Post 78 - Wisdom & Insight: Some of My Favorite Quotes

One motivation for creating a blog is the opportunity for the blogger--under the guise of informing/teaching/enlightening--to pontificate about things he deems of import. As you can see from the number on this post, I have done that very thing seventy-seven times in the past four years.

Today I wanted to give other people the chance to inform/teach/enlighten us. Today's post will be a brief listing of some of my favorite quotes from some of my favorite, most insightful Christian thinkers.

Enjoy.

C. S. Lewis

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

―The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

"Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed."

--The Case for Christianity

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals who we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

--The Weight of Glory

"Christians are no earthly good until they are heavenly minded."

--Mere Christianity (in response to a famous quote by the agnostic Supreme Court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes - “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.”)

A. W. Tozer

"... First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend... "

--The Pursuit of God

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us... Without a doubt the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God.”

--The Knowledge of the Holy

“When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself.  The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation.  In the “and” lies our great woe.  If we omit the “and” we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.”

--The Pursuit of God

Albert Einstein*

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.”

--Einstein: The Life and Times, Ronald W. Clark

"It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."

(*I'm aware that Albert Einstein wasn't a Christian, but he is often mistakenly portrayed as an atheist. He was not.)

Augustine of Hippo

“Command what you will and grant what you command.”

"Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all."

"God loves each of us as if there were only one of us."

--St. Augustine's Confessions

G. K. Chesterton

“The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.”

--Tremendous Trifles

"If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so."

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists."

"If you don't believe in God, you'll believe in anything."

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

--What's Wrong with the World

Oswald Chambers

"Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him."

--My Utmost for His Highest

"In the midst of the awesomeness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. You know it is not the hand of restraint, correction, nor chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it gives inexpressible peace and comfort, and the sense that "underneath are the everlasting arms," (Deuteronomy 33:27) full of support, provision, comfort and strength."

--His Utmost for His Highest

John Piper

"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."

--Desiring God

George Mueller

"George Mueller, nothing. The Lord Jesus, everything. In himself worse than nothing. By grace, in Christ, the son of the King."

Final Thought

I am humbled by the wisdom and insight of these amazing thinkers who were gifted with a unique ability to capture truth with an uncommon and clever rhetorical flair. It's a reminder that we should never stop seeking wise counsel from those who, through divine inspiration and the power of the Spirit, inform/teach/enlighten and encourage us in the faith.

Test all things; hold fast to that which is good. (1Thes 5:21)

Next Post: Bad "Christianity" - Part I

Here's a link: Post 79 - Dazed and Confused: Quotes from Ignorance