Wise Quotes on God
“The First Cause”
The First Cause of limitless Space ……………...must be Infinite
The First Cause of endless Time………………..must be Eternal
The First Cause of Boundless Energy…………...must be Omnipotent
The First Cause of Universal Interrelationships…must be Omnipresent
The First Cause of Infinite Complexity…………must be Omniscient
The First Cause of Moral Values………………..must be Moral
The First Cause of Spiritual Values……………..must be Spiritual
The First Cause of Human Responsibility………must be Volitional
The First Cause of Human Integrity……………..must be Truthful
The First Cause of Human Love…………………must be Loving
The First Cause of Life…………………………..must be Living
Henry Morris
"Intelligent Design"
A watch without a watchmaker is less incredible than a creation without a Creator.
Anonymous
"Isn't It Ironic?"
If there were no God, there would be no atheists
G. K. Chesterton
“Wishful Thinking”
“One reason people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life Force being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God learned about when we were children. The Life Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
C.S. Lewis
"Atheism Defined"
Atheism: The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.
Author Unknown
"So Very Unlike All Our Observations"
By universal evolutionism I mean the belief that the very formula of universal process is from imperfect to perfect, from small beginnings to great endings, from the rudimentary to the elaborate: the belief which makes people find it natural to think that morality springs from savage taboos, adult sentiment from infantile sexual maladjustments, thought from instinct, mind from matter, organic from inorganic, cosmos from chaos. This is perhaps the deepest habit of mind in the contemporary world. It seems to me immensely implausible, because it makes the general course of nature so very unlike those parts of nature we can observe.
C.S. Lewis
"The Pantheist's Pretend God"
The Pantheist's God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you...An 'impersonal God'—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that!
C.S. Lewis
"Like A Book On A Shelf"
Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as a man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance.
C.S. Lewis
“The Somebody”
We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct-in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness.
C.S.Lewis
"The All Seeing Eye"
Called or not called, God will be present.
Anonymous
"His Shouting Universe"
God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself. And he says it for us to learn and enjoy–namely, that he is infinitely great and powerful and wise and beautiful.
John Piper
"The Presence In Which You Have Always Stood"
If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?
C S Lewis
"Our Hunter, King and Husband: He Is Wonderfully Alive"
It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. 'Look out!' we cry, 'it's alive'. And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back - I would have done so myself if I could - and proceed no further with Christianity. An 'impersonal God' -- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads - better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap - best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband - that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?
C.S. Lewis
"My Argument With God Collapsed"
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.
C.S. Lewis
"God: Outside And Above Time"
Suppose I am writing a novel. I write 'Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!' For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story)at all...God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series (the real one)at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For His life is Himself.
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the points of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from about or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all... what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.
C.S .Lewis
"Here Is Deity"
We have never looked more squarely into the face of the living God
than when we stand by faith at the foot of the cross
and hear His Son plead for mercy upon the ungodly men who are murdering Him.
Here is power. Here is deity.
Author Unknown
“God Is Love”
1 John 4:8 For God is love
He is not merely benevolent, He is benevolence itself. Never was a more important declaration made than this; never was more meaning crowded into a few words than in this short sentence-“God is love.” In the darkness of this world of sin-in all the sorrows that come now upon the race, and that will come upon the wicked hereafter-we have the assurance that a God of infinite benevolence rules over all; and though we may not be able to reconcile all that occurs with this declaration, or see how the things which he has permitted to take place are consistent with it, yet in the exercise of faith on his own declarations we may find consolation in “believing” that it is so, and may look forward to a period when all his universe shall SEE it to be so. In the midst of all that occurs on the earth of sadness, sin, and sorrow, there are abundant evidences that God is love…in the gift of a Savior more than all, and in the offer of eternal life on terms simple and easy to be complied with-in all these things, which are the MERE expressions of love, not ONE of which would have been found under the government of a malignant being, we see illustrations of the sublime and glorious sentiment before us, that “God is love.” Even in this world of confusion, disorder, and darkness, we have evidence sufficient to prove that He is benevolent, but the full glory and meaning of that truth will be seen only in heaven. Meantime, let us hold on to the truth that He is love. Let us believe that He sincerely desires our good, and that what seems dark to us may be designed for our welfare; and amidst all the sorrows and disappointments of the present life, let us feel that our interests and our destiny are in the hands of the God of love.
