Human “Rights”Once and for all, we must put out of our minds that the purpose of life here is to enjoy ourselves to have a good time to be happy to make money and to live in ease and comfort.
That is not what life is all about.
You were put here for a purpose, and that purpose is not related to superficial pleasures.
No one owes you a living—not your parents, not your government, not life itself.
You do not have a right to happiness.
You have a right to nothing.
I believe that God wants us to be happy—but it is not a matter of our right, but of His love and mercy.
—Peter Marshall in John Doe, Disciple
Living Faith It is your living faith in the adequacy of the One who is in you, which releases His divine action through you.
—W. Ian Thomas in The Saving Life of Christ
Too Much of a Good Thing Vanity is a subtle temptation to all of us. At first we may be ever so humble and unobtrusive, but success and substance can replace lowliness of heart with a lofty lordliness; when life becomes sweet with some honey of honor or harvest we are to take heed lest we take too much for ourselves.
—V. Raymond Edman in Sweeter Than Honey
Worse Than Ignorance [T]hough one may be a competent art critic without ever having handled a brush or a chisel, and may legitimately pass judgment upon a book which one could not have written oneself, in the life of the soul there are no such privileges: there is no knowledge at all unless it is also and equally action, and if it is not that, then it is worse than ignorance.
—John Baillis in A Diary of Ressling
Opposing Agendas Our agenda is to fix the world until it can properly take care of us. God’s agenda is to bring all things together in Christ until every knee bows before him.
—Larry Crabb in Finding God
Cooperation with God If God has left some things contingent on man’s thinking and working why may he not have left some things contingent on man’s praying? The testimony of the great souls is a clear affirmative to this: some things never without thinking; some things never without working; some things never without praying! Prayer is one of the three forms of man’s cooperation with God.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick in The Meaning of Prayer
Just Ask Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.
—Billy Graham, quoted in Encounter Weekly online
God’s Dwelling Do you wish to pray in the temple? Pray in your own heart. But begin by being God’s temple, for He will listen to those who invoke Him in His temple.
—Saint Augustine in Johann. Evang., tract XV.6
I’m Okay? You’re Okay? We sit at the piano of life and insist that every note we strike is right—because we struck it.
We justify want of faith by saying, “I don’t go to church, but I am better than those who do”; as one might say, “I don’t pay taxes or serve the nation, but I am better than those who do.”
If each man is his own judge and standard, then who shall say he is wrong?
—Fulton Sheen in Peace of Soul
Still in School Our growth in prayer may be to us the test of our growth in all other respects. “Lord, teach us to pray,” is a prayer for the young beginner and for the more advanced disciple; it is a suitable petition for us all, for we have none of us yet learned to the full the sacred art of supplication.
—Charles H. Spurgeon in Let It Begin with Me
Old Math God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.
—Meister Eckhart, quoted in Sacred Moments
God’s View Delight is keener, suffering is richer, thought is more exciting, love and friendship are deeper, steadier in the long perspective of God.
—Barbara Spofford Morgan in Skeptics’ Search for God
Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
