Great Throughts Treasury

"If two people are not able to reconcile with each other, then one of them is not walking with God."

"Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing."

"We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right."

"What you applaud you encourage, but beware what you celebrate. "

"But life's joys are only joys if they can be shared."

"I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him"

"There is no greater discovery than seeing God as the author of your destiny."

"A friend asked the author, If this conversion you speak about is truly supernatural, and why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians that I know?"

"I am thoroughly convinced that when the last chapter of humanity is written, we will find that the implications of atheism, i.e., living without God, if consistently carried through, will have made life plainly unlivable within the limits of reason or even common sense."

"A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God."

"All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life?s purpose. Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive."

"All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true. Some beliefs are false, and we know them to be false. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance as if everything could be equally true. To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if the denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true."

"Attempting to satisfy the passions that rage inside us and the longings that motivate us, we invent spirituality, lean on political solutions, create new villains, turn our backs on Jesus, and blame a thousand tyrannies-- but we never come to terms with the source of the problem deep within the heart and inclination of every human being."

"An expenditure of words without income of ideas will lead to intellectual bankruptcy."

"Bahaism gives you a pluralistic view, and a lot of aspects of Hinduism give you a moral framework with no accountability other than the karmic system. There's no linear movement or point of accountability toward God."

"But you know, General, Jesus never came to establish a government upon the people by force. He did not even talk about political systems. He came to rule in the hearts of people, and not by the establishment of political power. He asks to live in you, not to control your state."

"By the time I was a young man, I lived with two deep struggles: I longed to become a cricketer, and I performed miserably in school. Cricket and tennis were all that I lived for. In India, this was a formula for failure."

"But the greatest dream of all is to know God and to know what he has intended for your life."

"Capturing the beauty of the conversion of the water into wine, the poet Alexander Pope said, The conscious water saw its Master and blushed. That sublime description could be reworked to explain each one of these miracles. Was it any different in principle for a broken body to mend at the command of its Maker? Was it far-fetched for the Creator of the universe, who fashioned matter out of nothing, to multiply bread for the crowd? Was it not within the power of the One who called all the molecules into existence to interlock them that they might bear His footsteps?"

"Chesterton says, in essence, that there is a dislocation of humility in our times. We have become more confident in who we are and less in what we believe. Our pride has moved us from the organ of conviction to the organ of ambition, when it is intended to be the other way around. In short, our confidence should be in our message and not in ourselves."

"Christianity is not a political theory. It is not even a cultural theory. It is, at its root, all about changing the heart of each man and woman, boy and girl, so that we begin to think God's thoughts and act in accordance with his character."

"Every religion at its core is exclusive."

"Changes in language often reflect the changing values of a culture."

"Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith."

"Every other person who is at the heart of any religion has had his or her beginning either in fancy or in fact. But nevertheless, there is a beginning. Jesus' birth in Bethlehem was a moment preceded by eternity. His being neither originated in time nor came about by the will of humanity. The Author of time, who lived in the eternal, was made incarnate in time that we might live with the eternal in view. In that sense, the message of Christ was not the introduction of a religion, but an introduction to truth about reality as God alone knows it. To deny Jesus' message while pursuing spirituality is to conjure an imaginary religion in an attempt to see heaven while sight is confined to the earth. That is precisely what Jesus challenged when he said, I have come that [you] may have life (John 10:10). His life spells living. Your life or my life, apart from Him, spells death."

"Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is."

"Everyone - pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist - has to answer these questions: 'Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?' Those are the fulcrum points of our existence."

"For communication to be effective, especially in matters as life-defining as the gospel message, truth and relevance are the two indispensable wings on which it is borne."

"For many in our high-paced world, despair is not a moment; it is a way of life."

"God the Grand Weaver seeks those with tender hearts so that he can put his imprint on them. Your hurts and your disappointments are part of that design, to shape your heart and the way you feel about reality. The hurts you live through will always shape you. There is no other way."

"God has disclosed himself in descriptive terms that give us enough information to be able to know who he is, and he has hidden enough of himself for us to learn the balance between faith and reason."

"Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart."

"Goodness can endure a few moments; holiness is life-defining."

"His life spells living. Your life or my life, apart from Him, spells death."

"how much more grand is the work of our Heavenly Father as he pulls together all the varied strands of life to reveal his grand design?"

"Humor aside, I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him."

"I am convinced that all our attempts to change the letter of the law and to reeducate people have been, and are, merely band-aid solutions for a fatal hemorrhage. The system will never change because our starting point is flawed. The secular view of man can neither give the grandeur that God alone can give, nor can it see the evil within the human heart that God alone can reveal and cure, for atheism implicitly denudes each individual of the grand image God has imprinted upon His creation."

"I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full."

"I am totally convinced the Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around."

"I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present answers."

"I came to Him because I did not know which way to turn. I remained with Him because there is no other way I wish to turn. I came to Him longing for something I did not have. I remain with Him because I have something I will not trade. I came to Him as a stranger. I remain with Him in the most intimate of friendships. I came to Him unsure about the future. I remain with Him certain about my destiny. I came amid the thunderous cries of a culture that has 330 million deities. I remain with Him knowing that truth cannot be all-inclusive."

"I have always marveled that so many religions exact such revenge against dissenters. It only weakens the appeal of their faith and contradicts any claims they might have made that 'all religions are basically the same.' If all religions were indeed the same, why not let someone be 'converted' to another religion?"

"I said, ?Can I ask you a question? On every university campus I visit, somebody stands up and says that God is an evil God to allow all this evil into our world. This person typically says, ?A plane crashes: Thirty people die, and twenty people live. What kind of a God would arbitrarily choose some to live and some to die??? I continued, ?But when we play God and determine whether a child within a mother's womb should live, we argue for that as a moral right. So when human beings are given the privilege of playing God, it?s called a moral right. When God plays God, we call it an immoral act. Can you justify this for me?? That was the end of the conversation.?"

"I thank the Lord that, even though things were so wrong in my life here, I finally was brought to the realization of what all those struggles were about. There are some wonderful things from your painful past, things with a beauty you may not have realized at the time."

"If God is the author of life, there must be a script."

"I remember the time an older man asked me when I was young, Do you know what you are doing now? I thought it was some kind of trick question."

"if it is true that heredity plays a role in the spiritual dispositions that are imprinted on our souls, Jesus? declaration that each of us needs to be born again is even more profound. The DNA of generations past marks itself very deeply in us, and it takes a new birth for us to be able to see through new eyes."

"I think it more appropriate to say that women in general recognize the emotional ramifications of their acts better than men do. Men do feel emotion, but they do so selectively and fail to face the consequences of reality. Betray a man and you find out that his emotions surge to the top. I believe that a legitimate understanding of what is happening here can preserve the grand union between emotion and will. Without the will, marriage is a mockery; without emotion, it is a drudgery. You need both. We like the side dealing with emotion, not the will."

"Implicit to the secularized world-view is not just the marginalization of any religious idea but its complete eviction from public credence in forming social policy. If an idea or belief is religiously based, be it in a matter of sexuality or marriage or education or whatever, then by that very virtue it is deemed unsuitable for public usage."

"if there is any part of our lives that we haven?t turned over to Christ, the devil reminds him, ?No, that one isn?t totally yours. I still have this patch of ground here.? Jesus is totally committed to us. And until we learn to be totally surrendered to him, we?ll never find the joy of what it means to fully belong to him. That is the key to every believer?s life ? full ownership by Christ. Everything we are and want to be belong to him. The Lord wants to have ownership of your life. If there is anything hindering this from happening, I invite you to come forward now and lay it before Christ."