Barnes’ Notes
"He Is Intrinsically Love"
If it is maintained that anything so small as the Earth must, in any event, be too unimportant to merit the love of the Creator, we reply that no Christian ever supposed we did merit it. Christ did not die for men because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely. And what, after all, does size of a world or a creature tell us about its "importance" or value?...we are all equally certain that only a lunatic would think a man six-feet high necessarily more important than a man five-feet high, or a horse necessarily more important than a man, or a man's legs than his brain...
C.S. Lewis
"The Father Gives All"
Divine Love is Gift-love. The Father gives all He is and has to the Son. The Son gives Himself back to the Father, and gives Himself to the world, and for the world to the Father, and thus gives the world (in Himself) back to the Father too.
C.S. Lewis
"The Reason For Everything"
It’s all for Him. The ultimate goal of the universe is to show the glory of God. It is the reason for everything that exists, including you. God made it all for His glory. Without God’s glory, there would be nothing. What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of his nature, the weight of His importance, the radiance of His splendor, the demonstration of his power, and the atmosphere of His presence. God’s glory is the expression of His goodness and all His other intrinsic, eternal qualities.
Rick Warren
"In Spirit And In Truth, With Every Purpose And Passion Of Your Heart"
God is a Spirit: this is one of the first, the greatest, the most sublime, and necessary truths in the compass of nature! There is a God, the cause of all things-the fountain of all perfection-without parts or dimensions, for He is ETERNAL-filling the heavens and the earth-pervading, governing, and upholding all things: for He is an infinite SPIRIT! This God can be pleased only with that which resembles Himself: therefore He must hate sin and sinfulness; and can delight in those only who are made partakers of His own divine nature. As all creatures were made by Him, so all owe Him obedience and reverence; but, to be acceptable to this infinite Spirit, the worship must be of a spiritual nature-must spring from the heart…and it must be in TRUTH, not only in sincerity, but performed according to that divine revelation which He has given men of Himself. A man worships God in spirit, when…He brings all his affections, appetites, and desires to the throne of God; and he worships him in truth, when every purpose and passion of his heart, and when every act of his religious worship, is guided and regulated by the word of God.
Adam Clarke
"What Makes God Smile"
This is what God wants most from you: a relationship…God made you to love you, and he longs for you to love him back…learning to love God and be loved by Him should be the greatest objective of your life. Nothing else comes close in importance...If you want to know how much you matter to God, look at Christ with His arms outstretched on the cross, saying, "I love you this much! I'd rather die than live without you.
Rick Warren
“His love is longing to give...”
“We never refuse our God without breaking His heart, and in the end, that is what sin always comes down to: a refusal to accept God’s love. When we say no to Him, we are stubbornly saying no to the better things that His love is longing to give us.”
Gary Henry
"Becoming Best Friends With God"
It’s difficult to imagine how an intimate friendship is possible between an omnipotent, invisible, perfect God and a finite, sinful human being…The word for friend in this verse does not mean a casual acquaintance but a close, trusted relationship. The same word is used to refer to the best man at a wedding and a king’s inner circle of intimate, trusted friends. In royal courts…the inner circle of trusted friends enjoy close contact, direct access, and confidential information…knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being known and loved is God’s greatest pleasure...You are as close to God as you choose to be. Like any friendship, you must work at developing your friendship with God. It won’t happen by accident. It takes desire, time, and energy. If you want a deeper, more intimate connection with God you must learn to honestly share your feelings with Him, trust Him when he asks you to do something, learn to care about what He cares about, and desire His friendship more than anything else.
Rick Warren
“Savoring God”
We were made to see and savor God—and savoring Him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of His presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.
John Piper
“Oh Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must sand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
C.S. Lewis
"In Your Presence There Is Fullness Of Joy"
This is love. God's love for us is God's doing what He must do, at great cost to Himself, so that we might have the pleasure of seeing and savoring Him forever.
John Piper
"God Gives. We Receive."
Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer --- there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, 'If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books. Now that I come to think of it, there are some humans whose enthusiastically favourable criticism would not much gratify me.
C.S. Lewis
"Our True Beloved"
When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within all our earthly experiences of innocent love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His...By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do...God is our true Beloved.
C.S. Lewis
"As If You Were The Only Creature"
He who counts the stars and calls them by
their names, is in no danger of forgetting His
own children! He knows your case as thoroughly
as if you were the only creature He ever made,
or the only saint He ever loved!
Charles H. Spurgeon
"Our Perfect God of Sharp Corners and Rough Edges"
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake...I call upon Him in prayer. Often He might reply - I think He does reply - "But you have been evading me for hours." For He comes not only to raise up but to cast down; to deny, to rebuke, to interrupt...If I never fled from His presence then I should suspect those moments when I seemed to delight in it of being wish -fulfillment dreams. That, by the way, explains the feebleness of all those watered versions of Christianity which leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation. No real belief in the watered versions can last. Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee. You and I have both known happy marriage. But how different our wives were from the imaginary mistresses of our adolescent dreams! So much less exquisitely adapted to all our wishes; and for that very reason (among others) so incomparably better. Servile fear is, to be sure, the lowest form of religion. But a god such that there could never be occasion for even servile fear, a 'safe' god, a tame god, soon proclaims himself to any sound mind as fantasy. I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven.
C.S. Lewis
“Indelibly Engraven”
Write Thy blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart, there to remain so indelibly engraven that no prosperity, no adversity shall ever move me from Thy love.”
Thomas A. Kempis
"In You Alone"
God, of your goodness, give me Yourself for You are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of You. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In You alone do I have all.
Julian of Norwich
"Assured Pledges Of Thy Love"
Lord, why should I doubt any more when Thou hast given me such assured pledges of Thy love?
First, Thou art my Creator, I Thy creature,
Thou my master, I Thy servant.
But hence arises not my comfort,
Thou art my Father, I Thy child; "Ye shall be My sons and daughters," saith the Lord Almighty.
Christ is my brother, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, unto my God and your God;
but lest this should not be enough, thy maker is thy husband.
Nay more, I am a member of His body, He my head.
Such privileges had not the Word of Truth made them known,
who or where is the man that durst in his heart have presumed to have thought it?
So wonderful are these thoughts that my spirit fails in me at the consideration thereof...
this is my comfort, when I come to Heaven,
I shall understand perfectly what He hath done for me,
and then shall I be able to praise Him as I ought.
Lord, having this hope, let me purify myself as Thou art pure,
and let me be no more afraid of death,
but even desire to be dissolved and be with Thee,
which is best of all.
Anne Bradstreet
"My God, I Love You"
My God, I love you not because I hope for heaven thereby, nor yet because who love you not are lost eternally. Not with the hope of gaining anything, nor seeking a reward; But as you have loved me, Oh Lord, ever loving, even so I love you, and will love, and in your praise will sing, solely because you are my God and my eternal King
Anonymous 17th century prayer
"Come"
Come, my Light, and illumine my darkness.
Come, my Life and revive me from death.
Come, my Physician, and heal my wounds.
Come, Flame of divine love,
and burn up the thorns of my sins, kindling my heart with the flame of your love.
Come, my King, sit upon the throne of my heart and reign there.
For Thou alone art my King and my Lord.
Dimitri of Rostov
"Giving To God"
Nothing that I am able to give to you do I find worthy of you, and only in this way do I discover that I am a poor man. And so I give to you the only thing that I possess - myself.
