297 results for tag: Quote for today

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 21, 2025 -Quote for the Day “When truth is fixed, reality adapts to unequivocal, eternal verities.  When truth is no longer truth, and every opinion equal, then subjective decisions are more likely to be accepted and tolerated.  Every generation that seeks to right all wrongs, finds itself battling with the unsettling reality that others in the past differed, and the notion past generations may have had it more ‘right’ than we do now is not only inconvenient, it is a painful and disconcerting possibility.  So why not reject such notions for ‘convenient truth?’”  Originally published in: C...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 18, 2025 - Quote for the Day “In a sad but twisted irony, religion not only seduces and deceives its followers (addicts and slaves), but it assures them that they need to endure misery and abuse in order to please and appease God.  What a travesty!  Religious legalism has turned many of its followers into the walking dead.”  Originally published in: Unplugging from Religion – Connecting With God ------------------------------------- Help Us Help Others - Give Now

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 16, 2025 - Quote for the Day “… running around in circles, so consumed with doing and fulfilling religious duties that there is little time to do anything else, let alone think, does not equate to following Jesus Christ… One can think that the highways and byways of Christ-less religion are paths of pleasing and appeasing God, while being absolutely deceived about who God actually is.  I was once making excellent progress on a narrow road that was in reality the broad road Jesus spoke of, but in terms of following Jesus I was going nowhere fast.”  Originally published in: Letters to My Friends – Our ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 14, 2025 - Quote for the Day “We don’t pay our own way into the kingdom of heaven.  There is no way to honor the Son, no way to accept the invitation, on our terms.  There is nothing we can do.  We can’t buy a ticket – the invitation is free, without charge.  We can’t get in the back door of the kingdom of heaven as a result of purchasing a pass through a religious power broker. It doesn’t matter how ‘true’ your church is – your church can’t give you a pass into the kingdom of heaven.  You may belong to one of the many ‘only true churches’ I have run across in my ministry, but that ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 11, 2025 - Quote for the Day “For God so loved the world challenges us because we naturally want to think that God only loves us … or at least, he loves us more. But if he loves the whole world then that means he loves everyone, just as much as he loves you and me!”  Originally published in: Wonders of His Love ------------------------------------- Help Us Help Others - Give Now

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 9, 2025 - Quote for the Day “If Jesus showed up today in our towns and cities, in our schools and courtrooms, in our cafes and malls, and yes, in our churches – would we recognize him?  Would he resemble what our churches have taught us?  Would religion welcome him?”  Originally published in: Between Religious Rocks and Life’s Hard Places ------------------------------------- Help Us Help Others - Give Now

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 7, 2025 -- Quote for the Day “Some people have been spiritually crippled all their lives and know no other reality.  They have been taught to fear and distrust everyone outside of their group, and they don’t want to be released from the comfort of their closeted world.”  Originally published in: Bad News Religion ------------------------------------- Help Us Help Others - Give Now

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 4, 2025 -- Quote for the Day “The baby had created the universe, but he had voluntarily left the pristine perfection of eternity in favor of the mud and filth of that stable – and the dust and grime of the world he would inhabit as he grew up.  He chose to come as a baby who would later be delivered via the birth canal and then later spiritually deliver not only Mary, the one who had physically delivered him, but ALL mankind, including those who tortured and crucified him.”  Originally published in: Christianity Without the Religion magazine, December 2022 Christianity Without the Religion Magazine ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

