#god

Jesus never commanded believers to produce fruit. Fruit is the *purpose* of the branch, but it is not the *responsibility* of the branch. The branch cannot produce anything on it's own. However, if it remains attached to the vine, it will receive life-sustaining sap, nourishment, strength, everything it needs. ↗

— Charles R. Swindoll

#god #jesus-christ #life

Inasmuch as often in this life greater rewards are offered for vice than for virtue, few people would prefer the right to the useful, were they restreined neither by the fear of God nor the expectation of another life ... ↗

— René Descartes

#god #morality #vice #virtue #life

I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or—it sounded just as bad in English—'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#belarus #colonialism #god #guns #gush-emunim

...true intimacy—sharing who you are, the very deepest part of you—with Him. God wants to listen to who you are. ↗

— Linda Boone

#journaling-with-god #soaking #life

And that is just precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#god #rumour #sculpting #life

Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain. ↗

— Matthew Stover

#life #pain #slave #traitor #life

I glance back in the mirror to the concrete bridge, the one I've boldly driven straight across without second thought, and I see truth reflecting back at me: Every time fear freezes and worry writhes, every time I surrender to stress, aren't I advertising the unreliability of God? That I really don't believe? But if I'm grateful to the Bridge Builder for the crossing of a million strong bridges, thankful for a million faithful moments, my life speaks my beliefs and I trust Him again. ↗

— Ann Voskamp

#god #trust #faith

What we recognize as Life is actually a premise that enforces the belief of the separateness from God. ↗

— Sufian Chaudhary

#life #sufian-chaudhary #world-of-archangels #life

When you enter the House of God, you leave your ego at the door and embrace purity as if your life depended on it. ↗

— Sufian Chaudhary

#house-of-god #life #purity #spiritual-books #spirituality

Meditation expands our inner being. The inner being is like a small, individual river flowering towards the Ocean. In meditation, I feel how my inner being expands into an inner ocean, which is part of everything, which is one with Existence. Through the inner being, we come in contact with the inner ocean, the undefined and boundless within ourselves, where we are one with life. We realize that God is part of life. We realize that God is not a person, but the consciousness that is part of everything. We find God in a flower, in a tree, in the eyes of a child or in a playful dog. Through discovering our inner being, we discover that we are also part of the flower, the child or the dog. We realize that God is everywhere. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#consciousness #dog #existence #flower #god