We can be in our day what the heroes of faith were in their day - but remember at the time they didn't know they were heroes.
[Pope Francis] most recent trip was to Sweden, where he commemorated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. That had triggered one of the biggest splits in Christianity and decades of religious wars. He went so far as to praise Luther, who was once considered a heretic in the church, as a great reformer. So what he's been doing with other Christian churches is trying to heal past wounds and work together toward a shared view of their history.
As the body lives by breathing, so the soul lives by believing.
Boy is he pissed," said Adrian. "Do you blame him?" asked Christian. "He just lost memerbship in the evil mastermind club. His brilliant plan fell apart, and now his daughter's missing when he thought she was somewhere safe. " Adrian stayed pointedly silent.
In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the heart of the gospel. Instead of being 'salt' and 'light' -images of a permeating and penetrating action-Christians and Christian institutions become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within.
What is a church? Let Truth and reason speak, They would reply, "The faithful, pure and meek, From Christian folds, the one selected race, Of all professions, and in every place.
Not everyone who has made peace with God has realized the peace of God.
The carnal person fears man, not God. The strong Christian fears God, not man. The weak Christian fears man too much, and God too little.
Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience - a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.
Before we become too arrogant with the most deadly of the seven deadly sins, the sin of pride, let us remember that the two great wars of this century, wars which cost twenty million dead, were fought between Christian nations praying to the same God.
Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly.
Marriage is a partnership between one man and one woman. . . Nothing could be clearer in the Bible as to what constitutes a marriage in God's sight.
The world would use us just as it did the martyrs, if we loved God as they did.
If you see a Bible that is falling apart, it probably belongs to someone who isn't!
I think that in the Christian community, we're lacking a lot of things, and I don't know that it's just children's role models.
Freedom is won by relegating religion to a purely private sphere remote from the body politic. In fact, the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture.
It is necessary to salvation that all Christians be subject to the pope.
Today, under the influences of Eastern religions and philosophies imported into the West, many Christians confuse God's Spirit with our spirit and think our spirit is a spark of the divine, "the God within everyone. " That's not how the biblical writers thought about our spirits or souls.
Our kids were God's kids first. . . We tend to forget this fact, regarding our children as "our" children, as though we have the final say in their health and welfare. We don't. All people are God's people, including the small people who sit at our tables.
You don't bring glory or pleasure to God by hiding your abilities or by trying to be someone else. You only bring him enjoyment by being you.