self-sacrifice is one of a woman's seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation).
Lukewarm people think about life on earth much more often than eternity in heaven.
God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard.
If God cared only about religious activities, then the Pharisees would have been heroes of the faith.
People who are obsessed with God are known as givers, not takers. Obsessed people genuinely think that others matter as much as they do, and they are particularly aware of those who are poor around the world (James 2:14-26).
Churchgoers all across the nation say the Holy Spirit has entered them. They claim that God has given them a supernatural ability to follow Christ, put their sin to death, and serve the church. Christians talk about being born again say that they they were dead but now have come to life. We have become hardened to those words, but they are powerful words that have significant meaning. Yet when those outside the church see no difference in our lives, they begin to question our integrity, out sanity, or even worse, our God. And can you blame them?
A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled up on top of it.
When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.
The sovereign state has in our times become a lethal danger to human civilization because technical developments enable it to employ an infinite number and variety of means of destruction.
[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.
How was it that Adrian Ivashkov, who never seemed to take anything seriously was the only one among these "responsible" people who paid attention to such small details? How was he the only one to really understand the magnitude of what I was feeling?