Grace, Faith & Life

Who is this that complicates ideas with words without knowledge?

Not he who answers quickly is worthy of praise, but he who can support his views.

Nothing hinders learning something so much, as to think that you already know it.

If you get kicked in the head by a mule, it is probably your fault.

There are two types of people; some only tell half of what they know, others only know half of what they tell.

Life is hard. It is even harder if you are stupid.

Men are four:
He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool – shun him.
He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple – teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep – wake him.
He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise – follow him!

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

Learning takes place when you figure something out for yourself.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Holiness is the fruit of Truth.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Obedience can be an expression of love, but obedience cannot be the motivation for love.

Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.”

15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;

Now is the time.

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization

You can tell the size of your God by looking at the size of your worry list. The longer your list, the smaller your God.

I am sure that never was a people, who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States; and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.

Today not only in philosophy but in politics, government, and individual morality, our generation sees solutions in terms of synthesis and not absolutes. When this happens, truth, as people have always thought of truth, has died.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

7 Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.
8 Exalt her, and she will promote you; She will bring you honor, when you embrace her.
9 She will place on your head an ornament of grace; A crown of glory she will deliver to you.”

Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

Spend your money on expensive books and you will get their worth in golden knowledge.

14 The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, But the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness.

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

15 The simple believes every word, But the prudent considers well his steps.

‎5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

‎16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Unless your heart, your soul, and your whole being are behind every decision you make, the words from your mouth will be empty, and each action will be meaningless. Truth and confidence are the roots of happiness.

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

Democrats couldn’t care less if people in Indiana hate them. But if Europeans curl their lips, liberals can’t look at themselves in the mirror.

The parents have a right to say that no teacher paid by their money shall rob their children of faith in God and send them back to their homes skeptical, or infidels, or agnostics, or atheists

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.

The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and leaders one can hear in the next county. Some find strength in eloquence, some in judgment, some in courage.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.

The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.

Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”
17 then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus,
20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.
5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,
6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

It is impossible to make something out of nothing, therefore, we do not exist.

27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

The Naked Gospel, by Andrew Farley

This is, without a doubt, the best book which I have ever read describing the personal transformation intended by the New Covenant. The typical modern evangelical church model is “come, grow, serve and go”. My problem with this paradigm is that the primary message is usually to motivate members to “serve and go”. This makes church growth the main thing, rather than an understanding of personal transformation for members.The leadership of most churches seem to be happy just getting new Christians to join “Team Christian”. Teaching a new believer their true identity in Christ and how that is supposed to work in their life situations according to the New Covenant seems to be a secondary emphasis. Maybe because they think that that is the work of the Holy Spirit. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the scriptural basis for the New Covenant and how it causes a personal transformation which should lead to a victorious Christian life. This is the Gospel the way it should be taught. Dan Boliek, aka Theophilos

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.   (KJV – sent from CadreBible)

There is a danger of forgetting what one has to say while working out a clever way to say it. St. Augustine

it is the nature of good minds to love truth in the form of words, not the words themselves. St. Augustine

 Print This Page