247 results for tag: Quote for today
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 23, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Jesus, God in the flesh, came to serve us, not the other way around. We do not find Jesus running around enforcing a bunch of rules. The primary sense we receive from reading the life and teachings of Jesus is that he loves us and invites us into the kingdom of heaven. The life and teachings of Jesus do not leave us frustrated or depressed, thinking we have never done anything right or that he is upset with us. That feeling comes to us from the kingdom of religion, not the kingdom of heaven. That feeling came (in the time of Jesus) from the Pharisees who condemned, belittled and scorned Jesus ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 21, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Many who believe the Bible is infallible and inerrant often claim that the Bible should not be interpreted, but its words believed and accepted without question.
Members of the ‘no interpretation is necessary’ marching-and-chowder society often predicate their insistence on laying aside critical faculties when reading the Bible in favor of believing, without question, someone’s interpretation of the Bible who is revered as a religious authority. But the Bible itself invites inquiry – it does not demand that its readers ‘check their brains at the door’ before reading nor does ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 18, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Here is the Christ-centered perspective; it is only by seeing Jesus as He really is that we understand our world as it really is. We must not evaluate God according to our world, for in so doing we diminish him. This is part of the force of the Second Commandment of the old covenant, when Israel was commanded not to make images of God. Nothing we can create can begin to capture the essence of God; all human depictions devalue and corrupt him. Many popular attempts at ‘end times prophecy’ turn God into something and someone He is not. They result from having the theological cart before the ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 16, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“The kingdom of heaven is not a physical kingdom. It is not defined by physical dimensions, boundaries and limitations. But the kingdom is real – it is certainly not pretend or imaginary. The spiritual dimension is far more authentic than the physical – of eternal significance rather than passing temporal limitations. By God’s grace, we live in the kingdom of heaven now. The kingdom now is limited, in the sense that it does not exercise universal domain or rule. Not everyone is part of the kingdom of God now. The kingdom now is the very real presence of eternity now. But the eternity of ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 14, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“If you once belonged to and were enslaved and in bondage to Christ-less religion, then you know what a spiritual cattle drive is like. Lots of cattle. A broad ‘road’ indeed. When you are being driven in either a physical or spiritual cattle drive, the view in front of you is not that glorious or glamorous, is it? All cattle drives look and smell the same.”
Originally published in:
Letters to My Friends
-------------------------------------
Help Us Help Others - Give Now
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 11, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“We have a need to let go of our past and to forgive real and imagined hurts caused by individuals who were involved, whether directly or indirectly. There’s no delete button to erase it all – but there is a way to heal it all. There’s a way to forgive others, but the solution does not ultimately come from human resources. There is a way to deal with the hurts and pains that live in our memories. The answer is found in God’s love… the resolution of our hurts and pains has no easy answer. In fact, forgiveness just might be the most difficult task that God’s love can ever accomplish ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 9, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“When you and I hear the word ‘peace’ defined as ‘the absence of conflict,’ that goes about as far as our minds can hope. The peace most humans hope for is when bloodshed, crime and war are no more.
Apart from God, when we draw a mental picture of peace, our limited human perspective transports us to the serenity experienced when armies are not fighting, and no doubt, that kind of peace is part of God’s kingdom”
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 7, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“God’s grace is alive and well – it is dynamic – it is the fundamental description of our relationship with God. God’s grace is unique – no religion, other than authentic Christianity – teaches and believes in God’s amazing grace.
Years ago, during a British conference on religion, experts from all over the world debated about what was unique to biblically based Christian faith. Was it the idea of the Incarnation – God, in the person of Jesus, coming to be one of us? No, other religions have teachings about gods who appear in human form. What about The Resurrection? No, other ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 4, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Thank God that he has made a way to spare us a life and eternity of fairness. We do not get what we deserve in this life, no matter how hard we try to ensure that we do. Not getting what we deserve means that there are times when we suffer loss and receive injustice. But the rest of the story is that God offers us his grace. God’s grace is something else that we do not deserve. If we accept God’s grace, the times in our physical lives when we do not receive what we consider to be justice pale by comparison when we realize that God forgives us of many things we do deserve.”
