Unbelieving Quotes

The very fact of having fixed conclusions to strive for in orthodox belief does not render the Christian philosopher dogmatic but rather intellectually fruitful, willing to take and follow reason further than the putatively undogmatic unbelieving philosopher ~ Gregory B. Sadler

You must pray with all your might. That does not mean saying your prayers, or sitting gazing about in church or chapel with eyes wide open while someone else says them for you. It means fervent, effectual, untiring wrestling with God. This kind of prayer be sure the devil and the world and your own indolent, unbelieving nature will oppose. They will pour water on this flame. ~ William Booth

Fear not, is the Lord's command and His divine encouragement to those who at His bidding are launching upon new seas; the divine presence and preservation forbid so much as one unbelieving fear. Without our God we should fear to move; but when He bids us to, it would be dangerous to tarry. Reader, go forward, and fear not. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

She was surprised to feel his hand on her arm and still more surprised-almost unbelieving-to see his fingers unclasp his identification bracelet and remove it from his arm. Silently he fumbled with the bracelet and slipped it around her right wrist. with a tiny click he snapped the clasp shut. Jane gave a gasp of astonishment and turned questioning to Stan. She was wearing his identification bracelet! The silver links on her wrist were still warm from his arm ~ Beverly Cleary

brings some blessings to unbelieving people. Jesus tells us, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44), and since there is no restriction in the context simply to pray for their salvation, and since the command to pray for our persecutors is coupled with a command to love them, it seems reasonable to conclude that God intends to answer our prayers even for our persecutors with regard to many areas of life. ~ Wayne A. Grudem

When the Christian or the church becomes popular with the unbelieving world, something is seriously wrong. Because Christ runs counter to evil and because we are Christ-owned, we must also stand against evil. ~ Billy Graham

Little men," he once said, "spend their days in pursuit of such things. I know from experience that at the moment of their deaths they see their lives shattered before them like glass. I've seen them die. They fall away as if they have been pushed, and the expressions on their faces are those of the most unbelieving surprise. Not so, the man who knows the virtues and lives by them. The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or not, and those who should prevail are often defeated. But it doesn't matter. The virtues remain uncorrupted and uncorruptible. They are rewards in themselves, the bulwarks with which we can protect our vision of beauty, and the strengths by which we may stand, unperturbed, in the storm that comes when seeking God. ~ Mark Helprin

From their midst a broad-shouldered man stepped forth, past Longwick, who tried vainly to motion him back. He ran three strides toward me, and I took a deep, unbelieving breath of his scent just before he enfolded me in a bear hug. Despite the pain to my shoulder, I didn't struggle. I dropped my head on his shoulder, and let him support me, feeling safer than I had in years. Suddenly, it seemed as if everything would be all right, as if everything could be mended. Heart of the Pack was here and he never let us come to harm. ~ Robin Hobb

If we are haunted by God, nothing else can get in, no cares, no tribulation, no anxieties. We see now why Our Lord so emphasised the sin of worry. How can we dare be so utterly unbelieving when God is round about us? To be haunted by God is to have an effective barricade against all the onslaughts of the enemy. "His soul shall dwell at ease." In tribulation, misunderstanding, slander, in the midst of all these things, if our life is hid with Christ in God, He will keep us at ease. We rob ourselves of the marvellous revelation of this abiding companionship of God. "God is our Refuge" - nothing can come through that shelter. ~ Oswald Chambers

Jesus H. Christ!" I exclaimed. I felt it again, unbelieving, but there it was. "You always said your head was solid bone, and I'll be damned if you weren't right. She shot you point-blank, and the bloody ball bounced off your skull!" Jamie, ~ Diana Gabaldon

The holiness of the gospel softens the hardness of the heart. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

echo James's exhortation to those of us in the church today: My brothers and sisters who have received the Holy Spirit, we often lack love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc., even while many of our unbelieving friends exhibit these traits - brothers and sisters, these things ought not to be so! ~ Francis Chan

In Paul's view a church should not merely survive in its unfriendly pagan environment, but advance. Christians should have nothing to do with a sad acceptance of harsh surroundings, bearing heavy crosses with uncomplaining gloom, cultivating an oppressive sense of sin. They were to be positive, doing good to one another and to unbelieving Jews and pagans regardless of abuse or injury. "Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks." No matter how adverse the circumstances, their way of life should be a rebuke to foulness and a spur to their neighbors to seek for themselves this new, extraordinary existence; Christians must outlove, outjoy, outthink, and always welcome those who opposed them. ~ John Charles Pollock

A highly trained scientist who is also a perfected man may eventually create a world and people it, but a dissolute unrepentant, unbelieving one will never be such a creator even in eternities.

