Christian Quotes - Page 372

Beyond the earliest days of the religion, early Christians were believers because they'd been converted, not because they were witnesses to supernatural events, just like today. The 9/11 hijackers believed in Paradise for martyrs, but that doesn't mean that that's true. We have no good reason to imagine that eyewitnesses wrote the gospels rather than someone simply documenting the Jesus story as it had developed within their church community.

Apart from it, the incarnation and the ministry would lose all their significance, the crucifixion would be but a martyrdom, and the cross a symbol of the victory of death over life. By the Resurrection it was that the Crucified One was "declared to be the Son of God with power," the great truth on which the Christian's faith is founded, and to which his hope is anchored. That Christ died for our sins is the Gospel of the Christian religion regarded as a human cult. The Gospel of Christianity goes on to declare "That He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures"

For what constitutes a Christian is not; accepting the Christian's creed, but accepting Christ as Savior and Lord. It is a question of personal loyalty and love.

The question is not How much may I indulge in and still be saved. God forbid! I must rather ask, What about Christ's will and the example I set for my fellow Christians?

I thought that Christian was a noun, a person looking for authenticity. I never understood that idea that a band could be Christian or something could be Christian. But it just can be and is.

I have met countless people who call themselves Christians who don't appear to have any living breathing vibrant connection with the resurrected Christ and I've met countless people from every religious background including atheists that tell me of their very personal and real experiences of the living Christ. I don't have people asking me why they should believe something - that's starting off on the wrong foot to say the least.

If this understanding of the good news of Jesus prevailed among Christians, the belief that Jesus’s message is about how to get somewhere else, you could possibly end up with a world in which millions of people were starving, thirsty, and poor; the earth was being exploited and polluted; disease and despair were everywhere; and Christians weren’t known for doing much about it. If it got bad enough, you might even have people rejecting Jesus because of how his followers lived. That would be tragic.

At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God.

Christian' makes a poor adjective

A lot of Christians have been taught a story that begins in chapter 3 of Genesis, instead of chapter 1. If your story doesn't begin in the beginning, but begins in chapter 3, then it starts with sin, and so the story becomes about dealing with the sin problem. So Jesus is seen as primarily dealing with our sins.

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?

Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian.

When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter--they are all hell on earth. Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What's disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.

I believe Jesus Christ came for everybody. I don't think he came for Christians. The Bible says take this good news to the whole world.

When the Christian praises and gives thanks to God, this not only pleases God, but it enriches the Christian's life with joy. It is a reciprocating transaction between God and man.

Any time you get serious about using your life the way God wants you to use it, there are going to be people who oppose it.

The fact is, you can say you love God and sing that you trust God and put him first, but your checkbook is where you can show just how much God's grace means to you.

But no one who is lost has lost one ounce of value to God. Even if you don't have a relationship with him, you have immense value to God.

Instead of focusing on that unappeasable person, refocus on Jesus, who accepts you unconditionally.

God is the Father who is full of mercy. God is the Father who is full of comfort. That is the kind of relationship he offers to you.

When you have a major loss in your life, the first thing you need to do is tell God exactly how you feel.

You've got a lot to look forward to in Heaven. Compared to what's in store for you in Heaven, your current pain and problems are petty.

Your spiritual family is even more important than our physical family because it will last forever.

From the very beginning, I started preaching when I was 16 years old. So I began studying Scripture very seriously. I had done over a hundred revivals in Baptist churches before I was 20. So I am studying the Scripture as a kid and I'm noticing that Christians often wanted to excuse God from things that God doesn't need excusing from.

Many believe one can be a "good Christian" without joining (or even attending) a local church, but God would strongly disagree.