Christianity - Christianity
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- Christianity 4
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This
coming to know Christ is what makes
Christian truth
redemptive truth, the truth
that transforms, not just
informs.
Harold Cooke Phillips
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Note: Our pages on
Christianity are not at all intended to try to convert
anyone to the religion; rather, they're presented with the intent of
giving
people food for thought about the religion, its purposes, and the
people
who follow it and who call themselves Christians.
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If Jesus
is Lord then the only right response to him is surrender
and
obedience. He is Savior and he is Lord. We cannot
separate his
demands from his love. We cannot dissect
Jesus and relate only to
the parts that we like or need. Christ died so that we could be forgiven
for managing our
own lives. It would be impossible to thank Christ for
dying and yet to continue running our own lives.
Rebecca Pippert
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The
root of the matter, if we want a stable world, is a very
simple and old-fashioned
thing,
a thing so simple that I
am almost ashamed to mention it for fear of the
derisive
smile
with which wise cynics will greet my words. The
thing I mean is love, Christian love,
or compassion.
If you feel this, you have a motive for existence,
a reason for courage,
an imperative necessity for
intellectual honesty.
Bertrand
Russell
Jesus could
weep. Sometimes when you look at the ugliness that makes you
weep, you know that the heart of God is also weeping. Jesus is
for real. He does not give up on anyone, least of all on me.
Desmond Tutu
Questions of Faith
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Christianity is not a theory or
speculation, but a life;
not a philosophy of life, but a living presence.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The Christian is not
one who has gone all the way with Christ. None of us has.
The Christian is one who has found the right road.
Charles L. Allen |
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A
man who was merely a man and said the sort of things
Jesus said would not be
a great moral teacher. He would
either be a lunatic-- on the level with
the man
who says
he is a poached egg-- or else he would be the Devil of
Hell. Either this man
was, and is, the Son of God;
or
else a madman or something worse.
C.S. Lewis
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If you wish your
children to be Christians
you must really
take the
trouble to be Christian yourselves. Those are the
only
terms upon which the home will work the gracious miracle.
Woodrow
Wilson |
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I maintain
Christianity is a
life much more than a religion.
R.M. Moberly
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It is the
great work of nature
to transmute sunlight into life.
So
it is the great end of Christian
living to transmute the
light of
truth
into the fruits of holy living.
Adoniram
J. Gordon
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The
Christians do not commit adultery. They do not bear false
witness.
They do not covet their neighbor's goods. They
honor father and mother.
They love their neighbors. They
judge justly. They avoid doing to others
what they do not
wish done to them. They do good to their enemies. They
are kind.
St.
Aristides |
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Christianity - Christianity
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The
purpose of Christianity is not to avoid difficulty, but
to produce
a character adequate to meet it when it comes. It does not make life easy;
rather it tries to make us
great enough for life.
James L. Christensen |
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No one
is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by
the word.
It is every individual's individual code of
behavior by means of which he
or she
makes him or herself a better
human being than their nature
wants to be, if they followed their nature only.
William
Faulkner
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I
have an unquenchable desire to slow down and find my life
going deeper in my walk with Christ.
I want to meet
him in the depths of my soul, away from the stress and
press of everything on top.
A relationship with
Christ is the key to fulfilling our deepest longings.
All of life is about filling
the void that sin and
separation from him have created within. Filling
the emptiness with piles
of things,
earthly friendships,
satisfying experiences, and sensual encounters ultimately
proves to achieve less
than what we had hoped for. Christ
is the only one who fits.
Joseph
M. Stowell |
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Christianity
was a difficult struggle for me for a very long time,
mostly because of my logical/rational mindset and
approach to life. I didn't choose the way my mind works,
but I do have to respect it, and my mind didn't allow me
to accept blindly much of the theology and dogma that I
heard being preached at services I went to. I found it
difficult to believe that so much was being taught that
wasn't at all Biblical, and I didn't know what to do with that-- if the New Testament is our Holiest text, shouldn't
our beliefs come directly from there?
Reading the works
of Ralph Waldo Trine and Emmet Fox has helped me a great deal in
coming to terms with many of the doubts I've had, for
they also approach their "relationship" with Jesus from a
practical, logical perspective. Helen Keller tells us to
value the faith that doesn't come easily, for the faith
that we struggle with becomes stronger through the
struggles. The bottom line for me is this: Jesus's major
purpose was to teach us how to live our lives so that they'll be
fulfilling and full of love, and if we're to get all we
can out of this life, we need to heed his words and make
them a part of our lives.
Christianity is about reaching
potential and loving unconditionally, not about following
rules blindly and judging and condemning others.
Christianity is about brother- and sisterhood,
for a house divided simply cannot stand.
There
have been many horrible things done in the name of Jesus and of God,
but those have been the actions of people who were selfish or arrogant
or afraid to lose their power, so they acted in un-Christian ways and
passed their actions off as valid in the eyes of God. I cannot
let my faith in Jesus and God be swayed by the selfish and hurtful
acts of others who don't want to take the responsibility necessary to
live a Christian life and give up their futile attempts at control.
