You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray read more

You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer. It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing. .. Luis Palau March 14, 2001 Most evangelicals believe that if a passage of the Bible seems unclear in its meaning, it should be interpreted in the light of Scripture "as a whole". But what does "Scripture as a whole" mean? In practice, if not theory, it means the working systematic theology of the interpreter, or of his own theological tradition. An evangelical... would not hold to that tradition unless he believed that it did represent the wholeness of the biblical witness. Nevertheless, if this state of affairs has been correctly described, he is now in a serious difficulty. For if the Bible must always accord with a theology that has already been accepted, how can the truth of a biblical passage ever confront him afresh with an unfavorable judgment?

Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 If you believe, where are your works? Your faith is something everyone read more

Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 If you believe, where are your works? Your faith is something everyone knows, for everyone knows that Christ was [crucified], and that everywhere men pray to Him. The whole world knows that His glory has not been spread by force and weapons, but by poor fishermen. 0 wise man, do you think the poor fishermen were not clever enough for this? Where they worked, there they made hearts better; where they could not work, there men remained bad; and therefore was the faith true and from God. The signs which the Lord had promised followed their teaching: in His name they drove out the devil; they spoke in new tongues; if they drank any deadly drink, they received therefrom no harm. Even if these wonders had not occurred, there would have been the wonder of wonders, that poor fishermen without any miracle could accomplish so great a work as the faith. It came from God, and so is Christ true, and Christ is thy God, who is in heaven and awaits thee.

[The] doctrine of progress sustained our fathers in the carrying of capitalistic democratic culture to most parts of the globe. read more

[The] doctrine of progress sustained our fathers in the carrying of capitalistic democratic culture to most parts of the globe. Its core was the conviction that in thus extending the range of western liberal culture and developing its assumptions, they were in effect establishing on earth that which would grow into the kingdom of God. Some put it sharply but un-Biblically: "building the Kingdom". That whole view exists today only as debris, for it has foundered on the rocks, not so much of human sin, as of the contradictions and complexities of the very western culture which was the substance of its belief.

It is for us, in whom the Christian Church is at this moment partially embodied, to declare that Christianity, that read more

It is for us, in whom the Christian Church is at this moment partially embodied, to declare that Christianity, that the Christian faith can do that for the world which the world needs. You say, "What can I do?" You can furnish one Christian life. You can furnish a life so faithful to every duty, so ready for every service, so determined not to commit every sin, that the great Christian Church shall be the stronger for your living in it, and the problem of the world be answered, and a certain great peace come into this poor, perplexed phase of our humanity as it sees that new revelation of what Christianity is.

Commemoration of James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda, 1885 In our Ashrams of East read more

Commemoration of James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda, 1885 In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart", in which we tell our needs... We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to appear better than we really are.

Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107 Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased read more

Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107 Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God. Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it.

Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 While extremely sensitive as to the slightest approach to slander, read more

Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 While extremely sensitive as to the slightest approach to slander, you must also guard against an extreme into which some people fall who, in their desire to speak evil of no one, actually uphold and speak well of vice. If you have to do with one who is unquestionably a slanderer, do not excuse him by calling him frank and free-spoken; do not call one who is notoriously vain, liberal and elegant; do not call dangerous levities mere simplicity; do not screen disobedience under the name of zeal; or arrogance, of frankness; or evil intimacy, of friendship. No, my friends, we must never, in our wish to shun slander, foster or flatter vice in others: but we must call evil evil, and sin sin, and so doing we shall serve God's glory.

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 But sons who are more generously and read more

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 But sons who are more generously and candidly treated by their fathers do not hesitate to offer them incomplete and halfdone and even defective works, trusting that their obedience and readiness of mind will be accepted by their fathers, even though they have not quite achieved what their fathers intended. Such children ought we to be, firmly trusting that our services will be approved by our most merciful Father, however small, rude, and imperfect these may be.

God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because read more

God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human, and therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple. Seeing that it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill.