Spiritual Poverty Quotes

Afghanistan doesn't have the oil of the Khazars, he said, and we're not ready to prostitute our women like the Thais. Unlike the Westerner's, ours is not a spiritual poverty but a material one. When our needs in that area are met, we will not have the dilemma or crisis of Western man. ~ Zia Haider Rahman

The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become - the more we realize that everything in life is a gift. The tenor of our lives becomes one of humble and joyful thanksgiving. Awareness of our poverty and ineptitude causes us to rejoice in the gift of being called out of darkness into wondrous light and translated into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. ~ Brennan Manning

As I looked at material and spiritual poverty in the world around me, including approximately 2 billion people who haven't even heard the gospel, I knew that I needed to make some major changes in my life. ~ David Platt

Poverty is a funny phenomenon. It is always defined financially and always relative to what other people earn. It is possible to be extremely happy despite having little money and being officially categorised as poverty-stricken. You can also be really unhappy despite earning a high salary. Those who always want something more will always live in poverty, regardless of how much they earn, while those who are content with what they have will always feel they have an abundance. Most poverty in the UK isn't material poverty, it's spiritual poverty, a state of mind in which fulfilment comes only from the pursuit of material gain. ~ Mark Boyle

We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's presence in the power of the Holy Spirit. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

Ordinary citizens are so accepting of what is going on, grumbling when their material interests were affected, but seemingly accepting the spiritual poverty so characteristic of today. ~ Charles Handy

There is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. ~ Pope Francis

If I am practicing spiritual poverty, which says that I own nothing, then the problems aren't mine and neither are the energy and compassion pouring through my heart to try to solve them. I am just a link in the process. If I don't take anything personally, then I can do great work without flagging. The Dalai Lama once said, 'Try with all your might - to work very, very hard - to make the world a better place, and if all your efforts are to no avail ... no hard feelings!' ~ Bo Lozoff

It is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

I am a priest, and while I listened to your homily this morning, I realized that I have not been the good shepherd I thought I was. I have never allowed myself to deal with faults in the church and always defended it against the complaints of people. Your homily made me realize that people's complaints are often a plea for help, an expression of their caring and their craving for greater intimacy with God. These pleas fell on my deaf ears, and I failed to nourish them. The financially poor are not the only people who are poor. Spiritual poverty is even more painful, and I have failed to recognize that in my people. This I humbly confess. ~ Joseph F. Girzone

Greatest poverty of all - the spiritual poverty of seeming abandonment by God: ~ Fulton J. Sheen

This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

When a society lacks God, even prosperity is joined by a terrible spiritual poverty. ~ Pope Francis

We fail to see the gospel as the solution to our greatest problem-our guilt, condemnation, and alienation from God. Beyond that, we fail to see it as the basis of our day-to-day acceptance with Him. As a result, many believers live in spiritual poverty. ~ Jerry Bridges

God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don't need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness. ~ Brennan Manning

When you have a spiritual foundation, you look at poverty differently then. ~ Dennis Banks

It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture. ~ Hans Hofmann

What makes the Bible's miracle stories so compelling is the idea that God cares about people's suffering, not simply their "spiritual blindness" or "spiritual poverty" but also their actual blindness and actual poverty. The apostle Paul insisted to the Corinthian church that the physical resurrection of Jesus, as witnessed by more than five hundred people, portends the resurrection of all who have died, all who have suffered, and that without it "our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14). ~ Rachel Held Evans

Prayer - Christian prayer - by its very nature is born out of an acknowledgment of need, out of an honest recognition of spiritual poverty. ~ Paul Murray

The tyranny of relativism is the spiritual poverty of our time ~ Pope Francis

Love is a cruel pain that devours everything. Sometimes it tears the veil from the soul, sometimes it draws it together. An atom of love is preferable to all that exists between the horizons, an atom of its pain better than the happy love of all lovers. Love is the marrow of beings; but there can be no real love without real suffering. Whoever is grounded firm in love renounces faith, religion, and unbelief. Love will open the door of spiritual poverty and poverty will show you the way of unbelief. When there remains neither unbelief nor religion, your body and your soul will disappear; you will then be worthy of the mysteries- if you could fathom them, this is the only way. ~ Farid Al-Din Attar

Whatever change you desire for the world, create that change in your own life. You are here for a purpose. Seek it out. Hunt it down. The greatest misery is to be purposeless. The great depression of our age is not economic, but spiritual. Our spiritual poverty is rooted in our purposelessness. ~ Matthew Kelly

Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon. ~ Thomas Merton

You are not what you have done, but what you have overcome. All the hardships, the mistakes, the rejections, the pain and all the times you questioned why have given birth to the wisdom and strength that will help you shine your light on the world, even in the darkest of hour. Failures and struggles keep you humble. Success and achievement keep you glowing, but only faith and determination keep you going. Stay focused and celebrate your efforts too, not just the outcomes. ~ John Geiger

It was in 1967, and I was on a spiritual pilgrimage to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. That was before the Beatles saw him, by the way, when not too many people knew of him. Anyway, I visited the Taj and noticed its wonderful sound. ~ Paul Horn

An unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of spiritual truth. ~ Geza Vermes

You have to be able to connect to the world of archetypes. That is not so easy, and most people in the West have no clue, that that is necessary, because they have no clue of what that means. They see the image, they see Buddha here, but they don't see what the image represents. Its one thing to see with this physical eyes, it's another thing to see with this spiritual eye. ~ Robert Svoboda

People in that crowd want to make poverty history, but NOT if they have to pay for it themselves ~ Ben Elton

You can find Calcutta anywhere in the world. You only need two eyes to see. Everywhere in the world there are people that are not loved, people that are not wanted nor desired, people that no one will help, people that are pushed away or forgotten. And this is the greatest poverty. ~ Mother Teresa

Many believers get together to discuss a great book and mistakenly call it Bible study. That is, in fact, a book club with a spiritual theme. ~ Jen Hatmaker

Reporter Jacob Riis made it his mission to expose the horrors of poverty in New York. New to working with a camera, his flash actually set the walls of One apartment inhabited by five blind people on fire. ~ H.W. Brands

The cigar has been smoked out, and we are the ashes. ~ Anthony Trollope

Intentionally or involuntarily, your earthly and spiritual fathers will lead you the perfect Father. You might not recognize it, but even when they fail, they create the perfect scenario for you to run into your Heavenly Daddy's arms.

When they reject you, He will receive you. When they fail at meeting you, He will open up His schedule. When they miscommunicate with you, He will share His heart of love for you and, His heart of love for them. ~ Carlos A. Rodriguez

Frederick Faber: In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness. He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been for eternity ... There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and He will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when he quickens His pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens, slacken at once: and do not be slow only, but silent, very silent, for He is God. ~ John Ortberg

The time will come when all people will view with horror light way in which society and its courts of law now take human life; and when that time comes, the way will be clear to device some better method of dealing with poverty and ignorance and their frequent byproducts, which we call crime. ~ Clarence Darrow

I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, but I didn't really know I was a deprived, poverty-stricken child until the media made me aware of it. ~ Ving Rhames

To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. ~ Jack Kornfield

The rise of the Divine Feminine does not have to be at the expense of the Sacred Masculine. It is about the complete respect of the differences that the Sacred Masculine and Divine Feminine bring to a physical and spiritual union. ~ Reena Kumarasingham

It was not the military prowess of the Germani that kept them outside the Empire, but their poverty.11 ~ Peter Heather

God is where there are no 'fees' being charged, where there is no botheration and where there is no scolding; that is where God is. ~ Dada Bhagwan

When you choose a Guru you become a follower. When your Guru chooses you, you become a disciple ~ Guruji Naushir

Translating this to the spiritual regions as their wont is, the poets sang beautifully how roses fade and petals fall. The moment is brief they sang; the moment is over; one long night is then to be slept by all. ~ Virginia Woolf

Getting offended is the bait of Satan for the believer. ~ David McGee

Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict. ~ Bertrand Russell

There are three fundamental phases to psychological and spiritual growth: being with difficult material (e.g., old wounds, anger); releasing it; and replacing it with something more beneficial. ~ Rick Hanson

Maintain a prayerful frame of heart in the intervals of duty. What reason can be assigned why our hearts are so dull, so careless, so wandering, when we hear or pray, but that there have been long intermissions in our communion with God? If that divine unction, that spiritual fervour, and those holy impressions, which we obtain from God while engaged in the performance of one duty, were preserved to enliven and engage us in the performance of another, they would be of incalculable service to keep our hearts serious and devout. For this purpose, frequent ejaculations between stated and solemn duties are of most excellent use: they not only preserve the mind in a composed and pious frame, but they connect one stated duty, as it were, with another, and keep the attention of the soul alive to all its interests and obligations. ~ John Flavel

Be encouraged to be an encourager. It's a spiritual art that everyone can learn. And mostly you learn by practicing it. ~ Jill Briscoe

What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world - the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy - have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is. ~ Ramakrishna

Growing up in New Orleans and just being in a poverty-stricken neighborhood gave me that same fire that Eazy had to separate himself from what could have ended up being such a bad situation. ~ Jason Mitchell

I realized there really is a natural interplay between my spirituality and my creativity. When I enter into a spirit of prayer, I can cultivate a receptive space and actually ask God for creative ideas that will enhance my my praying. Then these creative practices allow me to enter into the spiritual space even more quickly and deeply. The result is a spiraling effect leading to ever-expanding dimensions, encompassing both deeper spirituality and heightened creativity. ~ David Brazzeal

Freedom in society is gauged by our success in getting what we want and conditioned by status and power, by race, class and gender. In the internal world of the psyche, however, freedom means something very different. It is the ability to opt for our long-term physical and spiritual well-being as opposed to our immediate urges. Absent that ability, any talk of 'free will' or 'choice' becomes nearly meaningless. ~ Gabor Mate

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." Simon's insight is often reduced to "In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention." Our ~ Kevin Kelly

There's a real sense of desperation when you grow up in poverty. ~ Ray Lamontagne

The chit is semi-animate (half-alive) and the mind is completely physical. ~ Dada Bhagwan

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Amidst sorrows, the only thing that enlivens us is optimistic faith. Never lose that faith. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi