What Jesus longs to see in radical disciples is what he saw in little children: a spirit of sheer receptivity, utter dependence and radical reliance on the power and mercy and grace of God mediated through the Spirit of Christ.
The movement of Abraham is a paradigm of all authentic faith. It is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future.
The gospel will persuade no one unless it has so convinced us that we are transformed by it.
Why doesn't our contagious joy, enthusiasm and gratitude infect others with a longing for Christ? ... Perhaps because so few of us have undertaken the journey of faith across the chasm between knowledge and experience.
When we fear failure more than we love life, when we are dominated by thoughts of what might have been rather than by thoughts of what we might become, when we are haunted by the disparity between our ideal self and our real self, when we are tormented by guilt, shame, remorse, and self-condemnation, we deny our faith in the God of love.
To acknowledge Jesus as Saviour and Lord is only meaningful insofar as we try to live as He lived and to order our lives according to His values.
It is hard to be a Christian, but it is too dull to be anything else!
A life of love lived unpretentiously for others flowing out of a life lived for God is the imitation of Christ and the only authentic discipleship.
Simplicity of life does not depend on simplicity of environment.
The truest test of discipleship is the way we live with each other in the community of faith.
We either affirm or deprive, enlarge or diminish the lives of others.
Christians should- need- in certain ways to live dangerously if they are to live out their faith.
Either we dismiss the good news as too good to be true, or we permit ourselves to be overwhelmingly joyful persons because of it.
Biblically there is nothing more detestable than a self-sufficient person. He is so full if himself, so swollen with pride and conceit that he is insufferable.
The question is, do I worship God or do I worship my experience of God. Do I worship God or do I worship my idea of him? If I am to avoid a narcotic approach to religion that forces me to stagger from experience to experience hoping for bigger and better things, I must know what I believe apart from the nice or nasty feelings that may or may not accompany such a belief.
We are often so fed up of ourselves. We're sick of our own mediocrity, revolted by our own inconsistency, bored by our own monotony. We would never judge any other of God's children with the savage self-condemnation with which we crush ourselves.
If you love yourself intensely and freely, then your feelings about yourself correspond perfectly to the sentiments of Jesus.
A certain stiffness coupled with a critical attitude prevents us from offering people what they need the most- encouragement in their lives. We restrict our warmth and acceptance to a selected few.
Our busy world too often makes us deaf to the voice of God who speaks to us in silence.
Thus it is not surprising that we often wonder, in the midst of our occupied and preoccupied lives, if anything is really happening. Our lives may be filled to overflowing- so many events and commitments that we wonder how we'll get it all done. Yet, at the same time, we might feel unfulfilled and wonder if anything is worth living for. Being filled yet unfilled, busy yet bored, involved yet lonely, these are the symptoms of the absurd lifestyle that makes us inattentive to spiritual realities.
Mature Christians are those who have failed and learned to live graciously with their failure.
"Seek first the Kingdom of God." This requires taking time out from family, friends, career, ministry, even 'doing good', to enter the great silence of God. Alone in that silence, the noise within will subside and the Voice of Love will be heard. Without such silence we will drown in the inner cacophony of dialogues, encounters, meetings, discussion, and conferences where there is much speaking and little listening.
Devotional spirituality: a crude way of putting it would be that I spent so much time doing the things that would please God that I had no time left just to be with God.
On the journey from belief to experience, it takes more effort to be still than to run. Most of us live such a frenetic lifestyle that we are afraid of stillness, silence and solitude.
"How do I live a life in which Jesus is the centre?"
"Be faithful in your adoration. This word makes it clear that ll my attention must be on Jesus, not on myself. To adore is to be drawn away from my own preoccupations into the presence of Jesus. It means letting go of what I want, desire or have planned, and fully trusting Jesus and His love."
Never let a day pass without praying for yourself for an increase in faith.
He heals us of our absorption in ourselves- where we take ourselves too seriously, where the days and nights revolve around us, our heartaches and hiatal hernias, our problems and frustrations. His smile allows us to distance ourselves from ourselves and see ourselves in perspective as we really are. We are creatures fearfully and wonderfully made, a bundle of paradoxes and contradictions.
All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my work and witness. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that.
- Dominique Voillaume
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.-Albert Camus
If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says but watch what he does.-Maurice Blondel
