Bible Studies And Prayer Quotes

The word of God renewed my mind. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Samuel Chadwick said, "The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless works and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray!" Prayer ~ Neal Pirolo

Above all the studies in the world, study your own hearts; waste not a minute more of your precious time about frivolous & unsubstantial controversies. My dear flock, I have, according to the grace given me, labored in the course of my ministry among you, to feed you with the heart strengthening bread of practical doctrine, and I do assure you, it is far better you should have the sweet and saving impressions of gospel truths, feelingly and powerfully conveyed to your hearts, than only to understand them by a bare ratiocination, or a dry syllogistical inference. Leave trifling studies to such as have time lying on their hands and know not how to employ it. Remember you are at the door of eternity, and have other work to do. Those hours you spend upon heart-work in your closets, are the golden spots of all your time and will have the sweetest influence up to your last hour. ~ John Flavel

Behind these practical studies lay powerful, intertwined, and potentially contradictory beliefs: that language provides a key to the rational, scientific understanding of the world and that language is more than human speech, that it claims a divine origin and is the means by which God created the cosmos and Adam named the beasts.

As we will see, both ideas strongly influenced the Inklings, whose leading members wrote many words about the meaning of words. For Owen Barfield, language is the fossil record of the history and evolution of human consciousness; for C. S. Lewis, it is a mundane tool that "exists to communicate whatever it can communicate" but also, as in That Hideous Strength, an essential part of our metaphysical makeup for good or ill; for Charles Williams, language is power, a field of force for the magician, a vehicle of prayer for the believing Christian; for Tolkien, language is a fallen human instrument and a precious divine gift ("O felix peccatum Babel!" he exclaimed in his essay "English and Welsh"), a supreme art, and, as "Word", a name for God. ~ Philip Zaleski

I study the Bible constantly. I teach the Bible. You know, I'm a Bible conductor, and I have a lot of people studies. But also, I see how small things really help people to get over humps in their life. Gives them direction. ~ George Benson

For who could better describe the eye than God, Who made it? But as it is clearer than the day that God has left a good deal to our own efforts ... we should really follow in these things the thread of nature, by which first principles, reason and daily experience lead us. Therefore, He prompts the minds of great men to inquire into the nature which He created, and He furthers and conducts their studies. These things must be enough to us, and from Holy Scripture we should seek in the first place only those things which are necessary to salvation. ~ Georg Joachim Rheticus

I am interested in the literature and religion of ancient Israel. I focus on biblical law in its ancient Near Eastern context and on the way that biblical law was later reinterpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature. I have also explored the relation of the Bible to later western intellectual history. In my latest book, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, I explore the relationship between biblical composition history and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature.

At the University of Minnesota, I have department affiliations with the Center for Jewish Studies and the Program in Religious Studies and am also an affiliated faculty member of the Law School. ~ Bernard M. Levinson

So many people grew up in the church, and you can have an awesome upbringing, but I made a personal conviction; I made a personal decision when I was very young. I enjoy going to church without my parents. On Sunday mornings, I want to go. Bible studies on Wednesdays ... I have a relationship - not just through my parents. ~ AJ Michalka

Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it. ~ John Gresham Machen

I had done something wrong. I shouldn't have shown him. But he had known, hadn't he? What had I done? I retreated quickly down the aisle, pushing my way through the double doors into the porch, where I swiped one of my eyes dry. For a long moment I stood in the dim room, looking blankly at the flyers for bake sales and Bible studies on the noticeboard.
Then I heard him shout, "Damn you! Why?"
I looked through the clear glass of the porch doors to see if he spoke to some barely seen faerie. But to my eyes, there was no one there but Luke and God. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

It was during my study in Israel that I came to the realization that most of what I had learned in my courses in religion in the United States was outdated or in error. In order to understand what the biblical position is on any subject and, particularly on the subject of sex, one has to do it from a Hebrew perspective. ~ Roy B. Blizzard

During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield.
Let me refine that.
He didn't want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn't imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor.
That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn't reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed.
I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women's Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn't that selfish? What if that wasn't God's will?
I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn't exactly what I prayed for.
Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris?
Had my prayers even been heard?
If it was God's plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can't say that ~ Taya Kyle

I like reading my bible, I like bible studies where I get together with others and talk about the word of God and how it relates to us and how we can change to become more like him. ~ Bernhard Langer

I do not make decisions [as governor] based on what have I learned through my Bible studies, what have I learned in my religious classes in school. I'm a big believer in separation of church and state, and I think that's what ... the law is. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

We don't teach from Books of the Bible because it gets in the way of evangelism. We don't offer different kinds of Bible studies because it gets in the way of evangelism. We don't teach doctrine because it gets in the way of evangelism. If you want to be fed God's word or have the Bible explained to you then you are a fat lazy Christian and you need to shut up and get to work or you need to leave this church because we ONLY do evangelism. ~ Steven Furtick

We don't see the New Testament church hoarding the feast for themselves, gorging, getting fatter and fatter and asking for more; more bible studies, more sermons, more programs, classes, training, conferences, information, more feasting for us. At some point, the church stopped living the bible and decided just to study it, culling the feast parts and whitewashing the fast parts. We are addicted to the buffet, skillfully discarding the costly discipleship required after consuming. The feast is supposed to sustain the fast, but we go back for seconds and thirds and fourths, stuffed to the brim and fat with inactivity. ~ Jen Hatmaker

