Quotes about Spirituality

Psalm 134, The final Song of Ascents, provides the evidence. The way of discipleship that begins in an act of repentance concludes in a life of praise.

I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus.

One person says, "I don't feel like worshiping; therefore I am not going to church. I will wait till I feel like it and then I will go." Another says, "I don't feel like worshiping; therefore I will go to church and put myself in the way of worship." In the process she finds herself blessed and begins, in turn, to bless.

The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this science.

The people of Birmingham also have souls.

Theologian Karl Rahner was once asked if he believed in miracles. His reply? 'I live on miracles—I couldn't make it through a day without them.' Still another name for it is mystery.

I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer—helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer.

The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, "deny yourself" congregation.

The fusion is accomplished by reading these Scriptures slowly, imaginatively, prayerfully and obediently. This is the way the Bible has been read by most Christians for most of the Christian centuries, but it is not commonly read that way today. The reading style employed more often than not.

The way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.

By contemporary Christians is fast, reductive, information-gathering and, above all, practical. We read for what we can get out of it, what we can put to use, what we think we can use—and right now.

Prayer is speech at its most alive. The breath that is breathed into us by God we breathe back to God.