Quotes-May 2012
Between the internet being down and the busyness of this time of year, I am a tad late getting my quotes post written. I haven’t felt like I have read much this month but was pleasantly surprised to find a few quotes to share.
With all the changes going on here due to people leaving and end of the year happenings, these quotes on prayer were great reminders.
“If you cannot find time to pray, ask for forgiveness. Ask to be cleansed of the sin of having no time to pray… It could be that Satan is pushing you into too much work so that you cannot take time to pray.” Corrie Ten Boom
“The work of praying is prerequisite to all other work in the Kingdom of God. It is by prayer that we couple the powers of heaven to our helplessness… and make the impossible possible.” O Hallesby
I finished reading Sacred Marriage: What if God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? by Gary Thomas. Here are a few last quotes from my reading.
p. 197 “Becoming more like Jesus is the essence of Christianity, and none of us can say with any degree of sincerity that we have cornered the market on being a servant. Our marriages provide opportunities every day for us to be pushed further in this.
p.233 “Every word spoken to a family member is either an invitation to the experience of the holy or to the experience of chaos.”
p. 250 “Let us be what we are, and let us be it well.”
From Scripture and the Authority of God:How to Read the Bible Today by N. T. Wright
p.64 “But canonization was never simply a matter of a choice of particular books on “who’s in, who’s out” basis. It was a matter of setting out the larger story, the narrative framework, which makes sense of and brings order to God’s world and God’s people.”
p. 119 “Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.”
On reading of the scripture together, NT Wright says on p. 131, “But the primary purpose of the readings is to be itself an act of worship, celebrating God’s story, power and wisdom and, above all, God’s son. That is the kind of worship through which the church is renewed in God’s image, and so transformed and directed in its mission. Scripture is the key means through which the living God directs and strengthens his people in and for that work.”
p. 141 “The various crises in the Western Church of our day- decline in numbers and resources, moral dilemmas, internal divisions, failure to present the gospel coherently to a new generation- all these and more should drive us to pray for scripture to be given its head once more; for teachers and preachers who can open the Bible in the power of the Spirit, to give the church the energy and direction it needs for its mission and renew it in its love for God; and , above all, for God’s word to do its work in the world, as, in Isaiah’s vision, it brings about nothing short of new creation- the new world in which the grim entail of sin has at last been done away.
Lastly from From the Garden to the City by John Dyer
“Today successful technology companies are not those who build good products but those who can predict what the next tendency in technology will be. Likewise, Christians who live God-honoring lives in the digital world are those who can discern the tendencies built into all technology and then decide when those tendencies are in line with godly values, and when those tendencies are damaging to the soul. When we are aware of the tendencies and value inherent in our technology, we have the best chance of avoiding the negative trade-offs it brings and instead using the technology to serve God.”