Aeschines
The First Cause of limitless Space ……………...must be Infinite
The First Cause of endless Time………………..must be Eternal
The First Cause of Boundless Energy…………...must be Omnipotent
The First Cause of Universal Interrelationships…must be Omnipresent
The First Cause of Infinite Complexity…………must be Omniscient
The First Cause of Moral Values………………..must be Moral
The First Cause of Spiritual Values……………..must be Spiritual
The First Cause of Human Responsibility………must be Volitional
The First Cause of Human Integrity……………..must be Truthful
The First Cause of Human Love…………………must be Loving
The First Cause of Life…………………………..must be Living
Henry Morris
"Intelligent Design"
A watch without a watchmaker is less incredible than a creation without a Creator.
Anonymous
"Isn't It Ironic?"
If there were no God, there would be no atheists
G. K. Chesterton
“Wishful Thinking”
“One reason people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life Force being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God learned about when we were children. The Life Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
C.S. Lewis
"Atheism Defined"
Atheism: The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.
Author Unknown
"So Very Unlike All Our Observations"
By universal evolutionism I mean the belief that the very formula of universal process is from imperfect to perfect, from small beginnings to great endings, from the rudimentary to the elaborate: the belief which makes people find it natural to think that morality springs from savage taboos, adult sentiment from infantile sexual maladjustments, thought from instinct, mind from matter, organic from inorganic, cosmos from chaos. This is perhaps the deepest habit of mind in the contemporary world. It seems to me immensely implausible, because it makes the general course of nature so very unlike those parts of nature we can observe.
C.S. Lewis
"The Pantheist's Pretend God"
The Pantheist's God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you...An 'impersonal God'—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that!
C.S. Lewis
"Like A Book On A Shelf"
Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as a man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance.
C.S. Lewis
“The Somebody”
We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct-in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness.
C.S.Lewis
"The All Seeing Eye"
Called or not called, God will be present.
Anonymous
"His Shouting Universe"
God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself. And he says it for us to learn and enjoy–namely, that he is infinitely great and powerful and wise and beautiful.
John Piper
"The Presence In Which You Have Always Stood"
If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbors or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?
C S Lewis
"Our Hunter, King and Husband: He Is Wonderfully Alive"
It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. 'Look out!' we cry, 'it's alive'. And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back - I would have done so myself if I could - and proceed no further with Christianity. An 'impersonal God' -- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads - better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap - best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband - that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?
C.S. Lewis
"My Argument With God Collapsed"
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.
C.S. Lewis
"God: Outside And Above Time"
Suppose I am writing a novel. I write 'Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!' For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story)at all...God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series (the real one)at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For His life is Himself.
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the points of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from about or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all... what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.
C.S .Lewis
"Here Is Deity"
We have never looked more squarely into the face of the living God
than when we stand by faith at the foot of the cross
and hear His Son plead for mercy upon the ungodly men who are murdering Him.
Here is power. Here is deity.
Author Unknown
“God Is Love”
1 John 4:8 For God is love
He is not merely benevolent, He is benevolence itself. Never was a more important declaration made than this; never was more meaning crowded into a few words than in this short sentence-“God is love.” In the darkness of this world of sin-in all the sorrows that come now upon the race, and that will come upon the wicked hereafter-we have the assurance that a God of infinite benevolence rules over all; and though we may not be able to reconcile all that occurs with this declaration, or see how the things which he has permitted to take place are consistent with it, yet in the exercise of faith on his own declarations we may find consolation in “believing” that it is so, and may look forward to a period when all his universe shall SEE it to be so. In the midst of all that occurs on the earth of sadness, sin, and sorrow, there are abundant evidences that God is love…in the gift of a Savior more than all, and in the offer of eternal life on terms simple and easy to be complied with-in all these things, which are the MERE expressions of love, not ONE of which would have been found under the government of a malignant being, we see illustrations of the sublime and glorious sentiment before us, that “God is love.” Even in this world of confusion, disorder, and darkness, we have evidence sufficient to prove that He is benevolent, but the full glory and meaning of that truth will be seen only in heaven. Meantime, let us hold on to the truth that He is love. Let us believe that He sincerely desires our good, and that what seems dark to us may be designed for our welfare; and amidst all the sorrows and disappointments of the present life, let us feel that our interests and our destiny are in the hands of the God of love.