Secular knowledge, important as it may be, can never save a soul nor open the celestial kingdom nor create a world nor make a man a god, but it can be most helpful to that man who, placing first things first, has found the way to eternal life and who can now bring into play all knowledge to be his tool and servant. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Better mendacities Than the classics in paraphrase! Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later ... some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, non "dulce" non "et decor" . walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, the unbelieving came home, home to a lie. ~ Ezra Pound

Ideas were growing in all directions and dimensions; they were becoming a sculpture, or a castle. And then everyone left her, to return to their own affairs; and she was alone, and empty and unbelieving again. ~ Kristin Cashore

A different path of self-reflection is required if we are interested in the borders rather than the beliefs of Christianity. In my experience - in my conversations with "unbelieving neighbours" - I have learned that Christianity appears quite differently from the borders. Take, ~ Anthony Ledonne

Unless we're alone in the middle of nowhere, there are very few times in our days when our actions are not affecting someone's soul. The way we drive, the way we treat our waitress, how many items are in our cart when we pick the "express" lane, what we post online, the expression on our face, how we dress, and whether we pay our bills on time are all being thoughtfully scrutinized by an unbelieving world. ~ Sarah Hawkes Valente

If we are obsessed by God, nothing else can get into our lives - not concerns, nor tribulation, nor worries. And now we understand why our Lord so emphasized the sin of worrying. How can we dare to be so absolutely unbelieving when God totally surrounds us? To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy. ~ Oswald Chambers

Lord, will you send me with such an unbelieving heart to persuade others to believe? Must I daily plead with sinners about everlasting life and everlasting death, and have no more belief or feeling of these weighty things myself? Oh send me not naked and unprovided to the work; but, as you command me to do it, furnish me with a spirit suitable thereto." Prayer ~ Richard Baxter

I think I also don't confess because I am still so unbelieving of what happened. I am still aghast. I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone to someone else. So I am evasive in order to spare myself ... I can see though that my secrecy does me no favors. It probably makes worse my sense of being outlandish. It confirms to me that it might be abhorrent, my story, or that few can relate to it. ~ Sonali Deraniyagala

An unbelieving world may say otherwise, but so-called "sexual liberation" is actually sexual slavery - slavery to our own lusts. ~ Billy Graham

In all human transactions, the highest degree of assurance to which we can arrive, short of the evidence of our own senses, is that of probability. The most that can be asserted is, that the narrative is more likely to be true than false; and it may be in the highest degree more likely, but still be short of absolute mathematical certainty. Yet this very probability may be so great as to satisfy the mind of the most cautious, and enforce the assent of the most reluctant and unbelieving. If it is such as usually satisfies reasonable men, in matters of ordinary transaction, it is all which the greatest sceptic has a right to require; for it is by such evidence alone that our rights are determined, in the civil tribunals; and on no other evidence do they proceed, even in capital cases. ~ Simon Greenleaf

Unbelieving image-bearers really do have a lot of good ideas. To deny this is an affront to the One Whose image they bear. ~ Steve Corbett

The moral is significant: when System 2 is otherwise engaged, we will believe almost anything. System 1 is gullible and biased to believe, System 2 is in charge of doubting and unbelieving, but System 2 is sometimes busy, and often lazy. Indeed, ~ Daniel Kahneman

Nothing will convince and convict those around us like the peaceful and positive way you and I respond to our twentieth century hurts and distress. The unbelieving world-your neighbors, the guy at the gas station, the postman, the lady at the cleaners, your boss at work-is observing the way we undergo our trials. ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

I assure you, I've come to one of those natural breaks in the book, where one can walk away and let things go on working in the subconscious. It's true, don't look so unbelieving. It means I can afford to tear myself away from my view of the pigsties and go out on parole, as much as I like and you'll put up with. ~ Mary Stewart

We live in an unbelieving age but one which is markedly and lopsidedly spiritual. There is one type of modern man who recognizes spirit in himself but who fails to recognize a being outside himself whom he can adore as Creator and Lord; consequently he has become his own ultimate concern. He says with Swinburne, "Glory to man in the highest, for he is the master of things," or with Steinbeck, "In the end was the word and the word was with men." For him, man has his own natural spirit of courage and dignity and pride and must consider it a point of honor to be satisfied with this.

