Maxioms Pet

X
  •   15  /  24  

    Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second. ... The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn March 16, 2000 Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say "act". For what I call "myself" (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called "introspection", are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction "me"' and the stage set "the real world". Now the moment of prayer is for me -- or involves for me as its condition -- the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this "real world" and "real self" are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self -- this clown or hero or super -- under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but -- what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?

Share to:

You May Also Like   /   View all maxioms

  ( comments )
  12  /  20  

The various moral and theological and sociological disputes of the day, however progressively resolved with ecclesiastical connivance, have nothing to read more

The various moral and theological and sociological disputes of the day, however progressively resolved with ecclesiastical connivance, have nothing to say to this spiritual hunger, which is not assuaged by legalized abortion and homosexuality, solaced by contraception, or relieved by majority rule. Nor will it take comfort in the thought that God is dead, or that mankind has come of age, or even in ecumenical negotiations for writing off Papal Infallibility against the validity of Anglican Orders. The only means of satisfying it remains that bread of life which Jesus offered, with the promise that those who are of it should never hunger again. The promise stands.

  ( comments )
  5  /  16  

Maundy Thursday Jesus invites His saints To meet around His board; Here pardon'd rebels sit and read more

Maundy Thursday Jesus invites His saints To meet around His board; Here pardon'd rebels sit and hold Communion with their Lord. For food He give His flesh, He bids us drink His blood; Amazing favor! matchless grace Of our descending God! This holy bread and wine Maintains our fainting breath, By union with our living Lord And interest in His death. Let all our powers be join'd His glorious name to raise; Pleasure and love fill every mind, And every voice be praise.

by Isaac Watts Found in: Christianity Quotes,
Share to:
  ( comments )
  11  /  14  

What men turn to is more important than what they turn from, even if that to which they turn is read more

What men turn to is more important than what they turn from, even if that to which they turn is only a higher moral truth; but to turn to Christ is far more important than to turn to higher moral truth: it is to turn the face towards Him in whom is all moral truth; it is to turn to HIm in whom is not only the virtue which corresponds to the known vice from which the penitent wishes to flee, but all virtue; it is to turn the face to all holiness, all purity, all grace. It was this repentance which the apostles preached after Pentecost. ... Roland Allen, Pentecost and the World ... Also see comments on this book in Bookworms August 23, 2000 Commemoration of Rose of Lima, Contemplative, 1617 Four things a man must learn to do If he would make his record true: To think without confusion clearly, To love his fellow men sincerely, To act from honest motives purely, To trust in God and heaven securely. ... Henry van Dyke August 24, 2000 Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle Beginning a short series on the Bible: The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.

by A.w. Tozer Found in: Christianity Quotes,
Share to:
  ( comments )
  12  /  12  

Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The kingdom of heaven is not come even when read more

Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The kingdom of heaven is not come even when God's will is our law; it is fully come when God's will is our will.

by George Macdonald Found in: Christianity Quotes,
Share to:
  ( comments )
  22  /  26  

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 The ordinary group of worshipping Christians, as the preacher read more

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 The ordinary group of worshipping Christians, as the preacher sees them from the pulpit, does not look like a collection of very joyful people, in fact, they look on the whole rather sad, tired, depressed people. It is certain that such people will never win the world for Christ... It is no use trying to pretend: we may speak of joy and preach about it: but, unless we really have the joy of Christ in our hearts and manifest it, our words will carry no conviction to our hearers.

by Stephen Neill Found in: Christianity Quotes,
Share to:
  ( comments )
  12  /  12  

Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as the article of faith that decides whether the church is read more

Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling. By this he meant that when this doctrine is understood, believed, and preached, as it was in New-Testament times, the church stands in the grace of God and is alive; but where it is neglected, overlaid, or denied, ... the church falls from grace and its life drains away, leaving it in a state of darkness and death.

by J. I. Packer Found in: Christianity Quotes,
Share to:
  ( comments )
  15  /  17  

Few things are more striking than the change which has taken place during my own lifetime in the attitude of read more

Few things are more striking than the change which has taken place during my own lifetime in the attitude of the intelligentsia towards the spokesmen of Christian opinion. When I was a child, bishops expressed doubts about the Resurrection, and were called courageous. When I was a girl, G. K. Chesterton professed belief in the Resurrection, and was called whimsical. When I was at college, thoughtful people expressed belief in the Resurrection "in a spiritual sense", and were called advanced; (any other kind of belief was called obsolete, and its professors were held to be simpleminded). When I was middle-aged, a number of lay persons, including some poets and writers of popular fiction, put forward rational arguments for the Resurrection, and were called courageous. Today, any lay apologist for Christianity... whose works are sold and read, is liable to be abused in no uncertain terms as a mountebank, a reactionary, a tool of the Inquisition, a spiritual snob, an intellectual bully, an escapist, an obstructionist, a psychopathic introvert, an insensitive extrovert, and an enemy of society. The charges are not always mutually compatible, but the common animus behind them is unmistakable, and its name is fear. Writers who attack these domineering Christians are called courageous.

  ( comments )
  7  /  13  

Commemoration of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan Friar, Priest, Martyr, 1941 Paul does not forbid you to use rites and ceremonies, read more

Commemoration of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan Friar, Priest, Martyr, 1941 Paul does not forbid you to use rites and ceremonies, but it is not his wish that he who is free in Christ should be bound by them. He does not condemn the law of works if only one uses it lawfully. Without these things perhaps you will not be pious; but they do not make you pious.

  ( comments )
  3  /  18  

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 One hundred read more

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 One hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become "unity" conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.

by A.w. Tozer Found in: Christianity Quotes,
Share to:
Maxioms Web Pet