Joy is a response to the Lord’s presence. The people rejoiced because God responded to them, kindled their sacrifice. Has the fire of God come down and consumed your sacrifices? All your piety, your churchgoing, your repentance, your efforts to be good — do these produce shouts of joy? If not, something’s wrong; your sacrifice isn’t complete.
— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 17
I grew up with angry and resentful people and have struggled my whole career to help thousands of resentful and angry clients achieve a better life. The hardest truth for any of them to grasp is the difference between feeling powerful and being powerful. Most anger and resentment are attempts to feel powerful at the cost of being powerful.
Steven Stosny, PhD, Soar Above, p. 45
God is not a betrayer — he does not betray and he has never betrayed me.
Because unanswered prayer that was urgent and beyond precious to you can feel like a knife to the heart. The enemy rushes in with feelings of betrayal; he whispers terrible things about God in our vulnerability. It is never, ever true. But sometimes I have to remind myself of that.
— John Eldredge, Moving Mountains, p. 217
God calls each of us to different vocations. Or, rather, God plants within us these vocations, which are revealed in our desires and longings. In this way God’s desires for the world are fulfilled, as we live out our own deepest desires. Vocation is less about finding one and more about having it revealed to you, as you pray to understand “what I want and desire.”
— James Martin, S.J., The Jesuit Guide to (Amost) Everything, P. 343.
It is true that Jesus came, in delivering us from our sins, to deliver us also from the painful consequences of our sins. But these consequences exist by the one law of the universe, the true will of God. When that will is broken, suffering is inevitable.
But in the perfection of God’s creation, the result of that suffering is curative. The pain works toward the healing of the breach.
The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while those sins yet remained. That would be to cast out the window the medicine of cure while still the man lay sick. Yet, feeling nothing of the dread hatefulness of their sin, men have constantly taken this word that the Lord came to deliver us from our sins to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins.
This idea has terribly corrupted the preaching of the Gospel. The message of the Good News has not been truly communicated. Unable to believe in the forgiveness of their Father in heaven, imagining him not at liberty to forgive, or incapable of forgiving forthright; not really believing him God who is fully our Savior, but a God bound — either in his own nature or by a law above him and compulsory upon him — to exact some recompense or satisfaction for sin, a multitude of religious teachers have taught their fellow men that Jesus came to bear our punishment and save us from hell. But in that they have misrepresented his true mission.
The mission of Jesus was from the same source and with the same object as the punishment of our sins. He came to do more than take the punishment for our sins. He came as well to set us free from our sin.
No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sin. But a man to whom his sins are a burden, while he may indeed sometimes feel as if he were in hell, will soon have forgotten that he ever had any other hell to think of than that of his sinful condition. For to him his sin is hell. He would go to the other hell to be free of it. Free of his sin, hell itself would be endurable to him.
For hell is God’s and not the Devil’s. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death. Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell but by being saved from his sin, from the evil in him. If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze, and the worm will writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father. “Salvation from hell” is salvation as conceived by such to whom hell, and not the evil of the sin, is the terror.
— George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel, “Salvation From Sin,” quoted in Discovering the Character of God, edited by Michael Phillips, p. 39-40.
Men and women who rise strong are willing and able to reckon with their emotions. First, they recognize that they’re feeling something — a button has been pushed, they’re hooked, something is triggered, their emotions are off-kilter. Second, they get curious about what’s happening and how what they’re feeling is connected to their thoughts and behaviors. Engaging in this process is how we walk into our story.
— Brené Brown, Rising Strong, p. 40
Grievances don’t make you happy: Sometimes we hold on to grievances because we are afraid that our past was our best chance for happiness. However, you can’t continue to carry a grievance and hope to be happy. To be truly happy, you have to be willing to make love more important than your grievances, your ego, and your past. There comes a time, then when you have to accept that every grievance has an expiration date. By being willing to forgive, you come to see that there is life after a grievance.
— Robert Holden, Loveability, p. 182
I believe it is not only permissible but a religious obligation to question the existence of God if you are troubled by some of the things you were taught, to question the divine origin of things that are said in God’s name, and then to go on and search for answers to your questions. The only religiously unacceptable response is to reject religion entirely and close your mind to further speculation. I cannot believe that God would bless us with a critical intelligence, with the ability to extend the frontiers of knowledge and understanding when it comes to biology and psychology, and then say to us, “Stop, go no further” when it comes to theology. For me, the alternative to faith is not doubt but despair, the conclusion that we are alone in a cold and unreliable world.
— Harold S. Kushner, Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life, p. 120-121.
In the parable of the treasure hidden in a field, Jesus’ purpose was not to explain the gospel in theological terms but rather to emphasize its dramatic effect on the believer. “In his joy,” we read, the man in the story gave up everything he had in exchange for his newfound treasure. He would never have done this for the sake of doubt or guilt, which are poor motivators. Though a man may feel ever so justified for his doubts, and though he may feel ever so virtuous about the load of guilt he carries – for doesn’t this show how well he understands his sinfulness? – still such feelings can never motivate him to live as God wants him to.
To follow and obey God, we need joy. We need to catch a glimpse of the greatest treasure of all – the “inexpressible and glorious joy” (I Peter 1:8) of believing in Christ.
— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 13-14
Emotions are part of a motivational system; they exist not to punish but to motivate behavior that will help. Negative emotions do not indicate that you’re bad; they tell you to do better. They’re correction messages, not failure messages.
— Steven Stosny, PhD, Soar Above, p. 40