The Spirit Of The Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives Quotes
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." - MATTHEW 11:29–30
"His commands are not burdensome." - 1 JOHN 5:3, NIV
"A more reasonable estimate of human costs and values will lead us to think that no labour is better expended than that which explores the way to the treasure-houses of the spirit, and shows mankind where to find those goods which are increased by being shared, and which none can take from us." - WILLIAM RALPH INGE
"Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried." - G. K. Chesterton
"It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition!" - Søren Kierkegaard
"Proverbs 13:15 tells us that it is the way of the transgressor that is hard."
"To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved."
"We have only to grasp the secret of entering into that easy yoke."
"The secret involves living as he lived in the entirety of his life—adopting his overall life-style."
"Faith is a living, busy, active, powerful thing! It is impossible that it should not be ceaselessly doing that which is good." - Martin Luther
"People were, for all their physical dimensions, made to be like God."
"We were not designed just to live in mystic communion with our Maker, rather, we were created to govern the earth with all its living things."
"The greatest and most admirable power of humans over animals is not found in those who slaughter or abuse them, but in those who can govern their behavior by speaking to them."
"Animal sacrifice in religious ritual signals the effects of our failure to do what we were meant to do—whatever else its point."
"The human body itself then is part of the imago Dei, for it is the vehicle through which we can effectively acquire the limited self-subsistent power we must have to be truly in the image and likeness of God."
"Life is always and everywhere an inner power to relate to other things in certain specific ways."
"Spirituality is simply the holistic quality of human life as it was meant to be, at the center of which is our relation to God."
"The body is fulfilled in the spiritual life."
"The spiritual and the bodily are by no means opposed in human life—they are complementary."
"The disciplines are activities of mind and body purposefully undertaken, to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order."
"The spiritual disciplines are in a real sense an 'exercise unto godliness.'"
"The contemptuous description of Paul by Frederich Nietzsche... expresses the attitude of many secular thinkers in today’s world."
"Physical exercise was something Paul and others in the Aegean world understood very well."
"The life alienated from God collapses when deprived of its support from the sin-laden world."
"In that desert solitude, Jesus fasted for more than a month."
"Paul was one of those followers. But at the time of his conversion Paul was already a person far advanced beyond the ordinary in the Jewish religion."
"Serving others... was also characterized by great self-sacrifice, simplicity, and frugality."
"When we read the Scriptures, we can’t help but wonder about the strange power Christ and his apostles displayed."
"We are dealing here with the essence of the new life from above, not with just Paul’s or John’s language."
"The gospel of Christ offers radical change for human existence."
"The monastic form of asceticism spread from the Egyptian/Syrian crescent westward and northward across Europe during the fifth and sixth centuries to the furthermost reaches of the British Isles."
"From the beginnings, in the rules of St. Pachomius and St. Benedict, those who offended the monastic codes were severely whipped, often until their blood flowed."
"But it must be said that the earlier monasticism was far less severe in this matter than the later—though perhaps nothing ever surpassed the early desert hermits for overall rigor of life."
"Observing someone practicing such intense activities, ostensibly on behalf of the spiritual life, one cannot help but think that the point is somehow being missed."
"So as might be expected, monastic asceticism fell into decadence with monotonous regularity."
"To have a correct appreciation of the spiritual disciplines we must look more closely at the language and history of asceticism in the Western world."
"In classical linguistic background there is nothing whatsoever of hatred of the body, of the indulgence in its punishment for punishment’s sake, or of the earning of merit simply through power of will and self-control."
"The use of the law, for example, is one of the major elements of asceticism in the Old Testament."
"Asceticism rightly understood is so far from the "mystical" as to be just good sense about life and, ultimately, about spiritual life."
"The entire question of discipline, therefore, is how to apply the acts of will at our disposal in such a way that the proper course of action, which cannot always be realized by direct and untrained effort, will nevertheless be carried out when needed."
"Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief" (Hebrews 13:7).
"The younger are then told to submit themselves to this gentle oversight by the elders, and all are caught up together as a community of mutual servants in mutual submission" (1 Peter 5:5).
"The Way of Jesus knows no submission outside the context of mutual submission of all to all" (Ephesians 5:21, Philippians 2:3).
"Submission is a call for help to those recognized as able to give it because of their depth of experience and Christlikeness".
"How truly blessed is this free ‘order that is in beatitude.’ Here are the beginnings of that kingdom ‘cut out without hands’" (Daniel 2:34).
"Arrogance, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lasciviousness—the seven ‘deadly’ sins—along with many others are not phantoms or jokes, but hard-bitten realities".
"The walk with Christ certainly is one that leaves room for and even calls for individual creativity and an experimental attitude in such matters."
"To possess riches is to have a right to say how they will or will not be used. To use riches is to cause them to be consumed or to be transferred to others in exchange for something we desire."
"The poor are much more to be benefited by the godly controlling the goods of this world than by their performing a pious handwashing that only abandons those goods to the servants of ‘mammon.’"
"The church must become schools of spiritual discipline where Christians are taught how to own without treasuring; how to possess without being possessed; how to live simply, even frugally, though controlling great wealth and power."
"Why? This faith and discipline yields a new humanity, one for which 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want' or 'Our Father who art in heaven' does not express a resolve, a hope, or a commitment, but a vision in whose firm grip Jesus’ people live with abandon."
"The genius of this system is very great, maximizing the possibilities of individuals responding and being responsible to other individuals within a community under God."
"Justice cannot prevail until there are enough people properly equipped with Christ’s character and power, in something like the Mosaic distribution throughout society, who cooperatively and under God constantly see to it that the good is secured and that the right is done."
"God only moves forward with his redemptive plan through people who are prepared to receive freely and cooperate with him in the next step."
"We know that we have some part in bringing the vision to realization."
"Only saints of the faith of Abraham and Paul are capable of governing as God (and humans) would have it, because they work in the power of God and have the character to bear it without corruption."
"The people of Christ have never lacked for available power to accomplish the task set for them by their Master."
"Our political leaders are lionized and idolized as they are because we know that it would take that sort of person to solve the problems of human society, or at least to prevent them from becoming worse."
"The power structures of this present world, which permit, even encourage the crushing waves of evil to roll over humanity, will be dissolved."
"There is a way of life that, if generally adopted, would eliminate all of the social and political problems from which we suffer."