Quotes about Reflection

Dream big, pray hard, and think long.

without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. "Be still, and know that I am God." Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still.

Prayer makes no sense apart from waiting.

The root idea of Sabbath is simple as rain falling, basic as breathing. It's that all living things—and many nonliving things too— thrive only by an ample measure of stillness.

In some ways, the whole point of the Exodus was Sabbath. Let my people go, became God's rallying cry, that they might worship me. At the heart of liberty—of being let go—is worship. But at the heart of worship is rest—a stopping from all work, all worry, all scheming, all fleeing—to stand amazed and thankful before God and his work. There can be no real worship without true rest.

God created the church, we have said, so that it might increasingly reflect the character of God as it's been revealed in his Word. In keeping with the storyline of the entire Bible, then, church discipline is the act of excluding an individual who carelessly brings disrepute onto the gospel and shows no commitment to doing otherwise.

A healthy church is a congregation that increasingly reflects God's character as his character has been revealed in his Word.

The truly changed, truly converted, truly Christian heart can say with John Newton, "I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God, I am what I am.

May John Newton's prayer for himself be our prayer to God for our churches: "I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God I am what I am.

Do you think you are going to live forever? Is life so long you rather rag somebody than be nice to them?

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.