God - God 2 - God 3 - God 5 - God 6
  

If you begin to live life looking for
the God that is all around you,
every moment becomes a prayer.

Frank Bianco

    

An important note:  Our pages on God are not meant in any way to change anyone's
minds or beliefs-- rather, we're simply trying to present the many complex ways that
people of all faiths look at their idea of a deity.  Some passages may mention a particular
religion or denomination, but that doesn't mean that that perspective is being presented
as right or wrong-- it just is.  The concept of God is so predominant among humans,
though, that it seems wrong not to include these words on this site.

    

If you want to have a non-miraculous day, I suggest that newspaper and caffeine form the crux of your morning regimen.  Listen to the morning news while you're in the shower, read the headlines as you are walking out the door, make sure you're keeping tabs on everything:  the wars, the economy, the gossip, the natural disasters. . . But if you want the day ahead to be full of miracles, then spend some time each morning with God.

Marianne Williamson

      

Life is nothing but the expansion of love.  We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source.  The Source is God, who is all Love.  We must try to love all of humanity with the inner awareness, consciousness, and conviction that inside each individual is the living presence of God.

Sri Chinmoy

  
This kind of split makes me crazy, this territorializing of the holy.  Here God may dwell.  Here God may not dwell.  It contradicts everything in my experience, which says:  God dwells where I dwell.  Period.

Nancy Mairs
   

God does not want us to abandon our dreams, but will lovingly work with us  to refine our unrealistic dreams, to restore our broken dreams, to realize our delayed dreams, and to redesign our shattered dreams so both His purposes and our dreams can be fulfilled.

Ken Abraham

  

I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity.
What though we have many bodies?  We have but one soul. . . . I know
God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

   

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In seeking a more meaningful life, you might choose to pull the
plug on technology, slow down, and listen to life.  Pick
blackberries.  Watch it snow—really watch it.  Lie on the grass
and look at clouds.  Write a letter to a friend who expects one
only at Christmas.  Look closely at the words of a hymn.  Thumb
through a photo album.  Notice the expression on your child’s face
as she draws.  Write a poem.     But such actions begin much
deeper: with humbling ourselves in childlike faith before Him; in
what He knows, not what we know; in trusting that, just as
nobody knows what’s best for a boat like the people who made it,
so does our Maker know what’s best for those He made.

Bob Welch

  

If you want a television, you go out and work for it and you buy it.
If you want to learn about Aztec pottery, you take a course.  But the
relationship with God requires the active and passionate participation
of you, yourself.  You have to risk it.  You have to abandon yourself to it.
You have to leap into the fire.  Nobody will do it for you;
nobody can do it for you.

Andrew Harvey

   

God knows change can make your life richer.  Live for today
but hold your hands open to tomorrow.  Anticipate the future
and its changes with joy.  There is a seed of God’s love
in every event, every circumstance, every unpleasant situation
in which you may find yourself.  Don’t get stuck in a rut or
hung up on an outdated blessing.  You serve a God of change!

Barbara Johnson

   

That experience showed me that I--from moment to moment--am the only person
in control of my connection to God.  It’s not that God is deciding to connect with me,
depending on whether I had a good day, or did good or bad deeds.  It’s all up to me.
God, the awareness of God, the love of God, the blessings of God--that lively
ecstasy--is always there.  It’s me who separates from God by judging,
by indulging in negativity, by criticizing myself, as well as others.

Barbara De Angelis

 

There are dry, fruitless, lonely places in
each of our lives, where we seem to travel
alone, sometimes feeling as though we must
surely have lost the way.  What am I doing
here?  How did this happen?  Lord, get me
out of this!
   He does not get us out.  Not when we ask
for it, at any rate, because it was He all
along who brought us to this place.  He has
been here before—it is not wilderness to
Him, and He walks with us.  There are things
to be seen and learned in these apparent
wastelands which cannot be seen and learned
in the “city”—in places of comfort,
convenience, and company.
   God does not intend to make it no wasteland.
He intends rather to keep us, to hold us with
His strength, to sustain us with His sure words,
in a place where there is nothing else we
can count on.

