. I don’t think that’s it at all. I think what we’re seeking is a spirit of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, and quoted by Aron Ralston in his book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Atria Books, a trademark of Simon Schuster, Inc., 2004, p. 173.
Doubts: A man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood… Doubt must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.
George Macdonald (1824-1905), “The Voice of Job,” Unspoken Sermons, Second Series [1885]
Meditation:
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
— 1 Thessalonians 5;21 (KJV)

When you get to your wit’s end, you’ll find God lives there.

God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.

…Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

“While Christians have had a long heritage of rigorous scholarship and careful thinking, some circles still view the intellect with suspicion or even as contradictory to Christian faith. And many non-Christians are quick to label Christians as anti-intellectual and obscurantist. But this need not be so. In this classic introduction to Christian thinking, John Stott makes a forceful appeal for Christian discipleship that engages the mind as well as the heart.”

The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.

…T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the “worldliness” of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus became man… It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman, a righteous man, or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one… This is what I mean by worldliness — taking life in one’s stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness… How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

…Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Letters and Papers from Prison