#disciples

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

God's way leads always into trial, so far as sight and sense are concerned. Nature always will be tried in God's ways. ↗

— George Mueller

#trial #nature

Disciples and devotees…what are most of them doing? Worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea! ↗

— Wei Wu Wei

#disciples #form #forms #religion #religious

I always have the feeling we are merely fearfully trying to save room for God; I would rather speak of God at the center than at the limits, in strength rather than weakness, and thus in human life and goodness rather than in death and guilt. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#worship #death

Any religious person who says he does not really need human friends because God is his Friend is calling God a liar because He's the One Who says we also need human friends. ↗

— Mark Driscoll

#friendship #friendship

To be a Christian is to believe we are commanded and authorised to say certain things to the world; to say things that will make disciples of all nations. ↗

— Rowan D. Williams

#believe #certain #certain things #christian #commanded

Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail,' but it has nothing to do with morals, only with the implied juvenile threat of having a tantrum unless everyone else gives in. ↗

— N.T. Wright

#church #discipleship #inspirational #religion #theology

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world. ↗

— Scot McKnight

#discipleship #hope #inspirational #justice #religion

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

— Elisabeth Elliot

#failure #life