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branches ::: love God

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object:love God
word class:bigram

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Heart_of_Matter
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Imitation_of_Christ
The_Way_of_Perfection

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.10_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
0_1964-07-31
05.09_-_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience
1.01_-_Description_of_the_Castle
1.01_-_MASTER_AND_DISCIPLE
1.01_-_On_renunciation_of_the_world
1.02_-_IN_THE_COMPANY_OF_DEVOTEES
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.032_-_Our_Concept_of_God
1.03_-_On_exile_or_pilgrimage
1.03_-_VISIT_TO_VIDYASAGAR
1.04_-_On_Knowledge_of_the_Future_World.
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.05_-_CHARITY
1.05_-_On_the_Love_of_God.
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.06_-_MORTIFICATION,_NON-ATTACHMENT,_RIGHT_LIVELIHOOD
1.075_-_Self-Control,_Study_and_Devotion_to_God
1.07_-_THE_MASTER_AND_VIJAY_GOSWAMI
1.08_-_The_Depths_of_the_Divine
1.08_-_THE_MASTERS_BIRTHDAY_CELEBRATION_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.1.04_-_Philosophy
1.10_-_THE_MASTER_WITH_THE_BRAHMO_DEVOTEES_(II)
1.12_-_On_lying.
1.13_-_Gnostic_Symbols_of_the_Self
1.13_-_THE_MASTER_AND_M.
1.14_-_INSTRUCTION_TO_VAISHNAVS_AND_BRHMOS
1.16_-_PRAYER
1.16_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.18_-_M._AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.20_-_RULES_FOR_HOUSEHOLDERS_AND_MONKS
1.23_-_FESTIVAL_AT_SURENDRAS_HOUSE
1.24_-_PUNDIT_SHASHADHAR
1.25_-_ADVICE_TO_PUNDIT_SHASHADHAR
1.27_-_CONTEMPLATION,_ACTION_AND_SOCIAL_UTILITY
1.40_-_Describes_how,_by_striving_always_to_walk_in_the_love_and_fear_of_God,_we_shall_travel_safely_amid_all_these_temptations.
1.41_-_Speaks_of_the_fear_of_God_and_of_how_we_must_keep_ourselves_from_venial_sins.
1961_01_18
1969_12_09
1970_03_19?
1970_04_06
1970_04_07
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_V_-_Paracelsus_Attains
2.01_-_AT_THE_STAR_THEATRE
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_THE_MASTER_IN_VARIOUS_MOODS
2.04_-_ADVICE_TO_ISHAN
2.05_-_VISIT_TO_THE_SINTHI_BRAMO_SAMAJ
2.07_-_BANKIM_CHANDRA
2.07_-_The_Triangle_of_Love
2.08_-_ALICE_IN_WONDERLAND
2.08_-_AT_THE_STAR_THEATRE_(II)
2.09_-_Human_representations_of_the_Divine_Ideal_of_Love
2.11_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_IN_CALCUTTA
2.14_-_AT_RAMS_HOUSE
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.1.23_-_The_Rishi
3.2.08_-_Bhakti_Yoga_and_Vaishnavism
3.5.01_-_Aphorisms
4.02_-_Autobiographical_Evidence
4.02_-_Divine_Consolations.
4.03_-_The_Meaning_of_Human_Endeavor
4.1_-_Jnana
4.2_-_Karma
4.3_-_Bhakti
BOOK_I._-_Augustine_censures_the_pagans,_who_attributed_the_calamities_of_the_world,_and_especially_the_sack_of_Rome_by_the_Goths,_to_the_Christian_religion_and_its_prohibition_of_the_worship_of_the_gods
BOOK_VIII._-_Some_account_of_the_Socratic_and_Platonic_philosophy,_and_a_refutation_of_the_doctrine_of_Apuleius_that_the_demons_should_be_worshipped_as_mediators_between_gods_and_men
BOOK_XIV._-_Of_the_punishment_and_results_of_mans_first_sin,_and_of_the_propagation_of_man_without_lust
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
COSA_-_BOOK_III
Epistle_to_the_Romans
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_First_Letter_of_John
The_Gospel_According_to_John
Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra_text

PRIMARY CLASS

SIMILAR TITLES
love God

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE

Intuitio: A term generally employed by Spinoza in a more technical sense than that found in the Cartesian philosophy (see Reg. ad Dir. Ing., III). It is primarily used by Spinoza in connection with "scientia intuitiva" or knowledge "of the third kind" (Ethica, II, 40, Schol. 2). Intuition of this sort is absolutely certain and infallible, in contrast to reason (ratio, q.v.), it produces the highest peace and virtue of the mind (Ibid, V, 25 and 27). Also, as over against ratio, it yields an adequate knowledge of the essence of things, and thus enables us to know and love God, through which knowledge (Ibid, V, 39) the greater part of our mind is rendered eternal. -- W.S.W.

Tefila ::: Jewish Prayer. ::: Tefillin ::: Usually translated as “phylacteries.” Box-like appurtenances that accompany prayer, worn by Jewish adult males at the weekday morning services. The boxes have leather thongs attached and contain scriptural excerpts. One box (with four sections) is placed on the head, the other (with one section) is placed (customarily) on the left arm, near the heart. The biblical passages emphasize the unity of God and the duty to love God and be mindful of him with "all one's heart and mind" (e.g., Exod. 13.1-10, 11-16; Deut. 6.4-9; 11.13-21). See also Shema.



QUOTES [39 / 39 - 626 / 626]


KEYS (10k)

   5 Sri Ramakrishna
   5 Saint Thomas Aquinas
   3 Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
   3 Sri Aurobindo
   3 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   2 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
   1 Swami Ramakrishnananda
   1 SWAMI BRAHMANANDA
   1 Saint Vincent de Paul
   1 Saint Padre Pio
   1 Saint John Chrysostom
   1 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
   1 Saint Benedict Joseph Labre
   1 Saint Aloysius Gonzaga
   1 Rabia al-Adawiyya
   1 Philokalia
   1 John of the Cross
   1 John IV. 20
   1 Jalaluddin Rumi
   1 HOLY MOTHER SRI SARADA DEVI
   1 Blessed Angela of Foligno
   1 The Mother
   1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   22 C S Lewis
   21 Anonymous
   12 John Green
   10 Timothy J Keller
   10 Francis Chan
   9 Thomas Merton
   9 Leo Tolstoy
   9 John Piper
   8 R C Sproul
   8 Joyce Meyer
   7 Saint Augustine
   7 Max Lucado
   6 Rick Riordan
   6 Peter Kreeft
   6 Mother Teresa
   6 Meister Eckhart
   6 Jen Hatmaker
   6 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
   5 Thomas Kempis
   5 Simone Weil

1:I love God: I have no time left In which to hate the devil. ~ Rabia al-Adawiyya,
2:Stop loving yourself and you will love God. ~ Philokalia, Maximos the Confessor,
3:Love God, and do what you like. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
4:To love God is more excellent than to know Him ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 22.11).
5:Charity is the virtue by which we love God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.82.3ad3).,
6:To love God is more excellent than to know Him ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 22.11).,
7:To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God. ~ John of the Cross,
8:The Lord takes the human body for the sake of those pure souls who love God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
9:The principal effect of sanctifying grace is for man to love God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ScG 3.151).,
10:Meditation is not a means to reach God, but an end. The purpose of meditation is to love God and neighbor. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina,
11:He who wishes to love God does not truly love Him if he has not an ardent and constant desire to suffer for His sake. ~ Saint Aloysius Gonzaga,
12:We are to love God for Himself, because of a twofold reason; nothing is more reasonable, nothing more profitable." ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,
13:Lightning from here strikes there. When you begin to love God, God is loving you. A clapping sound does not come from one hand. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi,
14:I am sent not only to love God but to make Him loved. It is not enough for me to love God, if my neighbor does not love Him." ~ Saint Vincent de Paul,
15:Don't spend your energies on things that generate worry, anxiety and anguish. Only one thing is necessary: Lift up your spirit, and love God." ~ Saint Padre Pio,
16:If one loves a human being one has to endure grief and sorrow. If one can love God, one is indeed blessed, one has no more grief or sorrow. ~ HOLY MOTHER SRI SARADA DEVI
17:To love God, you need three hearts in one — a heart of fire for him, a heart of flesh for your neighbor, and a heart of bronze for yourself. ~ Saint Benedict Joseph Labre,
18:As a true wife loves her husband and as a miser his hoarded wealth, so must the devotee love God with all his heart and soul. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
19:Don't waste your energies on things that cause worry, disturbance and anxiety. Only one thing is necessary: to lift the spirit and love God. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina,
20:No one can make excuses, because anyone can love God; and he does not ask the soul for more than to love him, because he loves the soul, and it is his love." ~ Blessed Angela of Foligno,
21:One feels restless for God when one's soul longs for His vision. To love God is the essence of the whole thing. Bhakti alone is the essence. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
22:Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
23:Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5],
24:A tireless benevolence, clear-seeing and comprehensive, free from all personal reaction, is the best way to love God and serve Him upon earth.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
25:Just as it belongs to charity to love God, so it likewise belongs to charity to detest the sins through which the soul is separated from God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.113.5ad1).,
26:To know God is to love God, therefore the paths of jnana and bhakti (knowledge and devotion) come to the same. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Teachings of Ramana-Maharshi in his Own Words, Ch 6,
27:410. Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,
28:If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? ~ John IV. 20, the Eternal Wisdom
29:If we love God for what we can get from Him in the world, we really love the world, not God, and we can never be true devotees. The true devotee loves God just for the joy of loving Him, because God is the Beloved. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda,
30:What a weakness it is to love Jesus only when he caresses us, and to be cold immediately once he afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus love themselves too much to love God with all their heart. ~ Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque,
31:What a weakness it is to love Jesus Christ only when He Caresses us, and to be cold immediately once He afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus, love themselves too much to love God with all their heart. ~ Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque,
32:What a weakness it is to love Jesus Christ only when He Caresses us, and to be cold immediately once He afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus, love themselves too much to love God with all their heart." ~ Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque,
33:His will be done! He is omnipotent! What power has man? All that you can do is to love God. Have intense yearning for Him. The whole world is mad for something; why run mad after fleeting objects of this world? Better be mad for God. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA,
34:If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have laboured long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. ~ Saint John Chrysostom,
35:What need is there of your counting the number of trees and branches in an orchard? You have come to the orchard to eat mangoes. Do that and be happy. The aim of human birth is to love God. Realize that love and be at peace. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
36:Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death's a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.
From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
37:The worldly man is a hypocrite. He cannot be guileless. He professes to love God, but he is attracted by worldly objects. He doesn't give God even a very small part of the love he feels for 'lust & greed'. But he says that he loves God. Give up hypocrisy ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
38:God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! When I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
39:To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Love not Pleasure; love God. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
2:Love God, and do what you like. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove
3:The only unhappiness is not to love God. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
4:To love God is something greater than to know Him. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
5:To love God is something greater than to know Him. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
6:To love another person is to help them love God. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
7:You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
8:It is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
9:Love God and find him within - the only treasure worth finding. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove
10:Get up every day, love God, and do your best. He will do the rest! ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
11:We were made not primarily that we may love God, but that God may love us. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
12:Always remember, nothing can touch you if you inwardly love God. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
13:Real Christianity can be summed up in two commands: Love God, and love people. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
14:If we can not love the person whom we see, how can we love God whom we can not see? ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
15:Love not pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove
16:No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
17:Let her love God as He is in Himself, and not as her imagination says He is, and pictures Him. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
18:You have no idea How much you do for mankind When you love God unconditionally Even for a fleeting moment. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
19:When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
20:To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings and of the environment is the best way to love God. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove
21:Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove
22:I choose love. No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness, I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
23:To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
24:I do make conversion, if conversion means really turning people to God - to have a clean heart and to love God. That's the real conversion. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
25:Open your hearts to the love God instills . . . God loves you tenderly. What He gives you is not to be kept under lock and key, but to be shared. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
26:We are to love God most importantly so that we can grow to love people as he loved us, not so that we can feel more divine and worthy than the worldly. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
27:Love for God is obedience; love for God is holiness. To love God and to love man is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and this is salvation. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
28:To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove
29:I spent a lot of time in India with my father. I don't know all about their religion. But I know they love God. And I don't know. I've seen their sincerity. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove
30:I don't like hassles. But I love Christmas because it reminds us how "God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God" (Rom. 8:28 NLT). ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
31:Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
32:The Most difficult thing but an essential one is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
33:Work for god, love god alone, and be wise with god. When an ordinary man puts the necessary rime and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
34:And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, seeing He saith this of the Holy Spirit, Whom except we have, we can neither love God, nor keep His commandments? ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove
35:We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove
36:We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove
37:What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove
38:I may repeat &
39:It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
40:Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
41:Whenever we think of Christ, we should recall the love that led Him to bestow on us so many graces and favors, and also the great love God showed in giving us in Christ a pledge of His love; for love calls for love in return. Let us strive to keep this always before our eyes and to rouse ourselves to love Him. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove
42:There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
43:It is good to love God for hope of reward, but it is better to love God for love's sake; and the prayer goes: O Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth. But grant me this, that I may love thee without the hope of reward &
44:Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not &
45:Pure love is a willingness to give, without a thought of receiving anything in return. Love can save the world from nuclear destruction. Love God: turn to God with receptiveness and responsiveness. Love your fellow human beings: turn to them with friendliness and givingness. Make yourself fit to be called a child of God by living the way of love. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove
46:A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat "Do as you would be done by" till I am black in the fact, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
47:If you find it difficult to love the human in someone, then love the divine in him. The divine in him is God. God exists in that person just as God exists in you. To love God is extremely easy because God is divine and perfect. Each time you look at an individual, if you can consciously become aware of God's existence in him, then you will not be disturbed by his or her imperfections or limitations. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
48:Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30 ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove
49:When Jesus is asked, ‘What is the greatest commandment?’ he replies: Love God with all your heart. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love others as yourself. The first commandment is to love God, which means communing with the primal oneness of being. The second commandment is to love others as yourself, because when you wake up to oneness you see that others are your self. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove
50:If the immutable heart can be grieved by the puppets of its own making, it is Divine Omnipotence, no other, that has subjected it, freely, and in a humility that passes understanding. If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God, but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
51:To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed bu increased. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
52:Is it easy to love God' asks an old author. &
53:We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God, for His Majesty bears so tender an affection for us that I cannot doubt He will repay our love for others by augmenting, and in a thousand different ways, that which we bear for Him. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove
54:The sum and substance of the whole matter is that a man must love God, must be restless for Him. It doesn't matter whether you believe in God with form or God without form. You may or may not believe that God incarnates Himself as man. But you will realize Him if you have that yearning. Then He himself will let you know what He is like. If you must be mad, why should you be mad for the things of the world? If you must be mad, be mad for God alone. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
55:If I'm a blessing to you, then either God will put it on your heart to bless me, or he'll use somebody else to bless me. If I'm friendly with you, then I'll have friends. If I'm merciful with people, the Bible says I'll get mercy back. If I'm not judgmental, then people won't be judgmental with me. And it works also with finances. If you give to help other hurting people and you give to the preaching of the gospel, because you love God, then God takes care of you. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
56:It is a wonderful thing to see a first-rate philosopher at prayer. Tough-minded thinking and tenderhearted reverence are friends, not enemies. We have for too long separated the head from the heart, and we are the lesser for it. We love God with the mind and we love God with the heart. In reality, we are descending with the mind into the heart and there standing before God in ceaseless wonder and endless praise. As the mind and the heart work in concert, a kind of loving rationality pervades all we say and do. This brings unity to us and glory to God. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
57:The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased". ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
58:How then should I love God?’ You should love God non-mentally, that is to say the soul should become non-mental and stripped of her mental images. For as long as your soul is mental, she will possess images. As long as she has images, she will possess intermediaries, and as long as she has intermediaries, she will not have unity or simplicity. As long as she lacks simplicity, she does not truly love God, for true love depends upon simplicity . . . Indeed, you must love him as he is One, pure, simple and transparent, far from all duality. And we should eternally sink into this One, thus passing from something into nothing. So help us God. Amen. ~ meister-eckhart, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:To love God all-powerless. ~ Simone Weil,
2:Love God, Love People, Do Stuff ~ Bob Goff,
3:To love life is to love God. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
4:Love God with all your mind. ~ J P Moreland,
5:Love not Pleasure; love God. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
6:If you love god, burn a church. ~ Jello Biafra,
7:Only the hopeless love God. ~ Jennifer Donnelly,
8:love God and do as you please. ~ Craig L Blomberg,
9:Love God, and do what you like. ~ Saint Augustine,
10:22 I love God’s law with all my heart. ~ Anonymous,
11:Love God, and do what you like. ~ Saint Augustine,
12:Love God, then do what you will. ~ Saint Augustine,
13:Train our children to love God. ~ Daniel Harvey Hill,
14:We love God by loving his people. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
15:When you truly love God, you obey Him. ~ Dannah Gresh,
16:Your mind was made to know and love God. ~ John Piper,
17:We are made to know and love God. ~ Nicolas Malebranche,
18:The only unhappiness is not to love God. ~ Thomas Merton,
19:We love others best when we love God most. ~ Kyle Idleman,
20:If you want to love God better, hate sin more. ~ Mark Hart,
21:You cannot love God without loving people ~ Sunday Adelaja,
22:God hopes that we are going to love God back. ~ Desmond Tutu,
23:To love God is to cooperate with His grace. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,
24:Love God, serve God; everything is in that. ~ Clare of Assisi,
25:All is vanity but to love God and serve Him. ~ Thomas a Kempis,
26:3But if any man love God, the same is known of him. ~ Anonymous,
27:He who cannot hate the devil cannot love God. ~ Joseph Goebbels,
28:Love God, Embrace beauty, Live life to the fullest. ~ Kyle Lake,
29:Dare to love God without mediator or veil. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
30:Get warm any way you can, and love God and pray. ~ Thomas Merton,
31:To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And ~ Lysa TerKeurst,
32:All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters. ~ Jack Kerouac,
33:The more we love God, the more unpleasant sin becomes. ~ Criss Jami,
34:All things work together for good to them that love God. ~ Ed Warren,
35:To love another person is to help them love God. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
36:To love God passionately is to love truth passionately. ~ John Piper,
37:You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God. ~ C S Lewis,
38:You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God. ~ C S Lewis,
39:In His boundless love God permits the atheist to live. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
40:Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God. ~ John Henry Newman,
41:If my fans want to call me a love God, then so be it! ~ Alexander O Neal,
42:If you love God, tear out your heart's love of the world. ~ Muhammad Ali,
43:It is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. ~ Mother Teresa,
44:To love God is something greater than to know Him. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
45:For those who love God all things work together for good. ~ James MacDonald,
46:Love God and find him within - the only treasure worth finding. ~ Meher Baba,
47:Any old woman can love God better than a doctor of theology can. ~ Bonaventure,
48:Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
49:To love our neighbor in charity is to love God in man. ~ Saint Francis de Sales,
50:We must love God more for what He is, than for what He bestows. ~ Thomas Watson,
51:Love God. Live Called. It's not just devotional, it's vocational! ~ Brian Houston,
52:The way to love God is to begin to know God’s love to you. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones,
53:Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God. ~ Yann Martel,
54:I don’t want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. ~ Misty Edwards,
55:I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. ~ Dorothy Day,
56:I love God, and when you get to know Him, you find He's a Livin' Doll. ~ Jane Russell,
57:I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. ~ Philip Yancey,
58:One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people ~ Jennifer Worth,
59:We were made not primarily that we may love God, but that God may love us. ~ C S Lewis,
60:Freedom is perfect when no other love can impede our desire to love God ~ Thomas Merton,
61:Always remember, nothing can touch you if you inwardly love God. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
62:A mind fed daily on TV diminishes. Your mind was made to know and love God. ~ John Piper,
63:The Love-god inflames more fiercely those he sees are reluctant to surrender. ~ Tibullus,
64:To love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and our neighbor as ourself. ~ Anonymous,
65:All that is in the world is vanity except to love God and serve him only. ~ Thomas Kempis,
66:I love God, I love everybody else around me as myself, and I love my enemy. ~ Kevin Gates,
67:To fight the violence we must be brave, hold on strong to the love God gave. ~ Elton John,
68:Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God. ~ John Calvin,
69:We love God with our mind by taking the time to fill our mind with the Word. ~ Mike Bickle,
70:Romans 8:28 (ESV): For those who love God all things work together for good. ~ Peter Kreeft,
71:I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another. ~ Julie Orringer,
72:Love people for the sake of God, but never love God for the sake of people. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,
73:Love God and He will enable you to love others even when they disappoint you. ~ Francine Rivers,
74:A pure woman is better than a hundred yogis. Women are more open to love God. ~ Neem Karoli Baba,
75:This had to be the same kind of love God had for His people. Riley got that now… ~ Susan Sleeman,
76:To serve God, to love God, to enjoy God, is the sweetest freedom in the world. ~ Thomas F Wilson,
77:It behoves thee to love God wisely; and that may thou not do but if thou be wise. ~ Richard Rolle,
78:The greatest achievement to any human being is to love God, yourself, and others. ~ Janet Jackson,
79:And only as we love God supremely is it possible to love our neighbor impartially. ~ Ellen G White,
80:We are bored with God because our heartsq do not hunger for God, seek God, love God ~ Peter Kreeft,
81:If we can not love the person whom we see, how can we love God whom we can not see? ~ Mother Teresa,
82:God gave the Bible not so we can know it but so we can know and love God through it. ~ Scot McKnight,
83:Love God Today: Seek God for your future and trust Him to bring it about in His timing. ~ Joyce Meyer,
84:I would love God even if he damned me, because he was so gracious to others. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
85:God loves everyone in the world who doesn't love himself. Does God love God? ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
86:If you stand, worship, and love God in the midst of lack and difficulty, you will never lose ~ Heidi Baker,
87:Let her love God as He is in Himself, and not as her imagination says He is, and pictures Him. ~ A W Tozer,
88:Our only business is to love God, not to ask God for our necessities. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da,
89:If we do not love God and His Word what difference does it make if we love anything at all? ~ Martin Luther,
90:At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself. ~ John Stott,
91:Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it’s a place for those who love God. ~ Matt Chandler,
92:2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. ~ Anonymous,
93:As Dorothy Day put it, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. ~ Philip Yancey,
94:Trust is born in love, and our need is to love God, not apprehend
facts concerning him. ~ George MacDonald,
95:If God is compassionate, then certainly those who love God should be compassionate as well. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,
96:Love not pleasure; love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved. ~ Thomas Carlyle,
97:At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself. ~ John R W Stott,
98:Holiness is not to love Jesus and do whatever you want. Holiness is to love God and do what He wants. ~ C Wagner,
99:No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
100:It's easy to talk about how much you love God, but loving others reveals how much you truly do. ~ Elizabeth George,
101:It’s easy to talk about how much you love God, but loving others reveals how much you truly do. ~ Elizabeth George,
102:If you truly love God and His will, then doing what you will, will, in fact, be doing what God wills. ~ Peter Kreeft,
103:I petted the dogs who didn't argue with me ever. All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters. ~ Jack Kerouac,
104:As you love God and serve Him, you will undoubtedly experience the greatest adventure life has to offer. ~ Bill Bright,
105:includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, ~ A W Tozer,
106:To love God and to love man is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and this is salvation. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
107:To love God in great things is not so perfect an act of faith as to worship them in small ones. ~ Jean Pierre de Caussade,
108:To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God. ~ John of the Cross,
109:Whether you love God or you love a human being, if you love enough you will come into the presence of Love itself. ~ Rumi,
110:For a man who professed to love God, he was filled with the vinegar of hatred and self-righteousness. ~ Elizabeth Chadwick,
111:To love God, which was a thing far excelling all the cunning that is possible for us in this life to obtain. ~ Thomas More,
112:They that love God live their daily lives to show their true love for God; in truth and in spirit! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
113:The one who wants to love God has to take care about the purity of the soul, first of all. ~ Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov,
114:Love God, and within the limitations He has sovereignly placed in your life at this time, do what you can. ~ Donald S Whitney,
115:In the first decade of my life, I came to know and love God, as I was raised in a Christian home and community. ~ Chely Wright,
116:The people who love God with all their heart are those whose will is totally devoted to what is good for God. ~ Dallas Willard,
117:To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God. ~ Saint John of the Cross,
118:We must love God with our minds, allowing our intellect to inform our emotions, rather than the other way around. ~ Jen Wilkin,
119:And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. ~ Anonymous,
120:We are to love God, not for the gifts bestowed upon us but for the sake of love itself. ~ Eyran Katsenelenbogen, One Time (2018),
121:We were designed to know, serve, and love God supremely - and when we are faithful to that design, we flourish. ~ Timothy Keller,
122:all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
123:When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. ~ C S Lewis,
124:To love God, excluding the world, is to give Him an intense but imperfect adoration.(Thoughts and Aphorisms ~ Bhakti)#SriAurobindo,
125:Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back. ~ Anne Lamott,
126:Bapu Ghandi said, "All religions are true." I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face. ~ Yann Martel,
127:Disordered love always leads to misery and breakdown. The only way to 'reorder' our loves is to love God supremely. ~ Timothy Keller,
128:love—God’s love to me, and my love to God, and my love to my fellowmen. The three are one; you cannot separate them. ~ Andrew Murray,
129:Those who fervently love God are intoxicated by His warmth and live out their addiction like moths drawn to a flame. ~ Calvin Miller,
130:To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings and of the environment is the best way to love God. ~ Nhat Hanh,
131:Gary wondered, 'If God intentionally made us all different, why should everyone be expected to love God in the same way? ~ Rick Warren,
132:I love goodness and hate evil. My favorite verse in the Bible is ‘Those of you who love God—hate evil’ (Psalms 97:10). ~ Dennis Prager,
133:My mom's response after seeing a sign that read 'Love God, People and Life': 'Well a lot of people don't like people.' ~ Sasheer Zamata,
134:The less you attached to the world, the more you love God.The nearer you approach to God, the more you feel His love. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
135:I am betrayed and played but right now im feeling nothing pain but to forgive, it's because I love God too much that I can't hate. ~ AKA,
136:I believe in God.....I gain strength from God. I believe in Jehovah, God, very much.....I believe in God and love God. ~ Michael Jackson,
137:We lead our lives well when we love God with our whole being and when we love neighbors as we (properly) love ourselves. ~ Miroslav Volf,
138:‎1. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
It's that easy! :-) ~ Jos N Harris,
139:Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence. ~ Simone Weil,
140:If we love God's fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions. ~ John Piper,
141:And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. ~ Anonymous,
142:Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved. ~ Saint Augustine,
143:Some of you are sitting at home saying, 'I don't need a church to love God,' and I am here telling you that you are so wrong. ~ Francis Chan,
144:28And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those †who are the called according to His purpose. ~ Anonymous,
145:We are to love God for Himself, because of a twofold reason; nothing is more reasonable, nothing more profitable. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,
146:If everyone, including himself, loved as they should love, they would love God more than they loved themselves and their passions. ~ Rod Dreher,
147:Augustine writes: “We love God, therefore, for what He is in Himself, and [we love] ourselves and our neighbors for His sake. ~ Timothy J Keller,
148:I love God and I follow Jesus but I just don't have much affinity for the organized folderol of the churches in the Western World. ~ Larry Norman,
149:And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
150:ROM8.28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ~ Anonymous,
151:28And we know that for those who love God all things work together h for good, [8] for i those who are called according to his purpose. ~ Anonymous,
152:Love God? Sometimes I hate Him." This is a strange quote to hear from the lips of a man as respected for his religious zeal as Luther. ~ R C Sproul,
153:Moses simplifies the whole duty of Israel (and of humanity) by crystalizing the moral law into a single command to love God supremely. ~ Max Anders,
154:Did I know him? Did I love him? You ask me that? I knew him like you know nobody in the world, and I loved him like you love God. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
155:I choose love. No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness, I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves. ~ Max Lucado,
156:To love God and love our neighbor is the standard of God, which on our own we cannot achieve. But in Christ, a new command is issued. ~ Randy Frazee,
157:To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
158:Augustine writes: “We love God, therefore, for what He is in Himself, and [we love] ourselves and our neighbors for His sake.” That ~ Timothy J Keller,
159:I submit that God has no wishes about how, or even if, we glorify Him. Allow me, then, Jacob, to love God in my own fashion.” Franco’s ~ Irvin D Yalom,
160:People are so shocked when they find ... out I am Protestant. I am Presbyterian. And I go to church and I love God and I love my church. ~ Donald Trump,
161:This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun. ~ Jack London,
162:How could I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength while disengaging those very faculties every time I read the Bible? ~ Rachel Held Evans,
163:If we truly love God, we will express it by loving our neighbors, and when we truly love our neighbors, it expresses our love for God. ~ Richard Stearns,
164:First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you. ~ Anonymous,
165:I don't want to live forever. But as long as I'm alive, I'm going to love life, love my family, and love God. That's the way I am. ~ Nancy Sprowell Geise,
166:Love God, love people. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly. Treat people as you want to be treated. If you want to be great, be a servant. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
167:When we love God because we feel we SHOULD love him, instead of genuinely love out of our true selves, we have forgotten who God really is. ~ Francis Chan,
168:A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,
169:I do make conversion, if conversion means really turning people to God - to have a clean heart and to love God. That's the real conversion. ~ Mother Teresa,
170:our God! GOD the one and only! Love GOD, your God with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got! ~ Eugene H Peterson,
171:You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God. Sometimes this conversion can be done while the instinctive love is still gratified. ~ C S Lewis,
172:And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ROMANS 8:28 KJV ~ Joyce Meyer,
173:Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, [T5],
174:When we love God because we feel we should love Him, instead of genuinely loving out of our true selves, we have forgotten who God really is. ~ Francis Chan,
175:if you love God, you will obey Him! If you do not obey Him, you do not really love Him, regardless of what you may claim (see John 14:24). ~ Henry T Blackaby,
176:Because of the Shewing I am not good but if I love God the better: and in as much as ye love God the better, it is more to you than to me. ~ Julian of Norwich,
177:No knowledge is ever wasted. To quote the apostle Paul: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). ~ Ben Carson,
178:We can love God out of emotion; but when we can love Him out of emotion, knowledge and strength, our faith will thrive through all things. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner,
179:It is clear, then, that the soul which loves God seeks and looks for no other reward of its service than to love God perfectly. INTRODUCTION. ~ Juan de la Cruz,
180:And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, ESV). ~ Randy Alcorn,
181:It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful. The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me to embrace God in all things. ~ Saint Francis of Assisi,
182:Open your hearts to the love God instills . . . God loves you tenderly. What He gives you is not to be kept under lock and key, but to be shared. ~ Mother Teresa,
183:the Spirit f intercedes for the saints g according to the will of God. 28And we know that for those who love God all things work together h for good, ~ Anonymous,
184:The great problem a mother has is not a lack of creativity, accomplishment, or skill, but her inability to love God and others as Jesus loves her. ~ Gloria Furman,
185:Was it not because I loved man all-too-much? Now I love God. man I love not. Man is for me too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
186:Here, then, is the message. Don’t love anything less; instead learn to love God more, and you will love other things with far more satisfaction. ~ Timothy J Keller,
187:His quiet death was much like his monastic life where each day and each hour was a new beginning and a fresh commitment to love God with all his heart. ~ Anonymous,