There is another type of modern man who recognizes a divine being not himself, but who does not believe that this being can be known anagogically or defined dogmatically or received sacramentally. Spirit and matter are separated for him. Man wanders about, caught in a maze of guilt he can't identify, trying to reach a God he can't approach, a God powerless to approach him.

And there is another type of modern man who can neither believe nor contain himself in unbelief and who searches desperately, feeling about in all experience for the lost God. ~ Flannery O'Connor

God wept; but that mattered little to an unbelieving age; what mattered most was that the world wept and still is weeping and blind with tears and blood. For there began to rise in America in 1876 a new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor. ~ Howard Zinn

By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were.
... Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't. ~ Erwin Schrodinger

Church is not for pretenders and performers. Church is a place for pastors to preach principles of the faith in order to prepare believers to face the storms of life on the stage of an unbelieving world. ~ Billy Graham

The Holy Spirit is promised of God to be given to us, to do this work (of mortification). The taking away of the stony heart, that is, the stubborn, proud, rebellious, unbelieving heart, is, in general, the work of mortification that we treat of. ~ John Owen

Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: 'Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell?' And he replies: 'I tell you, yea. Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase rather than diminish their bliss.' There is no wild beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation would not be tarnished by the expression of such a doctrine.
These doctrines have been taught in the name of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in the name of infinite love and charity. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul. ~ George MacDonald

This is the glory and miracle of grace, that God, through the Holy Spirit, is able to transform a stubborn, rebellious, and unbelieving will into a passionate, obedient, believing will without violating the integrity of the individual or diminishing the voluntary nature of one's decision to trust Christ for salvation. ~ Sam Storms

No sensitive Christian can be satisfied with a distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness drawn only between communities, with each individual belonging unambiguously on one or the other side of the line. The behavior of "the righteous" is often very disappointing, while "the unrighteous" regularly perform in a manner that is much better than our theology might lead us to expect of them. Thus the need for a perspective that allows for both a rather slow process of sanctification in the Christian life and some sort of divine restraint on the power of sin in the unbelieving community. These theological adjustments to a religious perspective that might otherwise betray strong Manichean tones provide us with yet another reason for openness to a broad-ranging dialogue: Christians have good grounds for believing that their own weakness can be corrected by encountering the strengths of others. ~ Richard J. Mouw

Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash
suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious. ~ Paul Theroux

Even the nonreligious may exercise aesthetic judgment in matters of religion, and indeed our age has given the unbelieving a sophisticated taste in religious literature. ~ Lionel Trilling

He was a student - such things as happened to him, happen sometimes to students.
He was a German - such things as happened to him, happen sometimes to Germans.
He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless.
And being young, handsome, and eloquent he was beloved. ("The Cold Embrace") ~ Mary Elizabeth Braddon

By natural means, as the Lord always operates for the accomplishment of his purposes, means so simple that the thoughtless and unbelieving do not see the manifestation of his power, he brought the Puritans from the old world to New England, the Dutch to New York, the English Cavaliers to Virginia and the French to New Orleans, a combination of races which, paradoxical as it may appear, was just calculated to give us the composite America who made the United States of America what it is, the greatest nation of the world today. ~ Anthony W. Ivins

Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left clichés, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he'd most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an "Arms are for Hugging" sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams. ~ Mark Steyn

Can the believing husband in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in Hell? Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell? Can the loving wife in Heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in Hell? I tell. ~ Jonathan Edwards

At such times, the heart of man turns instictively towards his Maker. In prosperity, and whenever there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him, then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm. ~ Solomon Northup

And once again I found myself wondering, as I drifted off to stunned and unbelieving sleep:How do these terrible things always happen to me? ~ Jeff Lindsay