Barnes’ Notes
"He Is Intrinsically Love"
If it is maintained that anything so small as the Earth must, in any event, be too unimportant to merit the love of the Creator, we reply that no Christian ever supposed we did merit it. Christ did not die for men because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely. And what, after all, does size of a world or a creature tell us about its "importance" or value?...we are all equally certain that only a lunatic would think a man six-feet high necessarily more important than a man five-feet high, or a horse necessarily more important than a man, or a man's legs than his brain...
C.S. Lewis
"The Father Gives All"
Divine Love is Gift-love. The Father gives all He is and has to the Son. The Son gives Himself back to the Father, and gives Himself to the world, and for the world to the Father, and thus gives the world (in Himself) back to the Father too.
C.S. Lewis
"The Reason For Everything"
It’s all for Him. The ultimate goal of the universe is to show the glory of God. It is the reason for everything that exists, including you. God made it all for His glory. Without God’s glory, there would be nothing. What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of his nature, the weight of His importance, the radiance of His splendor, the demonstration of his power, and the atmosphere of His presence. God’s glory is the expression of His goodness and all His other intrinsic, eternal qualities.
Rick Warren
"In Spirit And In Truth, With Every Purpose And Passion Of Your Heart"
God is a Spirit: this is one of the first, the greatest, the most sublime, and necessary truths in the compass of nature! There is a God, the cause of all things-the fountain of all perfection-without parts or dimensions, for He is ETERNAL-filling the heavens and the earth-pervading, governing, and upholding all things: for He is an infinite SPIRIT! This God can be pleased only with that which resembles Himself: therefore He must hate sin and sinfulness; and can delight in those only who are made partakers of His own divine nature. As all creatures were made by Him, so all owe Him obedience and reverence; but, to be acceptable to this infinite Spirit, the worship must be of a spiritual nature-must spring from the heart…and it must be in TRUTH, not only in sincerity, but performed according to that divine revelation which He has given men of Himself. A man worships God in spirit, when…He brings all his affections, appetites, and desires to the throne of God; and he worships him in truth, when every purpose and passion of his heart, and when every act of his religious worship, is guided and regulated by the word of God.
Adam Clarke
"What Makes God Smile"
This is what God wants most from you: a relationship…God made you to love you, and he longs for you to love him back…learning to love God and be loved by Him should be the greatest objective of your life. Nothing else comes close in importance...If you want to know how much you matter to God, look at Christ with His arms outstretched on the cross, saying, "I love you this much! I'd rather die than live without you.
Rick Warren
“His love is longing to give...”
“We never refuse our God without breaking His heart, and in the end, that is what sin always comes down to: a refusal to accept God’s love. When we say no to Him, we are stubbornly saying no to the better things that His love is longing to give us.”
Gary Henry
"Becoming Best Friends With God"
It’s difficult to imagine how an intimate friendship is possible between an omnipotent, invisible, perfect God and a finite, sinful human being…The word for friend in this verse does not mean a casual acquaintance but a close, trusted relationship. The same word is used to refer to the best man at a wedding and a king’s inner circle of intimate, trusted friends. In royal courts…the inner circle of trusted friends enjoy close contact, direct access, and confidential information…knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being known and loved is God’s greatest pleasure...You are as close to God as you choose to be. Like any friendship, you must work at developing your friendship with God. It won’t happen by accident. It takes desire, time, and energy. If you want a deeper, more intimate connection with God you must learn to honestly share your feelings with Him, trust Him when he asks you to do something, learn to care about what He cares about, and desire His friendship more than anything else.
