A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, than must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of...
When gentleness starts to sound like a weakness to us Christians rather than a fruit of the Spirit, that's when we know power has become an idol for us.
We are all hypocrites to some degree — passionately promoting ideas we have not ourselves fully lived, taking others to task for frailties and failures not that dissimilar from our own. Knowing this, we should all be more gentle, more hopeful, more merciful with one...
Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love--whether we call it friendship or family or romance--is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Lifesaving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude...
I dislike your speaking of yourselves as though you were the only [ones] who know and taught the Gospel; ...But what I most dislike is your littleness of love...your want [lack] of union...your want of meekness, gentleness, long suffering; your impatience of...
Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. Meekness is a teaching of Jesus. Humility is the way God became human. Beware of any Christian movement that advocates otherwise, especially in the political sphere. It is simply trying to justify its own power by any means...
I would rather account to God for too great gentleness than for too great severity. God the Father is the Father of mercy; God the Son is a Lamb; God the Holy Ghost is a Dove; are you wiser than God?
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with...
The moment we Christians feel justified abandoning love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control for the sake of preserving and enforcing our own power is the moment we find we are being led by something other than the...