If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

Believers, look up – take courage. The angels are nearer than you think.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

I believe that I have received Jesus Christ into my heart. I believe that he has covered all of my sins.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

When Christians say God has been talking to them about something, it simply means they have a strong inner conviction or feeling that God has made His will known to them.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

In legal language, a covenant generally denotes an agreement between two or more parties. But in a religious context, a covenant is much more significant. It is a sacred promise with God. He fixes the terms.

Yes, God does expect us to live holy, consecrated lives. But not even the best of our intentions can make it happen. Thankfully, He doesn’t expect us to make ourselves holy. He just wants us to learn to depend on Him to make us holy.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

It’s not a faith in technology. It’s faith in people.

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

I am a Catholic because I choose to be a Catholic. And then I go to the Mass because I choose. It is out of my free will.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

I’ve always seen first responders as unsung heroes and very special people because, when everyone else is running away from danger, they run into it.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you’re enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.

Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the ‚human stratum‘ may not be homogeneous.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

When all is said and done, what constitutes the impregnable superiority of Christianity over all other types of Faith is that it is ever more consciously identified with a Christogenesis: in other words, with an awareness of the rise of a certain universal Presence which is at once immortalizing and unifying.

I do not doubt that we would become more useful if we praised God more, and others would join us, for they would see that God has blessed us.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

Although the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

We can never make ourselves better by trying… praying more or longer, studying more of the Word, performing good works, etc. Don’t get me wrong… it’s not bad to do any of these things. In fact, it’s good. It’s just that doing them in God’s power is the only way those things will have any real and lasting effect in our lives.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is.

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.

I used to say to my late wife, ‚I have great faith in the American people.‘

If you want to become fully mature in the Lord, you must learn to love truth. Otherwise, you will always leave open a door of deception for the enemy to take what is meant to be yours.

Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

My mother told me, ‚Son, nobody else but God knows.‘ And that’s what I’m about – reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That’s what I do.

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‚I love you.‘

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite.