#christianity

Foulgrin: "If you can keep Fletcher from saying a definitive no to a temptation, you've won. Whatever is not a no is merely a postponed yes." (advice to the tempter Squaltaint) ↗

— Randy Alcorn

#faith #inspiration #truth #faith

The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#christianity #egocentrism #philosophy #self-perfection #self-surrender

If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that his operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give him our confidence in spite of this. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#faith #faith

People "at the top" are eager to attribute their position to their own intellect, savvy, and hard work. The reality is much more complicated. Personal connections, family environment, and what appears to be plain luck determine how successful a person is. We are the product of three things- genetics, environment, and our personal choices- but two of these three factors we have no power over. We are not nearly as responsible for our success as our popular views of God and reality lead us to think. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#family

The real test of progress is how we love God and our neighbor. Everything else is fluff, and potentially dangerous fluff, at that. It gets in the eyes, so that we no longer see clearly as God sees ↗

— Michael Pocock

#evangelism #missions #change

I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it. ↗

— Sophie Scholl

#courage #courage

This will be my last year, Lord. I have gotten what I can. Thank You. ↗

— Beth Nimmo

#inspiration #inspirational #life #life-changing #love

Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn. ↗

— Randy Alcorn

#change #christianity #eternity #life #upside-down

Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perserverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life? ↗

— Ann Voskamp

#spirituality #courage

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope--and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us. ↗

— Walter Wangerin Jr.

#grief #death