So I believe. I believe that God
is with and in us, always, and that Jesus knew this and lived
this in order to show us many important things that we
need to know if we're to live fulfilling lives. Jesus taught us
to love, to be responsible, and most importantly, to have faith in
unity, God
and life, to have faith that things will be fine if we let things work as they've
been made to work, instead of trying to control every aspect of our
lives ourselves. Now, I don't love as much as I could, and I
sometimes shirk responsibility that I don't really want to have, and
my faith often falls short so that I try to control things that are
simply out of my control, but I try. And it's in the trying that
I grow.
Christianity is not about rules and regulations--it's a way of life
that was given to us so that we may make the most of this beautiful
gift of life without the worries of what will happen to us when we
die--instead of focusing on the fear of the unknown, we can focus on
the beauty of the known. |
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Jesus had
the same needs we do as a human being. He needed food,
shelter, safety, and love. He showed us how God loved him
and provided
for him. He showed us his need for rest when
he pulled away from others
to a quiet place. He showed us
how God wanted us to love our brothers
and sisters by
loving the people around him. He showed us his need to
depend on God and for relationship with God when he
prayed.
Betty Blaylock
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When I look at Jesus' warm and
intimate friendships, my heart fills with praise that
Jesus was. . . a man. A man of flesh-and-blood reality.
His heart felt the sting of
sympathy. His eyes glowed
with tenderness. His arms embraced. His lips smiled.
His
hands touched. Jesus was male! Jesus invites us to relate
to him as the Son of
Man. And because he is fully man, we
can relate to Jesus with affection and love.
Joni Erickson Tada |
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Jesus'
ministry was clearly defined. . . . A choice was made--
life abundant,
full, and free for all. Make
no mistake about it,
the day the choice was made, Jesus became
suspect.
That day in the
temple he sealed the fate already prepared for him.
How was the world to understand one who rejected
an offer of
power and control?
Joan
B. Campbell
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The essence of religion is that it releases in people a power and a
force
beyond human
capacity to generate, by which they may rise to a plane
of existence in which they are
superior to everything life may bring
them. There once lived a man who had the gift of
power to overcome anything
the world could do to him; and through the years other
people, through
contact with this man in spiritual communion, have found the same
power. Wistfully, we remember that once he said: "Verily, I say
unto you, they
that
believeth on me, the works that I do shall they do also; and
greater
works than these
shall they do." Why are we not
"doing works" like that? What is wrong? His was a
way of living that made weakness and
trouble
drop away like withered leaves in the fall.
Is it a lost art? How shall we find it again?
If the art has been lost to many of us, what can we
do? The answer is,
go back and
examine it at its source. And when we go back and
analyze
the life of Jesus, the source
of his power, and of his Divine energy,
we are impressed by his faith in God. He
believed God was near
to him,
using him. He believed in God with the faith of a child.
He kept in close
contact and communion with God and as a result he was
an open channel for Divine energy.
Norman
Vincent Peale
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Once
in a while there comes into the world one who from the very
first recognizes no separation of his life from the Father’s
life, and who dwells continually in this living realization;
and by bringing anew to the world this great fact, and showing
forth the works that will always and inevitably follow this
realization, he becomes in a sense a world’s savior, as did
Jesus, who, through the completeness of His realization of the
Father's life incarnate in Him, became the Christ Jesus. He
in this way pointed out to the world how all men can enter
into the realization of the Christ-life and thus be saved from
all impulse to sin. And
so instead of coming to appease the vengeance of an angry
God—difficult for one who has any adequate conception of God
even to conceive of—He brought to the world, by exemplifying
in His own life as well as by teaching to all who will hear
His real message, the method whereby all of us can enter into
the full and complete realization of our oneness with the life
of the tender and loving Infinite Father that dwells within.
Redeemed
from the bondage of the senses through which alone sin comes,
and born into the heavenly state, into life eternal, is
everyone who comes into the same relations with the Father,
and hence into the same realization of their oneness with the
Father's life, that Jesus came into. It
is difficult, however, to see how anyone will be redeemed from
the bondage of sin and enter into the heavenly state simply by
believing that Jesus entered into it while here. No
amount of believing that He lived the life He lived will take
anyone into the heavenly state, but living the life that Jesus
lived will take everyone who lives it there, in any age and in
any time, even whether or not they know that such a man as
Jesus ever lived.
Ralph Waldo Trine
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Christianity - Christianity
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It is
a great deal better to live a holy life than to talk about it.
Lighthouses do not ring bells and fire cannons to call
attention to their shining--they just shine.
Dwight L.
Moody
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I
believe that I possess this value: to serve Jesus. I am
less at peace
than if my goal would be to attain a professorship and a good life,
but
I live. And that gives me the tremendous feeling of happiness,
as if
one would hear music. One feels uprooted, because one asks, what
lies ahead, what decisions should I make--but more alive, happier
than those anchored in life. To drift with released anchor.
Albert
Schweitzer |
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Jesus
does not respond to our worry-filled way of living by saying that
we should not be so busy with worldly affairs. He does not try
to pull
us away from the many events, activities, and people that make up our
lives. . . . He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the
center
of our attention, to change our priorities. Jesus does not speak
about
a change of activities, a change in contacts, or even a change of
pace.
He speaks about a change of heart.
Henri J.M. Nouwen |
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quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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up for your free daily meditation
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The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not
our mother: Nature is our sister.
G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy |
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Jesus
himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross;
he waited until one of them turned to him.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison |
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I
want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual
state
of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father
nor
a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear
that
there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not
condone.
I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely
compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an
awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery.
Brennan Manning |
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