When the Lord Jesus Christ comes to purge His threshing floor, He shall punish all who are not His disciples with a fearful punishment. All who are found impenitent and unbelieving - all who have held the truth in unrighteousness - all who have clung to sin, stuck to the world, and set their affection on things below - all who are without Christ. All such shall come to an awful end. Christ shall burn up the chaff! ~ J.C. Ryle

It is unclear from any modern critique of religion that anyone is in a position to disprove the reality of religious mystery expressed in the ancients' texts, even if we probe that mystery. Modern affirmations of such faith as well as denials of it are acts of faith. Yet these critiques of religion bring us closer to understanding the human side of divine-human relations. And this is what believers and nonbelievers, believing and unbelieving theologians and historians of religion share: a desire to understand the human side of the equation in religious traditions. ~ Mark S. Smith

The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins. ~ Saint Patrick

The people of God are His representatives upon the earth, and He intends that they shall be lights in the moral darkness of this world. Scattered all over the country, in the towns, cities, and villages, they are God's witnesses, the channels through which He will communicate to an unbelieving world the knowledge of His will and the wonders of His grace. It ~ Ellen G. White

...do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard. Where were those truths which impelled the early Church to institute the catechumenate, which enabled a strict watch to be kept over the frontier between the Church and the world, and afforded adequate protection for costly grace? What had happened to all those warnings of Luther's against preaching the gospel in such a manner as to make men rest secure in their ungodly living? Was there ever a more terrible or disastrous instance of the Christianizing of the world than this? What are those three thousand Saxons put to death by Charlemagne compared with the millions of spiritual corpses in our country today? With us it has been abundantly proved that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our Evangelical church. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When the ship cracks in the typhoon, we cover our heads and tell ourselves that all will resolve back to normal. But we are unbelieving. This time may not be like the other times that with time grew into cheerful anecdotes. The stories we heard, about the ten thousand buried in the quake, were, after all, true.

And more irredeemable than any human catastrophe, the dinosaurs trailed across the desert to their end. They left no descendents to embellish their saga, but only the white bones and the marks in the clay for archeologists to make into footnotes. Our hour may be this hour, and our end the dinosaurs'.

So perhaps there will be no revolving back at all, and only archives, full of archetypes, like the composite photographs of movie heroines.
But with or without us, the Day itself must return, we insist, when the Joke at least sits basking in the sun, decorating her idle body with nameless red, once blood.

Philosophy, like lichens, takes centuries to grow and is always ignored in the Book of Instructions. If you can't Take It, Get Out.

I can't take it, so I lie on the hotel bed dissolving into chemicals whose adventure will pursue time to her extinguishment, without the slightest influence from these few years when I held them together in human passion. ~ Elizabeth Smart

You limit the power of angels when you speak negative, complaining, unbelieving words instead of speaking what God has declared. ~ Benny Hinn

Many feelings are simply too good to last
using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot coexist in the human frame. But the virtue of a mood depends by no means on its immediate presence. Like any other experience, it may be believed in, and, in its absence, which leaves the mind free to contemplate it, works even more good than its presence ~ George MacDonald

We cannot, therefore, blame the courts, public schools, media, or government for our own theological unfaithfulness. We are the ones - the prophets and priests - who have contributed to this "Ichabod," this departure of God's glory in our time. Only by returning to sound, effective God-centered preaching and teaching can we restore the confidence not only of Christians themselves in God's greatness, but of an unbelieving world that is more apathetic toward our benign, helpless, happy deity than hostile. ~ Michael S. Horton

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men ... forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice ... They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties ... They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft. ~ Walter Lippmann

I have changed refuge so often, in the course of my rout, that now I can't tell between dens and ruins. But there was never any city but the one. It is true you often move along in a dream, houses and factories darken the air, trams go by and under your feet wet from the grass there are suddenly cobbles. I only know the city of my childhood, I must have seen the other, but unbelieving. All I say cancels out, I'll have said nothing. ~ Samuel Beckett

Let us pray for the Catholic Church; for the Churches throughout the whole world; that is, for their truth, unity, and stability; that in all charity may flourish, and truth may live. For our own Church, that what is lacking in it may be supplied; what is unsound, corrected; that all Heresies, Schisms, Scandals, as well public as private, may be removed. Correct the wandering, convert the unbelieving, increase the faith of the Church, destroy Heresies, discover the crafty enemies, crush the violent. ~ Lancelot Andrewes

