#reign

I have learned to kiss the wave that drives me against the Rock of Ages. ↗

— Charles Spurgeon

#faith #sovereignty-of-god #trials #age

The Bible attitude is not that God sends sickness or that sickness is of the devil, but that sickness is a fact usable by both God and the devil. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#sickness #sovereignty-of-god #attitude

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers. ↗

— Edith Hamilton

#translations #beauty

Although China may be able to change the major power structure in the next ten years, it will be unable to shift the world from unipolarity to bipolarity unless it forms a formal alliance with Russia. ↗

— Wang Yizhou

#foreign-policy #russia #change

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point understanding may come. It will always be wordless. The moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it. ↗

— Peter Høeg

#culture #foreign #insight #language #understanding

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. ↗

— Clifton Paul Fadiman

#country #designed #foreign #foreign country #make

When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace. Even Edwards's sermon on sinners in God's hands was not designed to stress the flames of hell. The resounding accent falls not on the fiery pit but on the hands of the God who holds us and rescues us from it. The hands of God are gracious hands. They alone have the power to rescue us from certain destruction. ↗

— R.C. Sproul

#sovereignty-of-god #design

The clearest sensation that a human being has when he experiences the holy is an overpowering and overwhelming sense of creatureliness. That is, when we are in the presence of God, we are humbled and become most aware of ourselves as creatures. This is the opposite of Satan's original temptation, "You shall be as gods. ↗

— R.C. Sproul

#sovereignty-of-god #experience

The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge. ↗

— Cleveland Amory

#expensive #foreign #hard #husband #like

If we teach Truth but not the Source of Truth, we don't really succeed in passing on our faith. ↗

— Kevin Thoman

#relationship-with-god #sovereignty-of-god #faith