Originally ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
January 2, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Garrison Keillor has done a masterful job in talking about ingrained religious attitudes and beliefs in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon. Keillor named one of the churches in his fictional town Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.
According to Keillor, there’s always something to be done at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. No religious deed goes unpunished at this church. When one task is completed, ten more await doing. Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility is a spiritual prison, where, as the lyrics to the Eagle’s Hotel California warn – “you can check out any time you ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 31, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The best way to announce, send and share a vision is to encase and enfold that dream in a person. That’s what happened when God became a man. Mary… ‘wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger’ (Luke 2:7 KJV).
Sending a message, wrapped up in a person, is at the heart and core of the meaning and significance of the birth of Jesus, and of the celebration of his birth we call Christmas.
Jesus was God in human flesh – the God-man. He brought wonderful news to our world – we call it the gospel – and that gospel was wrapped up in his person. Jesus ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 28, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“In his classic book, The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton says this: ‘There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.’
Thomas Merton was saying that many people experience the hoopla and excitement of Christmas, but fail to grasp its profound meaning… Experiencing Christmas is one thing, but grasping its far-reaching significance is yet another.”
Originally published in:
Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul, Volume 3
-...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 26, 2023 - 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 ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 24, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The Incarnation is about The Visitor, when we became a visited planet… The Visitor brought heaven to earth. Moses gave us the law, but The Visitor personally delivered his grace and truth (John 1:17). When the law came, it came by the mailman (or, if you like, by Fedex), but when grace and truth came, God delivered it personally. God, in the person of Jesus, personally delivered grace and truth, so that you may know that God’s law has no power or condemnation over you. God’s law, delivered through Moses, cannot accuse you, because it was God in that manger.”
Originally ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 21, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Christmas is about a baby, a really vulnerable baby, born into poverty, into a land that is militarily occupied, to a race of people who are horribly oppressed. God in the flesh – even when it didn’t seem like God is with us.
Christmas is about a baby whose life is threatened soon after his birth so that his family has to run to save his life – they have to become aliens and immigrants. That doesn’t sound like God is with us, does it?
Wait – What about beautiful Christmas trees and expensive presents and lavish meals and feasts and huge choral concerts? Nothing ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 19, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2). While many stories begin with the words ‘once upon a time’ John’s Christmas story, about eternity invading human time and space… begins with the words ‘in the beginning.’ Instead of telling us about ‘once upon a time’ the sense here is ‘once before time.’ John writes about ‘in the beginning’ – before time existed, before time began, before the creation of the world as we know it, and before God came into the world in the person of Jesus… He ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 17, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“God, though what we call the Incarnation, came into our world in the person of Jesus. Jesus came into our time-bound world from eternity. The dilemma that the Incarnation presents for our human minds is that Jesus remained divine while becoming human. He still inhabited boundless eternity, but he also inhabited the limitations of our world and what it means to be human. He came into time. He was born, lived, died on the cross and was resurrected. He is now risen; He’s still in time as well as being outside of it. The Book of Revelation is from ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 14, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“How did this incredible and astounding story about God’s love incarnated for us become an orgy of eating, drinking, getting and grasping? How did God’s love being born into our story become so devalued that many primarily understand its celebration as a time when they shop until they drop, spending money they do not have in a vain pursuit of buying love and proving their love to those they hold near and dear?...
Sadly, a headlong pursuit of purchasing love for ourselves blurs and obscures the miracle, majesty and mystery of God’s love coming to this earth. Here-today-and-go...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 12, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“The Son of God was born into the world, not as a prince, but as a pauper. So, to deck up the legendary scene of his nativity with precious hangings, pictures, glittering lamps and other ornamentation, is to destroy whatever valid symbolism it might otherwise have had. Truly, we human beings have a wonderful facility for thus snatching fantasy from the jaws of truth. – Malcom Muggeridge Let us not think of Jesus as spiritual Prozac, designed to cure our depression by masking the symptoms but never offering a cure for the true problem. May we not be seduced by the silly and ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
December 10, 2023 - Quote for the Day:
“Christmas is about God who, in the person of Jesus, came to us willing to confront the very worst of what it means to be human, and love us anyway.”
Originally published in:
Letters to My Friends
-------------------------------------
Help Us Help Others - Give Now
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
