"The main question isn't "How do we hide our wounds to avoid embarrassment?", but rather "How do we use our pain to serve others?""
— Henri Nouwen
Source: The Wounded Healer
Wounds, Services
Views: 488
"The only way to glorify the all-sufficiency of God in worship is to come to Him because "in [His] presence there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11). This has been the main point so far, and we could call it vertical Christian Hedonism. Between man and God, on the vertical axis of life, the pursuit of pleasure is not just tolerable; it is mandatory: "Delight yourself in the LORD"! (Psalm 37:4). The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."
— John Piper
Source: Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, rev. ed. (Multnomah, 2011), ch. 4, "Love: The Labor of Christian Hedonism"
Needs, Glory, Joy
Views: 586
"Beware of imagining that intercession means bringing our personal sympathies into the presence of God and demanding that He does what we ask. ... Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God's interests in others for our natural sympathy with them."
— Oswald Chambers
Source: My Utmost for His Highest, "Vicarious Intercession"
"It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very 'spiritual', that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself."
— C.S. Lewis
Source: The Screwtape Letters, Letter III (the demon Screwtape speaking)
Prayer, Plan
Views: 592
"It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. … Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. … Although those things which are beyond man's knowledge may not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith."
— Thomas Aquinas
Source: Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, a. 1 (tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920)
Reason, Faith, Truth
Views: 533
"Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now."
— D. L. Moody
Source: W. R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody (1900)