Pray not for crutches but for wings.
Category: Incisive Quotes
Excuses are disguises.
“How shall I feel at the judgment, if multitudes of missed opportunities pass before me in full review, and all my excuses prove to be disguises of my cowardice and pride?”
Halting somewhere
“The Church has halted somewhere between Calvary and Pentecost.”
Little and unknown
“Keep us little and unknown, prized and loved by God alone.”
Don’t buck the religious system
“It is a costly and a suffering thing to come up against the religious system that has ‘ settled down’ here. It is far more costly than coming up against the naked world itself. The religious system can be more ruthless and cruel and bitter; it can be actuated by all those mean things, contemptible things, prejudices and suspicions things that you will not even find in decent people in the world. It is costly to go on to the heavenlies, it is painful; but it is the way of the pioneer, and it has to be settled that that is how it is.”
Pioneering is a costly thing
“The whole history of the Church is one long story of this tendency to settle down on this earth and to become conformed to this world, to find acceptance and popularity here and to eliminate the element of conflict and of pilgrimage. That is the trend and the tendency of everything. Therefore outwardly, as well as inwardly, pioneering is a costly thing.”
God needs to respect our decorum
“With some men it would seem, if they could control God’s operations and manipulate His actions they might tolerate a revival; but to allow God a free hand, fills them with righteous indignation and horror. If only God would consent to become an ‘ecclesiastic’ and respect their dignity and decorum and beautiful order of service and ways of running the Church, they might condescend to have a revival.”
Holy ignorance of our shining
Oh, for closest communion with God, till soul and body, head, face, and heart shine with Divine brilliancy! But oh! for a holy ignorance of our shining!
Trying to get the world on your side
The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down.
Reducing the Kingdom to its least denominators
We have not rejected the Kingdom. We have reduced it.
— E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person