Quotes about Receptiveness

Sometimes we yearn for God to crack open a receptive door to share our faith. We scramble to grab an opportunity that never seems to come. Other times God swings open a door so quickly we're too stunned to walk through it!

I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." MARK 10 : 15

If you hold a rose up before a man and he shuts his eyes tight and just holds out his hands and says "Here, I am ready to be persuaded; convince me by touch that your rose is red;" then you are helpless.

Even when the angel asks him specifically, "Do you not know what these are?" Zechariah answers with humility, "No, my lord." Had Zechariah not responded with humility and openness, he probably would not have gained much from the whole experience. People who think they know it all already cut themselves off from learning anything new.

A deaf ear is the first indication of a closed mind.

And while from inside we would hear coughs and stirrings, there was never a rustle in the listeners out the door.

Happy the man who never puts on a face, but receives every visitor with that countenance he has on.

Almighty God freely bestows the good things in this world in proportion to a person's mental readiness to receive.

Truly I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

Because we approach the gospel with preconceived notions of what it should say rather than what it does say, the Word no longer falls like rain on the parched ground of our souls. It no longer sweeps like a wild storm into the corners of our comfortable piety. It no longer vibrates like sharp lightning in the dark recesses of our nonhistoric orthodoxy. The gospel becomes, in the words of Gertrude Stein, … a pattering of pious platitudes spoken by a Jewish carpenter in the distant past.

Whom is He trying to teach? To whom is He explaining His message? To infants just weaned from milk? To babies removed from the breast?

it is a thing much more worthy of admiration and praise to receive admonition meekly, than to admonish a transgressor boldly.