#disciple

What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#discipleship #failure #faithfulness #prodigal #faith

Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God's grace and is on his way to becoming a Christian. (...) Being saved is trusting in what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us. ↗

— Tony Campolo

#bible #christian #christianity #conversion #discipleship

The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience. ↗

— Mark Galli

#faith

Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers... (Matthew 12:48) ↗

— Anonymous

#disciples #family #mother #family

A Christian understanding of the world sees a child's character not as genetically determined but as shaped to a significant degree by parental discipleship and discipline. ↗

— Russell Moore

#discipline #parenting #family

Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#friendship #internet #news #social-networking #friendship

The choice we face is not, as many imagine, between heaven and hell. Rather, the choice is between heaven and this world. Even a fool would exchange hell for heaven; but only the wise will exchange this world for heaven. ↗

— Dave Hunt

#heaven #hell #world #faith

The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#discipline #emotion #life

Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs. ↗

— Dallas Willard

#life

Failure means nothing now, only that it taught me life. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#failure #life