Living in eternity is, in fact, the way we are supposed to live all the time, right now, in the immediate moment, not hanging onto the past, not projecting into the future. The past is the rock that is under our feet, that enables us to push off from it and move into the future.
— Madeleine L’Engle, Sold Into Egypt, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase
Paul knows nothing of a theology in which God does not ultimately achieve his purposes….
It is God’s covenant purpose that his world will one day be reconciled in Christ. For now, only the Church shares in that privilege, but this is not a position God has granted his people so they can gloat over the world. On the contrary, the Church must live by gospel standards and proclaim its gospel message so that the world will come to share in the saving work of Christ.
— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 47, 53
I often ask people to pay attention to natural beauty instead of watching reruns of their old grudges…. The world is full of things to appreciate and find beautiful once you teach yourself to look. The forgiveness and gratitude channels remind us that even though we have been hurt, we do not have to dwell on the hurt. The one thing no one can take from us is what we pay attention to and focus on. We may have a habit of watching the grievance channel or the bitterness channel, but we still control the remote. The good news is that, with practice, any habit can be broken or changed. The world is full of heroes who have overcome difficulty by tuning in to channels of courage or bravery. Each of us can become a hero in our own life, to the benefit of our friends and family.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 142
God goes to work to help us see more clearly. One way He works is to allow our lower dreams to shatter. He lets us hurt and doesn’t make it better. We suffer and He stands by and does nothing to help, at least nothing that we’re aware we want Him to do.
In fact, what He’s doing while we suffer is leading us into the depths of our being, into the center of our soul where we feel our strongest passions.
It’s there that we discover our desire for God. We begin to feel a desire to know Him that not only survives all our pain, but actually thrives in it until that desire becomes more intense than our desire for all the good things we still want. Through the pain of shattered lower dreams, we wake up to the realization that we want an encounter with God more than we want the blessings of life. And that begins a revolution in our lives.
— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 4
The Lord spoke through Isaiah when he said, “In repentance and rest is your salvation” (30:15). I love how those two words go together — repentance and rest. When we repent, we can rest in the Lord. We can’t rest peacefully in God’s presence if we haven’t repented, and so the continual process of repentance is key to staying close to Him in our daily lives….
A. W. Tozer wrote, “Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.” Ouch! He saw that we often pray that we will obey — we pray for patience, for compassion, or that we would be free from covetousness — yet we do not take the actions necessary to actually abide by Christ’s teachings in those areas.
— Brooke Boon, Holy Yoga, p. 43-47
Not only do we want what immediately feels good and dislike what in fact is good for us, but we’re also out of touch with what would bring us the most pleasure if it were given to us….
The highest dream we could ever dream, the wish that if granted would make us happier than any other blessing, is to know God, to actually experience Him. The problem is that we don’t believe this idea is true. We assent to it in our heads. But we don’t feel it in our hearts.
We can’t stop wanting to be happy. And that urge should prompt no apology. We were created for happiness. Our souls therefore long for whatever we think will provide the greatest possible pleasure. We just aren’t yet aware that an intimate relationship with God is that greatest pleasure.
— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 2
Discontent is what fuels growth — in marriage, in oneself, and in institutions. It’s what propels you to come up with creative solutions and to seek novelty and change. Merely accepting this represents a huge step in keeping a marriage alive and frees you to move onward, out of the dark side.
— Ellyn Bader and Peter T. Pearson, Tell Me No Lies: How to Stop Lying to Your Partner — And Yourself — In the 4 Stages of Marriage, p. 81
There’s never a moment in all our lives, from the day we trusted Christ till the day we see Him, when God is not longing to bless us. At every moment, in every circumstance, God is doing us good. He never stops. It gives Him too much pleasure. God is not waiting to bless us after our troubles end. He is blessing us right now, in and through those troubles. At this exact moment, He is giving us what He thinks is good.
There, of course, is the rub. He gives us what He thinks is good, what He knows is good. We don’t always agree.
— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 1-2
Christ did not die to save us from suffering but from ourselves. He did not die to save us from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust.
He died that we might live — but live as he lives, by dying as he died, who died to himself that he might live unto God. If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God. And he that does not live to God is dead.
— George MacDonald, Your Life in Christ, p. 149-150
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.
— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis, p. 85