Quotes about Change

To keep from falling, you must change your focus: from your circumstances to My Presence.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." —EZEKIEL 36:26 NKJV

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Instead of striving for a predictable, safe lifestyle, seek to know Me in greater depth and breadth. I want to make your life a glorious adventure, but you must stop clinging to old ways.

When you cling to old ways and sameness, you resist My work within you. I want you to embrace all that I am doing in your life, finding your security in Me alone.

TO RECEIVE MY PEACE, YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR GRASPING, CONTROLLING STANCE TO ONE OF OPENNESS AND TRUST.

You can feel secure, even in the midst of cataclysmic changes, through awareness of My continual Presence. The One who never leaves you is the same One who never changes: I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. As you release more and more things into My care, remember that I never let go of your hand. Herein lies your security, which no one and no circumstance can take from you.

I CAME INTO YOUR LIFE TO MAKE YOU FREE. If you're involved in hurtful relationships, I will help you change them or break free; if you are trapped in addictions, I will help you take the first step toward freedom—honest confession of the truth. In every situation, the truth will set you free.

It is far too easy to be critical. It is far harder to have a better idea.

Christopher Rowland, who has plumbed apocalyptic literature as well as anyone in the modern era, counters much of the common interpretation of Revelation when he says, "We should not ask of apocalypses, what do they mean? Rather, we should ask, how do the images and designs work? How do they affect us and change our lives?

The question we need to ask today is this, and this question strikes to the heart of how we read the Bible: Do we seek to retrieve that cultural world and those cultural expressions, or do we live the same gospel in a different way in a different day?

I believe that the broad sweep of the way in which prayer works in the Bible — and I'm thinking here of Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh — teaches us that God, in his sovereignty, has established a kind of contingency in the universe, and that God genuinely interacts with humans who pray in such a way that the universe changes as a result of our prayers.