The best title of the [professing] church of God today, in my judgment, is 'Unbelieving Believers.' ~ Leonard Ravenhill

It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor does God withdraw Himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee. ~ John Owen

The fact is: our faith is more rational than the most elaborate paradigm of the atheistic foundationalist, more romantic than the wildest dreams of the unbelieving postmodernist. our faith is a dogma that makes you dance. ~ Reggie M. Kidd

The sense of security which she thought she had found disappeared; the bottom fell out of her world and she felt herself falling into an abyss of unbelieving despair. ~ Toni Maguire

To an unbelieving person nothing renders service or work for good. He himself is in servitude to all things, and all things turned out for evil to him, because he uses all things in impious way for his own advantage, and not for the glory of God. ~ Martin Luther

There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt. Had she been told, she would have been pleased but unbelieving. And the civilization of which she was a part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time, before or since, had so low a premium been placed on feminine naturalness. ~ Margaret Mitchell

The rational scientists - and "new atheists" - believe the "sensitive, caring" postmodern Pluralists are loopy and "woo-woo," and that the traditional religious fundamentalists are archaic, childish, and dangerous. The postmodern Pluralists think that both the Rational scientists and the traditional fundamentalists are caught up in "socially constructed" modes of knowing, which are culturally relative and have no more binding power than poetry or fashion styles; this "knowledge" gives the Pluralist an enormous sense of superiority (although in their worldview, nothing is supposed to be superior). And the traditional fundamentalists think that both the modern Rational scientists and the postmodern Pluralists are all unbelieving heathens, bound for an everlasting hell, so who cares what they think anyway? ~ Ken Wilber

I have always understood the unbelieving look in the eyes of those whom success touches early - it is a look half fearful, as though the dream were still in the process of being dreamed and to move or to speak would shatter it. ~ Moss Hart

None is poor but the mean in mind, the timorous, the weak, and unbelieving; none is wealthy but the affluent in soul, who is satisfied and floweth over. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

Now at Iconium a they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. 2 b But the c unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against d the brothers. [1] 3So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for e the Lord, who bore witness to f the word of his grace, g granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. 4But the people of the city h were divided; i some sided with the Jews and some with the apostles. ~ Anonymous

g*d wept, but that mattered little to an unbelieving age ... for there began to rise in America in 1876 a new capitalism & a new enslavement of labor" --w.e.b. dubois ~ Debois

The unbelieving world should see our testimony lived out daily because it just may point them to the Savior. ~ Billy Graham

The unbelieving world increasingly rejects the truth about God, while the believing world increasingly ignores the truth about God. ~ Jim Berg

You have to remember, you are in a controlled environment. It may seem that your circumstances are out of control, but the Creator of the universe is in complete control. He has you in the palm of His hand. Nothing can happen to you without God's permission.
In fact, God is even in control of our enemies. The Scripture talks about how God caused Pharaoh to harden his heart and not let the people go. Notice that God caused him to be difficult. Why was that? So God could show His power in extraordinary ways.
When something unexpected happens and catches you off-guard, instead of falling apart and blaming God and panicking, your attitude should be: God, I know You are still on the throne. This is not a surprise to You. I know You wouldn't have allowed this unless You had a purpose. The surprise may look like a setback, but I know the truth. It's a setup for You to show Your power in a greater way. It's a setup for You to show my unbelieving co-workers Your greatness.
God's purpose in crises is to show not just His power but to show other people what He can do. If you will view that adversity as an opportunity for God to display His greatness, God will use you as an example. He wants your neighbors to say, "How in the world did she make it? The medical report said 'impossible,' but look at her today. She's as strong and healthy as can be." Or, "He was laid off at the worst possible time, but look at him now. He has an even better job than before."
God wants to ~ Joel Osteen

I didn't say a word but stared
At Derek, still a little hazed.
He stared back, uncertain, scared,
Still unbelieving and amazed. ~ Tatyana K. Varenko

No one could have survived that fall. Not even a supernatural being. Not even the son of Satan. He lay there, unmoving, and I could not wrap my head around it. ~ Darynda Jones

We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even the most unbelieving Jew knows that. ~ Jonathan Sacks