Openness To God Quotes

Not even God can teach a man who comes to the Bible with his mind made up. ~ William Barclay

Contemplative prayer is not so much a type of prayer as something that should be a component of all prayer. It is the silence and space for stillness before God that supports genuine presence and openness to God . . . Sadly, it is this contemplative dimension that is most lacking from prayer. Communal prayer seldom leaves sufficient space for stillness before God in silence. Even liturgical prayer often leaves inadequate space for silence, and nonliturgical worship experiences are, of course, usually infamously devoid of silence. Intentional times of personal prayer are often rushed and reduced to the basics of petitions, intercession and possibly an expression or two of gratitude. All this is certainly worthy of being called prayer. But lacking the contemplative dimension, it is not holistic prayer and it will not be transformational. ~ David G. Benner

Pilgrimage always involves both an exterior and interior journey. Any travel can be a pilgrimage, regardless of the destination or whether or not there even is a destination. The difference between a pilgrim and a tourist is the intention of attention and openness to God. This transforms a trip into a pilgrimage, and the result is that the self that sets out on pilgrimage will not be the same as the self that returns. ~ David G. Benner

My children, mark me. I pray you. Know! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood; for God is love no less than he is truth; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives ... If anyone would ask me what God is, I should answer: God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow. ~ Meister Eckhart

If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God. ~ Lyman Abbott

A real friend is one who helps us to think our best thoughts, do our noblest deeds, and be our finest selves. ~ Elizabeth George

When we withhold forgiveness from others (for whatever reason) we are putting ourselves in the role of God or even being superior to God, who freely extends his grace and forgiveness to us time and time again. ~ Robert A. Fryling

Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. ~ Paul Tillich

Heart-to-heart journaling is a dialogue with God where both you and God are talking and you are recording it on paper. Heart-to-heart journaling is simply writing out your thoughts to God and what you sense to be His answer or response to you. ~ Linda Boone

Oh the gift that god could give us, to see ourselves as others see others. ~ Robert Burns

Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks: What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter or energy into the universe? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion. ~ Robert Jastrow

The Lord commands us to learn and discover all we can in this life. There's nothing wrong with wanting to know the mysteries of outer space or the latent powers of the mind. The problem comes when we desire to use that knowledge for our own gratification, rather than to build the kingdom of God. ~ Chris Heimerdinger

When you are offered a miracle take it. Otherwise, show God your tail so he can move on and give it to someone who doesn't want to be in hell any more. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Jesus offers unconditional grace; we are to offer unconditional grace. The mercy of Christ preceded our mistakes; our mercy must precede the mistakes of others. Those in the circle of Christ had no doubt of his love; those in our circles should have no doubts about ours. What does it mean to have a heart like his? It means to kneel as Jesus knelt, touching the grimy parts of the people we are stuck with and washing away their unkindnesses with kindness. Or as Paul wrote, "Be kind and loving to each other, and forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ" (Eph. 4:32). ~ Max Lucado

To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Enslavement to God signifies liberation from all other forms of servitude, and although modern man may think that he is liberated, he is in fact a slave to his desires... He is 'addicted' to hoarding wealth, sex, violence, intoxicants and so on. But above all, he is often seduced by the capitalist system that tends to work through the invention of false needs, which he feels must be satisfied instantly. ~ Donald W. Flood

My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me. That means that everything I think and feel is by nature a response, and the one to whom I respond is God. I never speak the first word. I never make the first move. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

He was looking at her with that intense blazing gaze – the one that made her feel she was the only woman in the world. Oh God, don't let him get to her. She'd tried to raise her defences against him, but he was so very attractive – almost irresistible. It would be easy to admit defeat… ~ Emily Arden

For many years of my life, I was very fearful. I let fear rule different areas of my life and it caused me to be enslaved by fear. It also caused me to miss out on a lot of opportunities. God has a lot for you. Yes, YOU! There's work to be done. There's doors to be taken. There's a need to stand firm. There's a reason to speak up. Do not let fear rule you. Remember what God promises. Remember Who your God is and remember He is a big God, a faithful God, and that you have no reason to fear. ~ Tania Goody

