Quotes Tagged "obedience"

Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people.

I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)

I don't do what I'm told, but I might do what you want if you ask me nicely.

You are evidence of your mother's strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity.

The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.

Father has a strengthening character like the sun and mother has a soothing temper like the moon.

God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.

Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.

If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.

Faith, in its most correct form, never removes responsibility; it removes fear of responsibility. The results are complete opposites with the greater saying, 'God's will is my delight.

There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always - always - returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.

The love of Christ is always there and unchanging, no matter what we do, but it is when we are obedient that we actually begin to feel it.

In our worldly perceptions of Jesus, we tend to embrace the kindness of his love ('be encouraged') but not the discipline of his love ('and sin no more'). But with the whole scope of his love, or maturity in Christ, we begin relying on him for guidance where we would prefer him to walk beside us rather than behind us.

Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.

God will save whomever He chooses to save. The Christian should proselytize not because he thinks he can change everybody; he should proselytize because the Gospel being shared is the ultimate act of love: because he thinks he can love everybody.

Israel's first king, Saul, looked like he was born for the role. He was tall, handsome, intelligent, and sensitive to God's leading. But he eventually lost most of his attractive qualities, the most important being obedience.

Long since, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of the Absolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself. That is why, though it was a terror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because of what He is in Himself. If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him. In His nature His sovereignty 'de jure' is revealed.

Who are the happiest people? Those who hear the word of God and obey. They are happy to bend the knee, happy to turn it over to God because they know, it’s that, or carry the weight of the world.

Without an acknowledgment of God and God’s law in one’s life, momentary pleasures will be continually contaminated by gnawing guilt. Momentary pleasures would become meaningless as each raw experience would be stripped of deep meaning and sweet memory, Each day’s work would become sheer drudgery, beauties of nature would become boring, and children would be deemed nuisances to be endured. Without God’s moral underpinnings, political behavior would be skewed toward short-term expediency, lurching nervously from crisis to crisis.

Three rules to obey! 1. Don't be over-impressed by your past glories! 2. Don't be scared by your future stories! 3. Be hopeful to get out of today's miseries!