Quotes about Receiving

God works to will, and He is ready to work to do, but, alas! many Christians misunderstand this. They think because they have the will, it is enough, and that now they are able to do. This is not so. … The power to do is not a permanent gift, but must be each moment received from the Holy Spirit.

These two, consecration and faith, are the essential elements of the Christian life—the giving up all to Jesus, the receiving all from Jesus. They are implied in each other; they are united in the one word—surrender. A full surrender is to obey as well as to trust, to trust as well as to obey.

The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.'

Expect great things from God, receive great things from God. Expect little from God, receive little from God.

There was never a person who did anything worth doing that he did not receive more than he gave.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort—every day—is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received.

We have always made it hard for God to give away God for free.

Jesus seems to often find love in people who might not have received much love themselves. Perhaps their deep longing for it became their capacity to both receive it and give it.

Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened." —Matthew 7:7—8

Mary is all of us both receiving and handing on the gift. We liked her precisely because she was one of us—and not God!

If Christ and Jesus are the archetypes of what God is doing, Mary is the archetype of how to receive what God is doing and hand it on to others.