If you want to make God laugh, then tell him your plans! ~ Robin S. Sharma

She turned her own Bible to John 13. The pastor began to preach about how Jesus loved Peter even though he knew ahead of time that Peter would deny him three times. "God loves us in the same way," Reverend Mitchell said. "Not because of what we do, but because of who he is. We can't earn God's favor by working for it. We don't earn it by our beauty or our possessions, for God is the one who gives those things anyway. His love is not dependent on anything. He loved us when we were unlovable, just as he did Peter. ~ Colleen Coble

Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man ... such a man is a true gentleman. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's only one way to find peace with a painful past and that is through a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. He alone, through His Spirit, can place a healing balm on our deep wounds. The Bible says: "You can't heal a wound by saying it's not there!" (Jeremiah 6:14 TLB)
We (Beth and Sherrie) have found that in the places that hurt the most, God brings a promise from the Bible to our memory at just the right time. We have experienced comfort and growth through our growing relationship with Jesus and how we long for the same growth for you! ~ Beth Willis Miller

If people are not sharing their faith in your church, if they're not having a quiet time, if they're not living godly lives, then you need to change your style of preaching. You are obviously not seeing lives changed through the Word of God. So what is the problem? The problem isn't the Word. The problem is your preaching style. ~ Bruce Wilkinson

The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are rediculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor. ~ Ray Bradbury

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me.
When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again? ~ Amy Tan

Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious
defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking
after himself. ~ Richard Dawkins

He learned to trust the Father when circumstances seemed hopeless. Christ used the tool of adversity to forge radiant joy in his spirit. ~ Nicholas Cappas

God speaks to us by speaking through us, and any meaning we arrive at in this life is composed of the irreducible details of the life that is around us at any moment. "I think there is no light in the world / but the world," writes George Oppen. "And I think there is light. ~ Christian Wiman

Worship of God is not restricted to believers alone ~ Sunday Adelaja

Sometimes, you have to go through a bunch of life lessons before God unites you with the person you were meant to be with. ~ Shannon L. Alder

It stank pretty bad, of course: manure was caked all over the wagon. But we were free. Right then I was elated with a sense of how faithful God is to his promises; I was free, and I was smiling joyfully on a manure wagon. As we ambled along, I laughed to myself when I thought of God's sense of humor in delivering us that way. Even today, the smell of manure reminds me of freedom. ~ Diet Eman

For others the mourning is over. Others would say that whilst one God has died - the God of ontotheology perhaps? - this allows for the good news of a God who is to come, a God who will be better able to gather up and give justice to all the manifold aspirations of human life towards goodness and meaning (and not just to those who are able to fit into a narrow 'religious' framework). ~ George Pattison

Reality, like God and History, tends to direct people to wherever they want to go. ~ Pauline Kael

The world is anxiously waiting to see what Jesus Christ can do in, by, for, and through one man wholly given to him - God-led. You can be that man. ~ Frank Buchman

After Sara's accident, so many well-intentioned people had offered her words of hope - that God would heal her, that she would see again - as if that was a given. It was the same hope people had offered Marilyn all those years ago. Story upon story of women who had struggled through infertility and ended up with a child on the other side.
'God is good. It'll happen,' they had told her.
As if God's goodness depended upon whether or not He answered prayers the way people wanted Him to answer. The hard truth was the sometimes He didn't. He hadn't rescued Marilyn from her infertility, and He hadn't rescued Sara from her blindness. But that didn't negate His goodness. It just meant that He had different plans. ~ Katie Ganshert

Quit worrying about what other people think and just be who God made you to be. If you will run your race, God will take care of your critics. ~ Joel Osteen

The third of the biblical Ten Commandments instructs humans never to make wrongful use of the name of God. People tend to understand this in a childish way, as a prohibition on uttering the explicit name of God (as in the famous Monty Python sketch 'If you say Jehovah...'). Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions, or our personal hatreds. As a resident of the Middle East I am keenly aware how often people break this commandment. The world would be a much better place if we followed it more devotedly. You want to wage war on your neighbours and steal their land? Leave God out of it, and find yourself some other excuse. ~ Yuval Noah Harari