At some point, our faith and our words must become our actions and lives. Do we talk more about God than we obey him? We aren't going to get to heaven and have God say, "Thanks for talking about doing so much for me with your friends. That was awesome!" Many of us have sat in Bible studies or retreats or church talking about what we want to change and how we want to live for God, only to go home and back to the routine of life. Change is a funny thing. It takes change to change. ~ Jennie Allen

The person who prays and who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the word he desires to worship (in order to be more single-mindedly at the word's disposal) will select with great care basic works for his studies which will observe the so-called exactitude of scholarship without losing sight of the most important exactitude, namely, the ordering of all thought toward prayer. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Friends I would like to challenge you to do an experiment, in the privacy of your studies. Everywhere you see the name "Jesus" in the Bible, replace it with the word light and see what that does to you. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Texts like the Bible and the works of the holy elders were written under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The person who studies them partakes of this Divine Grace in a mystical way. The soul is nourished with Grace even if the person who reads such literature does not understand the meaning of what is being read. "Just by reading this material," he claimed, "the individual becomes spiritually empowered by the Grace embedded in the words themselves. ~ Kyriacos C. Markides

I think a lot of people, even Christians, are willing to be satisfied with gaining lots and lots of biblical knowledge - and many people go to Bible studies and don't realize it isn't enough to know what's right, it's applying the information and the knowledge that you have. ~ Charles Stanley

A Cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible and the Second Coming of Christ; who frequently attends Bible studies; who has a high level of financial giving to a Christian cause; who home schools his children; who has accumulated survival foods and has a strong belief in the 2nd Amendment, and who distrusts Big Government. ~ Janet Reno

In Lake Placid we have Bible studies and it's awesome to be able to share your struggles as an athlete and as a Christian with others Christian athletes. That's one of the coolest things about sports ministry. We can share these common experiences with other Christians. Having Lolo as a teammate, for example, has been great. ~ Elana Meyers

Here's our problem today. Not only do we not like ultimatums, but we have too many Christians who have accepted Jesus into their hearts and who have been baptized and who have confessed their sins and who have joined the Church and who are in Bible studies and who are absolutely 100 percent convinced they are going to heaven, but who are not followers of Jesus. There are many who haven't made it real. The mark of a follower of Jesus is following. The mark of a follower of Jesus is that she or he has given Jesus her or his heart. It's that simple. It's that demanding. It's that serious. Jesus was a moral zealot and he expected his followers to become moral zealots too. He wanted them to live the Committed. Life. ~ Scot McKnight

Meanwhile, I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar. No longer chained to the assumption that the stories I read were literally true, I became aware of a more meaningful truth in the text, a truth intentionally detached from the exigencies of history. Ironically, the more I learned about the life of the historical Jesus, the turbulent world in which he lived, and the brutality of the Roman occupation that he defied, the more I was drawn to him. Indeed, the Jewish peasant and revolutionary who challenged the rule of the most powerful empire the world had ever known and lost became so much more real to me than the detached, unearthly being I had been introduced to in church. Today, I can confidently say ~ Reza Aslan

Sometimes people ask me how I can be both a Catholic and a scientist, particularly a scientist who, at least for some research, studies evolution. I tell them that they are confusing us with Evangelicals. Catholics don't have anything against evolution. A literal interpretation of the Bible, the kind that says that the earth is six thousand years old, has never been a part of our religion, at least not since the Saint Augustine warned against preaching idiocy to Pagans in 415 AD. He said that if you tell people that they have to believe in things that they know are not true and that do not matter then they will never believe you when you tell them things that are true and that do matter, things about Christ and the resurrection. The Church's friendliness towards science is not to protect science. It is to protect Christianity. ~ Gina DeMarco

I charge every reader of this message to ask himself frequently what the Bible is to him. Is it a Bible in which you have found nothing more than good moral precepts and sound advice? Or is it a Bible in which you have found Christ? Is it a Bible in which Christ is all? If not, I tell you plainly, you have hitherto used your Bible to very little purpose. You are like a man who studies the solar system, and leaves out in his studies the sun, which is the center of all. It is no wonder if you find your Bible a dull book! ~ J.C. Ryle

Obedience is the thing, living in active response to the living God. The most important question we ask of this text is not, 'What does this mean?' but 'What can I obey?' A simple act of obedience will open up our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Scholars may quote Plato in studies, but the hearts of millions shall quote the Bible at their daily toil, and draw strength from its inspiration, as the meadows draw it from the brook. ~ Moncure D. Conway

What do we inherit, and how, and why? The relatively new field of epigenetics studies the impact of environment and experience on genes themselves. How much had the gene pool of the Waldens - that apparently cheerful extended family I had seen singing on YouTube - formed me? I did not come from the line of small, wiry, dark-eyed people of the shtetl, the men swaying over crumbling tombstones, prayer books in their hands. The imprint of pogroms, of the difficulties and sorrows of immigrant life was not mine - at least not in the physical sense. But I had carried these things a long way in my heart. I was of that dusty and doomed Polish village - and I was not. What had I inherited psychologically? What was in my blood? I was made of three people: my mother, my father, Ben Walden. Disparate worlds had been floating and colliding within me all my life. ~ Dani Shapiro

I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies. ~ N. T. Wright