Quotes to Ponder
Corrie ten Boom
I do not believe immediately in telling new Christians what they should and should not do: such things can be left safely to the Holy Spirit. For, after all, we do not bring people to a faith, a religion, or a doctrine, but to a person, Jesus Christ.
If you will work for God, form a committee. If you will work with God, form a prayer group.
If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. But, if you look at Christ, You’ll be at rest.
Billy Graham
Perhaps you say, “But I don’t know what to say when I pray,” God does not mind your stumbling and halting phrases. He is not interested in your grammer. He is interested in your heart. I have a little boy only two years old. He stumbles and falters trying to express himself to me; but I think I love his little words that I can not understand even more than I will appreciate his correct grammatical sentences when he grows older.
One thing the Bible does not teach is that sex in itself is sin. Far from being prudish, the Bible celebrates sex and its proper use, presenting it as God-created, God-ordained, God-blessed. It makes plain that God himself implanted the physical magnetism between the sexes for two reasons: for the propagation of the human race, and for the expression of that kind of love between man and wife that makes for true oneness. His command to the first man and woman to be “one flesh” was as important as His command to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Courage and cowardice are antithetical. Courage is an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. Courage breeds creative self-affirmation; cowardice produces a destructive self-abnegation. Courage faces fear and thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it. Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
Fear is mastered through love. the New Testament affirms, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.” The kind of love that led Christ to a cross and kept Paul unembittered amid the angry torrents of persecution is not soft, anaemic, and sentimental. Such love confronts evil without flinching and shows in our popular parlance an infinite capacity “to take it.” Such love overcomes the world even from a rough-hewn cross against the sky-line.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil is. Against evil, one can protest; it can be exposed and, if necessary, stopped with force. Evil always carries the seed of its own self-destruction, because it at least leaves people with a feeling of uneasiness. But against stupidity, we are defenseless. Neither with protest nor with force can we do anything here; reasons have no effect. Facts that contradict one’s own prejudice need only to be disbelieved – in such cases stupid people even become critical, and when facts are unavoidable, they can simply be swept aside as meaningless isolated cases. Stupid people, in contrast to evil ones, are satisfied with themselves. Indeed, they become dangerous in that they may easily be stimulated to go on the attack. Therefore, more care must be taken in regard to stupidity than to evil…
Closer examination reveals that every strong external development of power, whether of a political or religious nature, strikes a large portion of the people with stupidity…
The biblical saying, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, (but fools despise wisdom and instruction)” [Proverbs 1:7] says that the internal liberation of people for responsible life before God is the only real way to overcome stupidity.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer ~
I Want to Live These Days with You: A Year of Daily Devotions
By: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Westminster John Knox Press / 2007