188:First-class religion teaches one how to love God without any motive. If I serve God for some profit, that is business-not love. ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da,
189:We are to love God most importantly so that we can grow to love people as he loved us, not so that we can feel more divine and worthy than the worldly. ~ Criss Jami,
190:Love for God is obedience; love for God is holiness. To love God and to love man is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and this is salvation. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
191:The words 'God is love' conclude a biblical warning, not a warm and fuzzy slogan. 'He who doesn't love [his neighbor] doesn't love God, for God is love.' ~ Mel White,
192:To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God. ~ Meher Baba,
193:If you wish to befriend someone, look for a person who loves first God then themselves. If they love God, they will be able to love their neighbor, too. ~ Petar Dunov,
194:To love God truly, one must first love man. And if anyone tells you that he loves God and does not love his fellow-man, you will know that he is lying. ~ Martin Buber,
195:If you wish to befriend someone, look for a person who loves first God then themselves. If they love God, they will be able to love their neighbor, too. ~ Peter Deunov,
196:If you love God and align your life to his Upper Story plan, God promises that everything is going to work out for the good. One way or another, you will ~ Randy Frazee,
197:It is important that we never separate our love for God from our love for others. For loving our neighbors as ourselves is one central way we love God. ~ Gregory A Boyd,
198:So to “love God with all your mind” means engaging all your powers of thought to know God as fully as possible in order to treasure him for all he is worth. ~ John Piper,
199:But if we love God for something less than Himself, we cherish a desire that can fail us. We run the risk of hating Him if we do not get what we hope for. ~ Thomas Merton,
200:I am happy that I can at least want to love God. Perhaps that is all I’ve got, but it is already all that is essential. And He will take care of the rest. ~ Thomas Merton,
201:Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty. ~ Girolamo Savonarola,
202:We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose ~ Madeleine L Engle,
203:But lest we think that we can love God and live any way we want to, Jesus told us very clearly, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). ~ Francis Chan,
204:Love for God is obedience; love for God is holiness. To love God and to love man is to be conformed to the image of Christ, and this is salvation. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
205:I don't like hassles. But I love Christmas because it reminds us how "God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God" (Rom. 8:28 NLT). ~ Max Lucado,
206:If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? ~ John IV. 20,
207:Jesus told the people He was with that it’s not enough to just look like you love God. He said we’d know the extent of our love for God by how well we loved people. ~ Bob Goff,
208:The fact is, I need God to help me love God. And if I need His help to love Him, a perfect being, I definitely need His help to love other, fault-filled humans. ~ Francis Chan,
209:God. He who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did know Him]. —1 JOHN 4:7-8 When I walk in love God is present. —1 JOHN 4:12 Love ~ Joyce Meyer,
210:God's love, and hence the love with which we come to love God, is eros and agape at once: a desire for the other that delights in the distance of otherness. ~ David Bentley Hart,
211:I do not follow God's will in fear of punishment, or even in hope of reward. I follow God's will, as I understand it, because I love God, and want to make Him happy. ~ Anonymous,
212:Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. ~ Mother Teresa,
213:As Romans 8:28 assures us, “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. ~ Kris Vallotton,
214:God loves me enough to give me choices and the liberty to make them. In turn, I am to love God's other children enough to have faith in their ability to make choices. ~ Irshad Manji,
215:O my heart! Love God as the chatrik loves the rain drops, Who even when fountains are full and the land green, Is not satisfied as long as it cannot get a drop of rain. ~ Guru Nanak,
216:One must love God first, and only then can one love one's closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God. ~ Thaddeus of Vitovnica,
217:A tireless benevolence, clear-seeing and comprehensive, free from all personal reaction, is the best way to love God and serve Him upon earth.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,
218:If you love any human being you will have to suffer for it. That person is blessed, indeed, who can love God alone. There is no suffering in loving God. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi,
219:ٰ"The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
220:You go often into the silence, but have you developed anubhava?” He was reminding me to love God more than meditation. “Do not mistake the technique for the Goal. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
221:Work for god, love god alone, and be wise with god. When an ordinary man puts the necessary rime and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
222:To love God as He ought to be loved, we must be detached from all temporal love. We must love nothing but Him, or if we love anything else, we must love it only for His sake. ~ Peter Claver,
223:To those who do not love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation at last. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
224:there is no formula to discovering went to say which one [yes or no]. There is only Jesus, doing as he sees his Father do, asking us to do as he does. Love God. Love people. ~ Emily P Freeman,
225:Our responsibility is to love God and to love our neighbour which is what Jesus taught and it's also what Judaism taught - and that would make sense because Jesus was Jewish. ~ Amy Jill Levine,
226:You can live a wonderful life, you can love God with all your heart, and you can love your husband or wife very passionately and have a balance in your life. I live by balance. ~ Yolanda Adams,
227:In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, “We know that God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. ~ James Comey,
228:Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
229:410. Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,
230:I hear people say, "Doctrine divides." Of course doctrine divides, but it also unites. It unites the ones who love God's truth and are willing to worship Him according to that truth. ~ R C Sproul,
231:The lover of God never knows the words “too much.” Those who accuse others of loving God or religion too much really do not love God at all, nor do they know the meaning of love. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
232:Do not think about the body. The body comes and goes; for it there is birth and there is death. But you are not the body. Body is just rust and dust. Think only of God. Love God. ~ Sathya Sai Baba,
233:Those that truly love God will make it their constant care and endeavour to keep his commandments, particularly those that relate to his worship. Those that love God, and keep those ~ Matthew Henry,
234:If you love God, surrender to God, you can live in the moment, free of anxiety. Without God? You look ahead and see traps and pitfalls, you look behind and you see loss and death. ~ Suzanne Morrison,
235:Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
236:The more you love God, the more deeply you care about life. The more deeply you care about people, the more deeply you are committed to making a difference in people’s lives. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus,
237:And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, seeing He saith this of the Holy Spirit, Whom except we have, we can neither love God, nor keep His commandments? ~ Saint Augustine,
238:God has witnessed everything done to you. Those that love God will feel shame for what they did. Those that don't ....do not know God or have a concept of repentance or forgiveness. ~ Shannon L Alder,
239:Let us remember the poor, and not forget kindness to strangers; above all, let us love God with all our soul, and might, and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. ~ Saint Athanasius of Alexandria,
240:To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
241:Religion, then, can tell you what to do—namely, to “love God with all your heart, soul and mind” and “to love your neighbor as yourself”; but the gospel alone gives you the power to do it. ~ J D Greear,
242:I think as Christians, we all have the same calling, and that calling is to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul and love others as ourselves and to glorify God in everything that we do. ~ LeCrae,
243:The Jesus Creed teaches us that a disciple’s responsibility is to love God by following Jesus. You only follow someone else when your own lights or sense of direction are not good enough. ~ Scot McKnight,
244:They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
245:But Augustine knew the Bible’s main mission: so that we can become people who love God and love others. If our reading of the Bible leads to this, the mission is accomplished. If it isn’t … ~ Scot McKnight,
246:The purpose of family is to love God and others. The purpose of marriage is to love God and others. The purpose of parenting is to love God and others. That’s the answer to the question. ~ Sharon Hodde Miller,
247:This isn’t a very popular idea in the American church, where we separate our love for God from our service to God. We say we love God most, but it’s a vague statement that yields little action. ~ Francis Chan,
248:We must love God more than the world, yet if we truly love God, we will also love the world, on his behalf. God matters more than the world, but because he loves it, the world now matters. ~ Michael E Wittmer,
249:who love God but spend more than what God has chosen to provide. They incur large amounts of debt and experience the shame and pressure that accompanies it. And they wind up feeling overwhelmed. ~ Bill Hybels,
250:...if (they) wish to love God, (they) be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion. ~ Ted Chiang,
251:I know many Catholics love God with all their heart. I have genuine respect for anyone who truly has given their life to Christ. We read about Mother Teresa and what a wonderful example she was. ~ Bill McCartney,
252:The beautiful simplicity of our faith is that it distills down to the exact same bottom line for both the brilliant theologian and the five-year-old child: love God and love each other - period. ~ Richard Stearns,
253:In life, you have people that love to party. That's me. People that love God. That's me. People that love sex. That's me. People that love people. That's me. And people that make mistakes.That's me also. ~ R Kelly,
254:The Declaration of Independence has established certain moral confines, and governs in a manner consistent with the spirit under which our nation was founded: Love God; love thy neighbor as thyself. ~ Jeremiah Denton,
255:What’s wrong in our world will not be set right until people who love God and who refuse to cave to these overwhelming challenges put the things they believe into action, things like courage and discipline and love. ~ Bill Hybels,
256:If you marry someone expecting them to be like a god, it is only inevitable that they will disappoint you. It's not that you should try to love your spouse less, but rather that you should know and love God more. ~ Timothy J Keller,
257:I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. DOROTHY DAY You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. ANNE LAMOTT ~ John Ortberg Jr,
258:We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others which would enable them to perform this duty. ~ Angelina Grimke,
259:Conversion is essential, but it is a beginning, not an end. The believer in Jesus Christ is not simply rescued from the penalty of his sin; he is redeemed to love God and his neighbor so that others might come to know him. ~ Max Anders,
260:Let the rage and malice of men be never so great, they can do no more, nor go any further, than God permits them; but when they have done their worst, We know all things shall work together for good to them that love God. ~ John Bunyan,
261:My goal should never be to raise kids that make me look good. (Oh but how my flesh craves this!) My goal should be to raise kids who love God and spend their lives making His goodness known in their corner of the world. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,
262:And even now I experience that blessed feeling. To love one's neighbors, to love one's enemies. Always to love--to love God in all His Manifestations. To love one's friends is human love, but to love one's enemies is divine. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
263:We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
264:Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death’s a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.
From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,
265:Show me someone who cares about God’s people, and I will show you someone who loves God. Show me someone who says they deeply love God but has little concern for his people, and I will show you someone spiritually delusional. ~ Jim Cymbala,
266:If you don’t love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God. ~ Donald Miller,
267:Whether you believe in a creed, or what you call religion, or not, there is something in Socialism that must move you. How can you love God, whom you have not seen, if you do not love your fellow man, whom you have seen? ~ Rose Pastor Stokes,
268:Love God first, and your husband second. Remember to compliment him, because if you don’t, someone else will. And always give a hundred percent. If you both do that, you’ll be covered on the days when someone slips a little. ~ Karen Kingsbury,
269:My message to blacks was: “It is time to stop hating who you are. God created you black—love yourself, love your hands and face, big nose and lips, for that is the only way you can love God. Blackness is God's gift to humanity. ~ James H Cone,
270:Nothing trains and teaches so powerfully as love. Love attracts. it does not coerce. If the aim of parents is to teach their children to love God they must show their love for Him by loving each other and loving the children. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
271:What is holiness? The end product of what holiness is it's to love God in the same way He loves Himself; it's to esteem God as much as He esteems Himself, and to separate yourself unto that love, and to keep yourself in that love. ~ Paul Washer,
272:To love God and neighbor is not something abstract, but profoundly concrete: it means seeing in every person and face of the Lord to be served, to serve him concretely. And you are, dear brothers and sisters, in the face of Jesus. ~ Pope Francis,
273:For if God is man's chief good, which you cannot deny, it clearly follows, since to seek the chief good is to live well, that to live well is nothing else but to love God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind. ~ Saint Augustine,
274:Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God. ~ Bernadette Roberts,
275:She felt as though she were a statue of ashes—bitter, useless, damned—like the salt statues of Gomorrah. For she was guilty. Those who love God, and by Him are abandoned in the dark of night, are guilty, because they are abandoned. ~ Pauline R age,
276:In his oral teaching John used to point out that the more you love God the more you desire that all people love and honor him and as the desire grows you work harder toward that end, both in prayer and in all other possible works. ~ Juan de la Cruz,
277:But I was not obeying the first and greatest commandment - to love God first - nor is it clear that I was obeying the second - to love my neighbour. Hating the oppressors of my neighbour isn't perhaps quite what Christ had in mind. ~ Sheldon Vanauken,
278:At the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said the essence of the spiritual life is to love God and to love people. Pride destroys our capacity to love. ~ John Ortberg,
279:Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God . . . there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.” —Cardinal John Henry Newman ~ Will Tuttle,
280:Do not recite words just to prove to yourself and others that you know and love God; for he already put his breath and light inside you. Instead, put truth in your every word and action, and always let your conscience steer and guide you. ~ Suzy Kassem,
281:He helped them to know and love God (worship), taught them to love each other (fellowship), gave them the Word so they could grow to maturity (discipleship), showed them how to serve (ministry), and sent them out to tell others (mission). ~ Rick Warren,
282:I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
283:Why," said the saint, "did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved mankind far too well? Now I love God! Mankind I do not love; mankind is a thing too imperfect for me. Love of mankind would be fatal to me. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
284:Do we really need to be fed more of the Word, or are we simply undernourished from an absence of living the Word? Maybe we love God, but are we loving others? If our faith is about us, then we are not just hungry—our spirits are starving. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
285:Our parents taught us to love God, love our family and love our country. Their own grandparents were immigrants. Their first language may not have been English, but the hopes and dreams they had for their children were purely American. ~ Martin O Malley,
286:Do you know what a great gift it is that God gave us the right to speak to Him every hour and moment, wherever we are? He always listens to us. This is the greatest honor we have. For this reason we must love God. ~ Porphyrios Bairaktaris of Kafsokalivia,
287:Everyone who believes that  l Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and  m everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 n By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. ~ Anonymous,
288:I'm going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because of He is God. ~ John Green,
289:But the truth is, real love denies self to give those we love God's best. So I said no to Collin and yes to God, and I truly believe that's why our marriage is so wonderful today. Because the Bible is clear - God honors those who honor him. ~ Julie Lessman,
290:There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. ~ J I Packer,
291:Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God . . . there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power.” —Cardinal Saint John Henry Newman ~ Will Tuttle,
292:Him with his whole heart. The saint Fudhail said to a certain man, "If anyone asks you whether you love God, keep silent; for if you say, 'I do not love Him,' you are an infidel; and if you say, 'I do,' your deeds contradict you." The ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
293:At all costs we should avoid considering our love of God to be superior to the love of the other for GodLet us love God and leave it for Him to decide on the intensity and sincerity of our loves, as well as of our differing views of Him ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
294:If I try to understand what it means to be a Christian, I look at the two instructions that were given in the Bible that are paramount, and those are to love God with all your heart and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. ~ Bruce Cockburn,
295:There are but two places where all go after death, white and black, rich and poor; those places are Heaven and Hell. Heaven is a place made for those, who are born again, and who love God, and it is a place where they will be happy for ever. ~ Jupiter Hammon,
296:We must submit to the Will of God and kiss the hand that strikes us, for we know it is better to suffer in this life than in the next, since one moment of suffering willingly accepted for the love God, is worth an eternity of happiness. ~ Margaret Mary Alacoque,
297:If all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purpose, then this means that billions of plot points are going to come together in the most satisfying cathartic release possible at the end of all time. ~ Douglas Wilson,
298:Most counseling cases today involve good desires that have become overgrown. In these cases most relevant passages of Scripture may not be those that rebut particular manifestations of sin, but those that remind us to love God with all our hearts. ~ James MacDonald,
299:To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And since I’m so very aware of my own need for grace, I must be willing to freely give it away. Each hole left from rejection must become an opportunity to create more and more space for grace in my heart. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,
300:If all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purpose, then this means that billions of plot points are going to come together in the most satisfying cathartic release possible at the end of all time. The ~ Douglas Wilson,
301:I live by the simplest, perhaps facile command that Jesus ever gave, which is to love God with the whole self and the neighbor as the self, and I find that's entirely consuming. To do those two things leaves me very little time to do much else. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
302:We ought to cherish the body. Our body's substance is not from an evil principle, as the Manicheans imagine, but from God. And therefore, we ought to cherish the body by the friendship of love, by which we love God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1265–1274),
303:I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of Hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of Paradise so that people will not love God for want of Heaven or fear of Hell, but because He is God."
(on pg. 174) ~ John Green,
304:What Mary would do is show up and remind us that despite the violence and fear, it’s still always worth it to love God and to love people. And always, always, it is worth it to sing alleluia in defiance of the devil, who surely hates the sound of it. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
305:One of the most comforting verses of Scripture is Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” Only a God of sovereign providence could make a promise like that. ~ R C Sproul,
306:When asked to identify what the law is about, Jesus’ response was simply “Love God, love people.” He named a fundamentally different way of identifying who are the children of God: “Do they love God, and do they love the people who mean so much to him? ~ John Ortberg Jr,
307:All Things Work Together for Good We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose. ROMANS 8:28 ~ Joyce Meyer,
308:Love God more than you fear hell. Make major decisions in a cemetery. When no one is watching, live as if someone is. Succeed at home first. Don’t spend tomorrow’s money today. Pray twice as much as you fret. God has forgiven you; you’d be wise to do the same. ~ Max Lucado,
309:Some people may complicate it for you, but the formula is simple: Love God more than anything else. More than your ego. More than your money. More than your desires...More than your sleep at dawn. Love God more than anything else, and submission comes natural. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,
310:Success will be measured at the end of your career, not at the peak. When you’re finished with baseball, if you love God, if you’re still in love with your wife, if your children know who you are, and if your reputation is still intact, then you’ll be successful. ~ Tommy Newberry,
311:What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. ~ Henri Nouwen,
312:1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.  2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.  3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion. ~   Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, (26 June 1822),
313:I'm a sinner. I don't always love God as strongly as I could or as directly as I should. Ash Wednesday reminds me that it is only through God that I have life; He gave it to me. God forgives. He loves. And He gives this sinner a second chance. Put simply: my God kicks ash. ~ Mark Hart,
314:I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbor as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbor as myself till I learn to love God;and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him. ~ C S Lewis,
315:It is impossible that one who has turned to the world and feels its anxieties, and engages his heart in the wish to please men, can fulfill that first and great commandment of the Master, 'You shall love God with all your heart and with all your strength' (Mt. 22:37). ~ Gregory of Nyssa,
316:He helped them to know and love God (worship), taught them to love each other (fellowship), gave them the Word so they could grow to maturity (discipleship), showed them how to serve (ministry), and sent them out to tell others (mission). Jesus modeled a purpose-driven life, ~ Rick Warren,
317:How ought we to love God, Father?" he asked in a whisper.
"By loving men, my son"
"And how ought we to love men?"
"By trying to guide them along the right path"
"And what is the right path?"
"The one that rises"
- Nikos Kazanzakis, Christ Recrucified ~ Nikos Kazantzakis,
318:He wore pointy-toed leather shoes, designer pants that were way too tight, and a god-awful silk shirt with the top three buttons open. Maybe he thought he looked like a groovy love god, but the guy couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, and he had a bad case of acne. ~ Rick Riordan,
319:I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. ~ C S Lewis,
320:Communion with God does not imply turning off your mind but turning it on - to be renewed in our minds. We're to love God with all our mind as well as heart. So true communion with God empowers hard work with the Bible, rather than bypassing work in favor of pure passivity. ~ Vern Poythress,
321:Love God’s people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
322:Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. ~ John the Apostle,
323:The kernel is the belief that God is love and, in Catholicism, God's love is present in the world. It is in the sacraments, in the Eucharist, in our families, in our friends, in our neighborhood, and forgiveness in the touch of a friendly hand, in a rediscovered love God is there. ~ Andrew Greeley,
324:Do we love God—all of God, including the “tough” parts of His nature—or do we refuse to bow before those elements that cause us “problems”? If we love Him and worship Him as He deserves, we will not dare to “edit” Him to fit our desires. Instead, we will seek to worship Him in truth. ~ James R White,
325:It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbor. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? ~ Wyatt North,
326:20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister,* that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? 21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters.* ~ Anonymous,
327:How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don’t even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people. ~ Anonymous,
328:School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer. ~ Simone Weil,
329:Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in innocent sufferings. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
330:Don’t stay trapped in the past. Let go of what lies behind and press into the great future God has planned for you. I can promise you: God is with you. He will lead you. He will strengthen you. He will help you. Love God Today: With God’s help, I will embrace every new thing He brings into ~ Joyce Meyer,
331:It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. ~ Mother Teresa,
332:Holy fear is the key to God's sure foundation, unlocking the treasuries of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. Along with the love of God, it composes the very foundation of life! We will soon learn that we cannot truly love God until we fear Him, nor can we properly fear Him until we love Him. ~ John Bevere,
333:There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. not merely that we know God, but that He knows us. ~ J I Packer,
334:The Greatest Gift
IF of us two might only one be glad,
Pain I’d pursue, and struggle to be sad.
If of us two one only might be great,
Safely obscure I’d triumph in my fate.
O Soul more dear than mine! if of us two
One only might love God, it should be you.
~ Blanche Edith Baughan,
335:I don't have a religion. I ain't nothing wrong with church as long as they selling chicken. Cause I read the Quran, I read the Kabalah, I read the Bible. They all got the same three basic principles: Love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and...As far as me being, I live by those principles. ~ Kevin Gates,
336:To love God means to surrender, to trust, to be ready to die into Him, because dying in God is the beginning of a new life; it is resurrection. Love has to become such an intense flame that it bums you out, that you are not left behind, that you are consumed in it. If you are not, the Guest comes. ~ Rajneesh,
337:We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship. ~ Dorothy Day,
338:When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
339:We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship. ~ David Brooks,
340:Salvation brings into the life a new capacity and with it a new ability to think right, to love God, to purpose to do the will of God, to have a changed heart. The heart of the Christian (and this means his intellectual, emotional, volitional, and spiritual life) can now be true and pure (Heb. ~ Charles C Ryrie,
341:At the cross in holy love God through Christ paid the full penalty of our disobedience himself. He bore the judgment we deserve in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. On the cross divine mercy and justice were equally expressed and eternally reconciled. God's holy love was 'satisfied.' ~ John Stott,
342:I do not know how to love God except by loving the poor. I do not know how to serve God except by serving the poor.... Here, within this great city of nine million people, we must, in this neighborhood, on this street, in this parish, regain a sense of community which is the basis for peace in the world. ~ Dorothy Day,
343:If you love God with all your soul, then you know your life does not end with your death. They asked a wise man about eternal life: “What will happen to us when this world comes to an end?” He answered, “I do not need the world, and I am not afraid of its end, because I know that my soul is eternal.” God ~ Leo Tolstoy,
344:Saints rarely have friends; they are usually hated and derided, for they love and love is always rejected by hard-hearted men....saints do not advertise themselves; good men do not seek out a name in the world....the saints did what they did almost in stealth, asking nothing except that men love God. ~ Taylor Caldwell,
345:We have free will.  Without that we couldn’t truly love God.  Humans are corrupted by sins, and we have the choice to choose salvation offered by God through Jesus Christ.  Love cannot exist where there is not the freedom to choose.  And because we have free will, we have the choice to do good or bad. ~ Wade H Garrett,
346:Do you want to know that your new life is real? Commit yourself to a local group of saved sinners. Try to love them. Don’t just do it for three weeks. Don’t just do it for six months. Do it for years. And I think you’ll find out, and others will, too, whether or not you love God. The truth will show itself ~ Mark Dever,
347:I want nothing more than what I have, for what I have is enough. I'm grateful for it. I foresee no reward, no eternal life. I expect only to leave further pieces of my heart in one place or another, but I love God nonetheless, with every atom of my being, and will love Him until I fall into black oblivion. ~ Mark Helprin,
348:Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
349:The Bible constantly warns against a merely mercenary relationship with God - a friendship of convenience or self-interest. We should not love God simply because doing so will produce many consolations in our life. We must enter a true relationship, were we fall in love not with His benefits, but with Him. ~ Robert Barron,
350:I have often heard, "I love God but just don't like His people." This may sound glib, but as John explained, this is a basic deception as we do not really love God unless we also love His people. The Scriptures also go to great lengths to explain that love is not to be based on whether people are lovable or not. ~ Rick Joyner,
351:Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not 'How am I to find God?' but 'How am I to let myself be found by him?' The question is not 'How am I to love God?' but 'How am I to let myself be loved by God?' ~ Henri Nouwen,
352:Pablito, the Bible was meant to be a bridge, not a wedge. It's the greatest love story ever told, about God's enduring and unconditional love for his creation--love beyond all reason. To understand it, you have to read it with love as the standard. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Always remember that. ~ Alex Sanchez,
353:What Jesus said we could do is leave typical behind. We could leave all of the comparisons and all of the trappings and all of the pretending of religion. Jesus told the people He was with that it’s not enough to just look like you love God. He said we’d know the extent of our love for God by how well we loved people. ~ Bob Goff,
354:God’s grace is sufficient when we come up short in our obedience, but it is important to call sin “sin” and declare war on it. Those who love God in truth will set their hearts to live in a spirit of obedience in every area of their lives—including their use of time, money, and words, and in what their eyes look at. ~ Mike Bickle,
355:The doctrines of Jesus are simple and tend all to the happiness of man, that there is only one God and God is perfect. That God and man are one. That to love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself, is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which I endeavor to reform and live my life. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
356:The more a person loves God, the more reason he has to hope in Him. This hope produces in the Saints an unutterable peace, which they preserve even in adversity, because as they love God, and know how beautiful He is to those who love Him, they place all their confidence and find all their repose in Him alone. ~ Alphonsus Liguori,
357:If [people] wish to love God, they [must] be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion. ~ Ted Chiang "Hell Is the Absence of God", Stories of Your Life and Others (e-book ed.). Picador. p. 164. ISBN 978-1-4472-8198-6.,
358:When you and I became born again, God became our Father. He is a love God. We are love children of a love God, because we have been born of God, and God is love. The nature of God in us is love. We have His nature in our spirit, not in our flesh. (We’ve got the flesh to contend with, but we can “crucify” it.) And ~ Kenneth E Hagin,
359:God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! When I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
360:School children and students who love God should never say: “For my part I like mathematics”; “I like French”; “I like Greek.” They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer. ~ Simone Weil, Waiting for God (1951), p. 105.,
361:The first real unhappiness I remember to have felt was when some one told me, one day, that I did not love God. I insisted, almost tearfully, that I did; but I was told that if I did truly love Him I should always be good. I knew I was not that, and the feeling of sudden orphanage came over me like a bewildering cloud. ~ Lucy Larcom,
362:God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! When I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,
363:Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage. ~ Meister Eckhart,
364:We can begin to focus on the eternal if we live to love God and others (the Jesus Creed), if we pursue justice as the way we are called to love others as God’s creations, if we live out a life that drives for peace as how loving people treat one another, and if we strive for wisdom instead of just knowledge or bounty. ~ Scot McKnight,
365:Whenever we think of Christ, we should recall the love that led Him to bestow on us so many graces and favors, and also the great love God showed in giving us in Christ a pledge of His love; for love calls for love in return. Let us strive to keep this always before our eyes and to rouse ourselves to love Him. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila,
366:When the Love of God is in me, God is able to love you through me and you are able to love God through me. If my soul were closed to that love, God’s love for you and your love for God and God’s love for Himself in you and in me, would be denied the particular expression which it finds through me and through no other. ~ Thomas Merton,
367:Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage. ~ Meister Eckhart,
368:If you dont love somebody, it gets annoying if they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them, you get pleasure from their pleasure nad it makes it easy to serve. I didnt love God because i didnt know God. universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists. ~ Donald Miller,
369:Nico, you can do this," Jason said. "It might be embarrassing, but it's for the scepter." Nico didn't look convinced. In fact he looked like he was going to be sick. But he squared his shoulders and nodded. "You're right. I- I'm not afraid of a love god." Favonius beamed. "Excellent! Would you like a snack before you go? ~ Rick Riordan,
370:The more a person loves God, the more reason he has to hope in Him. This hope produces in the Saints an unutterable peace, which they preserve even in adversity, because as they love God, and know how beautiful He is to those who love Him, they place all their confidence and find all their repose in Him alone. ~ Saint Alphonsus Liguori,
371:The Ruling Principle of the Universe is one of Harmony and Love—God is Love. Therefore, if we wish to embody the most ancient axiom, "as above, so below," we should become unified precisely upon this principle of love and should be subordinate to it, regarding it as our only boundless Ruler. ~ Helena Roerich Letters II, (15 April 1936),
372:The one who wants to love God has to take care about the purity of the soul, first of all. This purity is attained through conquering the passions. (The one who has not conquered the passions cannot enter) the chaste and pure region of the heart. Do not hate a sinner, for we all are to be res­pon­sible. ~ Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov,
373:If you don’t delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don’t know God. You don’t love God. You’re out of touch with God. You’re asleep to his character. ~ R C Sproul,
374:It is good to love God for hope of reward, but it is better to love God for love's sake; and the prayer goes: O Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth. But grant me this, that I may love thee without the hope of reward 'love' unselfishly for love's sake. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
375:It took Christians many years to realize that we cannot love God and also keep humans as slaves. It has taken even longer for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and also regard women as second-class humans. Now is the time for Christians to realize that we cannot love God and hate the Creator's nonhuman creatures. ~ Andrew Linzey,
376:A long time ago, when I was married, in the beginning it was bliss. I eloped after one month, and I married for security. I thought, 'I finally met a man who loves God and comes from a great family. I'm working, I love God, and I'm out here in California by myself, and I've met this great man.' So, I said yes. And we eloped. ~ Tichina Arnold,
377:Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me." Zarathustra answered: "What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto men." "Give them nothing," said the saint. "Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable unto them: ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
378:There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood. ~ Blaise Pascal,
379:You’re about to make a lot of money. But that is not true success. Success will be measured at the end of your career, not at the peak. When you’re finished with baseball, if you love God, if you’re still in love with your wife, if your children know who you are, and if your reputation is still intact, then you’ll be successful. ~ Tommy Newberry,
380:The truth of the gospel is intended to free us to love God and others with our whole heart. When we ignore this heart aspect of our faith and try to live out our religion solely as correct doctrine or ethics, our passion is crippled, or perverted, and the divorce of our soul from the heart purposes of God toward us is deepened. The ~ John Eldredge,
381:To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness - especially in the wilderness - you shall love him. ~ Frederick Buechner,
382:I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I know enough to see you’re perfect for me. You love God, you want a big family someday, you’re hardworking. And I can see us serving a congregation together—me preaching, you singing . . .” He smiled, his fingers tightening on hers. “We were made for each other, don’t you see? ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer,
383:Nico, you can do this," Jason said. "It might be embarrassing, but it's for the scepter."

