Christ Our Righteousness
Christ is our righteousness, not that we should escape punishment, still less that we should escape being righteous, but as the live potent creator of righteousness in us.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 45
Christ is our righteousness, not that we should escape punishment, still less that we should escape being righteous, but as the live potent creator of righteousness in us.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 45
No one can steal your destiny.
No matter what anyone “does to you” along your path to either personal or professional happiness, that person cannot interfere with your destiny. Only you are in control of that, within the master plan created with God. You will encounter setbacks in this crazy world of seven billion souls that will frustrate and challenge you. We all do. But your destiny cannot be changed or diminished by another human being’s actions when you are firmly on your path toward carrying out God’s plans.
The old adage “When one door closes, another one opens” is absolutely true. God will always provide new opportunities for you if the actions of another interfere with your divine mission. Such interference is only temporary. How can it be anything else? God is bigger than any human being’s free will, and he will always steer you in another, healthier, and more abundant direction. The divine architect will not have his master plan thwarted because one of the laborers doesn’t want to do his or her part on the building site that day. He will find new laborer for you to partner with so that you can continue to build your monument. And when you know that all such setbacks are temporary, you will find it much easier to forgive humans for being human.
— Kathleen McGowan, The Source of Miracles, p. 134-135
The secret of the Christian life — and the Christian marriage — is that you don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to figure life out, you don’t have to figure each other out, you don’t have to figure parenting out, or money or family. You have a counselor, you have a guide — you have God. What a relief that we don’t have to figure it all out! We get to walk with God. That is the beauty of Christian spirituality. This is not about mastering principles; it’s about an actual relationship with an actual person who happens to be the wisest, kindest, and, okay, wildest person you will ever know.
— John and Stasi Eldredge, Love and War, p. 130-131
It is not enough to satisfy God’s goodness that he should give us all things richly to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he gives them.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 34
What is inside me, the thing I love with, and the thing I think about God with, and the thing I love poetry with, the thing I read the Bible with — that thing God keeps on making bigger and bigger. That thing is me, and God will keep on making it bigger to all eternity, though he has not even got me into the right shape yet.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 30
If we believe that God does his best for every man and woman, we must also believe that God knows every person’s needs, and will, for love’s sake, not spare one pang that may serve to purify the soul of one of his children.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 21
God seems to take pleasure in working by degrees. The progress of the truth is as the permeation of leaven, or the growth of a seed.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 19
God is against sin. While those who resist him remain one with their sin, he is against them — against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes. And thus he is altogether and always for them.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 17
God wants to build you a house whereof the walls shall be goodness; you want a house whereof the walls shall be comfort. But God knows that such walls cannot be built; that kind of stone crumbles away in the foolish workman’s hands.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 16
God gave man power to thwart his will, that, by means of that same power, he might come at last to do his will in a higher kind and way than would otherwise have been possible to him.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 12