Elisabeth Elliot

   

   

God who is goodness and truth is also beauty.  It is this innate
human and divine longing, found in the company of goodness
and truth, that is able to recognize and leap up at beauty
and rejoice and know that all is beautiful, that there is not one speck
of beauty under the sun that does not mirror back the beauty of God.

Roberta Bondi

    

Here’s an experiment:  For one whole day think, speak, and act exactly
as you would if you were absolutely convinced of the truth of the statements
that God has all power and infinite intelligence, and that His nature is
infinite goodness and love.  To think in this manner all day will be the most
difficult thing, because thought is so subtle.  To speak in accordance with
these truths will be easier, if you are vigilant.  To act in accordance
with them will be the easiest part, although it may require much
in the way of moral courage.

Emmet Fox

  

The material world. . . says:  If you use this product, you will be popular.
If you live in this neighborhood, you have arrived.  If you win this award,
your worth will be validated.  The material world demands that you do
something to earn favor.  God doesn’t work this way.  His grace is a gift.
There’s nothing we can do to make God love us more.  There’s nothing we
can do—or can have done—to make God love us less.  And when we accept
this—not just nonchalantly agree, intellectually, that it’s true, but hide it
in our very hearts—it fills our life sails with a cleansing breeze.

Bob Welch

   

   
God is no White Knight who charges into the world to pluck us
like distressed damsels from the jaws of dragons, or diseases.
God chooses to become present to and through us.
It is up to us to rescue one another.

Nancy Mairs
 

We have often heard it said that God never closes one door unless he opens
another.  It is a great comfort to know we never really lose when we believe,
for any defeat can be turned to good if we will absorb the lesson in it.  And
yet, how often we refuse to go through that door that has been opened for us.
It is so much easier to stand back and wail about the closed one.  There seems
to be a certain amount of gratification in defeat.  Sometimes a door will close
for us because that particular one would have caused us more unhappiness,
but it never closes for punishment.  God is love—and love does not punish,
nor does it have any power but to give what is right and good for us.  With
this knowledge we can walk with grace through those doors that open to us.

Joyce Hifler

 

Far beyond your intellect, far beyond your understanding,
lies inexhaustible knowledge and wealth, strength and power,
peace and joy.  Do not use your intellect to find the answers
for God and his manifestations.  Everything is God.

Swami Vishnu-Devananda

God - God 2 - God 3 - God 5 - God 6

 

View life as a learning opportunity.  Ask God what He wants you to learn
from the situations you face. . . . When we set aside specific time to listen,
He often encourages us with His presence and promises, and interprets
to some degree the circumstances of life.  Take advantage of the natural lull
after hard times when you’re pulling together the pieces to
sort through the events and ferret out the lessons.

Jean Fleming

 

 We all know that it is God alone who is our peace—although nearly all of us
forget it from time to time.  We forget it when we begin to neglect our daily visit
with God.  Now, when you think that you are too busy for your daily visit,
let me ask you frankly, what wonderful thing are you doing that is more important?
There is nothing that you could possibly do with that time that would bring you
greater benefit than perfect peace.  As a matter of fact, if you have something
very important and urgent to do, your visit will make that very important
thing go through much more easily and successfully.

Emmet Fox

  

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you.  Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader).  All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another.  Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!

   

 

Once, hurrying through a busy airport to get to my gate
on time for a connecting flight, I came upon a lady
in a wheelchair.  Amidst the chaos of the hundreds
of people rushing around us, my eyes met hers.
The sweetest smile appeared on her face.  I smiled back,
but I knew she would never fully realize how that
small gesture had filled my soul.  I believe that
God is in our everyday.  Many moments occur in our
lives which reveal his face, his touch, his voice.
Look for him today.  He will be found.