Nico didn't look convinced. In fact he looked like he was going to be sick. But he squared his shoulders and nodded. "You're right. I- I'm not afraid of a love god."

Favonius beamed. "Excellent! Would you like a snack before you go? ~ Rick Riordan,
384:The biggest change for me as a mom was realizing I needed to put someone else before me. Now the hardest part about the empty nest is learning to put myself first. I know that I have raised my sons to be big, strong, independent men who love God, themselves and care for others. I have to learn to let them have space and learn without me. ~ Kim Alexis,
385:I know people who support Hamas but they never got involved in terrorist attacks, for example... They follow Hamas because they love God and they think that Hamas represents God. They don't have knowledge, they don't know the real God and they never studied Christianity. But Hamas, as representative for Islam, it's a big problem. ~ Mosab Hassan Yousef,
386:People are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it. ~ C S Lewis,
387:The notion that there is no basic value system is far more incoherent or invalid than the notion that there are essential values. Every religion can tell you it has basic values. You ask a Christian, most Christians would say love God and love your neighbor. Is that the entirety of Christianity? No one in his right mind would say it is. ~ Dennis Prager,
388:God desires for us to be the persons we were created to be: to be simply and purely ourselves, and in this state to love God and to let ourselves be loved by God. It is a double journey, really: finding God means allowing ourselves to be found by God. And finding our true selves means allowing God to find and reveal our true selves to us. ~ James Martin,
389:When the soul knows the love of God by the Holy Spirit, then he clearly feels that the Lord is our own Father, the closest, dearest Father, the best. And there is not greater happiness that to love God with all the mind and heart, and our neighbor as ourself. And when this love is in the soul, then all things bring joy to the soul. ~ Silouan the Athonite,
390:I am not convinced of the argument, 'I want to believe; it is only those awful Christians I hate. They get in the way of my belief.' If you hate Christians more than you love Christ, you do not love Christ. It comes to mind the question, 'If you do not love your brother or sister whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen? ~ Criss Jami,
391:My daughter, I am not a Mrs Whatsit, a Mrs Who, or a Mrs Which. Yes, Calvin has told me everything he could. I am a human being, and a very fallible one. But I agree with Calvin. We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
392:To love God does not mean to meet His needs, but rather to delight in Him and to be captivated by His glorious power and grace, and to value Him above all other things on earth. All the rest of the commandments are the kinds of things that we will do from our hearts, if our hearts are truly delighted with and resting in the glory of God's grace. ~ John Piper,
393:The power of God is shown, not so much in his creation of the world or in any of his miracles, but rather in the fact that out of love God has “emptied himself” (Phil. 2:7), has poured himself out in generous self-giving, by his own free choice consenting to suffer and to die. And this self-emptying is a self-fulfillment: kenosis is plerosis. ~ Kallistos Ware,
394:When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, ‘I love God’, is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself – and that is not love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
395:I learned that to love God the way He wants us to love Him is not an emotion or a feeling. To love God means to lose self, to relinquish self, to set self aside, and to be broken of self. In other words, we must give God all our thoughts, emotions, and desires that are contrary to His so that His Love and His Life can come forth from our hearts. ~ Nancy Missler,
396:But many people want to look upon God with the eyes with which they look upon a cow; they want to love God the way they love a cow that you love because it gives you milk and cheese. This is how people behave who want to love God because of external wealth or inner comfort; but they do not love God properly: rather, they love their self interest. ~ Meister Eckhart,
397:It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake, and the prayer goes: "Lord, I do not want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward — love unselfishly for love's sake. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
398:A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat "Do as you would be done by" till I am black in the fact, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God. ~ C S Lewis,
399:Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I don't think He wants us to keep asking and dwelling on His specific plan or will. He wants us to dwell on and seek Him. Then our decisions will be made from our love for and relationship with Him. We are free to take action in whatever means we want as long as we seek Him and allow Him to guide us. ~ Nadine Brandes,
400:Like had been replaced by love. And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out of his deeps had come the new thing—love. That which was given unto him did he return. This was a god indeed, a love–god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun. ~ Jack London,
401:It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” Franklin D. Roosevelt noted soon after its creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.” Off the record, he joked that the name of the god they worshiped seemed to be “Property. ~ Kevin M Kruse,
402:Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens-if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it, we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being which he or she cannot possibly give. ~ Oswald Chambers,
403:That’s what’s so difficult about Jesus’ call to love others. On one level, it’s easy to love God, because God doesn’t smell. God doesn’t have bad breath. God doesn’t reward kindness with evil. God doesn’t make berating comments. Loving God is easy, in this sense. But Jesus really let us have it when he attached our love for God with our love for other people. ~ Gary L Thomas,
404:Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
405:...the words of Pyotr Stephanovich come into my mind: You must love God because He is the only one you can love for Eternity.
That sounds very profound to me, and tears come into my eyes whenever I say it. I never heard anyone else say it. But I don't believe in God and if I did I couldn't love Him/Her/It. I couldn't love anyone I thought had created this world. ~ Marilyn French,
406:Was it love of people?' I asked her.
'Of course no,' she snapped sharply. 'How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don't even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people. ~ Jennifer Worth,
407:To a large degree we have preached our own version of the knowledge of good and evil as though it were the message of salvation. We need to confess that we have sinned in the gravest fashion by frequently loving our version of truth and ethics more than people, and even God himself. For one cannot genuinely love God while refusing to love one's neighbor (1 John 4:20). ~ Gregory A Boyd,
408:Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it’s a place for those who love God. You can scare people into coming to your church, you can scare people into trying to be good, you can scare people into giving money, you can even scare them into walking down an aisle and praying a certain prayer, but you cannot scare people into loving God. You just can’t do it. ~ Matt Chandler,
409:I think that Andrew and I both used to think that the first most important thing was to love God, and the second most important thing was to love others. But during those hard months, we learned that it was all bound up together. That figuring out how to love each other in the change and in the struggle gave us a new understanding and grasp on God's grace and faithfulness. ~ Addie Zierman,
410:Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him... so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. ~ John Piper,
411:Like the Chaldeans, Joseph’s brothers were guilty of sin, sin that they personally had wanted to do. But God stands above all human choices and works through human freedom to bring about His own providential goals. That is what Joseph was saying: “You chose to do something sinful, but all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. I ~ R C Sproul,
412:Love God's people, let not strangers draw away the flock, for if you slumber in your slothfulness and disdainful pride, or worse still, in covetousness, they will come from all sides and draw away your flock. Expound the Gospel to the people unceasingly… be not extortionate… . Do not love gold and silver, do not hoard them… . Have faith. Cling to the banner and raise it on high. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
413:Thanksgiving and Christmas then, for us who love God, are not mere time outs from work days. They are a celebration of the gift of work itself, days on which we celebrate work by declaring our freedom. In a manner of speaking we announce that on this one day we may rest from our work, and without pressure or guilt, we may be glad. A holiday is a holy day-meant for rejoicing in God. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
414:Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good ~ Baruch Spinoza,
415:Many Christians have put their trust in changing laws rather than, with God’s help, changing hearts of fellow sinners for whom Christ died (1 John 2:2). The church in America often depends on legislation to do the work that God calls his people to do. The Spirit’s transformation of ourselves and of those around us comes when we love God and neighbor—the very core of our Christian commitment. ~ Paul Copan,
416:If we’ve been in church for years yet aren’t full, are we really hungry for more knowledge? In our busy lives, do we really need another program or event? Do we really need to be fed more of the Word, or are we simply undernourished from an absence of living the Word? Maybe we love God, but are we loving others? If our faith is about us, then we are not just hungry—our spirits are starving. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
417:It is only when we love God and Christ with all of our hearts, souls, and minds that we are able to share this love with our neighbors through acts of kindness and service... When this pure love of Christ - or charity - envelops us, we think, feel, and act more like Heavenly Father and Jesus would think, feel, and act. Our motivation and heartfelt desire are like unto that of the Savior. ~ M Russell Ballard,
418:If you find it difficult to love the human in someone, then love the divine in him. The divine in him is God. God exists in that person just as God exists in you. To love God is extremely easy because God is divine and perfect. Each time you look at an individual, if you can consciously become aware of God's existence in him, then you will not be disturbed by his or her imperfections or limitations. ~ Sri Chinmoy,
419:Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30 ~ Charles R Swindoll,
420:City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of membership in one or the other of the "two cities." The City of God is the invisible community of all who love God; the City of the World is all those who love the world and themselves as their God. ~ Peter Kreeft,
421:It is far more difficult to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. One can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s Creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God. Yet to love God first and foremost, receiving Her Love, allows us to love all of God’s Creation unconditionally, and in its right place. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha,
422:Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved. ~ Osho,
423:The Savior’s words are simple, yet their meaning is profound and deeply significant. We are to love God and to love and care for our neighbors as ourselves. Imagine what good we can do in the world if we all join together, united as followers of Christ, anxiously and busily responding to the needs of others and serving those around us — our families, our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens. ~ M Russell Ballard,
424:Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved. ~ Rajneesh,
425:God’s love for man and man’s love for God. About the second of these two, people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it. ~ C S Lewis,
426:The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor is emphasized. One is so closely connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbor or hate him altogether. Saint John's words should rather be interpreted to mean that love of neighbor is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
427:28And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those nwho are the called according to His purpose. 29For whom oHe foreknew, pHe also predestined qto be conformed to the image of His Son, rthat He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30Moreover whom He predestined, these He also scalled; whom He called, these He also tjustified; and whom He justified, these He also uglorified. ~ Anonymous,
428:If the immutable heart can be grieved by the puppets of its own making, it is Divine Omnipotence, no other, that has subjected it, freely, and in a humility that passes understanding. If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God, but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. ~ C S Lewis,
429:A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. ~ C S Lewis,
430:We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which we were destined in our creation. If we love everything else but God, we contradict the image born in our very essence, and we cannot help being unhappy, because we are living a caricature of what we are meant to be. ~ Thomas Merton,
431:You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings toward Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it; you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful beings to prefer His pleasure to our own or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love of Him can or does make us obedient to Him. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss,
432:According to my religious belief, I'm sorry if you feel like I'm pushing this on you - my religious belief is that you behave the way God wants us to behave. And that's simply love God and love one another. If we did that, there would be no need for any of the other commandments. It would be great. But in the same vein, we would have obtained paradise by that point. And it's tougher to get to paradise by that point. ~ Ralph Sarchie,
433:Ibn Arabi observes that the most perfect of mystic lovers are
those who love God simultaneously for himself and for them-
selves, because this capacity reveals in them the unification of
their twofold nature (a resolution of the torn "conscience
malheureuse" ). He who has made himself capable of such love
is able to do so because he combines mystic knowledge ( ma
rrifa ) with vision ( shuhud) . ~ Henry Corbin,
434:Is it easy to love God' asks an old author. 'It is easy,' he replies, 'to those who do it.' I have included two Graces under the word Charity. But God can give a third. He can awake in man, towards Himself, a supernatural Appreciative love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true centre of all human and angelic life. With this all things are possible. ~ C S Lewis,
435:People crave what they have always craved: to be known and loved, to belong somewhere. Community is such a basic human need. It helps us weather virtually every storm. If Jesus’ basic marching orders were 1.) to love God and 2.) to love people, then the fruit of that obedience includes being loved by God and loved by people. We give and get here. According to Jesus, the love of God and people is the substance of life. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
436:...when we love God, we naturally run to Him-frequently and zealously. Jesus didn't command that we have a regular time with Him each day. Rather, He tells us to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' He called this the 'first and greatest commandment' (Matt. 22:37-38). The results are intimate prayer and study of His Word. Our motivation changes from guilt to love. ~ Francis Chan,
437:Our ability to put on the mind of Christ Jesus comes by virtue of our sacred union with him. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit: “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5). The power to love God wholeheartedly is the birthright of those reborn in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is what allows us to move out into the world as crystalline bearers of God’s image. ~ Brennan Manning,
438:Sweeping out of the inward positive reality, there is to be a positive manifestation externally. It is not just that we are dead to certain things, but we are to love God, we are to be alive to Him, we are to be in communion with Him, in this present moment in history. And we are to love men, to be alive to men as men, and to be in communication on a true personal level with men, in this present moment in history. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,
439:Sweeping out of the inward positive reality, there is to be a positive manifestation externally. It is not just that we are dead to certain things, but we are to love God, we are to be alive to Him, we are to be in communion with Him, in this present moment of history. And we are to love men, to be alive to men as men, and to be in communication on a true personal level with men, in this present moment of history. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,
440:Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom. ~ Timothy Keller,
441:To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed bu increased. ~ C S Lewis,
442:To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. ~ C S Lewis,
443:Self love is accepting yourself as you are right now, with all your flaws and mistakes, and desiring to grow beyond this state at the same time. On the Path to God, you accept yourself, you desire to grow your soul, and you desire to receive God’s Love and love God fervently, and with devotion. This is the ultimate Self love, as by loving your soul in this Way, you will eventually come to love yourself as God loves you. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha,
444:Love God and follow Him. Really, nothing else matters. If you are ever unsure what to do, remember how Jesus loved people. He was the best at it. You can trust Him because anywhere He asks you to go, He has been there too. This is not an easy path, Lovies. Jesus went to hard places and did hard things; He loved folks everyone else hated or despised. But if you trust us at all, believe me: this is the life you want, this Jesus life. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
445:The idea that the Creator is on your side, guiding your footsteps, taking a personal interest in your troubles, deriving pleasure from your victories, providing solace in your defeats, orchestrating the world such that, in the words of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, ‘All things work together for good to those who love God’ – all this must have a dramatic impact on the efficacy of a sportsman, or indeed anyone else. As Muhammad ~ Matthew Syed,
446:26 In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for uswith unspoken groanings. 27 And He who searches the hearts knows the Spirit’s mind-set, because He intercedes for the •saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. ~ Anonymous,
447:While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. ~ Timothy Keller,
448:While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope. ~ Timothy J Keller,
449:Over time, I realized that when we love God, we naturally run to Him- frequently and zealously. Jesus didn't command that we have a regular time with Him each day. Rather, He tells us to 'love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' He called this the 'first and greatest commandment' (Matt. 22:37-38). The results are intimate prayer and study of His Word. Our motivation changes from guilt to love. ~ Francis Chan,
450:Because, my dear, God is love. Not just maternal or fraternal love but romantic love as well. Song of Solomon was written to show what the love between a husband and a wife should be, but it was also written to emulate the depth of feeling and love God has for each of us. As intense and wonderful as this young man’s kiss made you feel, more so is the passion and love God has for you. No, your feelings aren’t wrong, but perhaps the timing is. ~ Julie Lessman,
451:I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward—driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home. ~ C S Lewis,
452:Fr. Amphilochios, the geronta or elder on the island of Patmos when I first stayed there, would have been in full agreement. Do you know, he said, that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment love the trees. Whoever does not love trees, so he believed, does not love God. When you plant a tree, he insisted, you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God's blessing. ~ Kallistos Ware,
453:The Lord wants us to love one another. Here is freedom: in love for God and neighbor. In this freedom, there is equality. In earthly orders, there may not be equality, but this is not important for the soul. Not everyone can be a king, not everyone a patriarch or a boss. But in any position it is possible to love God and to please Him, and only this is important. And whoever loves God more on earth will be in greater glory in His Kingdom. ~ Silouan the Athonite,
454:We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God, for His Majesty bears so tender an affection for us that I cannot doubt He will repay our love for others by augmenting, and in a thousand different ways, that which we bear for Him. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila,
455:The aim is to love God because the pure heart loves loving God and because the true mind knows He deserves it. Unlike the accusations and beliefs of the critics and skeptics, it is neither an obligation of duty; nor a fear of damnation; nor a wish for power; nor a desire to appear more righteous than others; nor because God needs it; but because through all love, truth, reason, faith, honesty, and joy in and beyond oneself and the universe, He is worthy. ~ Criss Jami,
456:There are many who want me to tell them of secret ways of becoming perfect and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. Begin as a mere apprentice and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master of the art. ~ Saint Francis de Sales,
457:Seeking miraculous experiences simply for the sake of experiencing the miraculous makes us spiritual drug addicts who simply want to get “high.” This book is about learning to love God, not learning to join a spiritual circus. Enthusiasts need to be especially careful to remain true to seeking and loving God rather than searching for new experiences. When we seek “spiritual experiences” for their own sake, they can actually become, and be used for, evil. ~ Gary L Thomas,
458:I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment: to love my Lord, my God, with all my heart. I don't want the reputation that I love God, I don't want to write songs about loving God, I don't want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes, I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him, I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and it's real. ~ Misty Edwards,
459:He tells people that they can no more expect justice in the afterlife than in the mortal plane, but he doesn't do this to dissuade them from worshipping God; on the contrary, he encourages them to do so. What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion. ~ Ted Chiang,
460:God Himself is the rule and mode of virtue. Our faith is measured by divine truth, our hope by the greatness of His power and faithful affection, our charity by His goodness. His truth, power and goodness outreach any measure of reason. We can certainly never believe, trust or love God more than, or even as much as, we should. Extravagance is impossible. Here is no virtuous moderation, no measurable mean; the more extreme our activity, the better we are. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,
461:We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children. ~ Muhammad Ali,
462:Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered "I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
463:To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence. ~ Saint Augustine,
464:Love God, love your neighbor, Jesus said, a perfect sound bite for the ages. But did Christ know how complicated my neighbors were? How hard they were to love sometimes? How much easier it is to surround myself with people who look and think and act like me, to love only myself? Yes, yes, yes, he does, but he is polite and firm in his response. A messy, present, incarnational love is the simplest and hardest call of all, the call that all of us were created to follow. ~ D L Mayfield,
465:Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
466:Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
467:When you say you love God, you are saying you love everything. Immature religion becomes an excuse for not loving a whole bunch of things and reveals that you have not had an authentic God experience yet. Rigid religion and compulsive religiosity, all unloving religion, is a rather clear sign that you have not met God! Once you have had a unitive experience with God, reality, or even yourself, your life invariably shows two things: quiet confidence and joyous gratitude. ~ Richard Rohr,
468:This is the journey marriage calls us to, to seek to understand and empathize, for each of us to strive to become a redemptive partner rather than a legal opponent. If we truly want to love God’s sons and daughters, we have to seek to understand God’s sons and daughters. Men and women, have you ever asked God why your spouses are the way they are? In the midst of your frustration, have you ever sought God’s perspective for what has “bent” them in their current direction? ~ Gary L Thomas,
469:To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest t all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”


― C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis ~ C S Lewis,
470:Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life. But I don't see that having a sexy image when you are on stage means that you don't love God. No one knows what I'm really like from that. I like to walk around with bare feet and I don't like to comb my hair. I'm always so glammed up and so diva on stage and that's what they see. People don't understand that... No one knows my personal relationship with God and it's not up to me to prove that to anyone. ~ Beyonce Knowles,
471:As to those in whom the will of God is not inwardly accomplished,-because there is no inward life in them, for they are altogether outward,-upon them the will of God is wrought as alone it can be; appearing at first sight bitter and ungracious, though in reality merciful and loving in the highest degree. To those who do not love God, all things must work together immediately for pain and torment, until, by means of the tribulation, they are led to salvation at last. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
472:To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
473:If our decisions about how to treat others are always motivated by love for God, a singular love for God, we really do not have to worry about the law, because the law reflects what is pleasing to God. That is why Augustine said, “Love God and do what you want.” If you love God, you can do as you please, because you will be doing what pleases God. It is that simple. If you really love him, you will be pleased by what pleases him, and what pleases him is revealed to us in his law. ~ R C Sproul,
474:Anyhow, there'll be plenty of jam in heaven, that's one comfort, he said complacently. Perhaps there will...if we want it, she said, But what makes you think so? Why, it's in the catechism, said Davy. Oh, no, there is nothing like that in the catechism, Davy. But I tell you there is, persisted Davy. It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday. Why should we love God? It says, Because he makes preserves, and redeems us. Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery,
475:Becaise I love God, I want to handle his truth with accuracy, clarity, and specificity. I want to build bridges of understanding from the wisdom of the Word to the details of people's lives. And because I love people, I will not be satisfied with lobbing grenades of general truth at them. Rather, through good questions, committed listening, and careful interpretation, I will enter their world with the understanding necessary to bring Christ's help to where it is really needed. ~ Paul David Tripp,
476:The Christian community demonstrates the effectiveness of the gospel. We are the living proof that the gospel is not an empty word but a powerful word that takes men and women who are lovers of self and transforms them by grace through the Spirit into people who love God and others. We are the living proof that the death of Jesus was not just a vain expression of God’s love but an effective death that achieved the salvation of a people who now love one another sincerely from a pure ~ Tim Chester,
477:Mrs. Meyers
He protested all his life long
The newspapers lied about him villainously;
That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall,
But only tried to help her.
Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see
That even trying to help her, as he called it,
He had broken the law human and divine.
Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:
If your ways would be ways of pleasantness,
And all your pathways peace,
Love God and keep his commandments.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
478:Rabe'a
al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a
torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I
am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn
down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is
God. ~ John Green,
479:Love one another, fathers,” the elder taught (as far as Alyosha could recall afterwards). “Love God’s people. For we are not holier than those in the world because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, but, on the contrary, anyone who comes here, by the very fact that he has come, already knows himself to be worse than all those who are in the world, worse than all on earth … And the longer a monk lives within his walls, the more keenly he must be aware of it. For ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
480:I would love to have a more earnest prayer life! In my life, prayer is the single most difficult discipline. I love God and there's something in me that would rather do things for God than talk to God. I'm not by nature a mystical, devotional person. I like to do things. And so it's a challenge for me to have a faithful prayer life, but I know God loves me and He's not mad at me. He just wishes I would slow down and turn things over to Him. And that's what I think you achieve through prayer. ~ Max Lucado,
481:What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone. ~ Thomas Kempis,
482:What is it that Jesus wants? What does he want more than anything else? Well, that’s an easy one because he hasn’t exactly kept it a secret. Jesus wants us to love him. Remember when Jesus was asked, “Which is the greatest commandment?” (Matt. 22:36). He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (v. 37). Love God! Jesus is God. He is saying, “Love me! The most important and highest thing you can do with all of your life is to love me! ~ Stasi Eldredge,
483:What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease
the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone. ~ Thomas Kempis,
484:Why does God let us do bad things?"

"Because He wants us to make up our own minds."

"Even to do bad things, right under His nose?"

"He doesn't want us to do bad things, but to know good from bad and be good of our own free choice."

"Why?"

"Because He loves us and wants us to love Him, but if He just made us be good, we couldn't really love Him enough. You can't love to do what you are made to do, and you couldn't love God if He made you. ~ James Agee,
485:Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was
seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra,
carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the
other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she
answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour
it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this
torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people
will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but be-
cause He is God ~ John Green,
486:It has amazed me in the past to see people lose their way when they allow their hairdresser, whose own world is a catastrophe, to become their counselor. Nothing against hairdressers, but the same can be said of unchurched colleagues and neighbors. Sharing your woes with people whose own lives don't line up with the will of God can lead to bad advice and poor choices. Look for the people in your life who love you and love God wnd clearly want what's best for you, with no agendas or strings attrached. ~ Brian Houston,
487:The Great Commandment to love God and love others is a call to intimacy; the Great Commission to go and make disciples is a call to fruitfulness. Intimacy is to precede fruitfulness. The Great Commandment must precede the Great Commission and is an inseparable part of it. When intimacy does not precede fruitfulness, we easily become subject to our own mission and become focused upon religious duty, hyper-religious activity, and aggressive striving that leaves an angry edge in our life and relationships. ~ Jack Frost,
488:For verily it is not deep words that make a man holy and upright; it is a good life which maketh a man dear to God. I had rather feel contrition than be skilful in the definition thereof. If thou knewest the whole Bible, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what should all this profit thee without the love and grace of God? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, save to love God, and Him only to serve. That is the highest wisdom, to cast the world behind us, and to reach forward to the heavenly kingdom. ~ Thomas Kempis,
489:Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,
490:Do you want to do something amazing for God? Trade the appearance of being close to God for the power of actually being close to God. Quit talking a big game and go live a big faith. One of Jesus’ friends said if we want to get it right, we need to live a life worthy of the calling we’ve received. The call is to love God and the people around us while we live into the most authentic version of ourselves. We weren’t just an idea God hoped would work out someday. We were one of His most creative expressions of love, ever. ~ Bob Goff,
491:Being, so, by the same principle, it was moved to love him in all his manifestations in the visible world; that, as by his breath the flame of life was kindled in all animal sensible creatures, to say we love God as unseen, and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction in itself. I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere, upright-hearted people, in every society, who truly love God, were accepted of him. ~ Various,
492:God has made us with proper desires,  but if there is not a proper contentment on my part, to this extent I am in revolt against God, and of course revolt is the whole central problem of sin. When I lack proper contentment, either I have forgotten that God is God, or I have ceased to be submissive to him. We are now speaking about a practical test to judge if we are coveting against God. A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,
493:We are commanded to love God with all our strength, heart, mind and soul and our neighbor in the same way God loves us - it is the same love flowing between God and the soul - the soul and its neighbor. It is difficult, but the burden of the cross is light compared to the cross of uncontrolled emotions, anger, insistence on one's own opinion, the frustration of trying to change others rather than being changed oneself, resentment, regrets and guilt. Accepting the present moment like Jesus did is certainly a lighter burden. ~ Mother Angelica,
494:A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat "Do as you would be done by" till I am black in the fact, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward - driven on from social matters to religious matters. ~ C S Lewis,
495:Bapu Ghandi said, "All religions are true." I just want to love God, " I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.
My embarassment was contagious. No one said anything. It happened that we were not far from the statue of Gandhi on the esplanade. Stick in hand, an impish smile on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes, the Mahatma walked. I fancy that he heard our conversation, but that he paid even greater attention to my heart, Father cleared his throat and said in a half-voice, " I suppose that's what wer're all trying to do - love God. ~ Yann Martel,
496:One way we show our love for God is to graciously receive His love and every good gift He brings into our lives. You see, God has a plan: He wants us to receive His love; love ourselves in a balanced, godly way; generously love Him in return; and love everyone who comes into our lives. Learning to receive graciously helps us give graciously. When God reaches out to love us, He is attempting to start a cycle that will not only bless us, but others as well. Love God Today: “Lord, please help me receive graciously all that You desire to give me. ~ Joyce Meyer,
497:The undivided heart is a good thing, as long as you love somebody. In fact, a divided heart that loves someone is better than an undivided heart that loves nobody -- the latter would actually be undivided egoism. It would mean having one's heart full, but with the most corrupting thing there is: oneself. Of this type of virgin and celibate, unfortunately none too rare, Charles Peguy has rightly said: "Because they do not belong to someone else, they think they belong to God. Because they love no one else, they think that they love God. ~ Raniero Cantalamessa,
498:The truth is, God has redeems the world across cultures, countries, world powers, systems, religious orders, trends, movements, and human heart since the beginning of time. His ways are entirely outside of our understanding. Sure, I know and love God and my contacts, because it is the only one I know; and I am grateful he found me here. But he has rescued people in and out of church, in and out of religions, and in and out of traditions since the beginning. He operates and truly mysterious ways we won't know until heaven. And we will probably be shocked. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
499:And naturally I was reading in the library a few days later from a book about the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna, and I stumbled upon a story about a seeker who once came to see the great master and admitted to him that she feared she was not a good enough devotee, feared that she did not love God enough. And the saint said, "Is there nothing you love?" The woman admitted that she adored her young nephew more than anything else on earth. The saint said, "There, then. He is your Krishna, your beloved. In your service to your nephew, you are serving God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
500:Scripture breathes wisdom like we breathe oxygen. It can't not. Through Scripture, God reveals himself. This wisdom cannot be captured, let alone contained, on a neon bumper sticker or rubber bracelet. Wisdom itself invites us to go deeper- right into a relationship with God himself.

Through wisdom, we learn to love God and love what he loves. We find rich counsel on the life we were meant for- in our families, communities, and world. We discover our personal responsibilities to others. And we unearth how to put love into action." -Organic God ~ Margaret Feinberg,
501:It is a wonderful thing to see a first-rate philosopher at prayer. Tough-minded thinking and tenderhearted reverence are friends, not enemies. We have for too long separated the head from the heart, and we are the lesser for it. We love God with the mind and we love God with the heart. In reality, we are descending with the mind into the heart and there standing before God in ceaseless wonder and endless praise. As the mind and the heart work in concert, a kind of loving rationality pervades all we say and do. This brings unity to us and glory to God. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
502:In Moses' time, the heart was understood to be the seat of a person's emotions, the very center of his being, the place where decisions were made. The soul was considered the basis for a person's traits and qualities, or his personality. Strength refers to physical, mental and spiritual strength.

So within this command to love God with "all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength," every fiber of humanity is addressed. Our goal as people who follow Christ should be no less than becoming people who are madly in love with God. ~ Francis Chan,
503:If we were to say that God himself does evil, we would have to conclude that he is not a good and righteous God, and therefore that he is not really God at all. On the other hand, if we maintain that God does not use evil to fulfill his purposes, then we would have to admit that there is evil in the universe that God did not intend, is not under his control, and might not fulfill his purposes. This would make it very difficult for us to affirm that “all things” work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). If ~ Wayne Grudem,
504:Do not desire chiefly to be cherished and consoled by God; desire above all to love Him.
Do not anxiously desire to have others find consolation in God, but rather help them to love God.
Do not seek consolation in talking about God, but speak of Him in order that He may be glorified.
If you truly love Him, nothing can console you but His glory. And if you seek His glory before everything else, then you will also be humble enough to receive consolation from His hand: accepting it chiefly because, in showing His mercy to us, He is glorified in our souls. ~ Thomas Merton,
505:Neither the Ten Commandments nor the Bible elsewhere commands us to love our parents. This is particularly striking given that the Bible commands us to love our neighbor, to love God, and to love the stranger. The Bible understands that there will always be individuals who, for whatever reason, do not love a parent. Therefore, it does not demand what may be psychologically or emotionally impossible. But it does demand that we show honor to our parents. And it makes this demand only with regard to parents. There is no one else whom the Bible commands us to honor. ~ Dennis Prager,
506:This is the fundamental prayer for happiness from a mind that the Spirit has cleared of illusions. Augustine writes: “We love God, therefore, for what He is in Himself, and [we love] ourselves and our neighbors for His sake.” That doesn’t mean, he quickly adds, that we shouldn’t pray for anything else but to know, love, and please God. Not at all. The Lord’s Prayer shows us that we need many things. However, if we have made God our greatest love, and if knowing and pleasing him is our highest pleasure, it transforms both what and how we pray for a happy life. ~ Timothy J Keller,
507:You say you cannot love God; but it strikes me that if you rightly consider who and what He is, you cannot help it. He is your father, your best friend: every blessing, everything good, pleasant, or useful, comes from Him; and everything evil, everything you have reason to hate, to shun, or to fear, comes from Satan- HIS enemy as well as ours. And for this cause was God manifest in the flesh, that He might destroy the works of the Devil: in one word, God is love; and the more of love we have within us, the nearer we are to Him and the more of His spirit we possess. ~ Anne Bront,
508:The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased". ~ C S Lewis,
509:Man depends on God for all things: God depends on man for one. Without man's love God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death . . . The justification of the injustice of the universe is not our blind acceptance of God's inexplicable will, nor our trust in God's love, his dark and incomprehensible love, for us, but our human love, notwithstanding anything, for him. ~ Archibald MacLeish,
510:Luther examined the Great Commandment, "'Live the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all yor strength and with all your mind.'; and, 'Love yor neighbor as yourself'" (Luke 10:27) Then he asked himself, What is the Great Trangression?" Some answer this question by saying that great sin is murder, adultery, blasphemy, or unbelief. Luther disagreed. He concluded that if the Great Commandment was to live Gid with all the heart, than the Great Transgression was to fail to love God with all the heart. He saw a balance between great obligations and great sins. ~ R C Sproul,
511:Women are indoctrinated from infancy about beauty. We feel we must be Superwoman and have it all: beauty, brains, a good work ethic, great with children, a good cook. The list is long, isn’t it? I think it’s particularly hard for women to accept the unconditional love God offers. We are so used to being held to such a high standard—and failing—that we feel we can never measure up. What a blessing when we realize that we don’t have to. God loves us, warts and all. We are safe in his arms. Safe to tell him our dreams, our fears, our failings. Safe to relax in his unconditional love. ~ Colleen Coble,
512:The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction. In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with help of His grace. ~ Saint Basil,
513:The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably. ~ A W Tozer,
514:For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace - to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of the outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now, my hands are full. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
515:See Who God is! Realize what this Mass is! See Christ here, on the Cross! See His wounds, see His torn hands, see how the King of Glory is crowned with thorns! Do you know what Love is? Here is Love, Here on this Cross, here is Love, suffering these nails, these thorns, that scourge loaded with lead, smashed to pieces, bleeding to death because of your sins and bleeding to death because of people that will never know Him, and never think of Him and will never remember His Sacrifice. Learn from Him how to love God and how to love men! Learn of this Cross, this Love, how to give your life away to Him. ~ Thomas Merton,
516:the violence and fear, it’s still always worth it to love God and to love people. And always, always, it is worth it to sing alleluia in defiance of the devil, who surely hates the sound of it. On the Sunday after the massacre, I stood before our congregation, grasping the music stand, which holds my sermon notes, and I looked at my now slightly faded tattoo of Mary Magdalene. In the image, she stands tall with one hand in a gesture of openness and the other with a raised finger as if to say, Shut up, because I have to tell you something. For not the first time nor the last, I borrowed her voice. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
517:hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 26†Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27†And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because [6] the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28†And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, [7] for those who are called according to his purpose. ~ Anonymous,
518:For the next twelve hours I will be exposed to the day’s demands. It is now that I must make a choice. Because of Calvary, I’m free to choose. And so I choose. I choose love . . . No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves. I choose joy . . . I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical . . . the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God. ~ Max Lucado,
519:To live always in the Secret Places of the Most High, To think only those thoughts that are inspired from above, To do all things in the conviction that God is with us, To give the best to all the world with no thought of reward, To leave all recompense to Him who doeth all things well, To love everybody as God loves us, and be Kind as He is Kind, To ask God for everything and in faith expect everything, To live in perpetual gratitude to Him who gives everything, To love God so much that we can inwardly feel that My Father and I are one, This is the prayer without ceasing, the true worship of the soul. ~ Christian D Larson,
520:Love God's people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth.... And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognise that. Else he would have no reason to come here. When he realises that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of seclusion is attained. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
521:The story line of Kings is so overcrowded, it’s hard to keep track. The narrator complains, there’s so much going on, Solomon can’t love God “wholeheartedly.” This is a crucial word. The new Jerusalem opens up a whole new layer of human problems. We are in a fluid world, full of lush possibilities. Religions, jobs, marriages, all forms of life feel like open questions. In this atmosphere, can anybody be “wholehearted” about anything? Cosmopolitan culture, when it thrives, is scary. But it is also thrilling, and the people love it: “Judah and Israel prospered, as many as the sand on the sea; they ate and drank and were happy. ~ Anonymous,
522:I'm not sure why God made us the way He did... As to why we're here, well, I think maybe we're here to learn to love Him. To learn to love God and to want to be with Him. I think we're here to cultivate our longing for heaven. '

Luke sighed. 'Heaven,' he said, 'seems like a long, long way off, Dad.'

Jack nodded. 'It does. But I think God gives us glimpses of heaven from time to time to help up nurture the desire... I see glimpses every spring when the earth renews itself. And sometimes I see glimpses in a worship service when I'm singing about Jesus and all of a sudden I feel like I'm right there in His arms. ~ Susan Meissner,
523:I do what I do because I love God, as I love your children, as I love humanity, as I love peace, truth, and justice for all. I may not be a fan of religion, but I am a big fan of God. I choose not to subscribe to any one religion because I recognize truths in them all — both the truths and flaws. For anybody to believe that any father would want to see his children fighting is madness. It does not make the Creator happy to see anybody massacre any of his beautiful creations. If you must know the religion I choose, I choose LOVE. If you must know the name of my god, his name is Truth, or rather 'He Who is One, The One Who is All. ~ Suzy Kassem,
524:Of course, not even the strongest believers love God perfectly, nor does anyone get close to doing so. Yet to the degree you move toward loving him supremely, things begin to fall into order, into their proper places in your life. Instead of looking to the things of the world as the deepest source of your contentment, you can enjoy them for what they are. Money and career, for example, become just what they are supposed to be. Work becomes work, a great way to use your gifts and be useful to others. Money becomes just money, a great way to support your family. But these things are not your source of safety and contentment. He is. ~ Timothy J Keller,
525:Now, with regard to religion, you say where you want to go is to a place where you can truly know God and love God. I am simply observing that your religions do not take you there. Your religions have made God the Great Mystery, and caused you not to love God, but to fear God. Religion has done little, as well, to cause you to change your behaviors. You are still killing each other, condemning each other, making each other “wrong.” And, in fact, it is your religions which have been encouraging you to do so. So with regard to religion, I merely observe that you say you want it to take you to one place, and it is taking you to another. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
526:But Jesus could see inside people. And inside, in their hearts, Jesus saw that they did not love God or other people. They were running away from God, and they thought they didn't need a rescuer. They thought they were good enough because they kept the rules. But sin had stopped their hearts from working properly. And their hearts were hard and cold.
"This woman knows she's a sinner," Jesus told them. "She knows she'll never be good enough. She knows she needs me to rescue her. That's why she loves me so much. You look down on this woman because you don't look up to God. She is sinful on the outside-but you are sinful on the inside. ~ Sally Lloyd Jones,
527:How then should I love God?’ You should love God non-mentally, that is to say the soul should become non-mental and stripped of her mental images. For as long as your soul is mental, she will possess images. As long as she has images, she will possess intermediaries, and as long as she has intermediaries, she will not have unity or simplicity. As long as she lacks simplicity, she does not truly love God, for true love depends upon simplicity . . . Indeed, you must love him as he is One, pure, simple and transparent, far from all duality. And we should eternally sink into this One, thus passing from something into nothing. So help us God. Amen. ~ Meister Eckhart,
528:What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity? For verily it is not deep words that make a man holy and upright; it is a good life which maketh a man dear to God. I had rather feel contrition than be skilful in the definition thereof. If thou knewest the whole Bible, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what should all this profit thee without the love and grace of God? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, save to love God, and Him only to serve. That is the highest wisdom, to cast the world behind us, and to reach forward to the heavenly kingdom. ~ Thomas Kempis,
529:Sonnet 154

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;
And so the General of hot desire
Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love. ~ William Shakespeare,
530:At camp, there would be games and activities, field days and color wars, but only in the late afternoons. Until five o’clock, Moses’s words would continue, and we would study them from our dog-eared volumes of Deuteronomy, with the same rebbes as all year round, with their harsh voices, their scoldings, and their rods. All summer, Moses would berate, chastise, and teach the great lessons about loving God with all your heart and all your soul and all your possessions because those who ceased to love God were punished by war and famine and pestilence until the love of God was restored, and then we would go swimming or play kickball out on the grassy field. ~ Shulem Deen,
531:Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as "Careful! This might lead you to suffering."

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less. And who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground-- because the security (so to speak) is better? Who could even include it among the grounds for loving? ~ C S Lewis,
532:If we do not love the Bible, we certainly do not love the God who gave it to us; but if we do love God, then no other book in the entire world will be comparable in our minds. When God speaks, it is the delight of our ears to hear what he says. In other books there is some truth and some error. Apart from the Bible, the best book ever written has mistakes in it. It is not possible for fallible men to write infallible books. Somehow or other we either say more than is true or less than is true. The most skillful writer does not always keep along that hairline of truth that is more difficult to tread than a razor's edge. But Scripture never errs. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
533:With God everything is beautiful because neither you have to sleep with him – let him snore – nor do you have to live with him. If his body stinks, let it stink. It is a pure hypothesis in your mind. But to be in contact with real human beings is a totally different experience. It is a fire test for your love. It is very easy to love God; it is very difficult to love man. It costs nothing to love God; it needs tremendous understanding to love a man. So those who have escaped into the forest and the mountains, and are projecting an idea of God, and love that God, have chosen a very easy kind of life. Their love is not going to grow because it has no challenges. The ~ Osho,
534:The strange idea of having to love God so that He does not punish me for my rebelliousness and disappointment, but instead rewards me with the love that forgives all, becomes just as much the expression of our childish dependency and insecurity as the assumption that, like our parents, God is in desperate need of our love. But is this not a completely grotesque idea? A higher being dependent on inauthentic feelings dictated by morality is strongly reminiscent of the insecurity displayed by our frustrated and disoriented parents. Such a being can be called God only by people who have never questioned their own parents or thought about their dependency on them. ~ Alice Miller,
535:All human beings are divided into four general classes...The lowest of these divisions is the physical nature, and those who dwell therein are of the earth, earthy; they live only for the gratification of their physical natures. Their idea of heaven is a place where there is food, feasting, and little or no work...Their minds are only partly active. Their bodies resemble prisons more than dwelling places...they live to labor, plodding along to a mediocre destiny...Give them opulence and they cannot retain it. Give them luxuries, and they do not appreciate them. They are the dark earthy ones who must ever bow before intelligence. They do not love God, for they cannot know Him,
536:Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals that have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, “I am too great a sinner to change,” or “God would not want me.” God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture, but with a “passionless passion,” a “wild tranquility.” A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, any more that a man on dry land can swim; but as soon as he takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before. It is not the wrong things one has already done which keep one from God; it is the present persistence in that wrong. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
537:We are not free to love God insofar as we are enslaved to creatures. And we all are. We are addicted to whatever we cannot part with that is less than God, our true good. And that includes ourselves--especially ourselves and our own will. So we must renounce this too, this especially. God's world is not the problem; our attitude is. God does not want us to renounce the unspeakably beautiful world he gave us as creation, as gift, as it really is. He wants us to renounce it as creator, as our god, as it really is not. This wonderful world is our God-given house to live in and to live the love of God in. But God's bride must learn not to love her house as if it were her husband. ~ Peter Kreeft,
538:to change people most profoundly, we must change what we worship. Thinking, arguments, and beliefs are crucial as means of moving the heart, but ultimately we are what we adore. We are what captures our imagination, what leads us to praise and to compel others to praise it. Our inordinate anger, anxiety, and discouragement result from disordered loves. Our relational problems result from disordered loves, and our social and cultural problems as well. What can re-engineer our very inner being, the structure of our personality? What can create healthy human community? Worship and adoration of God. We must love God supremely, and that can be cultivated only through praise and adoration. ~ Timothy J Keller,
539:X
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee . . . mark ! . . . I love thee--in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
540:Over time I realized that when we love God, we naturally run to Him—frequently and zealously. Jesus didn’t command that we have a regular time with Him each day. Rather, He tells us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He called this the “first and greatest commandment” (Matt. 22:37–38). The results are intimate prayer and study of His Word. Our motivation changes from guilt to love. This is how God longs for us to respond to His extravagant, unending love: not with a cursory “quiet time” plagued by guilt, but with true love expressed through our lives. Like my little girl running out to the driveway to hug me each night because she loves me. ~ Francis Chan,
541:To love God more is never to love people less. It’s to love people best. It’s to relieve them of the responsibility of being your false Christ. It’s to keep their sins against you from being unforgivable and your sins against them from being ignorable. It’s to guard them from our mean-streaks and strong human tendencies to respond to disappointment with punishment. It’s to keep the people close by from cutting their wrists on the razor-sharp blades of our insecurities. It’s to dull the edge of our cravings to be adored. It’s to untie the double knots of codependency. It’s to let the affirmations of others be the overflow and not the essential source of our emotional survival. To love God is to guard man. ~ Beth Moore,
542:Sonnet X
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee . . . mark ! . . . I love thee--in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
543:When I speak elsewhere in the book of the multifaceted joys of the resurrected life in the new universe, some readers may think, But our eyes should be on the giver, not the gift; we must focus on God, not on Heaven. This approach sounds spiritual, but it erroneously divorces our experience of God from life, relationships, and the world—all of which God graciously gives us. It sees the material realm and other people as God’s competitors rather than as instruments that communicate his love and character. It fails to recognize that because God is the ultimate source of joy, and all secondary joys emanate from him, to love secondary joys on Earth can be—and in Heaven always will be—to love God, their source. ~ Randy Alcorn,
544:Because the Lord is our Master, we can trust Him to take care of us in every situation and stage of life. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, He will provide all that we need in order to be faithful to Him.27 We can be “anxious for nothing” (Phil. 4:6) because we know “that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). We are right to trust Him completely, for He is sovereign not only over our lives, but also over everything that exists.28 “For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we boldly say: ‘The Lord is my helper: I will not fear. What can man do to me?’” (Heb. 13:5–6 NKJV). ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
545:Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
546:For all clergymen whom I had yet met, regarded mankind and their interests solely from the clerical point of view, seeming far more desirous that a man should be a good church man, as they called it, than that he should love God. Hence, there was always an indescribable and, to me, unpleasant odour of their profession about them. If they knew more concerning the life of the world than other men, why should everything they said remind one of mustiness and mildew? In a word, why were they not men at worst, when at best they ought to be more of men than other men?--And here lay the difficulty: by no effort could I get the face before me to fit into the clerical mould which I had all ready in my own mind for it. ~ George MacDonald,
547:Sonnet Xxvii: Heart's Compass
Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are;
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
Being of its furthest fires oracular;—
The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
548:When God fills us with His Holy Spirit, we are filled with love. He desires to pour Himself out through our lives, our jars of clay, into His world, which aches for Him. His all-surpassing power is given to us, not so we can hoard it for ourselves, storing it in a darkened room somewhere, from which it trickles out in small quantities. It is given to us to be splashed out in the light, for the joy of all people everywhere. We can’t love God’s way without being filled with Him. If we try it on our own, we end up exhausted and burned out. I’ve done it; it doesn’t work. Only when we let His love pour into us and let it spill out from deep within us will His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. ~ Heidi Baker,
549:It is far more important to love your wife than to love God, and I will tell you why. You cannot help him, but you can help her. You can fill her life with the perfume of perpetual joy. It is far more important that you love your children than that you love Jesus Christ. And why? If he is God you cannot help him, but you can plant a little flower of happiness in every footstep of the child, from the cradle until you die in that child's arms. Let me tell you to-day it is far more important to build a home than to erect a church. The holiest temple beneath the stars is a home that love has built. And the holiest altar in all the wide world is the fireside around which gather father and mother and the sweet babes. ~ Robert G Ingersoll,
550:our concern with truth is an inevitable expression of our concern with God. If God exists, then he is the measure of all things, and what he thinks about all things is the measure of what we should think. Not to care about truth is not to care about God. To love God passionately is to love truth passionately. Being God-centered in life means being truth-driven in ministry. What is not true is not of God. What is false is anti-God. Indifference to the truth is indifference to the mind of God. Pretense is rebellion against reality, and what makes reality reality is God. Our concern with truth is simply an echo of our concern with God. And all this is rooted in God's concern with God, or God's passion for the glory of God. ~ John Piper,
551:You see, that is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God's will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn't it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances," he continued with academic exactitude, each word etched on the air with acid, "is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God. ~ Mary Doria Russell,
552:When a man reflects on these things, studies all these created beings, from the angels and spheres down to human beings and so on, and realizes the divine wisdom manifested in them all, his love for God will increase, his soul will thirst, his very flesh will yearn to love God. He will be filled with fear and trembling, as he becomes conscious of his lowly condition, poverty, and insignificance, and compares himself with any of the great and holy bodies; still more when he compares himself with any one of the pure forms that are incorporeal and have never had association with any corporeal substance. He will then realize that he is a vessel full of shame, dishonor, and reproach, empty and deficient. ~ Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (c. 1180),
553:In this primal sense, then, evil is evil because it is rebellion against God. Evil is the failure to do what God demands or the performance of what God forbids. Not to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength is a great evil, for God has demanded it; not to love our neighbor as ourself is a great evil, for the same reason. To covet someone’s house or car or wife is a great evil, for God has forbidden covetousness; to nurture bitterness and self-pity is evil, for a similar reason. The dimensions of evil are thus established by the dimensions of God; the ugliness of evil is established by the beauty of God; the filth of evil is established by the purity of God; the selfishness of evil is established by the love of God. ~ D A Carson,
554:Remember, if indeed thou art able to know it, that not in any church is the service done that he requires. He will say to no man, 'You never went to church: depart from me; I do not know you;' but, 'Inasmuch as you never helped one of my father's children, you have done nothing for me.' Church or chapel is not the place for divine service. It is a place of prayer, a place of praise, a place to feed upon good things, a place to learn of God, as what place is not? It is a place to look in the eyes of your neighbour, and love God along with him. But the world in which you move, the place of your living and loving and labour, not the church you go to on your holiday, is the place of divine service. Serve your neighbour, and you serve him. ~ George MacDonald,
555:Sonnet X: Yet Love, Mere Love
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee...mark!...I love thee--in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
556:Sonnet 10 - Yet, Love, Mere Love, Is Beautiful Indeed
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee . . . mark! . . . I love thee—in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
557:To paraphrase Augustine, if you want to know your God-given gifts, first know that the purpose of spiritual gifts is to bring unity to the church. Then “love God and do what you feel like doing.” But there is more to the unleashing of gifts in the body. One of the bad fruits of an “I” church is that we don’t tell people when they bless us. If someone has taught Sunday school and helped us understand a passage of Scripture, then we should tell the person and encourage his or her gift. If worship leaders left us rejoicing that we have been with God’s people in his presence, then thank them for the specific ways they blessed you and the church. No one should have to ask what their gifts are; we should tell people their gifts as they minister to us. Can ~ Edward T Welch,
558:My Mother
Who sat and watched my infant head
When sleeping on my cradle bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed?
My Mother.
When pain and sickness made me cry,
Who gazed upon my heavy eye,
And wept for fear that I should die?
My Mother.
Who taught my infant lips to pray
And love God’s holy book and day,
And walk in wisdom’s pleasant way?
My Mother.
And can I ever cease to be
Affectionate and kind to thee,
Who wast so very kind to me,
My Mother?
Ah, no! the thought I cannot bear,
And if God please my life to spare
I hope I shall reward they care,
My Mother.
When thou art feeble, old and grey,
My healthy arm shall be thy stay,
And I will soothe thy pains away,
My Mother.
~ Ann Taylor,
559:When the Scripture relates redemption to the law of God, the terms it uses are to be carefully marked. It does not say we are redeemed from the law. That would not be an accurate description and the Scripture refrains from such an expression. We are not redeemed from the obligation to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and our neighbour as ourselves.

The law is comprehended in these two commandments (Matt. 22:40) and love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:10)... It would contradict the very nature of God to think that any person can ever be relieved of the necessity to love God with the whole heart and to obey his commandments.

When Scripture relates redemption to the law of God it uses terms that are more specific. ~ John Murray,
560:On true confidence and on hope. We should be able to recognize true and perfect love by whether or not someone has great hope and confidence in God, for there is nothing that testifies more clearly to perfect love than trust. Wholehearted love for another creates trust in them, and we will truly find in God everything that we dare hope for in him, and a thousand times more. Just as we can never love God too much, neither can we have too much trust in him. Nothing we may do can ever be so appropriate as fully trusting in God. He has never ceased to work great things through those who have great trust in him, and he has clearly shown in all such people that their trust is born of love, for love possesses not only trust but also true knowledge and unshakeable certainty. ~ Meister Eckhart,
561:most flowery, romantic, sickeningly sweet terms imaginable. No less a heavyweight than Augustine even waxed treacly when he wrote: “O Lord, how I love you! You pounded on my heart with your Word until I loved you. . . . But what do I love when I love you? Not beautiful bodies or the loveliness of the passing seasons, not the radiance of light around us that make our eyes leap with joy, not the sweet melodies of songs, not the fragrance of flowers or perfumes or spices, not cakes or honey, not the entangled limbs of lovers. These are not the things I love when I love God. And yet, I love a light and a voice and a fragrance and a food and an embrace when I love God, who is a light, a voice, a fragrance, a food, and an embrace to my innermost self. . . . This is what I love when I love God. ~ John R Mabry,
562:Was Paul unloving when he disputed daily in the marketplace about the things of God (Acts 17:17)? Was Jesus unloving when He contradicted the teaching of the Pharisees? Were the prophets of ancient Israel unloving when they rebuked and admonished the false prophets? Was Elijah unloving when he disputed with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18)? I cannot imagine someone in the crowd on Mount Carmel that day saying: “You people can follow Elijah if you want to, but I’m not going to. He may have truth on his side, but he is not loving. Look what he did to these prophets of Baal. How unloving!” Contending for the truth of God is an act of love, not a sign of an absence of love. If we love God, if we love Christ, if we love the church, we must love the truth that defines the very essence of Christianity. ~ R C Sproul,
563:We should not be held back by the thought that if they are not elect, they will not believe us and our efforts to convert them will fail. That is true; but it is none of our business and should make no difference to our action. In the first place, it is always wrong to abstain from doing good for fear that it might not be appreciated. In the second place, the nonelect in this world are faceless men as far as w are concerned. We know that they exist, but we do not and cannot know who they are, and it is as futile as it is impious for us to try and guess. The identity of the reprobate is one of God's 'secret things' into which his people may not pry. In the third place, our calling as Christians is not to love God's elect, and them only, but to love our neighbour, irrespective of whether he is elect or not. ~ J I Packer,
564:For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,
565:The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love', and look on things as a man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for they pleasure they are and were created.' (Rev. 4:11) We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased.' To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: ...What we would here and now call our 'happiness' is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall, in fact, be happy. ~ C S Lewis,
566:Yes—love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?… "When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
567:For the only path leading out of the torments of hell to the everlasting joy of the Kingdom is that of the divine commandments: with our whole being we are to love God and our neighbour with a heart that is free of all sin. The return journey from this remote and inhospitable land is not an easy one, and there is no hunger more fearful than that of a heart laid waste by sin. Those in whom the heart is full of the consolation of incorruptible grace can endure all external deprivations and afflictions, transforming them into a feast of spiritual joy; but the famine in a hardened heart lacking divine consolation is a comfortless torment. There is no greater misfortune than that of an insensible and petrified heart that is unable to distinguish between the luminous Way of God’s Providence and the gloomy confusion of the ways of this world. ~ Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou,
568:Karl Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the masses'. Buddhism, particularly as it is popularly practiced, promises improvement through karma. Islam and Christianity promise eternal life to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God. ~ John Green,
569:Night fell, and her husband came to bed, and as soon as they had finished kissing and embracing each other, he fell fast asleep. Psyche was not naturally either very strong or very brave, but the cruel power of fate made a virago of her. Holding the carving knife in a murderous grip, she uncovered the lamp and let its light shine on the bed.

At once the secret was revealed. There lay the gentlest and sweetest of all wild creatures, Cupid himself, the beautiful Love-god, and at sight of him the flame of the lamp spurted joyfully up and the knife turned its edge for shame.

Psyche was terrified. She lost all control of her senses, and pale as death, fell trembling to her knees, where she desperately tried to hide the knife by plunging it in her own heart. She would have succeeded, too, had the knife not shrunk from the crime and twisted itself out of her hand. ~ Apuleius,
570:forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. ~ Frederick Douglass,
571:Pure, unadulterated, consistent love for God and pure, unadulterated, consistent love for others is the summation of all the law God has given us in both the Old and New Testaments. Of course, the problem is that we never obey these simple commands. We always love ourselves more than we love God or others. We are always erecting idols in our hearts and worshipping and serving them. We are always more focused on what we want and how we might get it than we are on loving Him and laying down our life for others. The law does show us the right way to live, but none of us obeys it. Not for one millisecond.
Even though our children cannot and will not obey God's law, we need to teach it to them again and again. And when they tell us that they can't love God or others in this way, we are not to argue with them. We are to agree with them and tell them of their need for a Savior. ~ Elyse M Fitzpatrick,
572:Don’t Waste Your Pain All things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose. ROMANS 8:28 Life is full of unjust situations that can create a great deal of pain for you, especially in your relationship with other people. You will experience some hurt and pain, but you don’t have to allow these experiences to destroy your happiness. You can’t always choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond to it. If you’ve been hurt, God can take your bad experiences and make them work for your good. Believing this truth is a positive decision that can help stop your pain. Choose to learn from the hurtful experiences instead of wasting your pain by allowing them to make you bitter. One way to do this is to overcome evil with good by making sure you don’t hurt others. It’s a good place to start! ~ Joyce Meyer,
573:To be an Eikon means, first of all, to be in union with God as Eikons; second, it means to be in communion with other Eikons; and third, it means to participate with God in his creating, his ruling, his speaking, his naming, his ordering, his variety and beauty, his location, his partnering, and his resting, and to oblige God in his obligating of us. Thus, an Eikon is God-oriented, self-oriented, other-oriented, and cosmos oriented. To be an Eikon is to be a missional being – one designed to love God, self, and others and to represent God by participating in God’s rule in this world. We are now back to perichoresis: to be an Eikon means to be summond to participate in God’s overflowing perichoretic love – both within the Trinity and in the missio Dei with respect to the cosmos God has created. When we participate in this missio Dei we become Eikonic. To be an Eikon means to be in relationship. ~ Scot McKnight,
574:It is this Good which we are commanded to love with our whole heart, with our whole mind, and with all our strength. It is toward this Good that we should be led by those who love us, and toward this Good we should lead those whom we love. In this way, we fulfill the commandments on which depend the whole Law and the Prophets: 'Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind'; and 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' For, in order that a man might learn how to love himself, a standard was set to regulate all his actions on which his happiness depends. For, to love one's own self is nothing but to wish to be happy, and the standard is union with God. When, therefore, a person who knows how to love himself is bidden to love his neighbor as himself, is he not, in effect, commanded to persuade others, as far as he can, to love God? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,
575:God says nothing. Why not? Francis Anderson is again very insightful. It is one of the many excellences of the book that Job is brought to contentment without ever knowing all the facts of his case. . . . [T]he test would work only if Job did not know what it was for. God thrusts Job into an experience of dereliction to make it possible for Job to enter into a life of naked faith, to learn to love God for himself alone. God does not seem to give this privilege to many people, for they pay a terrible price of suffering for their discoveries. But part of the discovery is to see the suffering itself as one of God’s most precious gifts. To withhold the full story from Job, even after the test was over, keeps him walking by faith, not by sight. He does not say in the end, “Now I see it all.” He never sees it all. He sees God (Job 42:5). Perhaps it is better if God never tells any of us the whole of our life-story.373 ~ Timothy J Keller,
576:They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the
religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. ~ Frederick Douglass,
577:Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love “the lost”. You can’t feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as “all lost people”.

Don’t wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. ~ John Piper,
578:But, if we want our churches to thrive and our devotional lives to flourish, we absolutely must let God be God. We cannot settle for warm, fuzzy, "feel good movie of the year" versions of God. We cannot settle for a God who exists only to meet our needs and make us happy. We cannot settle for a God who is boring and irrelevant. We cannot settle for a God of our own imagination. We must know the ferocious, untamable God. We must let God out of the boxes we have created. We must come face to face with God as he really is, with all his sharp edges and blazing glory and heart-rending beauty. We must encounter the God who makes mountains melt like wax and the angels cover their eyes and the rivers leap for joy. If we are going to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we must truly know God. We must know him as he truly is, not as we imagine him to be. We must come to grips with the God who has revealed himself in scripture. ~ Stephen Altrogge,
579:He [Jesus] knew no sin. Do you realize this? There has never been one moment in your life— not one moment in your life that wasn’t tainted by sin. And yet, there never was a moment in His life that was tainted by sin! Someone asked me a long time ago, "What is the greatest sin you can commit?" And all of a sudden it just popped in my head so I said it— I said, “Well, I suppose the greatest sin you could commit is to break the greatest commandment that’s ever been given: to love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Do you realize there’s never been one moment in your life that you have loved God as God ought to be loved? To even suggest that you have is paramount to blasphemy. You have never loved God in a way that God deserves to be loved. But there was never one moment in the life of the man Jesus Christ that He did not love God as God deserves to be loved! You think Jesus is great? He’s greater than you know... ~ Paul David Washer,
580:Leo cried, "Hold on! Let's have some manners here. Can I at least find out who has the honor of destroying me?"
"I am Cal!" the ox grunted. He looked very proud of himself, like he'd taken a long time to memorize that sentence.
"That's short for Calais," the love god said. "Sadly, my brother cannot say words with more than two syllables--"
"Pizza! Hockey! Destroy!" Cal offered.
"--which includes his own name," the love god finished.
"I am Cal," Cal repeated. "And this is Zethes! My brother!"
"Wow," Leo said. "That was almost three sentences, man! Way to go."
Cal grunted, obviously pleased with himself.
"Stupid buffoon," his brother grumbled. "They make fun of you. But no matter. I am Zethes, which is short for Zethes. And the lady there--" He winked at piper, but the wink was more like a facial seizure. "She can call me anything she likes. Perhaps she would like to have dinner with a famous demigod before we must destroy you? ~ Rick Riordan,
581:To accept what is bitter; acceptance must not be allowed to project itself on to the bitterness and lessen it; otherwise the force and purity of the acceptance are proportionally lessened. For the object of the acceptance is to taste what is bitter, as such, and not anything else. (St. Thomas on the suffering of Christ.)—To say like Ivan Karamazov: nothing can possibly make up for a single tear from a single child. And yet to accept all tears, and the countless horrors which lie beyond tears. To accept these things not simply in so far as they may admit of compensations, but in themselves. To accept that they should exist, simply because they do exist.

To accept that event because it exists, and by this acceptance to love God through and beyond it. To accept that it should exist, because it does exist, what exactly does this mean? Is it not simply to recognize that it is?

When one loves God through and beyond evil as such, it is indeed God whom one loves. ~ Simone Weil,
582:I kept steadily to meetings, spent first-day afternoons chiefly in reading the Scriptures and other good books, and was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart does love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness, not only toward all men, but also toward the brute creatures; that, as the mind was moved by an inward principle to love God as an invisible, incomprehensible Being, so, by the same principle, it was moved to love him in all his manifestations in the visible world; that, as by his breath the flame of life was kindled in all animal sensible creatures, to say we love God as unseen, and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction in itself. I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere, upright-hearted people, in every society, who truly love God, were accepted of him. ~ Various,
583:For some reason foreign to our modern ears, God tells us that celebration is central to pleasing Him; it is central to leading a good life. Modern American life has no time for serious celebrations as did life in centuries past. We've got work to do; projects and deadlines press us. And yet for all our industrial-strength pragmatism, few if any truly important things get accomplished. We have forgotten that celebration isn't just an option; it's a call to full Christian living.
Celebration is worshiping God with our bodies, with the material creation He has set up around us. Celebrating-whether in feasts, ceremonies, holidays, formal worship, or lovemaking-are all part of obeying God's command to "love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength" (Deut. 6:5; Mk. 12:30). We are to show our love for God not just with one portion of our being (the spiritual aspect); we are to love God with our whole body, heart and strength and legs and lips. ~ Douglas Wilson,
584:Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say... ~ Leo Tolstoy,
585:By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And  t we have seen and testify that  u the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of  v the world. 15 w Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So  x we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  y God is love, and  z whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this  a is love perfected with us, so that  b we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because  c as he is so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but  d perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not  a been perfected in love. 19 e We love because he first loved us. 20 f If anyone says, “I love God,” and  g hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot [1] love God  h whom he has not seen. 21And  i this commandment we have from him:  j whoever loves God must also love his brother. ~ Anonymous,
586:Working in God’s field, by the way, is not meant to be a metaphor for how hard it is to follow God. Jesus is actually saying the opposite: that following God is about his generosity and grace, not about what we do or don’t do. It is a joy to follow God. It is rewarding to obey him. His goodness toward us is far beyond anything we could earn or deserve. We relate to God according to his rich measures of grace and generosity. We don’t have to worry about whether we measure up or whether we are working hard enough to please him. We don’t have to stress out about the future. We don’t have to waste our energy envying other people. We can simply enjoy God and trust God and love God. By the way, this will completely change the way we relate to others. It will make for great friendships. When we trust God to give us what is right, we can celebrate the good things God does for other people. That’s where we really begin to enjoy life. Instead of complaining that you got a cat and Bill got an Escalade, take your cat over for a ride in Bill’s Escalade. ~ Judah Smith,
587:Love God Today: Love God more than you love things, and He will always give you what is best for you and will help you fulfill your destiny. August 15 Wisdom Is Calling Wisdom cries aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the markets. PROVERBS 1:20 God wants us to use wisdom, and according to today’s Scripture, wisdom is not difficult to obtain; the Holy Spirit wants to reveal it to us; we simply need to pay attention. For example, have you ever needed to make a decision and had your “head” (your intellectual abilities) try to lead you one way while your heart is leading you another? Have you ever had a situation in which your natural thoughts and feelings seemed to be guiding you in one direction, but something inside of you kept nagging you to go another direction? Chances are, wisdom is crying out to you. One way to love yourself is to listen to it and obey. Many times, it cries out in your heart that you should or should not do a certain thing—you should eat healthily, you should be kind to other people, you should not spend money you do not have. These are all ~ Joyce Meyer,
588:I realized right then and there, in that hallway, that I wanted no other... I became the man she needed me to be because she had sense enough to have requirements-standards that she needed in her relationship in order to make the relationship work for her.
She knew she wanted a monogamous relationship-a partnership with a man who wanted to be a dedicated husband and father. She also knew this man had to be faithful, love God, and be willing to do what it took to keep this family together. On a smaller scale she also made it clear that she expected to be treated like a lady at every turn-I'm talking opening car doors for her, pulling out her seat when she's ready to sit at the table, coming correct on anniversary, Mother's Day, and birthday gifts, keeping the foul talk to a minimum. These requirements are important to her because they lay out a virtual map of what I need to do to make sure she gets what she needs and wants. After all, it's universal knowledge that when mama is happy, everybody is happy. And it is my sole mission in life to make sure Marjorie is happy. ~ Steve Harvey,
589:Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. When it comes, it degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself. Love, though it is no prophylactic against depression, is what cushions the mind and protects it from itself. Medications and psychotherapy can renew that protection, making it easier to love and be loved, and that is why they work. In good spirits, some love themselves and some love others and some love work and some love God: any of these passions can furnish that vital sense of purpose that is the opposite of depression. Love forsakes us from time to time, and we forsake love. In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaninglessness of life itself, becomes self-evident. The only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance. ~ Andrew Solomon,
590:Christ did once commit the care of your souls to me as your minister; and you know, dear children, how I have instructed you, and warned you from time to time; you know how I have often called you together for that end; and some of you, sometimes, have seemed to be affected with what I have said to you. But I am afraid it has had no saving effects as to many of you; but that you remain still in an unconverted condition, without any real saving work wrought in your souls, convincing you thoroughly of your sin and misery, causing you to see the great evil of sin, and to mourn for it, and hate it above all things, and giving you a sense of the excellency of the Lord Jesus Christ, bringing you with all your hearts to cleave to him as your Saviour, weaning your hearts from the world, and causing you to love God above all, and to delight in holiness more than in all the pleasant things of this earth; and so that I now leave you in a miserable condition, having no interest in Christ, and so under the awful displeasure and anger of God, and in danger of going down to the pit of eternal misery. But ~ Jonathan Edwards,
591:An old story is told about Rabia of Basra, an eighth-century Sufi mystic who was seen running through the streets of her city one day carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she said she wanted to burn down the rewards of paradise with the torch and put out the fires of hell with the water, because both blocked the way to God, 'O, Allah,' Rabia prayed, 'if I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.'

In Christian tradition this comes under the heading of unconditional love, though it is usually understood as the kind of love God exercises toward humans instead of the other way around. Now, thanks to a Muslim mystic from Iraq, I have a new way of understanding what it means to love God unconditionally. Whenever I am tempted to act from fear of divine punishment or hope of divine reward, Rabia leans over from here religion into mine and empties a bucket of water on my head. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
592:When we remember we are queens from another kingdom, then the kings in this one will wake up at last and honor our presence and open the gates. We won't storm the castle walls; we will melt the castle walls. Kings will then set a table for us to feast at instead of tossing us bones. They will recognize us when we recognize ourselves. We come bearing gifts from another realm. We bring illumination when our minds are illuminated. We are only visiting here, but our visit is an honor, a mitzvah, and the entire earth kingdom is blessed by our presence. Wake up, damn it, and thank the stars. We have been playing so small and the crown is so huge. We will not wear it until we expand our heads.

Don't your get it? Can't you see? As we change our minds, we will change the world. And until we do, we will remain where we are. And all the laws and all the bashing and all the silly, childish, petty political arguments will continue for years, and for more years beyond, until women remember, followed by men, that a woman is a miracle and her heart lies in God. She is here to love God, passionately and truly... ~ Marianne Williamson,
593:People with trust issues also have faith and humility issues. You can't ask the world to rise to your expectations, yet not meet that same standard for others. The notion that God didn't hurt me, but you did becomes an illogical argument for many. People who are trying to love you feel that they can never meet your definition of love because it is one sided or has rules that don't apply to you, as well. This is when the teachings of Christ become distorted. Forgiveness, compassion, love, kindness and second chances becomes a game. People in your life feel they must win it to receive it, which is far from the unconditional love God gives us. In the end, the person with trust issues find themself on a journey of perfection seeking out people incapable of mistakes like the last person or hurting their self esteem. Sadly, they miss the blessings of growth that come through humbly accepting they are also flawed and make mistakes. They miss the blessings of faith because they don't invite God into their heart, so he can help them overcome their cycle of pain. They miss the peace that comes from forgiveness and being forgiven. But most of all, they miss out on the beautiful people God brings into their life who love them so much. ~ Shannon L Alder,
594:deceptive and can easily be an illusion. Indeed, the second type is experienced in all the faculties of our soul and cannot deceive those who truly love God; indeed they no more doubt it than they doubt God himself, for love drives out all fear. ‘Love knows no fear’ as St John12 (1 John 4:18) says, and it is also written: ‘Love covers a multitude of sins’ (1 Peter 4:8). For where there is sin, there can be neither complete trust nor love, since love completely covers over sins and knows nothing of them. Not in such a way as if we had not sinned, but rather it wipes them away and drives them out, as if they had never existed. For all God’s works are so utterly perfect and overflowing that whoever he forgives, he forgives totally and absolutely, preferring to forgive big sins rather than little ones, all of which creates perfect trust. I hold this kind of knowledge to be incomparably better, more rewarding and more authentic than the other, since neither sin nor anything else can obstruct it. For when God finds people in the same degree of love, then he judges them in the same way, regardless of whether they have sinned greatly or not at all. But those to whom more is forgiven, should have a greater love, as our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘They to whom more is forgiven must love more’ (Luke 7:47). ~ Meister Eckhart,
595:John sums up the matter bluntly. “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars” (1 John 4:20). To truly love God includes loving others with the same love God has for us and the same love God has for them. This is part of what it means to be a participant in the divine nature. It is, in fact, what it means to be Christian (Christ-like). “Whoever does not love,” John wrote, “does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). Our capacity to love—to fulfill the greatest two commandments—is the definitive evidence that we are in fact abiding in Christ and participating in the perfect love of the triune God. Christians sometimes try to assess how they or others are doing on the basis of such things as how successfully they conquer a particular sin, how much prayer and Bible study they do, how regularly they attend and give to church, and so forth. But rarely do we honestly ask the question that Scripture places at the center of everything: Are we growing in our capacity to love all people? Do we have an increasing love for our sisters and brothers in Christ as well as for those for whom Christ died who are yet outside the church? Are we increasing in our capacity to ascribe unsurpassable worth to people whom society judges to have no worth? If there is any distinguishing mark of the true disciple from a biblical perspective, this is it! ~ Gregory A Boyd,
596:Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine, forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more, or at least to dislike it less....

Some writers use the word charity to describe not only Christian love between human beings, but also God’s love for man and man’s love for God. About the second of these two, people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in them selves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “If I were sure that I loved God what would I do? When you have found the answer, go and do it. ~ C S Lewis,
597:It may seem a hard matter, to love our neighbours who have so much of what is evil about them, and whose faults so often await the evil that lingers within ourselves. But remember that he made them and he loves them, and whosever loves him that begat, loveth him that was begotten also. and if god so loveth us that he gave his only begotten son to die for us, we ought also to love one another, but if you cannot feel positive affection for those that do not care for you, you can at least try to do to them as they should do unto you. You can endeavour to pity their failings and excuse their offenses and to do all the good you can to those about you. And if you accustom yourself to this, Nancy, the very effort itself will make you love them in some degree, to say nothing of the goodwill your kindness would beget in them, though they might have little else that is good about them. If we love God, and wish to serve him, let us try to be like him, to do his work, to labour for his glory, which is the good of man, to hasten the coming of his kingdom, which is the peace and happiness of all the world. However powerless we may seem to be in doing all the good through life, the humblest of us may do much towards it. And let us dwell in love, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. The more happiness we bestow, the more we shall receive even here and the greater will be our reward in heaven when rest from our labours. ~ Anne Bront,
598:In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . nor even his partisanship for the poor, humble people. The real trouble was that he got involved with moral failures, with obviously irreligious and immoral people: people morally and politically suspect, so many dubious, obscure, abandoned, hopeless types existing as an eradicable evil on the fringe of every society. This was the real scandal. Did he really have to go so far? . . . What kind of naive and dangerous love is this, which does not know its limits: the frontiers between fellow countrymen and foreigners, party members and non-members, between neighbors and distant people, between honorable and dishonorable callings, between moral and immoral, good and bad people? As if dissociation were not absolutely necessary here. As if we ought not to judge in these cases. As if we could always forgive in these circumstances.[4] Because the shining sun and the falling rain are given both to those who love God and to those who reject God, the compassion of the Son embraces those who are still living in sin. The pharisee lurking within all of us shuns sinners. Jesus turns toward them with gracious kindness. He sustains His attention throughout their lives for the sake of their conversion, “which is always possible to the very last moment.”[5] ~ Brennan Manning,
599:PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE. Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extent that you trust Me. Every problem can teach you something, transforming you little by little into the masterpiece I created you to be. The very same problem can become a stumbling block over which you fall, if you react with distrust and defiance. The choice is up to you, and you will have to choose many times each day whether to trust Me or defy Me. The best way to befriend your problems is to thank Me for them. This simple act opens your mind to the possibility of benefits flowing from your difficulties. You can even give persistent problems nicknames, helping you to approach them with familiarity rather than with dread. The next step is to introduce them to Me, enabling Me to embrace them in My loving Presence. I will not necessarily remove your problems, but My wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them. We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose. ROMANS 8 : 28 (AMP) But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 CORINTHIANS 1 : 23 – 24 ~ Sarah Young,
600:MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE. Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extent that you trust Me. Every problem can teach you something, transforming you little by little into the masterpiece I created you to be. The very same problem can become a stumbling block over which you fall if you react with distrust and defiance. The choice is up to you, and you will have to choose many times each day whether to trust Me or defy Me. The best way to befriend your problems is to thank Me for them. This simple act opens your mind to the possibility of benefits flowing from your difficulties. You can even give persistent problems nicknames, helping you to approach them with familiarity rather than with dread. The next step is to introduce them to Me, enabling Me to embrace them in My loving Presence. I will not necessarily remove your problems, but My wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them. We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose. —ROMANS 8:28 AMP But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. —1 CORINTHIANS 1:23–24 ~ Sarah Young,
601:The Sunday service alone seldom leads people on deeper or even real journeys; we must begin to be honest about this. All that organized religion can do is to hold you inside the boxing ring long enough so you can begin to ask good questions and expect bigger answers. But it seldom teaches you how to really box with the mystery itself. Organized religion does not tend to cook you! It just keeps you on a low, half-cold simmer. It doesn’t teach you how to expect the mystery to show itself at any profound level. It tends, and I don’t mean to be unkind, to make you codependent upon its own ministry, instead of leading you to know something for yourself, which is really the whole point. It’s like we keep saying, “keep coming back, keep coming back” and you’ll eventually get it. But you don’t because the whole thing is oriented toward something you attend or watch and not to something you can participate in 24/7, even without the ministrations of priest and ministers and formal sacraments. Again, I mean no disrespect. If God-experience depends on formal sacramental ministry from ordained clergy, than 99.9 percent of creation has had no chance to know or love God. That can’t be true. And if the clergy themselves have not gone on a further journey, they don’t know how to send you there or guide you there because they have not gone there themselves yet (see Matthew 23:13). Nemo dat quod not hat, we said in Latin: “You cannot give away what you do not have yourself. ~ Richard Rohr,
602:Elaborating on this idea later in his Confessions, Augustine wrote: Wherever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleaves to sorrow, even though the things outside God and outside itself to which it cleaves may be things of beauty. (Confessions 4.10.15)310 Smith, following Augustine, argues that our ultimate loves are constitutive of our identity. They determine “that to which we are fundamentally oriented, what ultimately governs our vision of the good life, what shapes our being-in-the-world . . . and makes sense of all our penultimate desires and actions.”311 The things we love individually not only determine our character, but what a society loves collectively shapes its culture. This latter idea was the heart of Augustine’s great work City of God. He believed societies are the mutual associations of individuals united by what they love in common. What does this mean? Smith’s entire book is committed to the thesis that to change people most profoundly, we must change what we worship. Thinking, arguments, and beliefs are crucial as means of moving the heart, but ultimately we are what we adore. We are what captures our imagination, what leads us to praise and to compel others to praise it. Our inordinate anger, anxiety, and discouragement result from disordered loves. Our relational problems result from disordered loves, and our social and cultural problems as well. What can re-engineer our very inner being, the structure of our personality? What can create healthy human community? Worship and adoration of God. We must love God supremely, and that can be cultivated only through praise and adoration. ~ Timothy J Keller,
603:The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God’s kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification. In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of kings. The clue to understanding all his dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives he is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ. Sometimes the chiseling process is painful and the discipline irksome, but then the Scripture reminds us: “The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons . . . No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb 12:6-7,11). Only the person who has grasped this can make sense of Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God” (KJV); equally, only he can maintain his assurance of sonship against satanic assault as things go wrong. But he who has mastered the truth of adoption both retains assurance and receives blessing in the day of trouble: this is one aspect of faith’s victory over the world. Meanwhile, however, the point stands that the Christian’s primary motive for holy living is not negative, the hope (vain!) that hereby he may avoid chastening, but positive, the impulse to show his love and gratitude to his adopting God by identifying himself with the Father’s will for him. ~ J I Packer,
604:I didn’t know much about God, ’cept that if you pissed Him off, He’d getcha one day. My momma knew God—she was raised a Methodist. In fact, her daddy was a Methodist preacher. Still, Momma said she wanted more from God, so for the past couple of years she’d been searching for more. I got to go with her on some of those searches. First, we tried the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were cool, till I learned they didn’t celebrate Christmas. God or no God, I wasn’t giving up Christmas! Then we tried the Muslims (or the “Black Muslims,” as Momma called them). I didn’t like them because when we got to their church (which they called a mosque), they made us change our clothes and put on some of their clothes: floor-length dresses and material to wrap our heads in so our hair wouldn’t show. And they searched us too, which pissed me off. But Momma seemed to understand; she said it was because white folks thought the Muslims were militant, so white folks was always messing with ’em—you know, harassing them, arresting them, threatening them. Momma said the Muslims had to be careful so that’s why they were searching folks. uring Momma’s God search, we tried a few other religions. I never really did care one way or the other. I never really seriously thought about God because, no matter what the religion, they all wanted you to be perfect. And I knew I was far from perfect. So I figured God wouldn’t wanna mess with me. I don’t know which religion Momma finally decided on. Maybe she realized she didn’t need a particular religion to know and love God or for God to know and love her. Whatever she decided, she also decided that she wasn’t going to choose for me. She wanted to wait until I was old enough and then let me decide my religion. ~ Cupcake Brown,
605:In reality, the damned are in the same place as the saved—in reality! But they hate it; it is their Hell. The saved love it, and it is their Heaven. It is like two people sitting side by side at an opera or a rock concert: the very thing that is Heaven to one is Hell to the other. Dostoyevski says, 'We are all in paradise, but we won’t see it'…Hell is not literally the 'wrath of God.' The love of God is an objective fact; the 'wrath of God' is a human projection of our own wrath upon God, as the Lady Julian saw—a disastrous misinterpretation of God’s love as wrath. God really says to all His creatures, 'I know you and I love you' but they hear Him saying, 'I never knew you; depart from me.' It is like angry children misinterpreting their loving parents’ affectionate advances as threats. They project their own hate onto their parents’ love and experience love as an enemy—which it is: an enemy to their egotistic defenses against joy…

Since God is love, since love is the essence of the divine life, the consequence of loss of this life is loss of love...Though the damned do not love God, God loves them, and this is their torture. The very fires of Hell are made of the love of God! Love received by one who only wants to hate and fight thwarts his deepest want and is therefore torture. If God could stop loving the damned, Hell would cease to be pure torture. If the sun could stop shining, lovers of the dark would no longer be tortured by it. But the sun could sooner cease to shine than God cease to be God...The lovelessness of the damned blinds them to the light of glory in which they stand, the glory of God’s fire. God is in the fire that to them is Hell. God is in Hell ('If I make my bed in Hell, Thou art there' [Ps 139:8]) but the damned do not know Him. ~ Peter Kreeft,
606:1. I DO SOLEMNLY RESOLVE to embrace my current season of life and will maximize my time in it. I will resist the urge to hurry through or circumvent any portion of my journey but will live with a spirit of contentment. 2. I WILL CHAMPION God’s model for womanhood in the face of a postfeminist culture. I will teach it to my daughters and encourage its support by my sons. 3. I WILL ACCEPT and celebrate my uniqueness, and will esteem and encourage the distinctions I admire in others. 4. I WILL LIVE as a woman answerable to God and faithfully committed to His Word. 5. I WILL SEEK to devote the best of myself, my time, and my talents to the primary roles the Lord has entrusted to me in this phase of my life. 6. I WILL BE a woman who is quick to listen and slow to speak. I will care about the concerns of others and esteem them more highly than myself. 7. I WILL FORGIVE those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged. 8. I WILL NOT TOLERATE evil influences even in the most justifiable form, in myself or my home, but will embrace and encourage a life of purity. 9. I WILL PURSUE justice, love mercy, and extend compassion toward others. 10. I WILL BE FAITHFUL to my husband and honor him in my conduct and conversation in order to bring glory to the name of the Lord. I will aspire to be a suitable partner for him to help him reach his God-given potential. 11. I WILL DEMONSTRATE to my children how to love God with all their hearts, minds, and strength, and will train them to respect authority and live responsibly. 12. I WILL CULTIVATE a peaceful home where everyone can sense God’s presence not only through acts of love and service but also through the pleasant and grateful attitude with which I perform them. 13. I FULLY RESOLVE to make today’s decisions with tomorrow’s impact in mind. I will consider my current choices in light of those who will come after me. ~ Priscilla Shirer,
607:When I stopped viewing girls as potential girlfriends and started treating them as sisters in Christ, I discovered the richness of true friendship. When I stopped worrying about who I was going to marry and began to trust God’s timing, I uncovered the incredible potential of serving God as a single. . . .

I believe the time has come for Christians, male and female, to own up to the mess we’ve left behind in our selfish pursuit of short-term romance. Dating may seem an innocent game, but as I see it, we are sinning against each other. What excuse will we have when God asks us to account for our actions and attitudes in relationships? If God sees a sparrow fall (Matthew 10:29), do you think He could possibly overlook the broken hearts and scarred emotions we cause in relationships based on selfishness?

Everyone around us may be playing the dating game. But at the end of our lives, we won’t answer to everyone. We’ll answer to God. . . .

Long before Seventeen magazine ever gave teenagers tips on dating, people did things very differently.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a guy and girl became romantically involved only if they planned to marry. If a young man spent time at a girl’s home, family and friends assumed that he intended to propose to her. But shifting attitudes in culture and the arrival of the automobile brought radical changes. The new “rules” allowed people to indulge in all the thrills of romantic love without having any intention of marriage. Author Beth Bailey documents these changes in a book whose title, From Front Porch to Backseat, says everything about the difference in society’s attitude when dating became the norm. Love and romance became things people could enjoy solely for their recreational value.

Though much has changed since the 1920s, the tendency of dating relationships to move toward intimacy without commitment remains very much the same. . . .

Many of the attitudes and practices of today’s dating relationships conflict with the lifestyle of smart love God wants us to live. ~ Joshua Harris,
608:I Choose Love...
No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves.

I Choose Joy...
I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God.

I Choose Peace...
I will live forgiven. I will forgive so I may live.

I Choose Patience...
I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Instead of cursing the one who takes my place, I'll invite him to do so, Rather complain that the wait is to long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clenching my fist at new assignments, I will face them with joy and courage.

I Choose Kindness...
I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for that is how God has treated me.

I Choose Goodness...
I will go without a dollar before I take a dishonest one. I will be overlooked before I will boast. I will confess before I accuse. I choose goodness.

I Choose Faithfulness...
Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My friends will not question my word. And my family will not question my love.

I Choose Gentleness...
Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it only be in praise. If I clench my fist, may it only be in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.

I Choose Self-Control...
I refuse to let what will rot, rule the eternal. I choose self-control. I will be drunk only by joy. I will be impassioned only by my faith. I will be influenced only by God. I will be taught only by Christ. I choose self-control.

Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek His grace. And then when this day is done I will place my head on my pillow and rest. ~ Max Lucado,
609:I guess when I first started hearing Céline Dion songs I did not realize that she was almost always singing about someone she is sooooo desperately in love with ! She has such longing and such agony as she is away from her lover . I tried to see a lesson in this : I think the way Celine Din feels about her lover is the way God feels must feel about the church ,which in some ways seems to have strayed so far from Him . I think God allowed me to REALLY MISS my boyfriend so I could catch a tiny glimpse of what his hear must feel as the church strays into religion and away from things that are so important to Him like helping the impoverished, unwanted people of the world . I got a tiny glimpse of how he longs and desires for my heart each and every minute of each and every day .
God so deeply ,passionately , desperately loves us . He intensely longs for his lover ,the church, to come back to his teachings of giving(surrendering) all we a have to lovingly serve Him ,our beloved , who lives in the hearts of the suffering poor people of this world and unite as a community in an effort to serve HIM in Them . It deeply moves me HIM KNOWING that he is singing to me even more longingly and passionately than Celine Dion wanting to adopt me into his family. That is pretty WONDERFUL !!!
Satan is not a fan of God winning our hearts (souls). He is battling every day . I am becoming more keenly aware of this spiritual battle between God and the devil for my heart (soul) than ever before. The devil tricks us into being materialistically selfish wanting more and more for ourselves this depriving us of the infinite eternal treasure of LOVE God wants to shower on us which no money or processions can buy . No where in the bible does it say I deserve a reward here on this earth
Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever work you do do ity with all your heart (it does not say “and after this work you deserve a long hot bath “ it does say “since you KNOW that ypu will receive an in hertiance in heaven from the lord as a reward “
And we know in our hearts that God is ALL we need (matthew 19-21 says Do not lay up for your selves treasures in this world where moth and rust doth corrupt …..but lay up for yourselves treasure (Love for God )in eternity “
page 174 Kisses from Katie ~ Katie Davis,
610:Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive. ~ Andrea Dworkin,
611:It is now that I must make a choice. Because of Calvary, I’m free to choose. And so I choose. I choose love . . . No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves. I choose joy . . . I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical . . . the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God. I choose peace . . . I will live forgiven. I will forgive so that I may live. I choose patience . . . I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Instead of cursing the one who takes my place, I’ll invite him to do so. Rather than complain that the wait is too long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clinching my fist at new assignments, I will face them with joy and courage. I choose kindness . . . I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me. I choose goodness . . . I will go without a dollar before I take a dishonest one. I will be overlooked before I will boast. I will confess before I will accuse. I choose goodness. I choose faithfulness . . . Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My associates will not question my word. My wife will not question my love. And my children will never fear that their father will not come home. I choose gentleness . . . Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself. I choose self-control . . . I am a spiritual being. After this body is dead, my spirit will soar. I refuse to let what will rot, rule the eternal. I choose self-control. I will be drunk only by joy. I will be impassioned only by my faith. I will be influenced only by God. I will be taught only by Christ. I choose self-control. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek his grace. And then, when this day is done, I will place my head on my pillow and rest. ~ Max Lucado,
612:From the essay on Love, in which he describes as a wilderness experience his daily visits with his wife to a hospital 3,000 miles from home in a strange city, where someone he loves is in danger of dying.
“When the worst finally happens, or almost happens, a kind of peace comes. I had passed beyond grief, beyond terror, all but beyond hope, and it was thee, in that wilderness, that for the first time in my life I caught sight of something of what it must be like to love God truly. It was only a glimpse, but it was like stumbling on fresh water in the desert, like remembering something so huge and extraordinary that my memory had been unable to contain it. Though God was nowhere to be clearly seen, nowhere to be clearly heard, I had to be near him—even in the elevator riding up to her floor, even walking down the corridor to the one door among all those doors that had her name taped on it. I loved him because there was nothing else left. I loved him because he seemed to have made himself as helpless in his might as I was in my helplessness. I loved him not so much in spite of there being nothing in it for me but almost because there was nothing in it for me. For the first time in my life, there in that wilderness, I caught a glimpse of what it must be like to love God truly, for his own sake, to love him no matter what. If I loved him with less than all my heart, soul, and will, I loved him with at least as much of them as I had left for loving anything…

I did not love God, God knows, because I was some sort of saint or hero. I did not love him because I suddenly saw the light (there was almost no light at all) or because I hoped by loving him to persuade him to heal the young woman I loved. I loved him because I couldn’t help myself. I loved him because the one who commands us to love is the one who also empowers us to love, as there in the wilderness of that dark and terrible time I was, through no doing of my own, empowered to love him at least a little, at least enough to survive. And in the midst of it, these small things happened that were as big as heaven and earth because through them a hope beyond hopelessness happened. “O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and for evermore.”…

The final secret, I think, is this: that the words “You shall love the Lord your God” become in the end less a command than a promise. ~ Frederick Buechner,
613:Love one another, Fathers,” said Father Zossima, as far as Alyosha could remember afterwards. “Love God’s people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth... And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognize that. Else he would have had no reason to come here. When he realizes that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of our seclusion is attained. For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world with your tears... Each of you keep watch over your heart and confess your sins to yourself unceasingly. Be not afraid of your sins, even when perceiving them, if only there be penitence, but make no conditions with God. Again I say, Be not proud. Be proud neither to the little nor to the great. Hate not those who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and slander you. Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists—and I mean not only the good ones—for there are many good ones among them, especially in our day—hate not even the wicked ones. Remember them in your prayers thus: Save, O Lord, all those who have none to pray for them, save too all those who will not pray. And add: it is not in pride that I make this prayer, O Lord, for I am lower than all men... Love God’s people, let not strangers draw away the flock, for if you slumber in your slothfulness and disdainful pride, or worse still, in covetousness, they will come from all sides and draw away your flock. Expound the Gospel to the people unceasingly... be not extortionate... Do not love gold and silver, do not hoard them... Have faith. Cling to the banner and raise it on high. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
614:Love one another, Fathers,’ said Father Zossima, as far as Alyosha could remember afterwards. ‘Love God’s people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth....

And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognise that. Else he would have had no reason to come here. When he realises that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of our seclusion is attained. For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men — and everything
on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and
every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world with your tears....

Each of you keep watch over your heart and confess your sins to yourself unceasingly. Be not afraid of your sins, even when perceiving them, if only there be penitence, but make no conditions with God. Again, I say, be not proud. Be proud neither to the little nor to the great. Hate not those who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and slander you. Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists — and I mean not only the good ones — for there are many good ones among them, especially in our day — hate not even the wicked ones. Remember them in your prayers thus: Save, O Lord, all those who have none to pray for them, save too all those who will not pray. And add: it is not in pride that I make this prayer, O Lord, for I am lower than all men....

Love God’s people, let not strangers draw away the flock, for if you slumber in your slothfulness and disdainful pride, or worse still, in covetousness, they will come from all sides and draw away your flock. Expound the Gospel to the people unceasingly... be not extortionate.... Do not love gold and silver, do not hoard them.... Have faith. Cling to the banner and raise it on high. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
615:Love one another, fathers," the elder taught (as far as Alyosha could recall afterwards). "Love God's people. For we are not holier than those in the world because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, but, on the contrary, anyone who comes here, by the very fact that he has come, already knows himself to be worse than all those who are in the world, worse than all on earth...And the longer a monk lives within his walls, the more keenly he must be aware of it. For otherwise he had no reason to come here. But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world's and each person's, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth. This knowledge is the crown of the monk's path, and of every man's path on earth. For monks are not a different sort of men, but only such as all men on earth ought also to be. Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite, universal, and that knows no satiety. Then each of us will be able to gain the whole world by love and wash away the world's sins with his tears...Let each of you keep close company with his heart, let each of you confess to himself untiringly. Do not be afraid of your sin, even when you perceive it, provided you are repentant, but do not place conditions on God. Again I say, do not be proud. Do not be proud before the lowly, do not be proud before the great either. And do not hate those who reject you, disgrace you, revile you, and slander you. Do not hate atheists, teachers of evil, materialists, not even those among them who are wicked, nor those who are good, for many of them are good, especially in our time. Remember them thus in your prayers: save, Lord, those whom there is no one to pray for, save also those who do not want to pray to you. And add at once: it is not in my pride that I pray for it, Lord, for I myself am more vile than all...Love God's people, do not let newcomers draw your flock away, for if in your laziness and disdainful pride, in your self-interest most of all, you fall asleep, they will come from all sides and lead your flock away. Teach the Gospel to the people untiringly...Do not engage in usury...Do not love silver and gold, do not keep it...Believe, and hold fast to the banner. Raise it high... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
616:On the two kinds of certainty of eternal life. In this life there are two kinds of certainty concerning the life which is eternal: the one consists in those occasions when God tells us of it either himself or through an angel or special revelation, although this happens rarely and only to a few. The other kind of knowledge is better and more beneficial and falls frequently to those whose love is perfect. This happens to those whose love for and intimacy with their God is so great that they trust him completely and are so sure of him that they can no longer have any doubts, their certainty being founded on their love for him in all creatures without distinction. And if all creatures were to reject and abjure him, even if God himself were to do so, then they would not cease to trust, for love is not capable of mistrust but can only trust all that is good. And there is no need for anything to be said to either the lover or the beloved, for as soon as God senses that this person is his friend, he immediately knows all that is good for them and that belongs to their well-being. For however devoted you are to him, you may be sure that he is immeasurably more devoted to you and has incomparably more faith in you. For he is faithfulness itself – of this we can be certain as those who love him are certain. This type of certainty is far greater, more perfect and true than the other and it cannot deceive us, while the first kind can be deceptive and can easily be an illusion. Indeed, the second type is experienced in all the faculties of our soul and cannot deceive those who truly love God; indeed they no more doubt it than they doubt God himself, for love drives out all fear. ‘Love knows no fear’ as St John12 (1 John 4:18) says, and it is also written: ‘Love covers a multitude of sins’ (1 Peter 4:8). For where there is sin, there can be neither complete trust nor love, since love completely covers over sins and knows nothing of them. Not in such a way as if we had not sinned, but rather it wipes them away and drives them out, as if they had never existed. For all God’s works are so utterly perfect and overflowing that whoever he forgives, he forgives totally and absolutely, preferring to forgive big sins rather than little ones, all of which creates perfect trust. I hold this kind of knowledge to be incomparably better, more rewarding and more authentic than the other, since neither sin nor anything else can obstruct it. For when God finds people in the same degree of love, then he judges them in the same way, regardless of whether they have sinned greatly or not at all. But those to whom more is forgiven, should have a greater love, as our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘They to whom more is forgiven must love more’ (Luke 7:47). ~ Meister Eckhart,
617:Describe the defeated ones,” said a merchant, when he saw that the Copt had finished speaking. And he answered: The defeated are those who never fail. Defeat means that we lose a particular battle or war. Failure does not allow us to go on fighting. Defeat comes when we fail to get something we very much want. Failure does not allow us to dream. Its motto is: “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.” Defeat ends when we launch into another battle. Failure has no end; it is a lifetime choice. Defeat is for those who, despite their fears, live with enthusiasm and faith. Defeat is for the valiant. Only they will know the honor of losing and the joy of winning. I am not here to tell you that defeat is part of life; we all know that. Only the defeated know Love. Because it is in the realm of Love that we fight our first battles—and generally lose. I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought. They managed to avoid scars, humiliations, and feelings of helplessness, as well as those moments when even warriors doubt the existence of God. Such people can say with pride: “I never lost a battle.” On the other hand, they will never be able to say: “I won a battle.” Not that they care. They live in a universe in which they believe they are invulnerable; they close their eyes to injustices and to suffering; they feel safe because they do not have to deal with the daily challenges faced by those who risk stepping out beyond their own boundaries. They have never heard the words “good-bye” or “I’ve come back. Embrace me with the fervor of someone who, having lost me, has found me again.” Those who were never defeated seem happy and superior, masters of a truth they never had to lift a finger to achieve. They are always on the side of the strong. They’re like hyenas, who eat only the leavings of lions. They teach their children: “Don’t get involved in conflicts; you’ll only lose. Keep your doubts to yourself and you’ll never have any problems. If someone attacks you, don’t get offended or demean yourself by hitting back. There are more important things in life.” In the silence of the night, they fight their imaginary battles: their unrealized dreams, the injustices to which they turned a blind eye, the moments of cowardice they managed to conceal from other people—but not from themselves—and the love that crossed their path with a sparkle in its eyes, the love God had intended for them, but which they lacked the courage to embrace. And they promise themselves: “Tomorrow will be different.” But tomorrow comes and the paralyzing question surfaces in their mind: “What if it doesn’t work out?” And so they do nothing. Woe to those who were never beaten! They will never be winners in this life. ~ Paulo Coelho,
618:Hi again !
My fav quote from "Kisses from Katie " By Katie J Davis frm page 174

As an 8 year old ,when I first started hearing Céline Dion’s songs, I did not realize that she was almost always singing about someone she is sooooo desperately in love with ! She has such longing and such agony as she is away from her lover .But now a I feel so much longing for my boyfriend whom Im losing .I see a lesson in this : I think the way Celine Dion feels about her lover is the way God must feel about the church ,which in some ways seems to have strayed so far from Him .
I think God allowed me to REALLY MISS my boyfriend so I could catch a tiny glimpse of what God’s heart must feel as the church strays into religion and away from things that are so important to Him like helping the impoverished, unwanted people of the world . He longs and desires for my heart to come back to Him each and every minute of each and every day .
God so deeply ,passionately , desperately loves us . He intensely longs for his lover to come back to his teachings of giving all we a have to Him ,our beloved , who lives in the hearts of the suffering poor people of this world and unite as a community in an effort to serve HIM in Them and I am so awed by his love for me .I feel so precious and dear to him that He is singing to me even more longingly and passionately than Celine Dion sings to her lover. That is pretty WONDERFUL !!!
Satan is not a fan of God our love affair with God and so Satan is battling every day to keep us from giving our hearts to God. I am becoming more keenly aware than ever before of this battle between God and Satan to claim my heart . The devil tricks us into giving our hearts to materialistically selfish desires: wanting more and more for ourselves so we forget Love for God and our neighbor. So that we trade our noble inheritance : the precious treasure of LOVE God wants to shower on us which no money or processions can buy for more ME ME ME . No where in the bible does it say I deserve a reward (boy friend and material abundance ) here on this earth but it does say that I will have a joy so great that it is greater than all good things of this world combined .
Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever work you do do it with all your heart (it does not say “and after this work you deserve a long hot bath and some me time “ it does say “Serve with all your heart since you KNOW that you will receive an in heritance in heaven from the Lord as a reward “
…And we KNOW in our hearts that God is ALL we need to overflow with joy ….
(Matthew 19-21 says Do not lay up for your selves treasures in this world where moth and rust doth corrupt …..but lay up for yourselves treasure (Love for God )which will be yours for eternity “

Bless you ,
Dari ~ Katie Davis,
619:To realize we love another to get love because we do not love our own self is one of our core human wounds. For each of the two parts of this prayer meditation, express out loud or silently these sentences. Let the feelings and memories come. Express the feelings intuitively, changing and adding to the sentences if it helps. You can repeat one sentence several times in a row until you feel it, or go straight into the next one. You can improvise sentences that may better fit your feelings. One may also experience spirit interference in this prayer meditation. This can manifest as voices and feelings disagreeing with it. Unless you are living as unconditional love, you can be sure these are negative spirits trying to dissuade you from traveling deeper into your own wounds to release them, thereby banishing these spirit influences forever. Do each part for one hour. This meditation prayer can be about two hours long. Center yourself and drop into a prayerful, silent heartful space. Ask to become vulnerable and open your heart. Part One: I am not loved I am not loved I am not loved I have never been loved My parents did not love me I need love I need love I need love Please love me My quest for love has never worked My quest for love will never work Nobody really loves me Nobody really loved me How do you feel? Part Two: I am love I am love I am love God loves me God loves me God loves me God desires me God desires me God desires me I am love I am love I am love (from your heart) I am not loved I have never been loved I am not loved I am not LOVED I am just not loved No one has ever loved me No one loves me I am not loved I am not loved I do not love myself I do not love myself I do not love myself I am loved I am loved I am loved I am LOVED God is not here for me God has never been here for me God is not here for me God has left me I am not loved I have never been loved No one loves me God loves me God LOVES me God wants me God wants me God LOVES me God WANTS me God desires me I don’t want God I don’t want God I don’t want God I want fear I want fear I want fear I AM LOVED I AM LOVED I AM LOVED God wants me God desires me God loves me What does this make you feel? The experience of love and need in co-dependent relationships In such a relationship, one or both partners cover each others emotions by giving false comfort, false ‘love’ and other placating behaviors that prevent the other in deeply feeling and owning their own emotions. When you want to get out of this pattern, this prayer meditation will help. It will let both partners feel the truth of the unspoken demand of love and how they respond to it. Simply sit in front of your partner and express out loud these sentences as a way to reveal the unconscious behavior that is being played out between you both. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha,
620:Listening and Answering Throughout most of the great Old Testament book that bears his name, Job cries out to God in agonized prayer. For all his complaints, Job never walks away from God or denies his existence—he processes all his pain and suffering through prayer. Yet he cannot accept the life God is calling him to live. Then the skies cloud over and God speaks to Job “out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1). The Lord recounts in vivid detail his creation and sustenance of the universe and of the natural world. Job is astonished and humbled by this deeper vision of God (Job 40:3–5) and has a breakthrough. He finally prays a mighty prayer of repentance and adoration (Job 42:1–6). The question of the book of Job is posed in its very beginning. Is it possible that a man or woman can come to love God for himself alone so that there is a fundamental contentment in life regardless of circumstances (Job 1:9)?97 By the end of the book we see the answer. Yes, this is possible, but only through prayer. What had happened? The more clearly Job saw who God was, the fuller his prayers became—moving from mere complaint to confession, appeal, and praise. In the end he broke through and was able to face anything in life. This new refinement and level of character came through the interaction of listening to God’s revealed Word and answering in prayer. The more true his knowledge of God, the more fruitful his prayers became, and the more sweeping the change in his life. The power of our prayers, then, lies not primarily in our effort and striving, or in any technique, but rather in our knowledge of God. You may respond, “But God spoke audible words to Job out of a storm. I wish God spoke to me like that.” The answer is—we have something better, an incalculably clearer expression of God’s character. “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son . . . the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:1–3). Jesus Christ is the Word of God (John 1:1–14) because no more comprehensive, personal, and beautiful communication of God is possible. We cannot look directly at the sun with our eyes. The glory of it would immediately overwhelm and destroy our sight. We have to look at it through a filter, and then we can see the great flames and colors of it. When we look at Jesus Christ as he is shown to us in the Scriptures, we are looking at the glory of God through the filter of a human nature. That is one of the many reasons, as we shall see, that Christians pray “in Jesus’ name.” Through Christ, prayer becomes what Scottish Reformer John Knox called “an earnest and familiar talking with God,” and John Calvin called an “intimate conversation” of believers with God, or elsewhere “a communion of men with God”—a two-way communicative interaction.98 “For through [Christ] we . . . have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Eph 2:18). ~ Timothy J Keller,
621:Dr. Syngmann: But someone must have made it all. Don't you think so, John?

Pastor Jón: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and so on, said the late pastor Lens.

Dr. Syngmann: Listen, John, how is it possible to love God? And what reason is there for doing so? To love, is that not the prelude to sleeping together, something connected with the genitals, at its best a marital tragedy among apes? It would be ridiculous. People are fond of their children, all right, but if someone said he was fond of God, wouldn't that be blasphemy?

Pastor Jón once again utters that strange word 'it' and says: I accept it.

Dr. Syngmann: What do you mean when you say you accept God? Did you consent to his creating the world? Do you think the world as good as all that, or something? This world! Or are you all that pleased with yourself?

Pastor Jón: Have you noticed that the ewe that was bleating outside the window is now quiet? She has found her lamb. And I believe that the calf here in the homefield will pull through.

Dr. Syngmann: I know as well as you do, John, that animals are perfect within their limits and that man is the lowest rung in the reverse-evolution of earthly life: one need only compare the pictures of an emperor and a dog to see that, or a farmer and the horse he rides. But I for my part refuse to accept it.

Pastor Jón Prímus: To refuse to accept it - what is meant by that? Suicide or something?

Dr. Syngmann: At this moment, when the alignment with a higher humanity is at hand, a chapter is at last beginning that can be taken seriously in the history of the earth. Epagogics provide the arguments to prove to the Creator that life is an entirely meaningless gimmick unless it is eternal.

Pastor Jón: Who is to bell the cat?

Dr. Syngmann: As regards epagogics, it is pleading a completely logical case. In six volumes I have proved my thesis with incontrovertible arguments; even juridically. But obviously it isn't enough to use cold reasoning. I take the liberty of appealing to this gifted Maker's honour. I ask Him - how could it ever occur to you to hand over the earth to demons? The only ideal over which demons can unite is to have a war. Why did you permit the demons of the earth to profess their love to you in services and prayers as if you were their God? Will you let honest men call you demiurge, you, the Creator of the world? Whose defeat is it, now that the demons of the earth have acquired a machine to wipe out all life? Whose defeat is it if you let life on earth die on your hands? Can the Maker of the heavens stoop so low as to let German philosophers give Him orders what to do? And finally - I am a creature you have created. And that's why I am here, just like you. Who has given you the right to wipe me out? Is justice ridiculous in your eyes? Cards on the table! (He mumbles to himself.) You are at least under an obligation to resurrect me! ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness,
622:Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew - who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed there was no guess — no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They knew that in the eternity — back of that morning, he had done nothing. They knew that it took him six days to make the earth — all plants, all animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in space. They knew exactly what he did each day and when he rested. They knew the origin, the cause of evil, of all crime, of all disease and death.

At the same time they knew that God created man in his own image and was perfectly satisfied with his work... They knew all about the Flood -- knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his children -- the old and young -- the bowed patriarch and the dimpled babe -- the young man and the merry maiden -- the loving mother and the laughing child -- because his mercy endureth forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds -- everything that walked or crawled or flew -- because his loving kindness is over all his works. They knew that God, for the purpose of civilizing his children, had devoured some with earthquakes, destroyed some with storms of fire, killed some with his lightnings, millions with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed countless thousands upon the fields of war. They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

Then I asked myself the question: Is there a supernatural power -- an arbitrary mind -- an enthroned God -- a supreme will that sways the tides and currents of the world -- to which all causes bow?

I do not deny. I do not know - but I do not believe. I believe that the natural is supreme - that from the infinite chain no link can be lost or broken — that there is no supernatural power that can answer prayer - no power that worship can persuade or change — no power that cares for man.

Is there a God?

I do not know.

Is man immortal?

I do not know.

One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.

We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know. We can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom that the brave have won. We can destroy the monsters of superstition, the hissing snakes of ignorance and fear. We can drive from our minds the frightful things that tear and wound with beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men. We can fill our lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art and song, and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with sunshine — with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to the last drop the golden cup of joy. ~ Robert G Ingersoll,
623:Poets At Seven Years
And the mother, closing the work-book
Went off, proud, satisfied, not seeing,
In the blue eyes, under the lumpy brow,
The soul of her child given over to loathing.
All day he sweated obedience: very
Intelligent: yet dark habits, certain traits
Seemed to show bitter hypocrisies at work!
In the shadow of corridors with damp paper,
He stuck out his tongue in passing, two fists
In his groin, seeing specks under his shut lids.
A doorway open to evening: by the light
You’d see him, high up, groaning on the railing
Under a void of light hung from the roof. In summer,
Especially, vanquished, stupefied, stubborn,
He’d shut himself in the toilet’s coolness:
He could think in peace there, sacrificing his nostrils.
When the small garden cleansed of the smell of day,
Filled with light, behind the house, in winter,
Lying at the foot of a wall, buried in clay
Rubbing his dazzled eyes hard, for the visions,
He listened to the scabbed espaliers creaking.
Pity! His only companions were those children
Bare-headed and puny, eyes sunk in their cheeks,
Hiding thin fingers yellow and black with mud
Under old clothes soiled with excrement,
Who talked with the sweetness of the simple-minded!
And if his mother took fright, surprising him
At his vile compassions: the child’s deep
Tenderness overcame her astonishment.
All fine. She’d had the blue look, – that lies!
At seven he was making novels about life
In the great desert, where ravished Freedom shines,
Forests, suns, riverbanks, savannahs! – He used
Illustrated weeklies where he saw, blushing,
Smiling Italian girls, and Spanish women.
125
When the daughter of next door workers came by,
Eight years old – in Indian prints, brown-eyed,
A little brute, and jumped him from behind,
Shaking out her tresses, in a corner,
And he was under her, he bit her buttocks,
Since she never wore knickers:
– And, bruised by her fists and heels,
Carried the taste of her back to his room.
He feared the pallid December Sundays,
When, hair slicked back, at a mahogany table,
He read from a Bible with cabbage-green margins:
Dreams oppressed him each night in the alcove.
He didn’t love God: rather those men in the dusk,
Returning, black, in smocks, to the outer suburbs
Where the town-crier, with a triple drum beat,
Made the crowds laugh and murmur at the edicts.
– He dreamed of the amorous prairies, where
Luminous swells, pure odours, gold pubescences,
Stirred in the calm there, and then took flight!
And above all how he savoured sombre things,
When, in his bare room behind closed shutters,
High, and blue, and pierced with acrid damp,
He read his novel, mooned over endlessly,
Full of drowned forests, leaden ochre skies,
Flowers of flesh opening in star-filled woods,
Dizziness, epilepsies, defeats, compassion!
– While the street noises rumbled on below,
Lying alone on pieces of unbleached canvas,
With a violent presentiment of setting sail!
~ Arthur Rimbaud,
624:A Preacher
"Lest that by any means
When I have preached to others I myself
Should be a castaway." If some one now
Would take that text and preach to us that preach, -Some one who could forget his truths were old
And what were in a thousand bawling mouths
While they filled his -- some one who could so throw
His life into the old dull skeletons
Of points and morals, inferences, proofs,
Hopes, doubts, persuasions, all for time untold
Worn out of the flesh, that one could lose from mind
How well one knew his lesson, how oneself
Could with another, may be choicer, style
Enforce it, treat it from another view
And with another logic -- some one warm
With the rare heart that trusts itself and knows
Because it loves -- yes such a one perchance,
With such a theme, might waken me as I
Have wakened others, I who am no more
Than steward of an eloquence God gives
For others' use not mine. But no one bears
Apostleship for us. We teach and teach
Until, like drumming pedagogues, we lose
The thought that what we teach has higher ends
Than being taught and learned. And if a man
Out of ourselves should cry aloud, "I sin,
And ye are sinning, all of us who talk
Our Sunday half-hour on the love of God,
Trying to move our peoples, then go home
To sleep upon it and, when fresh again,
To plan another sermon, nothing moved,
Serving our God like clock-work sentinels,
We who have souls ourselves," why I like the rest
Should turn in anger: "Hush this charlatan
Who, in his blatant arrogance, assumes
Over us who know our duties."
Yet that text
Which galls me, what a sermon might be made
Upon its theme! How even I myself
28
Could stir some of our priesthood! Ah! but then
Who would stir me?
I know not how it is;
I take the faith in earnest, I believe,
Even at happy times I think I love,
I try to pattern me upon the type
My Master left us, am no hypocrite
Playing my soul against good men's applause,
Nor monger of the Gospel for a cure,
But serve a Master whom I chose because
It seemed to me I loved him, whom till now
My longing is to love; and yet I feel
A falseness somewhere clogging me. I seem
Divided from myself; I can speak words
Of burning faith and fire myself with them;
I can, while upturned faces gaze on me
As if I were their Gospel manifest,
Break into unplanned turns as natural
As the blind man's cry for healing, pass beyond
My bounded manhood in the earnestness
Of a messenger from God. And then I come
And in my study's quiet find again
The callous actor who, because long since
He had some feelings in him like the talk
The book puts in his mouth, still warms his pit
And even, in his lucky moods, himself
With the passion of his part, but lays aside
His heroism with his satin suit
And thinks "the part is good and well conceived
And very natural -- no flaw to find" -And then forgets it.
Yes I preach to others
And am -- I know not what -- a castaway?
No, but a man who feels his heart asleep,
As he might feel his hand or foot. The limb
Will not awake without a little shock,
A little pain perhaps, a nip or blow,
And that one gives and feels the waking pricks.
But for one's heart I know not. I can give
No shock to make mine prick. I seem to be
Just such a man as those who claim the power
Or have it, (say, to serve the thought), of willing
29
That such a one should break an iron bar,
And such a one resist the strength of ten,
And the thing is done, yet cannot will themselves
One least small breath of power beyond the wont.
To-night now I might triumph. Not a breath
But shivered when I pictured the dead soul
Awaking when the body dies to know
Itself has lived too late, and drew in long
With yearning when I shewed how perfect love
Might make Earth's self be but an earlier Heaven.
And I may say and not be over-bold,
Judging from former fruits, "Some one to-night
Has come more near to God, some one has felt
What it may mean to love Him, some one learned
A new great horror against death and sin,
Some one at least -- it may be many." Yet -And yet -- Why I the preacher look for God,
Saying "I know thee Lord, what I should see
If I could see thee as some can on earth,
But I do not see thee," and "I know thee Lord,
What loving thee is like, as if I loved,
But I cannot love thee." And even with the thought
The answer grows "Thine is the greater sin,"
And I stand self-convicted yet not shamed,
But quiet, reasoning why it should be thus,
And almost wishing I could suddenly
Fall in some awful sin, that so might come
A living sense of God, if but by fear,
And a repentance sharp as is the need.
But now, the sin being indifference,
Repentance too is tepid.
There are some,
Good men and honest though not overwise
Nor studious of the subtler depths of minds
Below the surface strata, who would teach,
In such a case, to scare oneself awake
(As girls do, telling ghost-tales in the dark),
With scriptural terrors, all the judgments spoken
Against the tyrant empires, all the wrath
On them who slew the prophets and forsook
Their God for Baal, and the awful threat
For him whose dark dread sin is pardonless,
30
So that in terror one might cling to God -As the poor wretch, who, angry with his life,
Has dashed into a dank and hungry pool,
Learns in the death-gasp to love life again
And clings unreasoning to the saving hand.
Well I know some -- for the most part with thin minds
Of the effervescent kind, easy to froth,
Though easier to let stagnate -- who thus wrought
Convulsive pious moods upon themselves
And, thinking all tears sorrow and all texts
Repentance, are in peace upon the trust
That a grand necessary stage is past,
And do love God as I desire to love.
And now they'll look on their hysteric time
And wonder at it, seeing it not real
And yet not feigned. They'll say "A special time
Of God's direct own working -- you may see
It was not natural."
And there I stand
In face with it, and know it. Not for me;
Because I know it, cannot trust in it;
It is not natural. It does not root
Silently in the dark as God's seeds root,
Then day by day move upward in the light.
It does not wake a tremulous glimmering dawn,
Then swell to perfect day as God's light does.
It does not give to life a lowly child
To grow by days and morrows to man's strength,
As do God's natural birthdays. God who sets
Some little seed of good in everything
May bring his good from this, but not for one
Who calmly says "I know -- this is a dream,
A mere mirage sprung up of heat and mist;
It cannot slake my thirst: but I will try
To fool my fancy to it, and will rush
To cool my burning throat, as if there welled
Clear waters in the visionary lake,
That so perchance Heaven pitying me may send
Its own fresh showers upon me." I perchance
Might, with occasion, spite of steady will
And steady nerve, bring on the ecstasy:
But what avails without the simple faith?
31
I should not cheat myself, and who cheats God?
And wherefore should I count love more than truth,
And buy the loving him with such a price,
Even if 'twere possible to school myself
To an unbased belief and love him more
Only through a delusion?
Not so, Lord.
Let me not buy my peace, nay not my soul,
At price of one least word of thy strong truth
Which is Thyself. The perfect love must be
When one shall know thee. Better one should lose
The present peace of loving, nay of trusting,
Better to doubt and be perplexed in soul
Because thy truth seems many and not one,
Than cease to seek thee, even through reverence,
In the fulness and minuteness of thy truth.
If it be sin, forgive me: I am bold,
My God, but I would rather touch the ark
To find if thou be there than -- thinking hushed
"'Tis better to believe, I will believe,
Though, were't not for belief, 'Tis far from proved" -Shout with the people "Lo our God is there,"
And stun my doubts by iterating faith.
And yet, I know not why it is, this knack
Of sermon-making seems to carry me
Athwart the truth at times before I know -In little things at least; thank God the greater
Have not yet grown by the familiar use
Such puppets of a phrase as to slip by
Without clear recognition. Take to-night -I preached a careful sermon, gravely planned,
All of it written. Not a line was meant
To fit the mood of any differing
From my own judgment: not the less I find -(I thought of it coming home while my good Jane
Talked of the Shetland pony I must get
For the boys to learn to ride:) yes here it is,
And here again on this page -- blame by rote,
Where by my private judgment I blame not.
"We think our own thoughts on this day," I said,
"Harmless it may be, kindly even, still
Not Heaven's thoughts -- not Sunday thoughts I'll say."
32
Well now do I, now that I think of it,
Advise a separation of our thoughts
By Sundays and by week-days, Heaven's and ours?
By no means, for I think the bar is bad.
I'll teach my children "Keep all thinkings pure,
And think them when you like, if but the time
Is free to any thinking. Think of God
So often that in anything you do
It cannot seem you have forgotten Him,
Just as you would not have forgotten us,
Your mother and myself, although your thoughts
Were not distinctly on us, while you played;
And, if you do this, in the Sunday's rest
You will most naturally think of Him;
Just as your thoughts, though in a different way,
(God being the great mystery He is
And so far from us and so strangely near),
Would on your mother's birthday-holiday
Come often back to her." But I'd not urge
A treadmill Sunday labour for their mind,
Constant on one forced round: nor should I blame
Their constant chatter upon daily themes.
I did not blame Jane for her project told,
Though she had heard my sermon, and no doubt
Ought, as I told my flock, to dwell on that.
Then here again "the pleasures of the world
That tempt the younger members of my flock."
Now I think really that they've not enough
Of these same pleasures. Grey and joyless lives
A many of them have, whom I would see
Sharing the natural gaieties of youth.
I wish they'd more temptations of the kind.
Now Donne and Allan preach such things as these
Meaning them and believing. As for me,
What did I mean? Neither to feign nor teach
A Pharisaic service. 'Twas just this,
That there are lessons and rebukes long made
So much a thing of course that, unobserving,
One sets them down as one puts dots to i's,
Crosses to t's.
A simple carelessness;
No more than that. There's the excuse -- and I,
33
Who know that every carelessness is falsehood
Against my trust, what guide or check have I
Being, what I have called myself, an actor
Able to be awhile the man he plays
But in himself a heartless common hack?
I felt no falseness as I spoke the trash,
I was thrilled to see it moved the listeners,
Grew warmer to my task! 'Twas written well,
Habit had made the thoughts come fluently
As if they had been real -Yes, Jane, yes,
I hear you -- Prayers and supper waiting me -I'll come -Dear Jane, who thinks me half a saint.
~ Augusta Davies Webster,
625: The Rishi
King Manu in the former ages of the world, when the
Arctic continent still subsisted, seeks knowledge from the Rishi of the Pole, who after long baffling him with conflicting side-lights of the knowledge, reveals to him what it chiefly concerns man to know.

MANU
Rishi who trance-held on the mountains old
Art slumbering, void
Of sense or motion, for in the spirit's hold
Of unalloyed
Immortal bliss thou dreamst protected! Deep
Let my voice glide
Into thy dumb retreat and break thy sleep
Abysmal. Hear!
The frozen snows that heap thy giant bed
Ice-cold and clear,
The chill and desert heavens above thee spread
Vast, austere,
Are not so sharp but that thy warm limbs brook
Their bitter breath,
Are not so wide as thy immense outlook
On life and death:
Their vacancy thy silent mind and bright
Outmeasureth.

But ours are blindly active and thy light
We have forgone.

RISHI
Who art thou, warrior armed gloriously
Like the sun?
Thy gait is as an empire and thine eye
Dominion.
Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
MANU
King Manu, of the Aryan peoples lord,
Greets thee, Sage.

RISHI
I know thee, King, earth to whose sleepless sword
Was heritage.

The high Sun's distant glories gave thee forth
On being's edge:
Where the slow skies of the auroral North
Lead in the morn
And flaming dawns for ever on heaven's verge
Wheel and turn,
Thundering remote the clamorous Arctic surge
Saw thee born.

There 'twas thy lot these later Fates to build,
This race of man
New-fashion. O watcher with the mountains wild,
The icy plain,
Thee I too, asleep, have watched, both when the Pole
Was brightening wan
And when like a wild beast the darkness stole
Prowling and slow
Alarming with its silent march the soul.

O King, I know
Thy purpose; for the vacant ages roll
Since man below
Conversed with God in friendship. Thou, reborn
For men perplexed,
Seekest in this dim aeon and forlorn
With evils vexed
The vanished light. For like this Arctic land
Death has annexed
To sleep, our being's summits cold and grand
Where God abides,
Repel the tread of thought. I too, O King,

221

222

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909
In winds and tides
Have sought Him, and in armies thundering,
And where Death strides
Over whole nations. Action, thought and peace
Were questioned, sleep,
And waking, but I had no joy of these,
Nor ponderings deep,
And pity was not sweet enough, nor good
My will could keep.

Often I found Him for a moment, stood
Astonished, then
It fell from me. I could not hold the bliss,
The force for men,
My brothers. Beauty ceased my heart to please,
Brightness in vain
Recalled the vision of the light that glows
Suns behind:
I hated the rich fragrance of the rose;
Weary and blind,
I tired of the suns and stars; then came
With broken mind
To heal me of the rash devouring flame,
The dull disease,
And sojourned with this mountain's summits bleak,
These frozen seas.

King, the blind dazzling snows have made me meek,
Cooled my unease.

Pride could not follow, nor the restless will
Come and go;
My mind within grew holy, calm and still
Like the snow.

MANU
O thou who wast with chariots formidable
And with the bow!
Voiceless and white the cold unchanging hill,

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
Has it then
A mightier presence, deeper mysteries
Than human men?
The warm low hum of crowds, towns, villages,
The sun and rain,
The village maidens to the water bound,
The happy herds,
The fluting of the shepherd lads, the sound
Myriad of birds,
Speak these not clearer to the heart, convey
More subtle words?
Here is but great dumb night, an awful day
Inert and dead.

RISHI
The many's voices fill the listening ear,
Distract the head:
The One is silence; on the snows we hear
Silence tread.

MANU
What hast thou garnered from the crags that lour,
The icy field?
RISHI
O King, I spurned this body's death; a Power
There was, concealed,
That raised me. Rescued from the pleasant bars
Our longings build,
My winged soul went up above the stars
Questing for God.
223

224

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909
MANU
Oh, didst thou meet Him then? in what bright field
Upon thy road?
RISHI
I asked the heavenly wanderers as they wheeled
For His abode.

MANU
Could glorious Saturn and his rings of hue
Direct thy flight?
RISHI
Sun could not tell, nor any planet knew
Its source of light,
Nor could I glean that knowledge though I paced
The world's beyond
And into outer nothingness have gazed.

Time's narrow sound
I crossed, the termless flood where on the Snake
One slumbers throned,
Attempted. But the ages from Him break
Blindly and Space
Forgets its origin. Then I returned
Where luminous blaze
Deathless and ageless in their ease unearned
The ethereal race.

MANU
Did the gods tell thee? Has Varuna seen
The high God's face?

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
RISHI
How shall they tell of Him who marvel at sin
And smile at grief?
MANU
Did He not send His blissful Angels down
For thy relief?
RISHI
The Angels know Him not, who fear His frown,
Have fixed belief.

MANU
Is there no heaven of eternal light
Where He is found?
RISHI
The heavens of the Three have beings bright
Their portals round,
And I have journeyed to those regions blest,
Those hills renowned.

In Vishnu's house where wide Love builds his nest,
My feet have stood.

MANU
Is he not That, the blue-winged Dove of peace,
Father of Good?
RISHI
Nor Brahma, though the suns and hills and seas
Are called his brood.
225

226

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909
MANU
Is God a dream then? are the heavenly coasts
Visions vain?
RISHI
I came to Shiva's roof; the flitting ghosts
Compelled me in.

MANU ls He then God whom the forsaken seek,
Things of sin?
RISHI
He sat on being's summit grand, a peak
Immense of fire.

MANU
Knows He the secret of release from tears
And from desire?
RISHI
His voice is the last murmur silence hears,
Tranquil and dire.

MANU
The silence calls us then and shall enclose?
RISHI
Our true abode
Is here and in the pleasant house He chose
To harbour God.
Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
MANU
In vain thou hast travelled the unwonted stars
And the void hast trod!
RISHI
King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars
That I had fled,
To be His arms whom I have sought; I saw
How earth was made
Out of His being; I perceived the Law,
The Truth, the Vast,
From which we came and which we are; I heard
The ages past
Whisper their history, and I knew the Word
That forth was cast
Into the unformed potency of things
To build the suns.

Through endless Space and on Time's iron wings
A rhythm runs
Our lives pursue, and till the strain's complete
That now so moans
And falters, we upon this greenness meet,
That measure tread.

MANU
Is earth His seat? this body His poor hold
Infirmly made?
RISHI
I flung off matter like a robe grown old;
Matter was dead.
227

228

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909
MANU
Sages have told of vital force behind:
It is God then?
RISHI
The vital spirits move but as a wind
Within men.

MANU
Mind then is lord that like a sovereign sways
Delight and pain?
RISHI
Mind is His wax to write and, written, rase
Form and name.

MANU
Is Thought not He who has immortal eyes
Time cannot dim?
RISHI
Higher, O King, the still voice bade me rise
Than thought's clear dream.

Deep in the luminous secrecy, the mute
Profound of things,
Where murmurs never sound of harp or lute
And no voice sings,
Light is not, nor our darkness, nor these bright
Thunderings,
In the deep steady voiceless core of white
And burning bliss,
The sweet vast centre and the cave divine
Called Paradise,

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
He dwells within us all who dwells not in
Aught that is.

MANU
Rishi, thy thoughts are like the blazing sun
Eye cannot face.

How shall our souls on that bright awful One
Hope even to gaze
Who lights the world from His eternity
With a few rays?
RISHI
Dare on thyself to look, thyself art He,
O Aryan, then.

There is no thou nor I, beasts of the field,
Nor birds, nor men,
But flickerings on a many-sided shield
Pass, or remain,
And this is winged and that with poisonous tongue
Hissing coils.

We love ourselves and hate ourselves, are wrung
With woes and toils
To slay ourselves or from ourselves to win
Shadowy spoils.

And through it all, the rumour and the din,
Voices roam,
Voices of harps, voices of rolling seas,
That rarely come
And to our inborn old affinities
Call us home.

Shadows upon the many-sided Mind
Arrive and go,
Shadows that shadows see; the vain pomps wind
Above, below,
While in their hearts the single mighty God
Whom none can know,

229

230

Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909
Guiding the mimic squadrons with His nod
Watches it all -
Like transient shapes that sweep with half-guessed truth
A luminous wall.

MANU
Alas! is life then vain? Our gorgeous youth
Li the and tall,
Our sweet fair women with their tender eyes
Outshining stars,
The mighty meditations of the wise,
The grandiose wars,
The blood, the fiery strife, the clenched dead hands,
The circle sparse,
The various labour in a hundred lands,
Are all these shows
To please some audience cold? as in a vase
Lily and rose,
Mixed snow and crimson, for a moment blaze
Till someone throws
The withered petals in some outer dust,
Heeding not, -
The virtuous man made one with the unjust,
Is this our lot?
RISHI
O King, sight is not vain, nor any sound.

Weeds that float
Upon a puddle and the majestic round
Of the suns
Are thoughts eternal, - what man loves to laud
And what he shuns;
Through glorious things and base the wheel of God
For ever runs.

O King, no thought is vain; our very dreams
Substantial are;

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
The light we see in fancy, yonder gleams
In the star.

MANU
Rishi, are we both dreams and real? the near
Even as the far?
RISHI
Dreams are we not, O King, but see dreams, fear
Therefore and strive.

Like poets in a wondrous world of thought
Always we live,
Whose shapes from out ourselves to being brought
Abide and thrive.

The poet from his vast and labouring mind
Brings brilliant out
A living world; forth into space they wind,
The shining rout,
And hate and love, and laugh and weep, enjoy,
Fight and shout,
King, lord and beggar, tender girl and boy,
Foemen, friends;
So to His creatures God's poetic mind
A substance lends.

The Poet with dazzling inspiration blind,
Until it ends,
Forgets Himself and lives in what He forms;
For ever His soul
Through chaos like a wind creating storms,
Till the stars roll
Through ordered space and the green lands arise,
The snowy Pole,
Ocean and this great heaven full of eyes,
And sweet sounds heard,
Man with his wondrous soul of hate and love,
And beast and bird, -

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Yes, He creates the worlds and heaven above
With a single word;
And these things being Himself are real, yet
Are they like dreams,
For He awakes to self He could forget
In what He seems.

Yet, King, deem nothing vain: through many veils
This Spirit gleams.

The dreams of God are truths and He prevails.

Then all His time
Cherish thyself, O King, and cherish men,
Anchored in Him.

MANU
Upon the silence of the sapphire main
Waves that sublime
Rise at His word and when that fiat's stilled
Are hushed again,
So is it, Rishi, with the Spirit concealed,
Things and men?
RISHI
Hear then the truth. Behind this visible world
The eyes see plain,
Another stands, and in its folds are curled
Our waking dreams.

Dream is more real, which, while here we wake,
Unreal seems.

From that our mortal life and thoughts we take.

Its fugitive gleams
Are here made firm and solid; there they float
In a magic haze,
Melody swelling note on absolute note,
A lyric maze,
Beauty on beauty heaped pell-mell to chain
The enchanted gaze,

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
Thought upon mighty thought with grandiose strain
Weaving the stars.

This is that world of dream from which our race
Came; by these bars
Of body now enchained, with laggard pace,
Borne down with cares,
A little of that rapture to express
We labour hard,
A little of that beauty, music, thought
With toil prepared;
And if a single strain is clearly caught,
Then our reward
Is great on earth, and in the world that floats
Lingering awhile
We hear the fullness and the jarring notes
Reconcile, -
Then travel forwards. So we slowly rise,
And every mile
Of our long journey mark with eager eyes;
So we progress
With gurge of revolution and recoil,
Slaughter and stress
Of anguish because without fruit we toil,
Without success;
Even as a ship upon the stormy flood
With fluttering sails
Labours towards the shore; the angry mood
Of Ocean swells,
Calms come and favouring winds, but yet afar
The harbour pales
In evening mists and Ocean threatens war:
Such is our life.

Of this be sure, the mighty game goes on,
The glorious strife,
Until the goal predestined has been won.

Not on the cliff
To be shattered has our ship set forth of old,

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Nor in the surge
To founder. Therefore, King, be royal, bold,
And through the urge
Of winds, the reboant thunders and the close
Tempestuous gurge
Press on for ever laughing at the blows
Of wind and wave.

The haven must be reached; we rise from pyre,
We rise from grave,
We mould our future by our past desire,
We break, we save,
We find the music that we could not find,
The thought think out
We could not then perfect, and from the mind
That brilliant rout
Of wonders marshal into living forms.

End then thy doubt;
Grieve not for wounds, nor fear the violent storms,
For grief and pain
Are errors of the clouded soul; behind
They do not stain
The living spirit who to these is blind.

Torture, disdain,
Defeat and sorrow give him strength and joy:
'Twas for delight
He sought existence, and if pains alloy,
'Tis here in night
Which we call day. The Yogin knows, O King,
Who in his might
Travels beyond the mind's imagining,
The worlds of dream.

For even they are shadows, even they
Are not, - they seem.

Behind them is a mighty blissful day
From which they stream.

The heavens of a million creeds are these:
Peopled they teem

Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
By creatures full of joy and radiant ease.

There is the mint
From which we are the final issue, types
Which here we print
In dual letters. There no torture grips,
Joy cannot stint
Her streams, - beneath a more than mortal sun
Through golden air
The spirits of the deathless regions run.

But we must dare
To still the mind into a perfect sleep
And leave this lair
Of gross material flesh which we would keep
Always, before
The guardians of felicity will ope
The golden door.

That is our home and that the secret hope
Our hearts explore.

To bring those heavens down upon the earth
We all descend,
And fragments of it in the human birth
We can command.

Perfect millenniums are sometimes, until
In the sweet end
All secret heaven upon earth we spill,
Then rise above
Taking mankind with us to the abode
Of rapturous Love,
The bright epiphany whom we name God,
Towards whom we drove
In spite of weakness, evil, grief and pain.

He stands behind
The worlds of Sleep; He is and shall remain
When they grow blind
To individual joys; for even these
Are shadows, King,
And gloriously into that lustre cease

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From which they spring.

We are but sparks of that most perfect fire,
Waves of that sea:
From Him we come, to Him we go, desire
Eternally,
And so long as He wills, our separate birth
Is and shall be.

Shrink not from life, O Aryan, but with mirth
And joy receive
His good and evil, sin and virtue, till
He bids thee leave.

But while thou livest, perfectly fulfil
Thy part, conceive
Earth as thy stage, thyself the actor strong,
The drama His.

Work, but the fruits to God alone belong,
Who only is.

Work, love and know, - so shall thy spirit win
Immortal bliss.

Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
Fear not to enjoy;
For Death's a passage, grief a fancied thing
Fools to annoy.

From self escape and find in love alone
A higher joy.

MANU
O Rishi, I have wide dominion,
The earth obeys
And heaven opens far beyond the sun
Her golden gaze.

But Him I seek, the still and perfect One, -
The Sun, not rays.
Poems from Ahana and Other Poems
RISHI
Seek Him upon the earth. For thee He set
In the huge press
Of many worlds to build a mighty state
For man's success,
Who seeks his goal. Perfect thy human might,
Perfect the race.

