The current situation, in which faith professed has little impact on the whole or life, is not unique to our times, nor is it a recent development. But it is currently at an acute stage. History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be...
Conversion is primarily an unselfing. The first birth of the individual is into his own little world. He is controlled by the deep-seated instincts of self-preservation and self-enlargement—instincts which are, doubtless, a direct inheritance from his brute ancestry....
Most of us fear community because we think it will call us away from ourselves… What a curious conception of self we have! We have forgotten that self is a moving intersection of many other selves. We are formed by the lives which intersect ours.
Community is not built through sitting in the same building and singing the same songs. It is forged in the fires of life. When we know each other deeply—the good, the bad, and the ugly—community is experienced. Roots grow deep when we know we are loved by others and...
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored… What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of God. from "The Rock"
My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the...
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end; submit with...
When you are young, I think, your hearing is in some ways better than it is ever going to be again. You hear better than most people the voices that call to you out of your own life to give yourself to this work or that work. When you are young, before you accumulate...
To be biblical is not simply to quote the Bible. We need to tell that to the fundamentalists. To be biblical is not to quote Moses; it’s to do what Moses did. To be biblical is to do what Abraham did; it’s not to quote the Abraham story. It’s to do what Jesus did;...
The Bible is far more than a doctrinal guidebook. God’s Word generates life, creates faith, produces change, frightens the Devil, causes miracles, heals hurts, builds character, transforms circumstances, imparts joy, overcomes adversity, defeats temptation, infuses...