#worship

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it. ↗

— Florence King

#creativity #did #elitism #enjoying #god

As we see the beauty of God and feel His weightiness in our hearts, our hearts begin to desire Him more than we desire sin. Before the Bible says, "Stop sinning," it says, "Behold your God. ↗

— J.D. Greear

#sin #worship #beauty

God directs his people not simply to worship but to sing his praises “before the nations.” We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#worship #communication

God's revelation... unmasks our illusions about ourselves. It exposes our pride, our individualism, our self-centeredness - in short, our sin. But worship also offers forgiveness, healing, transformation, motivation, and courage to work in the world for God's justice and peace - in short, salvation in its largest sense. ↗

— Marva J. Dawn

#theology #worship #courage

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#enmity #friendship #love #men #men and women

When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#gandhi #god #mohandas #prayer #religion

Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them. ↗

— Dan Kimball

#church #introverts #prayer #spirituality #worship

Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church? ↗

— James MacDonald

#encounter #focus #god #task #vision

God thundered again and again through the prophets that worship in the context of mistreatment of the poor and disadvantaged is an outrage. ↗

— Ronald J. Sider

#christianity #god #outrage #poor #prophets

The immoral woman in Luke 7 has the faith to anticipate Christ's forgiveness. She can act in love with no words to justify. ↗

— Jenn Thoman

#forgiveness #justification #worship #faith