January 2, 2025 -- Quote for the Day “We don’t impress God with our religious juggling, our spiritual dances, our religious hand-jive, ballet or soft-shoe.  He doesn’t award us spiritual points based on our gymnastic religious performances.   He intervenes in our lives, lavishing us with his grace, based on his goodness, not ours. Think of the wise men from the East who came to visit the newborn Jesus.  One day they were leading a normal life, doing their astronomical calculations, consulting their star charts, putting in a 9-5 day, washing their camels and eating dinner with the family at night.  They ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 31, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “According to ‘Bad News Religion,’ humans need to repent of vices and make every attempt to overcome them and avoid them. According to the cross of Christ, Christians must repent of both vices and virtues. If you are mired in some religious swamp, your own presumed virtues may be a real obstacle that prevents you from accepting Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ means that all we do falls short of God’s perfection, and that nothing we do, be it a vice or a virtue, changes his love for us or his willingness to accept us.”  Originally published in: Bad News Religion ------------...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 28, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “The Cross of Christ stands as the crowning, never-to-be surpassed monument to the power of God’s love – when Jesus, out of his love for us, gave us the ultimate gift – himself. The Cross of Christ is the vertical love of God meeting the hatred of our horizontal world – and triumphing over it. The Cross of Christ is the presence of God in the most ugly, foul and reprehensible evils that will ever occur in the horizontal dimension experienced on our planet earth, taking on his shoulders all the perversion and corruption that mankind has ever or will ever generate – and letting it all be ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 26, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “If Jesus had come as a health-and-wealth preacher, then people would have followed him, hoping to improve their physical status in life. He wouldn’t have been despised and rejected – he would have been celebrated. If Jesus had come predicting the end time, holding huge prophecy crusades, writing a string of best-selling ‘left-behind’ novels, then he would have sold out amphitheaters and stadiums. He wouldn’t have been despised and rejected – he would have been a best-selling author and speaker. If Jesus had come with a healing crusade, then he would have attracted far more of those ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 24, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “… when Jesus was born, he was born far from the doors of any cathedral or temple made with human hands – far from any mega-church campus. The place where Jesus was born had more in common with places today where homeless people fill shopping carts with redeemable containers and poor day laborers wait for someone to hire them… When Mary gave birth, she gave birth to Jesus in a barnyard, and laid him in a feeding trough designed to feed animals. This scene was not a beautiful hospital birthing room – Jesus was not laid in a hygienic room with a window where friends and relatives could view him. ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 21, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “I AM One of You” is the Christmas card God sends to each of us! When God, through an angel, informed Joseph that Mary would give birth to Jesus, he said: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they shall call him Immanuel, which means God with us (Matthew 1:23). God assures us, in his Christmas card, ‘How can I ever forget you?  In Christ I became one of you!” Christianity Without the Religion magazine, December 2021 ------------------------------------- Help Us Help Others - Give Now

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 19, 2024 - Quote for the Day:  “The shopping malls are filled with people whose credit cards are maxed out and whose hearts and souls are empty. Simon and Garfunkel reflected – ‘the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.’ In Eleanor Rigby, the Beatles sang of ‘all the lonely people’ in a religious, church setting.  Loneliness characterizes the lives of those who have not yet seen or embrace the light of Jesus. I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that of course, is the meaning of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 17, 2024 - Quote for the Day:  “The world into which Jesus came was not and is not a Hallmark-card Christmas where everyone is healthy, prosperous, well-nourished, living in beautiful homes, giving lavish gifts, gathered around long tables and enjoying sumptuous Christmas feasts. The world to which Jesus came and still comes is not about perfect families where everyone gets along, with no acrimony or arguments – it’s not a world where there is no oppression, no impoverishment, no disease and no heartache. Jesus came to the weary, dirt-poor, ghetto-like world of Bethlehem were political and religious tyrants, then and now, ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 14, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “When God came to us, in the person of Jesus, he came to be one of us – in humility.  That truth alone – that God humbled himself – seems to be blasphemous to many within religion. How could God become humble? God determined that he would enter the womb of Mary, a teenage girl who was betrothed, but not yet married. Yes, she was married to Joseph when Jesus was born, but she was pregnant with Jesus when she and Joseph married. The circumstances of his birth caused tongues to wag. Why did God do it that way? Why didn’t God the Holy Spirit just wait to impregnate Jesus after Mary and ...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 12, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “The first verses of the Gospel of John tell us that Jesus was the Word. Logos is the Greek term for ‘Word.’ It means Jesus was and is the force and the reason and the core of all meaning, relevance and power that sustains and holds everything together. Jesus, the Word – the Logos – is the answer to the questions that confound us. Who made us, who made the earth, who made our solar system, our cosmos and our universe – and how does it keep working? How is it all held together – how do all the eco-systems work in such symmetry and harmony?  It’s not random!”  Chris...

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 10, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “Instead of Christmas being about what Jesus gives to us, it can be twisted and corrupted into what we must give to others – and to God – so that he and others will be pleased enough by our performance to love us. Instead of Christmas being about the love of God that is freely given to one and all, Christ-less religion twists and perverts it into a nightmare where we have to prove our love to family and friends and God.”  Christianity Without the Religion magazine, December 2020 ------------------------------------- Help Us Help Others - Give Now

Reflections Along the Jesus Way

December 7, 2024 - Quote for the Day: “God’s grace, exemplified by the birth of Jesus, is not simply a one-time spiritual bail-out. God’s grace is not a temporary loan to help us get back on our feet.  The birth of Jesus is not a one-time stimulus package. God’s grace is an eternal solution. Jesus didn’t come to bring us a “little bit” of hope, to jump start the human religious economies of this world. Jesus did not come so that he could start another religion or modify religion. Religion is the problem. He brought the answer. The answer is Jesus. Jesus brought an entirely different kind of spiritual economy – an ...