Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing—for it ought to be growing—awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose.
C.S. Lewis
Related Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for Go... C.S. LEWIS The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest n... MECHTHILD OF MAGDENBURG To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we pu... MOTHER TERESA Through faith in the Lord Jesus alone can we obtain forgiveness of our sins, and be at peace with Go... GEORGE MULLER There would be no need for love if perfection were possible. Love arises from our imperfection, from... EUGENE KENNEDY Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597 The man who will and can go to our Lord in all freedom... ... MEISTER ECKHART Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 Love ... is very noticeabl... MEISTER ECKHART Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 Not only the young Christian but also the adu... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER Our challenge is to get out the message that health care can be affordable but it has to by its very... BILL MORSE Continuing a series on God and the human condition: The situation in which we find ourselves in th... SAMUEL M. SHOEMAKER Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, i... THOMAS JEFFERSON That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of GOD, who regards not the greatn... BROTHER LAWRENCE [...]we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature -- the urge to love and be loved -- must reve... E. STANLEY JONES Pure, unadulterated, consistent love for God and pure, unadulterated, consistent love for others is ... ELYSE M. FITZPATRICK How can we love a holy God? The simplest answer I can give to this vital question is that we can’t... R.C. SPROUL 35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give... JAMES C. DOBSON I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix. DEYTH BANGER If we are to believe he is really alive with all that that implies, then we have to believe without ... FREDERICK BUECHNER For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those t... JULIAN OF NORWICH It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world—Nature—is the only means by which we ... EDWARD ABBEY But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. ... C.S. LEWIS Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr ... K. MORGAN EDWARDS Commemoration of Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, 675 Most Christians would agree with C. S. Lewis... CLARK H. PINNOCK What will make you a star is in you SOTONYE ANGA Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 In coming to know Jesus, you have come to know y... ROBERT MACCOLL ADAMS Never again are we to look at the stars, as we did when we were children, and wonder how far it is t... JOSEPH E. MCCABE The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the pat... CRISS JAMI For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like... WILLIAM BARCLAY God freely created us so that we might know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him ... IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there c... TERESA OF AVILA We are not looking for power, ... We are not looking for prestige. We are here because we care very,... CHUCK COLSON There are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment. The essence of these needs is ca... STEPHEN R. COVEY Be encouraged. Hold your head up high and know God is in control and has a plan for you. Instead of ... GERMANY KENT Feast of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, & his sister Macrina, Teachers, c.394 & c.379 You will tell me... BROTHER LAWRENCE Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877 I can see no intellectual objection to ... DONALD O. SOPER Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but the... C.S. LEWIS A man can not be "friends with" God on any other terms than complete obedience to Him, and that incl... J. B. PHILLIPS We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of ... HERMANN HESSE To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the... RAINER MARIA RILKE Our deepest insight into the nature of God is expressed with a family analogy. He is both Father and... DANIEL DAY WILLIAMS Feast of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, Teacher, 1153 Commemoration of William & Catherine Booth, Fou... A. C. MCGIFFERT Feast of English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation God is always present, always available. At... JACQUES ELLUL Taken as practical counsel for survival, the Fifth Commandment is now almost a dead letter. Yet if o... JOY DAVIDMAN Things rarely go exactly as we expect, but in the long run, they work out well for those who love Go... ELIZABETH B. KNAUS Our motive for obedience is just as important, probably more so, to God than the level of our perfor... JERRY BRIDGES Every human being on earth is the same and our very being is crying out for same need. SUNDAY ADELAJA You know when we are blessed when our love strengthens for each other, that’s how you know God has... FRANCESCO NICHOLAS CECE Love and relationships are truly one of the most paradoxical aspects of being human. For it is in lo... ANONYMOUS Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when i... CORRIE TEN BOOM True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitu... FRANçOIS FéNELON For a marriage to succeed, God has to approve of it. Love is not enough to pull u through when the p... DOUGLAS YEBOAH Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something,... LEO TOLSTOY In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which... CARYLL HOUSELANDER Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 We must remember that our experien... THOMAS MERTON If we deny the grief its right in our lives, then we must question the love for which the grief is s... W. SCOTT LINEBERRY I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those... IRIS MURDOCH For all of us who are alive, life is the real issue. Yet so often we judge our existence by the thin... PREM RAWAT You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no ... C.S. LEWIS Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God. If we are bored with life there i... JERRY BRIDGES The same God who loves us as we are also loves us to much to leave us as we are. Perhpas because we ... JOSEPH LANGFORD We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has ... WENDELL BERRY The time scale for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emer... CARL SAGAN The time scale for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emer... CARL SAGAN [We learn] from heartbreak that love is not for idealists, but realists; it should always be passion... OPHéLIA DARWISH We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us -... FREDERICK BUECHNER Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy a... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 Wherever we turn in the church of ... FREDERICK W. FABER Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex. But its highest vibration for me is t... TERRY RILEY Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that ex... SALMAN RUSHDIE God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature - the urge to love and be loved - must reveal... E. STANLEY JONES I really love nature. I grew up in the country. But one of the things about nature is that it is bea... MAGGIE STIEFVATER It is my hope that the 2006 Season of Justice will not only be a time to raise awareness on our camp... AMANDA ALLEN Feast of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, Martyr, 258 Commemoration of Ninian, Bishop of Galloway, Apos... RICHARD ROLLE All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Churc... W. H. AUDEN Love and self-denial for the object loved go hand-in-hand. If I profess to love a certain person, an... CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON I mean that the reason God seems to act in ways that make no sense to us is that our perceptions are... TESSA AFSHAR What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, a... DOROTHY DAY As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men, the anguish in our neighbor's soul must ... EDITH STEIN Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional ... MILAN KUNDERA It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ... ALAIN DE BOTTON Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 He has loved us without being loved... We are b... CATHERINE OF SIENA (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes... JEAN SASSON Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is ... HANNAH ARENDT Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841 We can re... DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact t... WOODROW WILSON The great question for us now is, Do we believe in that love of God which Christ taught by His words... JAMES HASTINGS RASHDALL Christ's vast benevolence must, from the very nature of things, have afforded Him the deepest possib... CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON Despite our earnest efforts, we couldn't climb all the way up to God. So what did God do? In an amaz... WILLIAM H. WILLIMON To love one another as He loves us, is the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. For it is love that ki... TED ROBERTS In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only... DIETRICH BONHOEFFER We have been crafted by disaster to push out to the utmost horizon to find out what's on the oth... JONATHAN NOLAN Such is our dependence upon God that we are obliged not only to do everything for His sake, but also... FRANÇOIS FÉNELON For many people, God is a frightening idea. Asking God for help doesn't seem very comforting if we t... MARIANNE WILLIAMSON The very fact that God has placed a certain soul in our way is a sign that God wants us to do someth... MOTHER TERESA The Conob Indians of northern Guatemala... describe love as "my soul dies." Love is such that, witho... EUGENE A. NIDA The fear of God is the only cure for the fear of people. CRAIG GROESCHEL To fall in love for any reason does cause fires of emotion. When we are in love, we ride on a positi... NANDHIJI Feast of Justin, Martyr at Rome, c.165 Commemoration of Angela de'Merici, Founder of the Institute o... EUGENE A. NIDA If we become completely whole-hearted we will have love for all people and will seek in each person ... EBERHARD ARNOLD
More C.S. Lewis
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LEWIS To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. C.S. LEWIS The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good be... C.S. LEWIS If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explana... C.S. LEWIS Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if y... C.S. LEWIS You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another. C.S. LEWIS When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, ... C.S. LEWIS In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates o... C.S. LEWIS Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one ... C.S. LEWIS Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no ... C.S. LEWIS Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil. C.S. LEWIS The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. C.S. LEWIS I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up o... C.S. LEWIS There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he... C.S. LEWIS A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking d... C.S. LEWIS They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with you. Since but one voice is heard, i... C.S. LEWIS Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences,... C.S. LEWIS Friendship, then, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is ... C.S. LEWIS The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I wa... C.S. LEWIS Once when I had remarked on the affection quite often found between cat and dog, my friend replied, ... C.S. LEWIS Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to av... C.S. LEWIS We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and... C.S. LEWIS Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike t... C.S. LEWIS No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. C.S. LEWIS And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, am... C.S. LEWIS You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. C.S. LEWIS Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon hi... C.S. LEWIS I desired dragons with a profound desire. C.S. LEWIS What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on wh... C.S. LEWIS Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole w... C.S. LEWIS You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of... C.S. LEWIS But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do ... C.S. LEWIS You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect th... C.S. LEWIS Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Ind... C.S. LEWIS People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot ... C.S. LEWIS The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. C.S. LEWIS We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shov... C.S. LEWIS I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but becaus... C.S. LEWIS In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A y... C.S. LEWIS Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies t... C.S. LEWIS Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. C.S. LEWIS I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give... C.S. LEWIS Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he... C.S. LEWIS You are told to love your neighbour as yourself. How do you love yourself? When I look into my own m... C.S. LEWIS We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, Blessed are they that... C.S. LEWIS If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explan... C.S. LEWIS All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are... C.S. LEWIS A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from thos... C.S. LEWIS Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods. C.S. LEWIS What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong tu... C.S. LEWIS If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precis... C.S. LEWIS Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead ... C.S. LEWIS Aim at heaven, and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth, and you will get neither. C.S. LEWIS “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we ... C.S. LEWIS To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possib... C.S. LEWIS If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of t... C.S. LEWIS Humans are amphibians -- half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, b... C.S. LEWIS I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The gre... C.S. LEWIS The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epic... C.S. LEWIS Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense ... C.S. LEWIS The thing is to rely on God. The time will come when you will regard all this misery as a small pric... C.S. LEWIS We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walk... C.S. LEWIS