Kathy Troccoli

 

God is a tranquil Being, and abides in a tranquil eternity.  So must your
spirit become a tranquil and clear little pool, wherein the serene light
of God can be mirrored. . . . Nothing in the whole world is worth the loss
of your peace; even the faults which you have committed should only
humble, but not disquiet you.  God is full of joy, peace, and happiness.
Endeavor then to obtain a continually joyful and peaceful spirit.  Avoid
all anxious care, vexation, murmuring, and melancholy, which darken your
soul.  If you perceive such feelings arising, turn gently away from them.

G. Terstregen

  

It’s really quite simple.  When we look at a tree, God is there.
When we look at a flower, God is there.  When we look at the sky,
God is there.  When we look at the earth, God is there.  We can
see God in the faces of people on the street, in the faces of our
children, our friends, our partners, our colleagues, and our bosses.
When we see God shining through the faces of all those around
us—those like us and those unlike us—every moment becomes
a prayer and the world becomes a different place to live in.

Anne Wilson Schaef

   

  

If we are completely honest with ourselves we know deep down in our
hearts that the usual goals and strivings of self-sufficiency and self-
fulfillment we have are not our real destiny.  We sense an uneasiness
with the common, ordinary life of delights and pleasures, and begin to
hear this quiet voice from the soul’s depths, a whispering of a more
meaningful, richer life.  We are in essence seeking God and feel that
He is indeed drawing us to Him.  When we respond,
it is to God that we are responding.

Clara M. Matheson

  

God doesn’t expect us to perform for him.  He loves us always—when
we’re disappointed or hurt or making a mess of things.  Sometimes we
speak to him in a language that only he can understand.  What matters
to him is that we are vulnerable, that we are completely ourselves.
We are work, too, but God cherishes us.

Luci Swindoll

   

We are all born with a belief in God.  It may not have a name or face.
We may not even see it as God.  But it is there.  It is the sense
that comes over us as we stare into the starlit sky, or watch the last
fiery rays of an evening sunset.  It is the morning shiver as we wake
on a beautiful day and smell a richness in the air that we know and
love from somewhere we can’t quite recall.  It is the mystery behind
the beginning of time and beyond the limits of space.  It is a
sense of otherness that brings alive something deep in our hearts.

Kent Nerburn

   
You pay God a compliment by asking great things of him.

Teresa de Avila
   

People see God every day; they just don't recognize him.

Pearl Bailey

   

   
God
- God 2 - God 3 - God 5 -
God 6

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From the world we see, hear, and touch, we behold inspired visions
that reveal God's glory.  In the sun's light, we catch warm rays of grace
and glimpse His eternal design.  In the birds' song, we hear his voice
and it reawakens our need of Him.  At the wind's touch,
we feel His Spirit and sense our eternal existence.

Wendy Moore
   

Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye.  Eating lunch
with a friend.  Trying to do a decent day's work.  Hearing the rain patter
against the window.  There is no event so commonplace but that God is
present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him
or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all
the more compellingly and hauntingly. . . . If I were called upon to state in a
few words the essence of everything  I was trying to say both as a novelist
and a preacher, it would be something like this:  Listen to your life.  See it
for the fathomless mystery that it is.  In the boredom and the pain of it no
less than in the excitement and the gladness:  touch, taste, smell your way
to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments
are key moments and life itself is grace.

Frederick Buechner
Now and Then

   

God has spoken very boldly about his desire to be a presence in our lives.
If I want to heal the ache and loneliness in my own life, one of the things
I need to do is get away, alone with God. . . . In the silence God will speak
to you most powerfully.  Too often his words to us get muffled, lost, or
covered by the crowd of many noises both inside and outside of us.  We
must have a quiet heart in order to hear God's distinctive message to us.

Tim Hansel

   

       

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.

    
   

       

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