Discipleship Quotes

Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce.

You can't guide someone into adulthood. The experiences are unique to each person. Deanna Troi

If any have more of the government of thee than Christ, or if thou hadst rather live after any other laws than his, if it were at thy choice, thou art not his disciple (331).

Contentment is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually.

We lose much consolation by the habit of reading His promises for the whole church, instead of taking them directly home to ourselves.

The cornerstone of the Roman legionnaires' astonishing fighting spirit can be attributed to their training.

No one has ever been deeply changed by an act of the will. The only thing that can re-forge and change a life at its root, is love.

Change from despair to joy he made her extremely beautiful.

Only the search for truth is valid, the desire for wisdom the motive. The method is assimilation, not study.

Pat Conroy embraced his new hometown with the grateful passion of a refugee.

The author emphasizes the importance of self-forgetfulness when his statistics were marred by a bad outing. He forgot all of that outing to such an extent that he quipped, "What was my name?

When meeting criticism, he would regard it not as something to resent but as a thing to be examined, like an interesting beetle. "That's a curious view, not uninteresting.

Nietzsche tended to equate the memorable with the painful.

Prayer is the forerunner of mercy.

Alas! it is but little we have done for our Master's glory. Our winter has lasted all too long. We are as cold as ice when we should feel a summer's glow and bloom with sacred flowers.

Even though every identity marker I have can be taken from me, the grace and peace of the Trinity overflows into the life of the believer.

We have to love technology enough to describe it accurately. And we have to love ourselves enough to confront technology's true effect on us.

Are you dedicated to your patient or your ego?

Regular, modest failures are actually essential to many forms of resilience.

Something greater than me was happening. And yet, it was happening to me.

God doesn't want meerly action but hearts driving action.

It is not great counts God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.

My own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service.

After the original rapture of conversion had settled in, (Bob) Dylan backed away from his obviously Christian lyrics and returned to his more metaphorical use of language.

In brokenness comes beauty, divine fragility.

The Book that made the nation was destroying the nation.

The more broken you are, the more light gets through.

Development is a voluntary process. You need a positive decision to make the right steps, but it starts with introspection.

We never move on from the cross. We only get a more profound understanding of the cross.

[T]he road to character is built by confronting your own weakness.

True service is a lifestyle. It acts from the ingrained patterns of living. It springs spontaneously to meet human need.

Frasier (Responding to the suggestion that he undertake the difficult work of closure in a relationship): "What you just said about my success made a lot of sense. I tuned you out after that.

I hope we can inaugurate a new humility in our use of religious language, which for me is the very proof that it is authentic.

What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people?" Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.

What could make a man stands taller than a newborn son?

They chose to regard it as a miraculous preservation.

The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see.

True spirituality is not taught, it's caught. Once our sails have been unfurled to the Spirit, henceforth our motivation for the journey toward holiness and wholeness is immense gratitude.

To a great extent in spiritual things we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone can bring us to see Jesus.

No man is considered just and virtuous who does not know whence he came and wither he is going. – Napoleon

Any journalist who holds the office writes in a straitjacket.

Who can be astonished at anything, when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Saviour?

The 20th century, the author observes, fostered the idea that fulfillment is possible on Earth.

We put up a kind of spiritual firewall and make a conscious effort to shut out the headlines, because our (Bible) discussions are meant to be timeless.

It is easy to get faith into our heads. It is hard to get faith into our bloodstream.

If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.

You don't realize your story is changing you until you look back.

His eyes touched lightly, and passed on.

Chaucer, like Homer, writes about a journey, but as a Christian he has a different goal. Homer wanted to go home, but Chaucer's pilgrims want a place of man's true home: paradise

I found myself speaking more slowly (in an attempt to obey the Bible in speech), as if I was speaking French instead of English.