Christian Inspiration: A Lamp Unto My Feet and a Light Unto My Path

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

"Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness."

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'"

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

"Though our feelings come and go, God's love for us does not."

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

"Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self."

"For it is in giving that we receive."

"Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging."

"I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone."

"It is in pardoning that we are pardoned."

"It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."

"It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look."

"Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love."

"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love."

"Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

"Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance."

"While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart."

"You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him."

"What I believe about God is the most important thing about me."

"An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others."

"The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still."

"The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian."

"The man or woman who is wholly or joyously surrendered to Christ can't make a wrong choice/any choice will be the right one."

"To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men."

"Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God."

"Faith, as Paul saw it, was a living, flaming thing leading to surrender and obedience to the commandments of Christ."

"Salvation is from our side a choice, from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our 'accepting' and 'willing' are reactions rather than actions. The right of determination must always remain with God."

"The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus."

"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."

"Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God."

"The wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God."

"If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great."

"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't."

"It is better to lose your life than to waste it."

"Do you feel loved by God because you believe he makes much of you, or because you believe he frees you and empowers you to enjoy making much of him?"

"Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel."

"If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full."

"Suffering in the path of Christian obedience, with joy - because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3) - is the clearest display of the worth of God in our lives. Therefore, faith-filled suffering is essential in this world for the most intense, authentic worship. When we are most satisfied with God in suffering, he will be most glorified in us in worship. Our problem is not styles of music. Our problem is styles of life. When we embrace more affliction for the worth of Christ, there will be more fruit in the worship of Christ."

"Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good...."

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine."

"Love takes up where knowledge leaves off."

"The things that we love tell us what we are."

"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do."

"Beware the man of one book."

"Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious."

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever."

"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

"Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head."

"No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete."

"When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."

"Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

"Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else."

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

"I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land."

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity."

"To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing."

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

"That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing."

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'"

"A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened."

"God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he'll be there."

"God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with."

"It is not the body's posture, but the heart's attitude that counts when we pray."

"I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right."

"Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness."

"You're born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there's a loophole."

"Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength."

"God is unchanging in His love. He loves you. He has a plan for your life. Don't let the newspaper headlines frighten you. God is still sovereign; He's still on the throne."

"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."

"Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children."

"My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us, and will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us as we trust in Him."

"Believers, look up -- take courage. The angels are nearer than you think."

"The most eloquent prayer is the prayer through hands that heal and bless."

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

"It is in an especial manner our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experienced. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe, without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to."

"In such a state of things it is in an especial manner our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experience.%u2028 Deeply penetrated with this sentiment, I, George Washington, President of the United States, do recommend to all religious societies and denominations, and to all persons whomsoever, within the United States to set apart and observe Thursday, the 19th day of February next as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, and on that day to meet together and render their sincere and hearty thanks to the Great Ruler of Nations for the manifold and signal mercies which distinguish our lot as a nation..."

"It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one."