Often, our deepest dream is an unspoken dream. We are unable to articulate it for fear that we are asking too much. God, listening with ears of the heart, is able to hear our unspoken prayer. Hearing this soul prayer and acting on it, God often seems to catch us by surprise. We do not expect to be taken as seriously as God seems to be taking us. When the Universe opens a door or two for us, we shy away.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 149-150
Let’s be very clear, then: we do not need to be rescued from God. God is the one who rescues us from death, sin, and destruction. God is the rescuer.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 182
Could it be that the joy we pursue in life — whether the joy of playing an instrument or a sport, of chipping a sculpture from stone or building a business from the ground up — is the joy of knowing that there is a silence, a void, a space that waits for us to fill it? And could it be that God, the creator of both us and that void, is the witness, the audience, the Listener for whom we are always performing? And could it be that contemplation is the pause button that freezes time, so that we listen to the Listening and witness the Witness?
— Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality, p. 228
Nothing is impossible to God, and God may indeed look to us to dare to dream so that God’s plans can move forward. God may dream through us, counting on us to be conduits for a larger and higher plan than we may imagine.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 148
God reveals Himself in rearview mirrors.
And I’ve an inkling that there are times when we need to drive a long, long distance, before we can look back and see God’s back in the rearview mirror.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, p. 157
Majesty and humility are such an odd fit. This is one reason we struggle with prayer. We just don’t think God could be concerned with the puny details of our lives. We either believe he’s too big or that we’re not that important. No wonder Jesus told us to be like little children! Little children are not daunted by the size of their parents. They come, regardless.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 116-117
Many times when we pray for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out, a notion will come to us that seems too large to be carried out. We will strive to know the next right thing, and we will be shown something that seems beyond our grasp until we try it. The “until we try it” part is the measure of our willingness. Very often we pray for knowledge of God’s will, get a glimmering of something we could try, and then shrink back. “Not that! That’s too much!” we think. But is it too much?
God has unlimited resources. When we are in alliance with God, working in conscious partnership with God, those resources become our own. Many things that seemed beyond our grasp are actually well within our means when we begin to operate in accord with God’s will for us. All we have to do is be openminded enough to cooperate.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 144
The future of Christianity will rest in our ability to make our spiritual boundaries more porous, welcome the wisdom of other faiths, and borrow the best from other spiritual traditions, even as we share with them the stories and insights of Christianity. This in no way dishonors the contributions of Jesus, but recalls his appreciation for those persons thought to be outside the circle of God’s favor. When searching for an example of faith, he lifted up a Roman centurion. When illustrating compassion, Jesus spoke of a despised Samaritan who stopped to help. His willingness to see the good beyond his own tradition is a clear reminder for us to do the same.
Christianity, from its very start, was an invitation to believe God was at work in the wider world, far beyond the parameters of any one religion. When the church has forgotten the expansiveness of God, it has descended into a narrowness of mind and a meanness of spirit. When the church has remembered, it has been a light to the world and a balm and blessing to hurting people everywhere.
— Philip Gulley, The Evolution of Faith, p. 181-182
This is why Christians who talk the most about going to heaven while everybody else goes to hell don’t throw very good parties.
When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.
Life has never been just about “getting in.” It’s about thriving in God’s good world. It’s stillness, peace, and that feeling of your soul being at rest, while at the same time it’s about asking things, learning things, creating things, and sharing it all with others who are finding the same kind of joy in the same good world.
Jesus calls disciples to keep entering into this shared life of peace and joy as it transforms our hearts, until it’s the most natural way to live that we can imagine. Until it’s second nature. Until we naturally embody and practice the kind of attitudes and actions that will go on in the age to come. A discussion about how to “just get into heaven” has no place in the life of a disciple of Jesus, because it’s missing the point of it all.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 179
Beauty is the voice endlessly calling and so we see, so we reach. Doubt the philosophies, doubt the prophecies, doubt the Pharisees (especially the ones seen in mirrors), but who can doubt this, Beauty? Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends. See beauty and we know it in the marrow, even if we have no words for it: Someone is behind it, in it. Beauty Himself completes.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, p. 109-110