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Frederick Buechner
...With a religious book it is less what we see in it than what we see through it that matters. J. R. R. Tolkien's fairy-tale epic the Lord of the Rings helps draw the distinction perhaps. Some of its admirers have tried to make it into a religion book by claiming, among other things, that the Ring of Power which must be destroyed is the hydrogen bomb. Tolkien, on the other hand, denied this unequivocally. But intended or otherwise, there can be little doubt that for many it has become a religious book. The "Frodo Lives" buttons are not entirely a joke, because something at least comes to life through those fifteen hundred pages, although inevitably it is hard to say just what. It seems to have something to do with the way Tolkien has of making us see the quididity of things like wood, bread, stone, milk, iron, as though we have never seen them before or not for a long time, which is probably the truth of the matter; his landscapes set deeper echoes going in us than any message could. He gives us back a sense that we have mostly lost of the things of the earth, and because we are ourselves of the earth, whatever else, we are given back too some sense of our own secret. Very possibly again he did not intend it. I may well be axiomatic that, religiously, a writer achieves most when he is least conscious of doing so. Certainly the attempt to be religious is as doomed as the attempt to be poetic is.
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Andrew Murray
The giver is more than the gift; God is more than the blessing. And our being kept waiting on Him is the only way for our learning to find our life and joy in Himself. Oh, if God’s children only knew what a glorious God they have, and what a privilege it is to be linked in fellowship with Him, then they would rejoice in Him! Even when He keeps them waiting, they will learn to understand better than ever. ”Therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you.” His waiting will be the highest proof of His graciousness.
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Augustine
But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.
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Anne Bradstreet
How oft with disappointment have I met, When I on fading things my hopes have set?
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Joel Osteen
I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you're grateful, you'll see God open up new doors.
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John Piper
Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others. The overflow is experienced consciously as the pursuit of our joy in the joy of another. We double our delight in God as we expand it it the lives of others. If our ultimate goal were anything less than joy in God, we would be idolaters and no eternal help to anyone. Therefore, the pursuit of pleasure is an essential motive for every good deed. And if you aim to abandon the pursuit if of full and lasting pleasure, you cannot love people or please God.
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Thomas Chalmers
The learned are well pleased to seem so to others and to be accounted wise, but much that is to be found in learning little profiteth the soul. He that is intent upon things other than those that will help his soul's salvation is lacking in wisdom. Words will not satisfy the soul; but a good life giveth comfort to the mind, and a pure conscience affordeth great confidence in the sight of God.
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John Piper
We will not find a frustrated, gloomy, irritable Father who wants to be left alone, but a Father whose heart is so full of joy that it spills over unto all those (Christian Hedonists) who are thirty.
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Charles Stanley
... God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.
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Octavius Winslow
God would make is happy, but He can only make us happy by making us holy...Sin is the parent of all misery; holiness is the root of all happiness.
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John Piper
The quickest way to the heart is through a wound.... Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ.... Sin is like spiritual leprosy. It deadens your spiritual senses so that you rip your soul to shreds and don't even feel it.
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Martin Luther
Lo! my God, without merit on my part, of His pure and free mercy, has given to me (an unworthy, condemned, and contemptible creature) all the riches of justification and salvation in Christ. For such a Father then, who has overwhelmed me with these inestimable riches of His, why should I not freely, cheerfully, with my whole heart and with an eager will, do all that I know will be pleasing to Him, and acceptable in His sight? I will therefore give myself, as a sort of Christ, to my neighbor, as Christ has given Himself to me; and will do nothing in this life, except what I see will be needful, advantageous, and wholesome for my neighbor, since by faith I abound in all good things in Christ.
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