Many churches of all persuasions are hiring research agencies to poll neighborhoods, asking what kind of church they prefer. Then the local churches design themselves to fit the desires of the people. True faith in God that demands selflessness is being replaced by trendy religion that serves the selfish.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Each faithful young woman in the Church proclaims that individual worth is one of her most cherished values.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

When you become a Christian, something truly amazing happens: God comes to live inside your heart. You become the home of God.

I was born on a full moon. Both my children were born on full moons, too. Some people say that’s scary. It is what it is, man, I don’t be trippin‘. I couldn’t tell God when I wanted to be born.

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: ‚What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.‘

God created man, but I could do better.

My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

Clinicians, academicians, and politicians are often put to a test of faith. In pursuit of their goals, will their religion show or will it be hidden? Are they tied back to God or to man?

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

When we trust God more than our feelings, it confuses the devil. I mean, when he throws you his best shot and he can’t budge you from believing God, he won’t know what to do with you anymore.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‚What’s in it for me?‘

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one’s self to others.

When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in this world.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

A faithful woman can become a devoted daughter of God – more concerned with being righteous than with being selfish, more anxious to exercise compassion than to exercise dominion, more committed to integrity than to notoriety. And she knows of her own infinite worth.

We all have two lives: an inner life and an outer life. Your inner life is your soul life, which includes your mind, will and emotions. Your outer life is your physical life. And while God cares about every detail of your life, He is more concerned with your inner life than your outer life.

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

God never meant that people were to wear clothes. He meant we were to be nude. But we were in a state of innocence. Then sin came into the human race and became a blood poisoning.

Death surrenders us totally to God: it makes us enter into him; we must, in return, surrender ourselves to death with absolute love and self-abandonment since, when death comes, all we can do is to surrender ourselves completely to the domination and guidance of God.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world which that soul sums up in an incommunicable and particular way.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

A church without women would be like the apostolic college without Mary. The Madonna is more important than the apostles, and the church herself is feminine, the spouse of Christ and a mother.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.