For thou art He, O King. Only the night
Is on thy soul
By thy own will. Remove it and recover
The serene whole
Thou art indeed, then raise up man the lover
To God the goal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Rishi
,
626:Scene. Salzburg; a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian. 1541.
Festus, Paracelsus.
Festus.
No change! The weary night is well-nigh spent,
The lamp burns low, and through the casement-bars
Grey morning glimmers feebly: yet no change!
Another night, and still no sigh has stirred
That fallen discoloured mouth, no pang relit
Those fixed eyes, quenched by the decaying body,
Like torch-flame choked in dust. While all beside
Was breaking, to the last they held out bright,
As a stronghold where life intrenched itself;
But they are dead nowvery blind and dead:
He will drowse into death without a groan.
My Aureolemy forgotten, ruined Aureole!
The days are gone, are gone! How grand thou wast!
And now not one of those who struck thee down
Poor glorious spiritconcerns him even to stay
And satisfy himself his little hand
Could turn God's image to a livid thing.
Another night, and yet no change! 'T is much
That I should sit by him, and bathe his brow,
And chafe his hands; 't is much: but he will sure
Know me, and look on me, and speak to me
Once morebut only once! His hollow cheek
Looked all night long as though a creeping laugh
At his own state were just about to break
From the dying man: my brain swam, my throat swelled,
And yet I could not turn away. In truth,
They told me how, when first brought here, he seemed
Resolved to live, to lose no faculty;
Thus striving to keep up his shattered strength,
Until they bore him to this stifling cell:
When straight his features fell, an hour made white
The flushed face, and relaxed the quivering limb,
Only the eye remained intense awhile
As though it recognized the tomb-like place,
And then he lay as here he lies.
                 Ay, here!
Here is earth's noblest, nobly garlanded
Her bravest champion with his well-won prize
Her best achievement, her sublime amends
For countless generations fleeting fast
And followed by no trace;the creature-god
She instances when angels would dispute
The title of her brood to rank with them.
Angels, this is our angel! Those bright forms
We clothe with purple, crown and call to thrones,
Are human, but not his; those are but men
Whom other men press round and kneel before;
Those palaces are dwelt in by mankind;
Higher provision is for him you seek
Amid our pomps and glories: see it here!
Behold earth's paragon! Now, raise thee, clay!
God! Thou art love! I build my faith on that
Even as I watch beside thy tortured child
Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast by him,
So doth thy right hand guide us through the world
Wherein we stumble. God! what shall we say?
How has he sinned? How else should he have done?
Surely he sought thy praisethy praise, for all
He might be busied by the task so much
As half forget awhile its proper end.
Dost thou well, Lord? Thou canst not but prefer
That I should range myself upon his side
How could he stop at every step to set
Thy glory forth? Hadst thou but granted him
Success, thy honour would have crowned success,
A halo round a star. Or, say he erred,
Save him, dear God; it will be like thee: bathe him
In light and life! Thou art not made like us;
We should be wroth in such a case; but thou
Forgivestso, forgive these passionate thoughts
Which come unsought and will not pass away!
I know thee, who hast kept my path, and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy;
It were too strange that I should doubt thy love.
But what am I? Thou madest him and knowest
How he was fashioned. I could never err
That way: the quiet place beside thy feet,
Reserved for me, was ever in my thoughts:
But hethou shouldst have favoured him as well!
Ah! he wakens! Aureole, I am here! 't is Festus!
I cast away all wishes save one wish
Let him but know me, only speak to me!
He mutters; louder and louder; any other
Than I, with brain less laden, could collect
What he pours forth. Dear Aureole, do but look!
Is it talking or singing, this he utters fast?
Misery that he should fix me with his eye,
Quick talking to some other all the while!
If he would husband this wild vehemence
Which frustrates its intent!I heard, I know
I heard my name amid those rapid words.
Oh, he will know me yet! Could I divert
This current, lead it somehow gently back
Into the channels of the past!His eye
Brighter than ever! It must recognize me!
I am Erasmus: I am here to pray
That Paracelsus use his skill for me.
The schools of Paris and of Padua send
These questions for your learning to resolve.
We are your students, noble master: leave
This wretched cell, what business have you here?
Our class awaits you; come to us once more!
(O agony! the utmost I can do
Touches him not; how else arrest his ear?)
I am commissioned . . . I shall craze like him.
Better be mute and see what God shall send.
Paracelsus.
Stay, stay with me!
Festus.
          I will; I am come here
To stay with youFestus, you loved of old;
Festus, you know, you must know!
Paracelsus.
                 Festus! Where's
Aprile, then? Has he not chanted softly
The melodies I heard all night? I could not
Get to him for a cold hand on my breast,
But I made out his music well enough,
O well enough! If they have filled him full
With magical music, as they freight a star
With light, and have remitted all his sin,
They will forgive me too, I too shall know!
Festus.
Festus, your Festus!
Paracelsus.
           Ask him if Aprile
Knows as he Lovesif I shall Love and Know?
I try; but that cold hand, like leadso cold!
Festus.
My hand, see!
Paracelsus.
       Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprile!
We get so nearso very, very near!
'T is an old tale: Jove strikes the Titans down,
Not when they set about their mountain-piling
But when another rock would crown the work.
And Phaetondoubtless his first radiant plunge
Astonished mortals, though the gods were calm,
And Jove prepared his thunder: all old tales!
Festus.
And what are these to you?
Paracelsus.
              Ay, fiends must laugh
So cruelly, so well! most like I never
Could tread a single pleasure underfoot,
But they were grinning by my side, were chuckling
To see me toil and drop away by flakes!
Hell-spawn! I am glad, most glad, that thus I fail!
Your cunning has o'ershot its aim. One year,
One month, perhaps, and I had served your turn!
You should have curbed your spite awhile. But now,
Who will believe 't was you that held me back?
Listen: there's shame and hissing and contempt,
And none but laughs who names me, none but spits
Measureless scorn upon me, me alone,
The quack, the cheat, the liar,all on me!
And thus your famous plan to sink mankind
In silence and despair, by teaching them
One of their race had probed the inmost truth,
Had done all man could do, yet failed no less
Your wise plan proves abortive. Men despair?
Ha, ha! why, they are hooting the empiric,
The ignorant and incapable fool who rushed
Madly upon a work beyond his wits;
Nor doubt they but the simplest of themselves
Could bring the matter to triumphant issue.
So, pick and choose among them all, accursed!
Try now, persuade some other to slave for you,
To ruin body and soul to work your ends!
No, no; I am the first and last, I think.
Festus.
Dear friend, who are accursed? who has done
Paracelsus.
What have I done? Fiends dare ask that? or you,
Brave men? Oh, you can chime in boldly, backed
By the others! What had you to do, sage peers?
Here stand my rivals; Latin, Arab, Jew,
Greek, join dead hands against me: all I ask
Is, that the world enrol my name with theirs,
And even this poor privilege, it seems,
They range themselves, prepared to disallow.
Only observe! why, fiends may learn from them!
How they talk calmly of my throes, my fierce
Aspirings, terrible watchings, each one claiming
Its price of blood and brain; how they dissect
And sneeringly disparage the few truths
Got at a life's cost; they too hanging the while
About my neck, their lies misleading me
And their dead names browbeating me! Grey crew,
Yet steeped in fresh malevolence from hell,
Is there a reason for your hate? My truths
Have shaken a little the palm about each prince?
Just think, Aprile, all these leering dotards
Were bent on nothing less than to be crowned
As we! That yellow blear-eyed wretch in chief
To whom the rest cringe low with feigned respect,
Galen of Pergamos and hellnay speak
The tale, old man! We met there face to face:
I said the crown should fall from thee. Once more
We meet as in that ghastly vestibule:
Look to my brow! Have I redeemed my pledge?
Festus.
Peace, peace; ah, see!
Paracelsus.
           Oh, emptiness of fame!
Oh Persic Zoroaster, lord of stars!
Who said these old renowns, dead long ago,
Could make me overlook the living world
To gaze through gloom at where they stood, indeed,
But stand no longer? What a warm light life
After the shade! In truth, my delicate witch,
My serpent-queen, you did but well to hide
The juggles I had else detected. Fire
May well run harmless o'er a breast like yours!
The cave was not so darkened by the smoke
But that your white limbs dazzled me: oh, white,
And panting as they twinkled, wildly dancing!
I cared not for your passionate gestures then,
But now I have forgotten the charm of charms,
The foolish knowledge which I came to seek,
While I remember that quaint dance; and thus
I am come back, not for those mummeries,
But to love you, and to kiss your little feet
Soft as an ermine's winter coat!
Festus.
                 A light
Will struggle through these thronging words at last.
As in the angry and tumultuous West
A soft star trembles through the drifting clouds.
These are the strivings of a spirit which hates
So sad a vault should coop it, and calls up
The past to stand between it and its fate.
Were he at Einsiedelnor Michal here!
Paracelsus.
Cruel! I seek her nowI kneelI shriek
I clasp her vesturebut she fades, still fades;
And she is gone; sweet human love is gone!
'T is only when they spring to heaven that angels
Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day
Beside you, and lie down at night by you
Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep,
And all at once they leave you, and you know them!
We are so fooled, so cheated! Why, even now
I am not too secure against foul play;
The shadows deepen and the walls contract:
No doubt some treachery is going on.
'T is very dusk. Where are we put, Aprile?
Have they left us in the lurch? This murky loathsome
Death-trap, this slaughter-house, is not the hall
In the golden city! Keep by me, Aprile!
There is a hand groping amid the blackness
To catch us. Have the spider-fingers got you,
Poet? Hold on me for your life! If once
They pull you!Hold!
           'Tis but a dreamno more!
I have you still; the sun comes out again;
Let us be happy: all will yet go well!
Let us confer: is it not like, Aprile,
That spite of trouble, this ordeal passed,
The value of my labours ascertained,
Just as some stream foams long among the rocks
But after glideth glassy to the sea,
So, full content shall henceforth be my lot?
What think you, poet? Louder! Your clear voice
Vibrates too like a harp-string. Do you ask
How could I still remain on earth, should God
Grant me the great approval which I seek?
I, you, and God can comprehend each other,
But men would murmur, and with cause enough;
For when they saw me, stainless of all sin,
Preserved and sanctified by inward light,
They would complain that comfort, shut from them,
I drank thus unespied; that they live on,
Nor taste the quiet of a constant joy,
For ache and care and doubt and weariness,
While I am calm; help being vouchsafed to me,
And hid from them.'T were best consider that!
You reason well, Aprile; but at least
Let me know this, and die! Is this too much?
I will learn this, if God so please, and die!
If thou shalt please, dear God, if thou shalt please!
We are so weak, we know our motives least
In their confused beginning. If at first
I sought . . . but wherefore bare my heart to thee?
I know thy mercy; and already thoughts
Flock fast about my soul to comfort it,
And intimate I cannot wholly fail,
For love and praise would clasp me willingly
Could I resolve to seek them. Thou art good,
And I should be content. Yetyet first show
I have done wrong in daring! Rather give
The supernatural consciousness of strength
Which fed my youth! Only one hour of that
With thee to helpO what should bar me then!
Lost, lost! Thus things are ordered here! God's creatures,
And yet he takes no pride in us!none, none!
Truly there needs another life to come!
If this be all(I must tell Festus that)
And other life await us notfor one,
I say 't is a poor cheat, a stupid bungle,
A wretched failure. I, for one, protest
Against it, and I hurl it back with scorn.
Well, onward though alone! Small time remains,
And much to do: I must have fruit, must reap
Some profit from my toils. I doubt my body
Will hardly serve me through; while I have laboured
It has decayed; and now that I demand
Its best assistance, it will crumble fast:
A sad thought, a sad fate! How very full
Of wormwood 't is, that just at altar-service,
The rapt hymn rising with the rolling smoke,
When glory dawns and all is at the best,
The sacred fire may flicker and grow faint
And die for want of a wood-piler's help!
Thus fades the flagging body, and the soul
Is pulled down in the overthrow. Well, well
Let men catch every word, let them lose nought
Of what I say; something may yet be done.
They are ruins! Trust me who am one of you!
All ruins, glorious once, but lonely now.
It makes my heart sick to behold you crouch
Beside your desolate fane: the arches dim,
The crumbling columns grand against the moon,
Could I but rear them up once morebut that
May never be, so leave them! Trust me, friends,
Why should you linger here when I have built
A far resplendent temple, all your own?
Trust me, they are but ruins! See, Aprile,
Men will not heed! Yet were I not prepared
With better refuge for them, tongue of mine
Should ne'er reveal how blank their dwelling is:
I would sit down in silence with the rest.
Ha, what? you spit at me, you grin and shriek
Contempt into my earmy ear which drank
God's accents once? you curse me? Why men, men,
I am not formed for it! Those hideous eyes
Will be before me sleeping, waking, praying,
They will not let me even die. Spare, spare me,
Sinning or no, forget that, only spare me
The horrible scorn! You thought I could support it.
But now you see what silly fragile creature
Cowers thus. I am not good nor bad enough,
Not Christ nor Cain, yet even Cain was saved
From Hate like this. Let me but totter back!
Perhaps I shall elude those jeers which creep
Into my very brain, and shut these scorched
Eyelids and keep those mocking faces out.
Listen, Aprile! I am very calm:
Be not deceived, there is no passion here
Where the blood leaps like an imprisoned thing:
I am calm: I will exterminate the race!
Enough of that: 't is said and it shall be.
And now be merry: safe and sound am I
Who broke through their best ranks to get at you.
And such a havoc, such a rout, Aprile!
Festus.
Have you no thought, no memory for me,
Aureole? I am so wretchedmy pure Michal
Is gone, and you alone are left me now,
And even you forget me. Take my hand
Lean on me thus. Do you not know me, Aureole?
Paracelsus.
Festus, my own friend, you are come at last?
As you say, 't is an awful enterprise;
But you believe I shall go through with it:
'T is like you, and I thank you. Thank him for me,
Dear Michal! See how bright St. Saviour's spire
Flames in the sunset; all its figures quaint
Gay in the glancing light: you might conceive them
A troop of yellow-vested white-haired Jews
Bound for their own land where redemption dawns.
Festus.
Not that blest timenot our youth's time, dear God!
Paracelsus.
Hastay! true, I forgetall is done since,
And he is come to judge me. How he speaks,
How calm, how well! yes, it is true, all true;
All quackery; all deceit; myself can laugh
The first at it, if you desire: but still
You know the obstacles which taught me tricks
So foreign to my natureenvy and hate,
Blind opposition, brutal prejudice,
Bald ignorancewhat wonder if I sunk
To humour men the way they most approved?
My cheats were never palmed on such as you,
Dear Festus! I will kneel if you require me,
Impart the meagre knowledge I possess,
Explain its bounded nature, and avow
My insufficiencywhate'er you will:
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
But if that cannot be, dear Festus, lay me,
When I shall die, within some narrow grave,
Not by itselffor that would be too proud
But where such graves are thickest; let it look
Nowise distinguished from the hillocks round,
So that the peasant at his brother's bed
May tread upon my own and know it not;
And we shall all be equal at the last,
Or classed according to life's natural ranks,
Fathers, sons, brothers, friendsnot rich, nor wise,
Nor gifted: lay me thus, then say, "He lived
"Too much advanced before his brother men;
"They kept him still in front: 't was for their good
"But yet a dangerous station. It were strange
"That he should tell God he had never ranked
"With men: so, here at least he is a man."
Festus.
That God shall take thee to his breast, dear spirit,
Unto his breast, be sure! and here on earth
Shall splendour sit upon thy name for ever.
Sun! all the heaven is glad for thee: what care
If lower mountains light their snowy phares
At thine effulgence, yet acknowledge not
The source of day? Their theft shall be their bale:
For after-ages shall retrack thy beams,
And put aside the crowd of busy ones
And worship thee alonethe master-mind,
The thinker, the explorer, the creator!
Then, who should sneer at the convulsive throes
With which thy deeds were born, would scorn as well
The sheet of winding subterraneous fire
Which, pent and writhing, sends no less at last
Huge islands up amid the simmering sea.
Behold thy might in me! thou hast infused
Thy soul in mine; and I am grand as thou,
Seeing I comprehend theeI so simple,
Thou so august. I recognize thee first;
I saw thee rise, I watched thee early and late,
And though no glance reveal thou dost accept
My homagethus no less I proffer it,
And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest.
Paracelsus.
Festus!
Festus.
   I am for noble Aureole, God!
I am upon his side, come weal or woe.
His portion shall be mine. He has done well.
I would have sinned, had I been strong enough,
As he has sinned. Reward him or I waive
Reward! If thou canst find no place for him,
He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be
His slave for ever. There are two of us.
Paracelsus.
Dear Festus!
Festus.
      Here, dear Aureole! ever by you!
      Paracelsus.
Nay, speak on, or I dream again. Speak on!
Some story, anythingonly your voice.
I shall dream else. Speak on! ay, leaning so!
Festus.
                         Thus the Mayne glideth
Where my Love abideth.
Sleep's no softer: it proceeds
On through lawns, on through meads,
On and on, whate'er befall,
Meandering and musical,
Though the ****rd pasturage
Bears not on its shaven ledge
Aught but weeds and waving grasses
To view the river as it passes,
Save here and there a scanty patch
Of primroses too faint to catch
A weary bee.
Paracelsus.
More, more; say on!
Festus.
          And scarce it pushes
Its gentle way through strangling rushes
Where the glossy kingfisher
Flutters when noon-heats are near,
Glad the shelving banks to shun,
Red and steaming in the sun,
Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat
Burrows, and the speckled stoat;
Where the quick sandpipers flit
In and out the marl and grit
That seems to breed them, brown as they:
Nought disturbs its quiet way,
Save some lazy stork that springs,
Trailing it with legs and wings,
Whom the shy fox from the hill
Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.
Paracelsus.
My heart! they loose my heart, those simple words;
Its darkness passes, which nought else could touch:
Like some dark snake that force may not expel,
Which glideth out to music sweet and low.
What were you doing when your voice broke through
A chaos of ugly images? You, indeed!
Are you alone here?
Festus.
          All alone: you know me?
This cell?
Paracelsus.
     An unexceptionable vault:
Good brick and stone: the bats kept out, the rats
Kept in: a snug nook: how should I mistake it?
Festus.
But wherefore am I here?
Paracelsus.
             Ah, well remembered!
Why, for a purposefor a purpose, Festus!
'T is like me: here I trifle while time fleets,
And this occasion, lost, will ne'er return.
You are here to be instructed. I will tell
God's message; but I have so much to say,
I fear to leave half out. All is confused
No doubt; but doubtless you will learn in time.
He would not else have brought you here: no doubt
I shall see clearer soon.
Festus.
             Tell me but this
You are not in despair?
Paracelsus.
            I? and for what?
            Festus.
Alas, alas! he knows not, as I feared!
Paracelsus.
What is it you would ask me with that earnest
Dear searching face?
Festus.
           How feel you, Aureole?
           Paracelsus.
                       Well:
Well. 'T is a strange thing: I am dying, Festus,
And now that fast the storm of life subsides,
I first perceive how great the whirl has been.
I was calm then, who am so dizzy now
Calm in the thick of the tempest, but no less
A partner of its motion and mixed up
With its career. The hurricane is spent,
And the good boat speeds through the brightening weather;
But is it earth or sea that heaves below?
The gulf rolls like a meadow-swell, o'erstrewn
With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore;
And now some slet, loosened from the land,
Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean;
And now the air is full of uptorn canes,
Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks
Unrooted, with their birds still clinging to them,
All high in the wind. Even so my varied life
Drifts by me; I am young, old, happy, sad,
Hoping, desponding, acting, taking rest,
And all at once: that is, those past conditions
Float back at once on me. If I select
Some special epoch from the crowd, 't is but
To will, and straight the rest dissolve away,
And only that particular state is present
With all its long-forgotten circumstance
Distinct and vivid as at firstmyself
A careless looker-on and nothing more,
Indifferent and amused, but nothing more.
And this is death: I understand it all.
New being waits me; new perceptions must
Be born in me before I plunge therein;
Which last is Death's affair; and while I speak,
Minute by minute he is filling me
With power; and while my foot is on the threshold
Of boundless lifethe doors unopened yet,
All preparations not complete within
I turn new knowledge upon old events,
And the effect is . . . but I must not tell;
It is not lawful. Your own turn will come
One day. Wait, Festus! You will die like me.
Festus.
'T is of that past life that I burn to hear.
Paracelsus.
You wonder it engages me just now?
In truth, I wonder too. What 's life to me?
Where'er I look is fire, where'er I listen
Music, and where I tend bliss evermore.
Yet how can I refrain? 'T is a refined
Delight to view those chances,one last view.
I am so near the perils I escape,
That I must play with them and turn them over,
To feel how fully they are past and gone.
Still, it is like, some further cause exists
For this peculiar moodsome hidden purpose;
Did I not tell you something of it, Festus?
I had it fast, but it has somehow slipt
Away from me; it will return anon.
Festus.
(Indeed his cheek seems young again, his voice
Complete with its old tones: that little laugh
Concluding every phrase, with upturned eye,
As though one stooped above his head to whom
He looked for confirmation and approval,
Where was it gone so long, so well preserved?
Then, the fore-finger pointing as he speaks,
Like one who traces in an open book
The matter he declares; 't is many a year
Since I remarked it last: and this in him,
But now a ghastly wreck!)
             And can it be,
Dear Aureole, you have then found out at last
That worldly things are utter vanity?
That man is made for weakness, and should wait
In patient ignorance, till God appoint . . .
Paracelsus.
Ha, the purpose: the true purpose: that is it!
How could I fail to apprehend! You here,
I thus! But no more trifling: I see all,
I know all: my last mission shall be done
If strength suffice. No trifling! Stay; this posture
Hardly befits one thus about to speak:
I will arise.
Festus.
       Nay, Aureole, are you wild?
You cannot leave your couch.
Paracelsus.
               No help; no help;
Not even your hand. So! there, I stand once more!
Speak from a couch? I never lectured thus.
My gownthe scarlet lined with fur; now put
The chain about my neck; my signet-ring
Is still upon my hand, I thinkeven so;
Last, my good sword; ah, trusty Azoth, leapest
Beneath thy master's grasp for the last time?
This couch shall be my throne: I bid these walls
Be consecrate, this wretched cell become
A shrine, for here God speaks to men through me.
Now, Festus, I am ready to begin.
Festus.
I am dumb with wonder.
Paracelsus.
           Listen, therefore, Festus!
There will be time enough, but none to spare.
I must content myself with telling only
The most important points. You doubtless feel
That I am happy, Festus; very happy.
Festus.
'T is no delusion which uplifts him thus!
Then you are pardoned, Aureole, all your sin?
Paracelsus.
Ay, pardoned: yet why pardoned?
Festus.
                 'T is God's praise
That man is bound to seek, and you . . .
Paracelsus.
                     Have lived!
We have to live alone to set forth well
God's praise. 'T is true, I sinned much, as I thought,
And in effect need mercy, for I strove
To do that very thing; but, do your best
Or worst, praise rises, and will rise for ever
Pardon from him, because of praise denied
Who calls me to himself to exalt himself?
He might laugh as I laugh!
Festus.
              But all comes
To the same thing. 'T is fruitless for mankind
To fret themselves with what concerns them not;
They are no use that way: they should lie down
Content as God has made them, nor go mad
In thriveless cares to better what is ill.
Paracelsus.
No, no; mistake me not; let me not work
More harm than I have worked! This is my case:
If I go joyous back to God, yet bring
No offering, if I render up my soul
Without the fruits it was ordained to bear,
If I appear the better to love God
For sin, as one who has no claim on him,-
Be not deceived! It may be surely thus
With me, while higher prizes still await
The mortal persevering to the end.
Beside I am not all so valueless:
I have been something, though too soon I left
Following the instincts of that happy time.
Festus.
What happy time? For God's sake, for man's sake,
What time was happy? All I hope to know
That answer will decide. What happy time?
Paracelsus.
When but the time I vowed myself to man?
Festus.
Great God, thy judgments are inscrutable!
Paracelsus.
Yes, it was in me; I was born for it
I, Paracelsus: it was mine by right.
Doubtless a searching and impetuous soul
Might learn from its own motions that some task
Like this awaited it about the world;
Might seek somewhere in this blank life of ours
For fit delights to stay its longings vast;
And, grappling Nature, so prevail on her
To fill the creature full she dared thus frame
Hungry for joy; and, bravely tyrannous,
Grow in demand, still craving more and more,
And make each joy conceded prove a pledge
Of other joy to followbating nought
Of its desires, still seizing fresh pretence
To turn the knowledge and the rapture wrung
As an extreme, last boon, from destiny,
Into occasion for new coyetings,
New strifes, new triumphs:doubtless a strong soul,
Alone, unaided might attain to this,
So glorious is our nature, so august
Man's inborn uninstructed impulses,
His naked spirit so majestical!
But this was born in me; I was made so;
Thus much time saved: the feverish appeties,
The tumult of unproved desire, the unaimed
Uncertain yearnings, aspirations blind,
Distrust, mistake, and all that ends in tears
Were saved me; thus I entered on my course.
You may be sure I was not all exempt
From human trouble; just so much of doubt
As bade me plant a surer foot upon
The sun-road, kept my eye unruined 'mid
The fierce and flashing splendour, set my heart
Trembling so much as warned me I stood there
On sufferancenot to idly gaze, but cast
Light on a darkling race; save for that doubt,
I stood at first where all aspire at last
To stand: the secret of the world was mine.
I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,
Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
But somehow felt and known in every shift
And change in the spirit,nay, in every pore
Of the body, even,)what God is, what we are,
What life ishow God tastes an infinite joy
In infinite waysone everlasting bliss,
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds; in whom is life for evermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes; where dwells enjoyment there is he;
With still a flying point of bliss remote,
A happiness in store afar, a sphere
Of distant glory in full view; thus climbs
Pleasure its heights for ever and for ever.
The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
And the earth changes like a human face;
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks,
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask
God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged
With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate,
When, in the solitary waste, strange groups
Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,
Staring together with their eyes on flame
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms
Like chrysalids impatient for the air,
The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run
Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plainand God renews
His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all,
From life's minute beginnings, up at last
To manthe consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life: whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o'er the visible world before,
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole,
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make,
Some point where all those scattered rays should meet
Convergent in the faculties of man.
Powerneither put forth blindly, nor controlled
Calmly by perfect knowledge; to be used
At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear:
Knowledgenot intuition, but the slow
Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil,
Strengthened by love: lovenot serenely pure,
But strong from weakness, like a chance-sown plant
Which, cast on stubborn soil, puts forth changed buds
And softer stains, unknown in happier climes;
Love which endures and doubts and is oppressed
And cherished, suffering much and much sustained,
And blind, oft-failing, yet believing love,
A half-enlightened, often-chequered trust:
Hints and previsions of which faculties,
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last. So far the seal
Is put on life; one stage of being complete,
One scheme wound up: and from the grand result
A supplementary reflux of light,
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle. Not alone
For their possessor dawn those qualities,
But the new glory mixes with the heaven
And earth; man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things: the winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,
A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh,
Never a senseless gust now man is born.
The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts
A secret they assemble to discuss
When the sun drops behind their trunks which glare
Like grates of hell: the peerless cup afloat
Of the lake-lily is an urn, some nymph
Swims bearing high above her head: no bird
Whistles unseen, but through the gaps above
That let light in upon the gloomy woods,
A shape peeps from the breezy forest-top,
Arch with small puckered mouth and mocking eye.
The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops
With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour,
Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn
Beneath a warm moon like a happy face:
And this to fill us with regard for man.
With apprehension of his passing worth,
Desire to work his proper nature out,
And ascertain his rank and final place,
For these things tend still upward, progress is
The law of life, man is not Man as yet.
Nor shall I deem his object served, his end
Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,
While only here and there a star dispels
The darkness, here and there a towering mind
O'erlooks its prostrate fellows: when the host
Is out at once to the despair of night,
When all mankind alike is perfected,
Equal in full-blown powersthen, not till then,
I say, begins man's general infancy.
For wherefore make account of feverish starts
Of restless members of a dormant whole,
Impatient nerves which quiver while the body
Slumbers as in a grave? Oh long ago
The brow was twitched, the tremulous lids astir,
The peaceful mouth disturbed; half-uttered speech
Ruffled the lip, and then the teeth were set,
The breath drawn sharp, the strong right-hand clenched stronger,
As it would pluck a lion by the jaw;
The glorious creature laughed out even in sleep!
But when full roused, each giant-limb awake,
Each sinew strung, the great heart pulsing fast,
He shall start up and stand on his own earth,
Then shall his long triumphant march begin,
Thence shall his being date,thus wholly roused,
What he achieves shall be set down to him.
When all the race is perfected alike
As man, that is; all tended to mankind,
And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God. Prognostics told
Man's near approach; so in man's self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendour ever on before
In that eternal circle life pursues.
For men begin to pass their nature's bound,
And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant
Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great
For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade
Before the unmeasured thirst for good: while peace
Rises within them ever more and more.
Such men are even now upon the earth,
Serene amid the half-formed creatures round
Who should be saved by them and joined with them.
Such was my task, and I was born to it
Free, as I said but now, from much that chains
Spirits, high-dowered but limited and vexed
By a divided and delusive aim,
A shadow mocking a reality
Whose truth avails not wholly to disperse
The flitting mimic called up by itself,
And so remains perplexed and nigh put out
By its fantastic fellow's wavering gleam.
I, from the first, was never cheated thus;
I never fashioned out a fancied good
Distinct from man's; a service to be done,
A glory to be ministered unto
With powers put forth at man's expense, withdrawn
From labouring in his behalf; a strength
Denied that might avail him. I cared not
Lest his success ran counter to success
Elsewhere: for God is glorified in man,
And to man's glory vowed I soul and limb.
Yet, constituted thus, and thus endowed,
I failed: I gazed on power till I grew blind.
Power; I could not take my eyes from that:
That only, I thought, should be preserved, increased
At any risk, displayed, struck out at once-
The sign and note and character of man.
I saw no use in the past: only a scene
Of degradation, ugliness and tears,
The record of disgraces best forgotten,
A sullen page in human chronicles
Fit to erase. I saw no cause why man
Should not stand all-sufficient even now,
Or why his annals should be forced to tell
That once the tide of light, about to break
Upon the world, was sealed within its spring:
I would have had one day, one moment's space,
Change man's condition, push each slumbering claim
Of mastery o'er the elemental world
At once to full maturity, then roll
Oblivion o'er the work, and hide from man
What night had ushered morn. Not so, dear child
Of after-days, wilt thou reject the past
Big with deep warnings of the proper tenure
By which thou hast the earth: for thee the present
Shall have distinct and trembling beauty, seen
Beside that past's own shade when, in relief,
Its brightness shall stand out: nor yet on thee
Shall burst the future, as successive zones
Of several wonder open on some spirit
Flying secure and glad from heaven to heaven:
But thou shalt painfully attain to joy,
While hope and fear and love shall keep thee man!
All this was hid from me: as one by one
My dreams grew dim, my wide aims circumscribed,
As actual good within my reach decreased,
While obstacles sprung up this way and that
To keep me from effecting half the sum,
Small as it proved; as objects, mean within
The primal aggregate, seemed, even the least,
Itself a match for my concentred strength
What wonder if I saw no way to shun
Despair? The power I sought for man, seemed God's.
In this conjuncture, as I prayed to die,
A strange adventure made me know, one sin
Had spotted my career from its uprise;
I saw Aprilemy Aprile there!
And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened
His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
I learned my own deep error; love's undoing
Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
And what proportion love should hold with power
In his right constitution; love preceding
Power, and with much power, always much more love;
Love still too straitened in his present means,
And earnest for new power to set love free.
I learned this, and supposed the whole was learned:
And thus, when men received with stupid wonder
My first revealings, would have worshipped me,
And I despised and loathed their proffered praise
When, with awakened eyes, they took revenge
For past credulity in casting shame
On my real knowledge, and I hated them
It was not strange I saw no good in man,
To overbalance all the wear and waste
Of faculties, displayed in vain, but born
To prosper in some better sphere: and why?
In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind,
To know even hate is but a mask of love's,
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak,
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.
All this I knew not, and I failed. Let men
Regard me, and the poet dead long ago
Who loved too rashly; and shape forth a third
And better-tempered spirit, warned by both:
As from the over-radiant star too mad
To drink the life-springs, beamless thence itself
And the dark orb which borders the abyss,
Ingulfed in icy night,might have its course
A temperate and equidistant world.
Meanwhile, I have done well, though not all well.
As yet men cannot do without contempt;
'T is for their good, and therefore fit awhile
That they reject the weak, and scorn the false,
Rather than praise the strong and true, in me:
But after, they will know me. If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.
You understand me? I have said enough?
Festus.
Now die, dear Aureole!
Paracelsus.
           Festus, let my hand
This hand, lie in your own, my own true friend!
Aprile! Hand in hand with you, Aprile!
Festus.
And this was Paracelsus!


~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part V - Paracelsus Attains
,

IN CHAPTERS [76/76]



   27 Yoga
   11 Christianity
   9 Integral Yoga
   5 Philosophy
   2 Sufism
   2 Science
   2 Poetry
   1 Psychology


   24 Sri Ramakrishna
   8 Sri Aurobindo
   6 The Mother
   5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   5 Aldous Huxley
   4 Saint Teresa of Avila
   3 Saint John of Climacus
   3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   2 Swami Vivekananda
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Anonymous
   2 Al-Ghazali


   23 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   5 The Perennial Philosophy
   4 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   4 Essays Divine And Human
   4 City of God
   3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
   3 The Bible
   2 The Way of Perfection
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
   2 The Alchemy of Happiness
   2 Bhakti-Yoga


0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   There are three kinds of formal devotion: tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic. If a person, while showing devotion, to God, is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger, then his devotion is tamasic, since it is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia. If he worships God from a desire for fame or wealth, or from any other worldly ambition, then his devotion is rajasic, since it is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity. But if a person loves God without any thought of material gain, if he performs his duties to please God alone and maintains toward all created beings the attitude of friendship, then his devotion is called sattvic, since it is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony. But the highest devotion transcends the three gunas, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings; and it wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God's attributes. A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions — in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.
   There are two stages of bhakti. The first is known as vaidhi-bhakti, or love of God qualified by scriptural injunctions. For the devotees of this stage are prescribed regular and methodical worship, hymns, prayers, the repetition of God's name, and the chanting of His glories. This lower bhakti in course of time matures into para-bhakti, or supreme devotion, known also as prema, the most intense form of divine love. Divine love is an end in itself. It exists potentially in all human hearts, but in the case of bound creatures it is misdirected to earthly objects.

0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  has written: "If you cannot love God, at least find a way to fight
  Series Ten - To a Young Captain

0 1964-07-31, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Oh, but there has been something new here. Very recently, three days ago, a messenger from the Pope came to visit Pondicherry and, naturally, to meet the archbishop. There was a public reception and the archbishop invited people from the Ashram officially! Z was Catholic and he went, and it seems the delegate delivered a great speech in which he kept repeating that the time of division is over, that the time has come for all those who love God to unite fraternally, and so onits a step forward.
   Afterwards, there was a reception at the town hall. The delegate was sitting on the dais with the archbishop and the Chief Minister of Pondicherryno one else, all the others sat on chairs below. Then, as nothing was happening, Z thought it was just a waste of time (!), he went up on the dais and asked the minister to introduce him to the Popes delegate, which he did. Then Z said he was very happy with the delegates speech and thanked him for bringing such ideasyou can imagine the archbishops face!

05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There have been religions, approaches to the Divine, which did not believe in the divinity of man, the Chaldean line, the Semitic, for example. According to these, the Creator and the created are separate in nature and being; to call anything created as God himself is blasphemy. The ancient Egyptian, the Hebrew or the Muslim place God high in Paradise, and, in their view, man can be only his servant or slave, his worker or warrior. Man is too small and too earthly to be ever identified with God: he can only be a worshipper. Man can love God, at the most, as his Beloved. But this devotion is for something afar, like the desire of the moth for the star. And to equate the two is to confuse realities. Man as worshipper and devotee can attain certain divine qualities, but limited and modified and always humanized to a large extent. And God can never become man. He sends down his representative, his vicar, prophet or apostle who acts for him and in and through whom He acts, but He himself does not come down and put on the form or flesh. The universe is Gods handiwork and testifies to his miracle and glory; but the universe is not God. Between the watch and the watchmaker there is always a hiatus and an incommensurability.
   But can we say, I am born of God, and yet I am not God? So the Indian boldly declares, all this is the supreme Divine, there is nothing else than the Divinesarvam khalvidam brahma I am He, Thou are That, or again, that which is in me and the conscious being which is there in the Sun are one and the same thing. God has created man and the world, He is in man and in the world, He has become and is man and the world. Not only so. Not only does God become the clod of earth by reducing his potentialto zero, so to say; but He descends often enough in his own being and consciousness here below, assuming a human form for a special work and a special purpose. This is the Indian conception of Avatarhood.

1.01 - Description of the Castle, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  6.: People may say such things appear impossible and it is best not to scandalize the weak in faith by speaking about them. But it is better that the latter should disbelieve us, than that we should desist from enlightening souls which receive these graces, that they may rejoice and may endeavour to love God better for His favours, seeing He is so mighty and so great. There is no danger here of shocking those for whom I write by treating of such matters, for they know and believe that God gives even greater proofs of His love. I am certain that if any one of you doubts the truth of this, God will never allow her to learn it by experience, for He desires that no limits should be set to His work: therefore, never discredit them because you are not thus led yourselves.
  7.: Now let us return to our beautiful and charming castle and discover how to enter it. This appears incongruous: if this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to enter it, for it is the person himself: one might as well tell some one to go into a room he is already in! There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place, what is in it and what rooms it contains.

1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The point is, to love God even as the mother loves her child, the chaste wife her husband, and the worldly man his wealth. Add together these three forces of love, these three powers of attraction, and give it all to God. Then you will certainly see Him.
  "It is necessary to pray to Him with a longing heart. The kitten knows only how to call its mother, crying, 'Mew, mew!' It remains satisfied wherever its mother puts it. And the mother cat puts the kitten sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes on the floor, and sometimes on the bed. When it suffers it cries only, 'Mew, mew!' That's all it knows.
  --
  So saying, he continued on his way along the meadow. But the cowherd boys, being afraid, did not accompany him. In the mean time the snake moved swiftly toward him with upraised hood. As soon as it came near, he recited a mantra, and the snake lay at his feet like an earthworm. The brahmachari said: 'Look here. Why do you go about doing harm? Come, I will give you a holy word. By repeating it you will learn to love God. Ultimately you will realize Him and so get rid of your violent nature.' Saying this, he taught the snake a holy word and initiated him into spiritual life. The snake bowed before the teacher and said, 'Revered sir, how shall I practise spiritual discipline?'
  'Repeat that sacred word', said the teacher, 'and do no harm to anybody'. As he was about to depart, the brahmachari said, 'I shall see you again.'

1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  Let us eagerly run our course as men called by our God and King, lest, since our time is short, we be found in the day of our death without fruit and perish of hunger. Let us please the Lord as soldiers please their king; because we are required to give an exact account of our service after the campaign. Let us fear the Lord not less than we fear beasts. For I have seen men who were going to steal and were not afraid of God, but, hearing the barking of dogs, they at once turned back; and what the fear of God could not achieve was done by the fear of animals. Let us love God at least as much as we respect our friends. For I have often seen people who had offended God and were not in the least perturbed about it. And I have seen how those same people provoked their friends in some trifling matter and then employed every artifice, every device, every sacrifice, every apology, both personally and through friends and relatives, not sparing gifts, in order to regain their former love.
  In the very beginning of our renunciation, it is certainly with labour and grief that we practise the virtues. But when we have made progress in them, we no longer feel sorrow, or we feel little sorrow. But as soon as our mortal mind is consumed, and mastered by our alacrity, we practise them with all joy and eagerness, with love and with divine fire.

1.02 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  was taking him. He had only been told: "If you want to see a grog-shop, then come with me. You will see a huge jar of wine there." M. related this to Sri Ramakrishna, who laughed about it. The Master said: "The bliss of worship and communion with God is the true wine, the wine of ecstatic love. The goal of human life is to love God, Bhakti is the one essential thing. To know God through jnna and reasoning is extremely difficult."
  Then the Master sang:

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Thou must love God as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not-image, but as He is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.
  Eckhart

1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  We cannot imagine God usually, normally speaking, in any other way than as someone standing outside the world. If a carpenter makes a table or a chair, we can call him the creator of the table or the chair; and the table stands outside him, so that there is no proper relationship between what he has made and his own existence. Hence, we have to cry to God in a loud tone so that our voices may reach Him in the transcendent paradise where He is seated. We have a concept of paradise in every religion. In the Hindu religion we call it Vaikuntha, or Brahmaloka, Kailasa, etc., but whatever term we use, it is a concept of heaven the highest heaven where God is seated which we have to reach. We love God as we love any other object in this world, because God Himself has become an object of the love of the individual.
  Here I have to take a few moments to give some sort of an idea as to what love is, so that we may have an idea as to its relationship to the object of love. Most people have no idea of what it is and, therefore, it has been given many definitions. The most common definition of love is that it is a psychological emotion, a welling up of certain feelings in respect of an object. Love is the manner in which the mind arranges itself in respect of an object which it needs. Just as when one is on a battleground and there is a necessity to gird up one's loins for an immediate attack, one prepares oneself thoroughly, from head to foot, for the purpose of the task on hand or, a wrestler in the field prepares himself for the purpose for which he is there, and in this preparation he is worked up into a feeling of total concentration of his personality for the achievement of that purpose in a similar manner, the mind works itself up into a concentrated feeling in respect of the object which it needs for a particular purpose, at a particular time. This working up of the mind in sympathy with the object which it needs at a particular time is the love that the mind has for the object. Therefore, love may be regarded as a condition of the mind. It is a state of mind not a perpetual state, but a temporary state of the mind in respect of that particular object which is necessary at that particular moment.
  --
  There is an internal dichotomy subtly pressing itself forward, even in the organic concept of God; and how can there be an unconditioned love of God, a perpetual feeling for God, when the relationship of oneself with God is not clear? "I don't understand you and, therefore, I cannot love you. So my love for you depends upon my understanding of you, and the more I understand you, the more I love you." Here, the understanding is nothing but an appreciation of the real connection that exists between oneself and the other. "I must know, first of all, what my relationship with you is, then I can tell you how much love I have for you. Are you my father? Are you my brother? Are you my boss? Are you my servant? Are you my friend? Are you my enemy? What are you? If you tell me what you are, I can tell you how much love I have for you, because your context in relation to my presence is what determines my feeling for you." Likewise, I may ask this question: "How am I related to God?" This question was completely brushed aside by certain schools of devotion. They never wanted to answer this question at all, and kept it aside in cold storage. "We shall love God as we love anything else in this world.
  But wholly dedicating ourself for the sake of God these feelings for God, in a whole-souled fashion, though in a rarefied form of the ordinary loves in the world, are called the bhavas in bhakti yoga. A bhava is a feeling. Our feeling for God is called a bhava. Here, the basic difference that seems to be there between man and God is taken for granted, and it is not solved, because it cannot be solved so easily. If we go on trying to solve this question, our whole life will be spent in only answering this question. Therefore, the teachers of the path of devotion emphasised the necessity to love God, somehow or other, even if it be a magnified form of human love; and the answer to the difficulty as to whether human love is really divine love was that when human love gets magnified into infinity, it becomes divine love. There is a great point in this answer, because when the finite is lifted up into an unconditioned expanse to the extent possible for the mind, it loses the sting of finitude. The doctrine here is that when this human affection is expanded into the vastness of creation, though it may be true that in quality it has not changed, because of the fact that it has transformed itself into an utterly inconceivable magnitude of quantity, it will be free from the stigma of finitude of affection, and will be able to achieve certain miraculous results which finite love cannot.
  These bhavas or feelings of love for God are, therefore, human affections diverted to God in an all-absorbing manner, so that the conditioning factors of human affection are removed as far as possible, and God is taken for granted as a permanent Being - not like an ordinary object in the world which can die one day or the other, but as a perpetually existent Being and the necessity for loving that permanent Being is emphasised. Here, the feeling for God is similar to the feeling we have towards human relationships. These bhavas of bhakti are the central features of one path of yoga, called bhakti yoga, where God can be loved as a father, for instance. This is called shanta bhava, where emotions are least present.

1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  Exile means that we leave forever everything in our own country that prevents us from reaching the goal of the religious life. Exile means modest manners, wisdom which remains unknown, prudence not recognized as such by most, a hidden life, an invisible intention, unseen meditation, desire for humiliation, longing for hardship, constant determination to love God, abundance of charity, renunciation of vainglory, depth of silence.
  Those who have come to love the Lord are at first unceasingly and greatly disturbed by this thought, as if burning with divine fire. I speak of separation from their own, undertaken by the lovers of perfection so that they may live a life of hardship and simplicity. But great and praiseworthy as this is, yet it requires great discretion; for not every kind of exile, carried to extremes, is good.

