“Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? MARK 8:18 HOW’S YOUR SPIRITUAL VISION this morning? Are you focusing on your problems, on what you can’t do, on what you can’t have? The barrier is in your mind. It’s not God’s lack of resources or your lack of talent that holds you back. It’s simply because you are focused on the wrong things.”

“God gives us a glimpse of what heaven will be like for the believer. It will have the characteristics of a happy home, a holy city, a glorious garden, and a beautiful bride. This staggers the imagination!”

“If you really want to eat, keep climbing. The fruits are on the top of the tree. Stretch your hands and keep stretching them. Success is on the top, keep going.”

“If you are trying to force someone to change, it will steal your peace.

“Honesty means exactly what it says. We are honest and trustworthy in all our dealings. People can trust our word, because we refuse to lie or shade the truth.”

“Though we have less to worry about than previous generations, we have more worry. Though we have it easier than our forefathers, we have more uneasiness. Though we have less real cause for anxiety than our predecessors, we are inwardly more anxious.”

“Another of Brother Lawrence’s helpful ideas was to pray shorter conversational prayers continually through the day rather than trying to pray long sessions of complex prayers.”

“For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him.”

“You'll always get out of life what you put in-and you control what you put in.”

“Pain is the fuel of passion — it energizes us with an intensity to change that we don’t normally possess. C. S. Lewis said, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” It is God’s way of arousing us from spiritual lethargy. Your problems are not punishment; they are wake-up calls from a loving God. God is not mad at you; he’s mad about you, and he will do whatever it takes to bring you back into fellowship with him.”

“God is looking for people to use, and if you can get usable, he will wear you out. The most dangerous prayer you can pray is this: 'Use me.”

“When we refuse to forgive, we are in disobedience to God’s Word. We open a door for Satan to start all kinds of trouble in our lives. We hinder the flow of love toward others. Our faith is blocked and our prayers are hindered. We are miserable and lose our joy. Our attitudes are poisoned and we spew the poison onto everyone we meet. The price we pay to hang on to our bitter feelings is definitely not worth it. Unforgiveness does have devastating effects, so do yourself a favor… forgive!”

“Leaders do what is uncomfortable but helpful. They run away from the comfort that doesn't produce any help for the world.”

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

“...What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day... If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased... I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do... I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. ...Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.