Spiritual Quotes - Page 332

Moses warned them [Israelites] that the leading spiritual danger they would face on entering the [promise] land would be forgetting the Lord. What adversity would not do, prosperity and satisfaction could. They were to be on their guard against spiritual lethargy.

Spiritual leadership ought to be given to those who have proven themselves under stress.

Even the wisest people learn little from their successes; God warns His people against allowing their victories (which He will grant) to lead them into pride and spiritual indifference. Instead, they should pay close attention to God's Word.

Father, we ask that you give us a passion for the truth and not merely a hatred of falsehood. Keep us concerned for the spiritual health of people but open to your own rebukes from your mighty Word.

In any spiritual undertaking, God's first order of business is to see to the spiritual health of His people.

Intercessors constitute the greatest unseen group of spiritual heroes in world history. Their labors are not seen, but the results are. Those who pray for the spiritual needs of others do immeasurable good in the world, often preventing (at least for a time) divine judgment.

God wanted Israel, as He wants Christians, to learn to utterly abhor and detest anything that had the potential of coming between them and their God. The believer's enemies are typically internal rather than external, and they pose a powerful threat to spiritual health and progress.

Many people find spiritual growth possible only when times are hard; prosperity tends to promote complacency.

Equal justice under law is a spiritual as well as a civic principle.

The choice of a mate is crucial because no one has a greater influence on our spiritual lives.

Although spiritual growth puts our wills to the test, after the battle has been won, we recognize that the Lord is the true victor in the struggle.

A concern for doctrinal purity should always be based on love of the Lord, not a desire to express spiritual pride.

The spiritual heritage of the godly lives on after they are gone.

The wise Christian will learn from the spiritual blunders of others.

God's love does not depend on the current spiritual condition of those He loves.

The worship of false gods is always an outgrowth of spiritual deception.

Prayer is the breath of the new man, drawing in the air of mercy in petitions, and returning it in praises; it proves and maintains the spiritual life.

Big-heartednes s is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey.

I consider Otto Rank to be one of the great spiritual giants of the twentieth century, a genius as a psychologist and a saint as a human being. Though vilified by his original community of Freudians, he never became bitter. He died a feminist and deeply committed to social justice, in 1939....His deep understanding of creativity makes him a mentor for all of us living in a postmodern world....I believe that Art and Artist, especially chapters 12 to 14, may well emerge as the most valuable psychoanalysis of the spiritual life in our time.

Political movements for justice are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is the matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements are a fuller development of the cosmos's sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebrating and healing, which will in turn culminate in personal transformation and liberation.

Faith takes us to deep places, to the ruptures in our self-confidence and our lives. Do not settle for spiritual comfort all the time...Darkness is divine also. Faith is not about positive thinking so much as about what kicks in when we are weak, sick, and short of self-confidence. The via positiva never stands alone. The via negativa is always with us on our faith journey as well.

To connect with the great river we all need a path, but when you get down there there's only one river.

Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity.

Style ... is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.

It's like a spiritual elevation that occurs when you're playing and becoming one with the instrument or players on the stage.