Rick Warren
“Savoring God”
We were made to see and savor God—and savoring Him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of His presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.
John Piper
“Oh Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must sand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
C.S. Lewis
"In Your Presence There Is Fullness Of Joy"
This is love. God's love for us is God's doing what He must do, at great cost to Himself, so that we might have the pleasure of seeing and savoring Him forever.
John Piper
"God Gives. We Receive."
Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer --- there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, 'If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books. Now that I come to think of it, there are some humans whose enthusiastically favourable criticism would not much gratify me.
C.S. Lewis
"Our True Beloved"
When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within all our earthly experiences of innocent love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His...By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do...God is our true Beloved.
C.S. Lewis
"As If You Were The Only Creature"
He who counts the stars and calls them by
their names, is in no danger of forgetting His
own children! He knows your case as thoroughly
as if you were the only creature He ever made,
or the only saint He ever loved!
Charles H. Spurgeon
"Our Perfect God of Sharp Corners and Rough Edges"
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake...I call upon Him in prayer. Often He might reply - I think He does reply - "But you have been evading me for hours." For He comes not only to raise up but to cast down; to deny, to rebuke, to interrupt...If I never fled from His presence then I should suspect those moments when I seemed to delight in it of being wish -fulfillment dreams. That, by the way, explains the feebleness of all those watered versions of Christianity which leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation. No real belief in the watered versions can last. Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee. You and I have both known happy marriage. But how different our wives were from the imaginary mistresses of our adolescent dreams! So much less exquisitely adapted to all our wishes; and for that very reason (among others) so incomparably better. Servile fear is, to be sure, the lowest form of religion. But a god such that there could never be occasion for even servile fear, a 'safe' god, a tame god, soon proclaims himself to any sound mind as fantasy. I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven.
C.S. Lewis
“Indelibly Engraven”
Write Thy blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart, there to remain so indelibly engraven that no prosperity, no adversity shall ever move me from Thy love.”
Thomas A. Kempis
"In You Alone"
God, of your goodness, give me Yourself for You are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of You. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In You alone do I have all.
Julian of Norwich
"Assured Pledges Of Thy Love"
Lord, why should I doubt any more when Thou hast given me such assured pledges of Thy love?
First, Thou art my Creator, I Thy creature,
Thou my master, I Thy servant.
But hence arises not my comfort,
Thou art my Father, I Thy child; "Ye shall be My sons and daughters," saith the Lord Almighty.
Christ is my brother, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, unto my God and your God;
but lest this should not be enough, thy maker is thy husband.
Nay more, I am a member of His body, He my head.
Such privileges had not the Word of Truth made them known,
who or where is the man that durst in his heart have presumed to have thought it?
So wonderful are these thoughts that my spirit fails in me at the consideration thereof...
this is my comfort, when I come to Heaven,
I shall understand perfectly what He hath done for me,
and then shall I be able to praise Him as I ought.
Lord, having this hope, let me purify myself as Thou art pure,
and let me be no more afraid of death,
but even desire to be dissolved and be with Thee,
which is best of all.
Anne Bradstreet
"My God, I Love You"
My God, I love you not because I hope for heaven thereby, nor yet because who love you not are lost eternally. Not with the hope of gaining anything, nor seeking a reward; But as you have loved me, Oh Lord, ever loving, even so I love you, and will love, and in your praise will sing, solely because you are my God and my eternal King
Anonymous 17th century prayer
"Come"
Come, my Light, and illumine my darkness.
Come, my Life and revive me from death.
Come, my Physician, and heal my wounds.
Come, Flame of divine love,
and burn up the thorns of my sins, kindling my heart with the flame of your love.
Come, my King, sit upon the throne of my heart and reign there.
For Thou alone art my King and my Lord.
Dimitri of Rostov
"Giving To God"
Nothing that I am able to give to you do I find worthy of you, and only in this way do I discover that I am a poor man. And so I give to you the only thing that I possess - myself.
Aeschines