Quotes about Power

Our most natural prayer is "My Father in heaven, hallowed be my name, may my kingdom come, may my will be done on earth." We're afraid of God's will being done because we can't control what he will do, when he will do it, how he will do it, and what the outcome might be.

The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.

Art has tremendous power to shape culture and touch the human heart. Its artifacts embody the ideas and desires of the coming generation. This means that what is happening in the arts today is prophetic of what will happen in our culture tomorrow. It also means that when Christians abandon the artistic community, we lose a significant opportunity to coniniu- nicate Christ to our culture.

Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.

The problem, however, comes within the reach of possible solution, if we distinguish between sovereignty as an inherent power, and the exercise of sovereignty. God may limit the exercise of his sovereignty to make room for the free action of his creatures. It is by his sovereign decree that man is free. Without such self-limitation he could not admonish men to repent and believe. Here, again, the Calvinistic logic must either bend or break.

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.

Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.

Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.

Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power.

O, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.