1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  After a time Sri Ramakrishna showed signs of regaining the normal state. He drew a deep breath and said with a smile: "The means of realizing God are ecstasy of love and devotion - that is, one must love God. He who is Brahman is addressed as the Mother.
  He it is, says Ramprasad, that I approach as Mother; But must I give away the secret, here in the marketplace?
  --
  If a man comes to love God, he need not trouble himself much about these activities.
  One needs a fan only as long as there is no breeze. The fan may be laid aside if the southern breeze blows. Then what need is there of a fan?
  --
  "The more you come to love God, the less you will be inclined to perform action. When the daughter-in-law is with child, her mother-in-law gives her less work to do. As time goes by she is given less and less work. When the time of delivery nears, she is not allowed to do any work at all, lest it should hurt the child or cause difficulty at the time of birth.
  "By these philanthropic activities you are really doing good to yourself. If you can do them disinterestedly, your mind will become pure and you will develop love of God. As soon as you have that love you will realize Him.

1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  There is not a person in the world who will admit that he does not love God, or but that will pretend that he does love God. But this pretention can be brought to a touchstone and standard and found out by experiment. Just look at his actions and conduct, and see whether he will do a thing which has the holy approbation of God, or whether he will abstain from doing a thing which has not the divine approbation, notwithstanding the strong opposing inclinations of his soul, and thus show his reverence for the Holy Law. If he does thus oppose the desires of his soul, he is correct when he affirms, "I love God." But if he is following the inclinations of his soul, and is only saying with his tongue that he loves God, his declaration is a lie. When a person in this state of mind utters the confession, "There is no God but God," a voice from God addresses him saying, "You are a liar, for your actions [87] are opposed to your words." In this state of mind there is no use in making the declaration, "I love God." The prophet of God says however, that it is not an idle act to utter the phrase "There is no God but God" for the sake of preserving a man from the divine vengeance, so long as the man is one who does not prefer worldly works to the works of the future world....
  Let those, then, who wish to be saved from the torments of the grave, be earnest in cutting off the ties of the world; and let them acquire a habit of being satisfied with just that which is of actual necessity. Be satisfied for example with that amount of food and drink which is necessary to give strength for devotional exercises; be satisfied with the amount of clothing necessary to protect the body from cold and heat; and so in everything else. If a man cannot purify his heart from attachment to the world let him at least be assiduous in devotion and in calling upon God, and show a preference for cultivating an intimacy with the love of God. Let him look with fear and dread upon trust in the world, and weaken and relax the demands of sense by strict obedience to the law. If notwithstanding he should prefer to yield to the animal soul and to trust in this world, let him prepare himself to experience the torment of the grave and the terrors of the future world. And may the grace and mercy of God which embrace all men, and his pardon and forgiveness which extend to rich and poor, to great and small, reach and save him !

1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  tualizable elements of the Universe. To love God and our neigh-
  bor is therefore not merely an act of worship and compassion

1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love their cow for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage. Indeed, I tell you the truth, any object you have in your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost Truth.
  Eckhart
  --
  I have but one word to say to you concerning love for your neighbour, namely that nothing save humility can mould you to it; nothing but the consciousness of your own weakness can make you indulgent and pitiful to that of others. You will answer, I quite understand that humility should produce forbearance towards others, but how am I first to acquire humility? Two things combined will bring that about; you must never separate them. The first is contemplation of the deep gulf, whence Gods all-powerful hand has drawn you out, and over which he ever holds you, so to say, suspended. The second is the presence of that all-penetrating God. It is only in beholding and loving God. that we can learn forgetfulness of self, measure duly the nothingness which has dazzled us, and accustom ourselves thankfully to decrease beneath that great Majesty which absorbs all things. love God and you will be humble; love God and you will throw off the love of self; love God and you will love all that He gives you to love for love of Him.
  Fnelon
  --
  I once asked the Bishop of Geneva what one must do to attain perfection. You must love God with all your heart, he answered, and your neighbour as yourself.
  I did not ask wherein perfection lies, I rejoined, but how to attain it. Charity, he said again, that is both the means and the end, the only way by which we can reach that perfection which is, after all, but Charity itself. Just as the soul is the life of the body, so charity is the life of the soul.
  I know all that, I said. But I want to know how one is to love God with all ones heart and ones neighbour as oneself.
  But again he answered, We must love God with all our hearts, and our neighbour as ourselves.
  I am no further than I was, I replied. Tell me how to acquire such love.
  --
  He would give no other answer. At last, however, the Bishop said, There are many besides you who want me to tell them of methods and systems and secret ways of becoming perfect, and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. If you want to love God, go on loving Him more and more. Begin as a mere apprentice, and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master in the art. Those who have made most progress will continually press on, never believing themselves to have reached their end; for charity should go on increasing until we draw our last breath.
  Jean Pierre Camus

1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  refuge from the heat of the sun under the shadow of a tree and not be grateful to the tree, without which there would be no shadow at all. Precisely in the same way, were it not for God, man would have no existence nor attributes at all; wherefore, then, should he not love God, unless he be ignorant of Him? Doubtless fools cannot love Him, for the lover of Him springs directly from the knowledge of Him, and whence should a fool have knowledge?
  The second cause of this love is that man loves his benefactor, and in truth his only Benefactor is God, for whatever kindness he receives from any fellow-creature is due to the immediate instigation of God. Whatever motive may have prompted the kindness he receives from another, whether the desire to gain religious merit or a good name, God is the Agent who set that motive to work.
  --
  This is a somewhat dangerous topic to dwell upon, as it is beyond the understanding of common people, and even intelligent men have stumbled in treating of it, and come to believe in incarnation and union with God. Still, the affinity which does exist between man and God disposes of the objection of those theologians mentioned above, who maintain that man cannot love a Being who is not of his own species. However great the distance between them, man can love God because of the affinity indicated in the saying, "God created man in His own likeness."
  The Vision of God
  --
  The reason Bayazid indicated this method of cure for want of relish in devotion was that his friend was an ambitious seeker after place and honour. Ambition and pride are diseases which can only be cured in some such way. God said unto Jesus, "O Jesus! when I see in My servants' hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any selfish desire concerning this world or the next, I act as guardian over that love." Again, when people asked Jesus "What is the highest work of all?" he answered, "To love God and to be resigned to His will." The saint Rabia was once asked whether she loved
  {p. 130}
  --
  Many claim to love God, but each should examine himself as to the genuineness of the love which he professes. The first test is this: he should not dislike the thought of death, for no friend shrinks from going to see a friend. The Prophet said, "Whoever wishes to see God, God wishes to see him." It is true a sincere lover of God may shrink from the thought of death coming before he has finished his preparation
  [1. Koran, chap. 91.]
  --
  The second test of sincerity is that a man should be willing to sacrifice his will to God's, should cleave to what brings him nearer to God, and should shun what places him at a distance from God. The fact of a man's sinning is no proof that he does not love God at all, but it proves that he does not love Him with his whole heart. The saint Fudhail said to a certain man, "If any one asks you whether you love God, keep silent; for if you say, 'I do not love Him,' you are an infidel; and if you say, 'I do,' your deeds contradict you."
  The third test is that the remembrance of God should always remain fresh in a man's heart without effort, for what a man loves he constantly remembers, and if his love is perfect he never forgets it. It is possible, however, that, while the love of God does not take the first place in a man's heart, the love of the love of God may, for love is one thing and the love of love another.

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  conscience from rule of law to rule of spirit from prohibition to exhortation. To love God this means
  to listen to the voice of truth,571 and to act in accordance with its messages; to love thy neighbour, as thy

1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  One man may declare that he cannot fast; but can he declare that he cannot love God? Another may affirm that he cannot preserve virginity or sell all his goods in order to give the price to the poor; but can he tell me that he cannot love his enemies? All that is necessary is to look into ones own heart; for what God asks of us is not found at a great distance.
  St. Jerome
  --
  There are some who are newly delivered from their sins and so, though they are resolved to love God, they are still novices and apprentices, soft and weak. They love a number of superfluous, vain and dangerous things at the same time as Our Lord. Though they love God above all things, they yet continue to take pleasure in many things which they do not love according to God, but besides Himthings such as slight inordinations in word, gesture, clothing, pastimes and frivolities.
  St. Franois de Sales
  --
  It has been found, as a matter of experience, that it is dangerous to lay down detailed and inflexible rules for right livelihooddangerous, because most people see no reason for being righteous overmuch and consequently respond to the imposition of too rigid a code by hypocrisy or open rebellion. In the Christian tradition, for example, a distinction is made between the precepts, which are binding on all and sundry, and the counsels of perfection, binding only upon those who feel drawn towards a total renunciation of the world. The precepts include the ordinary moral code and the commandment to love God with all ones heart, strength and mind, and ones neighbour as oneself. Some of those who make a serious effort to obey this last and greatest commandment find that they cannot do so whole-heartedly, unless they follow the counsels and sever all connections with the world. Nevertheless it is possible for men and women to achieve that perfection, which is deliverance into the unitive knowledge of God, without abandoning the married state and without selling all they have and giving the price to the poor. Effective poverty (possessing no money) is by no means always affective poverty (being indifferent to money). One man may be poor, but desperately concerned with what money can buy, full of cravings, envy and bitter self-pity. Another may have money, but no attachment to money or the things, powers and privileges that money can buy. Evangelical poverty is a combination of effective with affective poverty; but a genuine poverty of spirit is possible even in those who are not effectively poor. It will be seen, then, that the problems of right livelihood, in so far as they lie outside the jurisdiction of the common moral code, are strictly personal. The way in which any individual problem presents itself and the nature of the appropriate solution depend upon the degree of knowledge, moral sensibility and spiritual insight achieved by the individual concerned. For this reason no universally applicable rules can be formulated except in the most general terms. Here are my three treasures, says Lao Tzu. Guard and keep them! The first is pity, the second frugality, the third refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven. And when Jesus is asked by a stranger to settle a dispute between himself and his brother over an inheritance, he refuses (since he does not know the circumstances) to be a judge in the case and merely utters a general warning against covetousness.
  Ga-San instructed his adherents one day: Those who speak against killing, and who desire to spare the lives of all conscious beings are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who destroy wealth, and those who murder the economy of their society? We should not overlook them. Again, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism.

1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  These three methods tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana are really the training of the will, the intellect and the emotion. It requires tremendous will to practise tapas, great understanding or intellectual capacity to probe into the meaning of the scriptures, and emotional purity to love God. These three are emphasised in the canons of tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana. By svadhyaya there is ishtadevata samprayogah,says the sutra; there is union of oneself with the deity of ones worship and adoration by a daily brooding over its characters.
  Whatever we think in our mind, that we will become, and that we will get. But, this thinking should not be a shallow thinking; it should be a very deep absorption of oneself in what one expects. The whole of us should be saturated with our longing for the ideal which is in our mind. There should be no other thought except of the qualities, characters and nature of the ideal which is in our mind. Anything and everything can be obtained in this world if only there is a will behind it. If the force of thought is intense enough, there is nothing which is impossible. This is the point made out in this sutra.

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "But it isn't any and every kind of bhakti that enables one to realize God. One cannot realize God without prema-bhakti. Another name for prema-bhakti is raga-bhakti. God cannot be realized without love and longing. Unless one has learnt to love God, one cannot realize Him.
  "There is another kind of bhakti, known as vaidhibhakti, according to which one must repeat the name of God a fixed number of times, fast, make pilgrimages, worship God with prescribed offerings, make so many sacrifices, and so forth and so on. By continuing such practices a long time one gradually acquires raga-bhakti. God cannot be realized until one has raga-bhakti. One must love God. In order to realize God one must be completely free from worldliness and direct all of one's mind to Him.
  "But some acquire raga-bhakti directly. It is innate in them. They have it from their very childhood. Even at an early age they weep for God. An instance of such bhakti is to be found in Prahlada. Vaidhibhakti is like moving a fan to make a breeze. One needs the fan to make the breeze. Similarly, one practises japa, austerity, and fasting, in order to acquire love of God. But the fan is set aside when the southern breeze blows of

1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  You should love him as he is, a not-God, not-mind, not-person, not-image-even more, as he is a pure, clear One, separate from all twoness. You should love God mindlessly, that is, so that your soul is without mind and free from all mental activities, for as long as your soul is operating like a mind, so long does it have images and representations. But as long as it has images, it has intermediaries, and as long as it has intermediaries, it has neither oneness nor simplicity. And therefore your soul should be bare of all mind and should stay there without mind.48
  Following Saint Dionysius, Eckhart refers to this "mindless" or "unknowing presence," or pure formless awareness without mental intermediaries, as "Divine Ignorance."
  --
  The third meaning is this: love God in all things equally. For God is equally near to all creatures. And among all these creatures God does not love any one more than any other. God is all and is one. All things become nothing but God [Nondual].59
  When all things are nothing but God, there are then no things, and no God, but only this.

1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Prahlada had it. Suppose you go to a wealthy man every day, but you seek no favour of him; you simply love to see him. If he wants to show you favour, you say: 'No, sir. I don't need anything. I came just to see you.' Such is love of God for its own sake. You simply love God and don't want anything from Him, in return."
  Saying this, the Master sang:

1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nevertheless conduct is a great part of our existence and the mere metaphysical, logical or scientific knowledge that either does not help me to act or even limits my self-manifestation through action, cannot be my only concern. For God has not set me here merely to think, to philosophise, to weave metaphysical systems, to play with words and syllogisms, but to act, love and know. I must act divinely so that I may become divine in being and deed; I must learn to love God not only in Himself but in all beings, appearances, objects, enjoyments, events, whether men call them good or bad, real or mythical, fortunate or calamitous; and I must know Him with the same divine impartiality and completeness in order that I may come to be like Him, perfect, pure and unlimited - that which all sons of Man must one day be. This, I cannot help thinking, is the meaning and purpose of the Lila. It is not true that because I think, I am; but rather because I think, feel and act, and even while I am doing any or all of these things, can transcend the thought, feeling and
  Philosophy

1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  As they drove along, Sri Ramakrishna said to the devotees: "You see, sin flies away when love of God grows in a man's heart, even as the water of the reservoir dug in a meadow dries up under the heat of the sun. But one cannot love God if one feels attracted to worldly things, to 'woman and gold'. Merely taking the vow of monastic life will not help a man if he is attached to the world. It is like swallowing your own spittle after spitting it out on the ground."
  After a few minutes the Master continued: 'The members of the Brahmo Samaj do not accept God with form. Narendra says that God with form is a mere idol. He says further: 'What? He still goes to the Kli temple!'"

1.12 - On lying., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  When the demons see that in the very beginning we intend to keep aloof from the witty lecture of a coarse leader, as from an infectious disease, then they try to catch us by two thoughts, suggesting to us: Do not offend the story-teller, or: Do not appear to love God more than they do. Be off! Do not dally, otherwise at the time of your prayer the jokes will recur to your mind. And not only run, but even piously disconcert the bad company by offering for their general attention the thought of death and judgment. For perhaps it is better for you to be sprinkled with a few drops of vainglory, if only you can become a channel of profit for many.
  Hypocrisy is the mother of lying and often its purpose. For some define hypocrisy as no other than meditation on falsehood, and an inventor of falsehood which has a reprehensible oath twisted up with it.

1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  should love God in the following way: "Love him as he is: a not-
  God, a not-spirit, a not-person, a not-image; as a sheer, pure,

1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  (To Captain and the other devotees) "Attri bute to yourselves the bliss of God-Consciousness; then you too will experience ineffable joy. The bliss of God-Consciousness always exists in you. It is only hidden by the veiling and projecting power of maya. The less you are attached to the world, the more you love God."
  CAPTAIN: "The farther you proceed toward your home in Calcutta, the farther you leave Benares behind. Again, the farther you proceed toward Benares, the farther behind you leave your home."

1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The whole thing is to love God and taste His sweetness. He is sweetness and the devotee is its enjoyer. The devotee drinks the sweet Bliss of God. Further, God is the lotus and the devotee the bee. The devotee sips the honey of the lotus.
  "As a devotee cannot live without God, so also God cannot live without His devotee.

1.16 - PRAYER, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Psychologically, it is all but impossible for a human being to practise contemplation without preparing for it by some kind of adoration and without feeling the need to revert at more or less frequent intervals to intercession and some form at least of petition. On the other hand, it is both possible and easy to practise petition apart not only from contemplation, but also from adoration and, in rare cases of extreme and unmitigated egotism, even from intercession. Petitionary and intercessory prayer may be used and used, what is more, with what would ordinarily be regarded as successwithout any but the most perfunctory and superficial reference to God in any of his aspects. To acquire the knack of getting his petitions answered, a man does not have to know or love God, or even to know or love the image of God in his own mind. All that he requires is a burning sense of the importance of his own ego and its desires, coupled with a firm conviction that there exists, out there in the universe, something not himself which can be wheedled or dragooned into satisfying those desires. If I repeat My will be done, with the necessary degree of faith and persistency, the chances are that, sooner or later and somehow or other, I shall get what I want. Whether my will coincides with the will of God, and whether in getting what I want I shall get what is spiritually, morally or even materially good for me are questions which I cannot answer in advance. Only time and eternity will show. Meanwhile we shall be well advised to heed the warnings of folk-lore. Those anonymous realists who wrote the worlds fairy stories knew a great deal about wishes and their fulfilment. They knew, first of all, that in certain circumstances petitions actually get themselves answered; but they also knew that God is not the only answerer and that if one asks for something in the wrong spirit, it may in effect be given but given with a vengeance and not by a divine Giver. Getting what one wants by means of self-regarding petition is a form of hubris, which invites its condign and appropriate nemesis. Thus, the folk-lore of the North American Indian is full of stories about people who fast and pray egotistically, in order to get more than a reasonable man ought to have, and who, receiving what they ask for, thereby bring about their own downfall. From the other side of the world come all the tales of the men and women who make use of some kind of magic to get their petitions answeredalways with farcical or catastrophic consequence. Hardly ever do the Three Wishes of our traditional fairy lore lead to anything but a bad end for the successful wisher.
  Picture God as saying to you, My son, why is it that day by day you rise and pray, and genuflect, and even strike the ground with your forehead, nay, sometimes even shed tears, while you say to me: My Father, my God, give me wealth! If I were to give it to you, you would think yourself of some importance, you would fancy you had gained something very great. Because you asked for it, you have it. But take care to make good use of it. Before you had it you were humble; now that you have begun to be rich you despise the poor. What kind of a good is that which only makes you worse? For worse you are, since you were bad already. And that it would make you worse you knew not; hence you asked it of Me. I gave it you and I proved you; you have found and you are found out! Ask of Me better things than these, greater things than these-Ask of Me spiritual things. Ask of Me Myself.

1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "Chaitanya was Divine Love incarnate. He came down to earth to teach people how to love God. One achieves everything when one loves God. There is no need of hathayoga."
  Practice of Hathayoga
  --
  "Sri Ramakrishna is certainly the best of men. In all my life I have not seen another great soul like him. He must have seen God. Otherwise, how could he talk with God day and night, addressing Him so intimately as 'Mother'? Otherwise, how could he love God so intimately? Such is his love for God that he forgets the outer world. He goes into samdhi and remains like a lifeless thing. Again, in the ecstasy of that love, he laughs and cries and dances and sings."
  Friday, December 14, 1883
  --
  MASTER: "The whole thing, in a nutshell is that one must develop ecstatic love for Satchidananda. What kind of love? How should one love God? Gauri used to say that one must become like Sita to understand Rma; like Bhagavati, the Divine Mother, to understand Bhagavan, iva. One must practise austerity, as Bhagavati did, in order to attain iva. One must cultivate the attitude of Prakriti in order to realize Purusha-the attitude of a friend, a handmaid, or a mother.
  "I saw Sita in a vision. I found that her entire mind was concentrated on Rma. She was totally indifferent to everything-her hands, her feet, her clothes, her jewels. It seemed that Rma had filled every bit of her life and she could not remain alive without Rma."

1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The thing is that one must love God. Through intense love one attains the vision of Him. The attraction of the husb and for the chaste wife, the attraction of the child for its mother, the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man-when a man can blend these three into one, and direct it all to God, then he gets the vision of God."
  Jaygopal was a man of the world. Was this why the Master gave instruction suited to him?
  --
  "Everything can be realized simply through love of God. If one is able to love God, one does not lack anything. Kartika and Ganesa were seated near Bhagavati, who had a necklace of gems around Her neck. The Divine Mother said to them, 'I will present this necklace to him who is the first to go around the universe.' Thereupon Kartika, without losing a moment, set out on the peacock, his carrier. Ganesa, on the other hand, in a leisurely fashion went around the Divine Mother and prostrated himself before Her. He knew that She contained within Herself the entire universe. The Divine Mother was pleased with him and put the necklace around his neck. After a long while Kartika returned and found his brother seated there with the necklace on.
  The Master's visions
  --
  To the devotees he said, "Always sing devotional songs" Continuing, he said: "To love God and live in the company of the devotees: that is all. What more is there?" He said, again: "When Krishna went to Mathura, Yaoda came to Radha, who was absorbed in meditation. Afterwards Radha said to Yaoda: 'I am the Primordial Energy. Ask a boon of Me.' 'What other boon shall I ask of You?' said Yaoda. Only bless me that I may serve God with my body, mind, and tongue; that I may behold His devotees with these eyes, that I may meditate on Him with this mind, and that I may chant His name and glories with this tongue.'
  "But those who are firmly established in God may do as well without the devotees. This is true of those who feel the presence of God both within and without. Sometimes they don't enjoy the devotees' company. You don't whitewash a wall inlaid with mother of pearl-the lime won't stick."
  --
  MASTER (to M.): "The Nitya and the Lila are the two aspects of the Reality. God, plays in the world as man for the sake of His devotees. They can love God only if they see Him in a human form; only then can they show their affection for Him as their Brother, Sister, Father, Mother, or Child.
  "It is just for this love of the devotees that God contracts Himself into a human form and descends on earth to play His lila."

1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The worldly man is a hypocrite. He cannot be guileless. He professes to love God, but he is attracted by worldly objects. He doesn't give God even a very small part of the love he feels for 'woman and gold'. But he says that he loves God. (To Mani Mallick) Give up hypocrisy."
  MANI: "Regarding whom, God or man?"

1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  This is what it means to be intoxicated with ecstatic love of God. The sum and substance of the whole matter is that a man must love God, must be restless for Him. It doesn't matter whether you believe in God with form or in God without form. You may or may not believe that God incarnates Himself as man. But you will realize Him if you have that yearning. Then He Himself will let you know what He is like. If you must be mad, why should you be mad for the things of the world? If you must be mad, be mad for God alone."
  Presently Sri Ramakrishna returned to the main hall of the house. A big pillow was placed near him for his use. Before touching it he said, "Om Tat Sat" Perhaps the pillow had been used by many worldly people, and that was why he purified it in this way.

1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "What need is there of your counting the number of trees and branches in an orchard? You have come to the orchard to eat mangoes. Do that and be happy. The aim of human birth is to love God. Realize that love and be at peace.
  "Suppose you have entered a tavern for a drink. Is it necessary for you to know how many gallons of wine there are in the tavern? One glass is enough for you. What need is there of your knowing the infinite qualities of God? You may discriminate for millions of years about God's attri butes and still you will not know them."

1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "To love God is the essence of the whole thing. Bhakti alone is the essence.
  Nrada said to Rma, 'May I always have pure love for Your Lotus Feet; and may I not be deluded by Your world-bewitching my!' Rma said to him, 'Ask for some other boon.' 'No,' said Nrada, 'I don't want anything else. May I have love for Your Lotus Feet. This is my only prayer.' "

1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Action, says Aquinas, should be something added to the life of prayer, not something taken away from it. One of the reasons for this recommendation is strictly utilitarian; action that is taken away from the life of prayer is action unenlightened by contact with Reality, uninspired and unguided; consequently it is apt to be ineffective and even harmful. The sages of old, says Chuang Tzu, first got Tao for themselves, then got it for others. There can be no taking of motes out of other peoples eyes so long as the beam in our own eye prevents us from seeing the divine Sun and working by its light. Speaking of those who prefer immediate action to acquiring, through contemplation, the power to act well, St. John of the Cross asks, What do they accomplish? And he answers, Poco mas que nada, y a veces nada, y aun a veces dano (Little more than nothing, and sometimes nothing at all, and sometimes even harm). Income must balance expenditure. This is necessary not merely on the economic level, but also on the physiological, the intellectual, the ethical and the spiritual. We cannot put forth physical energy unless we stoke our body with fuel in the form of food. We cannot hope to utter anything worth saying, unless we read and inwardly digest the utterances of our betters. We cannot act rightly and effectively unless we are in the habit of laying ourselves open to leadings of the divine Nature of Things. We must draw in the goods of eternity in order to be able to give out the goods of time. But the goods of eternity cannot be had except by giving up at least a little of our time to silently waiting for them. This means that the life, in which ethical expenditure is balanced by spiritual income, must be a life in which action alternates with repose, speech with alertly passive silence. Otium sanctum quaerit caritas veritatis; negotium justum suscipit necessitas caritatis (The love of Truth seeks holy leisure; the necessity of love undertakes righteous action). The bodies of men and animals are reciprocating engines, in which tension is always succeeded by relaxation. Even the unsleeping heart rests between beat and beat. There is nothing in living Nature that even distantly resembles mans greatest technical invention, the continuously revolving wheel. (It is this fact, no doubt, which accounts for the boredom, weariness and apathy of those who, in modern factories, are forced to adapt their bodily and mental movements to circular motions of mechanically uniform velocity.) What a man takes in by contemplation, says Eckhart, that he pours out in love. The well-meaning humanist and the merely muscular Christian, who imagines that he can obey the second of the great commandments without taking time even to think how best he may love God with all his heart, soul and mind, are people engaged in the impossible task of pouring unceasingly from a container that is never replenished.
  Daughters of Charity ought to love prayer as the body loves the soul. And just as the body cannot live without the soul, so the soul cannot live without prayer. And in so far as a daughter prays as she ought to pray, she will do well. She will not walk, she will run in the ways of the Lord, and will be raised to a high degree of the love of God.

1.40 - Describes how, by striving always to walk in the love and fear of God, we shall travel safely amid all these temptations., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  Those who really love God love all good, seek all good, help forward all good, praise all good,
  and invariably join forces with good men and help and defend them. They love only truth and things

1.41 - Speaks of the fear of God and of how we must keep ourselves from venial sins., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  helped to ruin our souls; but now they will often help us to love God more and to praise Him for
  having delivered us from what we see to be a notorious danger. And whereas we for our part may

1961 01 18, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   52This is a miracle that men can love God, yet fail to love humanity. With whom are they in love then?
   Is it possible to reach the Divine through philanthropy?1

1970 03 19?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   411Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.
   412After I knew that God was a woman, I learned something from far-off about love; but it was only when I became a woman and served my Master and Paramour that I knew love utterly.

1970 04 06, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   451To love God, excluding the world, is to give Him an intense but imperfect adoration.
   452Is love only a daughter or handmaid of jealousy? If Krishna loves Chandrabali,1 why should I not love her also?

1970 04 07, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   456Dost thou hate the atheist because he does not love God? Then shouldst thou be disliked because thou dost not love God perfectly.
   457There is one thing especially in which creeds and churches surrender themselves to the devil, and that is in their anathemas. When the priest chants Anathema Maranatha, then I see a devil praying.1

1.rb - Paracelsus - Part V - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  If I appear the better to love God
  For sin, as one who has no claim on him,-

2.01 - AT THE STAR THEATRE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "There are eight fetters that bind a person to the world. The gopis were free from all but one: shame. Therefore Krishna freed them from that one, too, by taking away their clothes. On attaining God one gets rid of all fetters. (To Mahendra Mukherji and the others) By no means all people feel attracted to God. There are special souls who feel so. To love God one must be born with good tendencies. Otherwise, why should you alone of all the people of Baghbazar come here? You can't expect anything good in a dunghill. The touch of the Malaya breeze turns all trees into sandalwood, no doubt. But there are a few exceptions-the banyan, the cotton-tree, and the Awattha, for example.
  (To the Mukherji brothers) "You are well off. If a man slips from the path of yoga, then he is reborn in a prosperous family and starts again his spiritual practice for the realization of God."

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  majesty, might and beauty of the Lord. To love God in His world
  The Karmayogin

2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "To know many things is ajnna, ignorance. To know only one thing is jnna, Knowledge-the realization that God alone is real and that He dwells in all. And to talk to Him is vijnna, a fuller Knowledge. To love God in different ways, after realizing Him, is vijnna.
  "It is also said that God is beyond one and two. He is beyond speech and mind. To go up from the Lila to the Nitya and come down again from the Nitya to the Lila is mature bhakti.

2.04 - ADVICE TO ISHAN, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Therefore a man should act in such a way that he may have bhakti for the Lotus Feet of God and love God as his very own. You see this world around you. It exists for you only for a couple of days. There is nothing to it." PUNDIT (smiling): "Revered sir, I feel a spirit of total renunciation when I am here. I feel like going away, giving up the world."
  MASTER: "No, no! Why should you give up? Give up mentally. Live unattached in the world.

2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (to the Brahmos): "Dive deep. Learn to love God. Plunge into divine love. You see, I have heard how you pray. Why do you Brahmos dwell so much on the glories of God? Is there such great need of your saying over and over again, 'O God, You have created the sky, the great oceans, the lunar world, the solar world, and the stellar world'?
  "Everybody is wonder-struck at the mere sight of a rich man's garden house. People become speechless at the sight of the trees, the flowers, the ponds, the drawing-room, the pictures. But alas, how few are they who seek the owner of all these! Only one or two inquire after him. He who seeks God with a longing heart can see Him, talk to Him as I am talking to you. Believe my words when I say that God can be seen. But ah! To whom am I saying these words? Who will believe me?

2.07 - BANKIM CHANDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Sambhu said to me: 'It is my desire to build a large number of hospitals and dispensaries. Thus I can do much good to the poor.' I said to him: 'Yes, that is not bad if you can do it in a detached spirit. But to be detached is very difficult unless you sincerely love God. And further, if you entangle yourself in many activities, you will be attached to them in a way unknown to yourself. You may think you have no motive behind your work, but perhaps there has already grown a desire for fame and the advertising of your name. Then again, if you are entangled in too many activities, the pressure of them will make you forget God.' I also said to him: 'Sambhu, let me ask you one thing. If God appears before you, will you want Him or a number of hospitals and dispensaries?' If one realizes God, one doesn't enjoy anything else. One who has tasted syrup of sugar candy cannot enjoy a drink made from common treacle.
  "Those who build hospitals and dispensaries, and get pleasure from that, are no doubt good people; but they are of a different type. He who is a real devotee of God seeks nothing but God. If he finds himself entangled in too much work, he earnestly prays, 'Lord, be gracious and reduce my work; my mind, which should think of Thee day and night, has been wasting its power; it thinks of worldly things alone.' Pure-souled devotees are in a class by themselves. You cannot have real love of God unless you know that God alone is real and all else illusory. You cannot have real love of God unless you know that the world is impermanent, only of two days' existence, while its Creator alone is real and eternal. "Janaka and sages like him worked in the world at the comm and of God.

2.07 - The Triangle of Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The second angle of the triangle of love is, that love knows no fear. Those that love God through fear are the lowest of human beings, quite undeveloped as men. They worship God from fear of pumshment. He is a great being to them, with a whip in one hand and the sceptre in the other; if they do not obey Him they are afraid they will be whipped.
  It is a degradation to worship God through fear of punishment; such worship is, if worship at all, the crudest form of the worship of love. o long as there is any fear in the heart, how can there he love also? Love conquers naturally all fear. Think of a young mother in the street, and a dog barking at her; she is frightened, and flies into the nearest house. But suppose, the next day, she is in the street with her child, and a lion springs upon the child. Where will be her position now? Of course, in the very mouth of the lion, protecting her child. Love conquers all fear. Fear comes from the selfish idea of cutting one's self off from the universe.

2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  Man melting, like ice vanishing before the blaze of the sun. That is religion. When the sun of God-consciousness rises, this substance called body-consciousness evaporates into an ethereal nothing. Gradually, we begin to approximate God-being. The life of religion is the way of gradual approximation to God-consciousness. Here, true love begins to preponderate in our lives. We do not merely think of God as philosophers or academicians or professors. We love God; and we cannot love a thing which is not really there. We cannot love a thing which is only an idea or a concept in our mind.
  All love is an urge of the soul to contact that which it feels as a hard reality in front of itself.

2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  The truth is that unless a man has got rid of rajas and has acquired sattva, he cannot steadily dwell in God; he cannot love God and realize Him."
  GIRISH: "You have blessed me."

2.09 - Human representations of the Divine Ideal of Love, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  There is one more human representation of the divine ideal of love. It is known as Madhura (mxur), sweet, and is the highest of all such representations. It is indeed based on the highest manifestation of love in this world, and this love is also the strongest known to man. What love shakes the whole nature of man, what love runs through every atom of his being, makes him mad, makes him forget his own nature, transforms him, makes him either a god or a demon, as the love between man and woman? In this sweet representation of divine love God is our husband. We are all women; there are no men in this world; there is but One Man, and that is He, our Beloved. All that love which man gives to woman, or woman to man, has here to be given up to the Lord. All the different kinds of love which we see in the world, and with which we are more or less playing merely, have God as the one goal; but unfortunately, man does not know the infinite ocean into which this mighty river of love is constantly flowing; and, foolishly, he often tries to direct it to little dolls of human beings. The tremendous love for the child that is in human nature is not for the little doll of a child; if you bestow it blindly and exclusively on the child, you will suffer in consequence; but through such suffering will come the awakening by which you are sure to find out that the love which is in you, if it is given to any human being, will sooner or later bring pain and sorrow as the result. Our love must, therefore, be given to the Highest One, who never dies and who never changesto Him, in the ocean of whose love there is neither ebb nor flow. Love must get to its right destination, it must go unto Him who is really the infinite ocean of love.
  All rivers flow into the ocean. Even the drop of water coming down from the mountain-side cannot stop its course after reaching a brook or a river, however big it may be; at last even that drop somehow does find its way to the ocean. God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me, I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, Why do You not come to me: why do You leave me thus alone? Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? It is the crystallised essence of infinite enjoyment that we have to seek, and that is in God. Let all our passions and emotions go up unto Him. They are meant for Him, for if they miss their mark and go lower, they become vile; and when they go straight to the mark, to the Lord, even the lowest of them becomes transfigured; all the energies of the human body and mind, howsoever they may express themselves, have the Lord as their one goal, as their Ekyana. All loves and all passions of the human heart must go to God. He is the Beloved; whom else can this heart love? He is the most beautiful, the most sublime. He is beauty itself, sublimity itself. Who in this universe is more beautiful than He? Who in this universe is more fit to become the husb and than He? Who in this universe is fitter to be loved than He? So let Him be the husband, let Him be the Beloved. Often it so happens that divine lovers who sing of this divine love accept the language of human love in all its aspects as adequate to describe it. Fools do not under-stand this; they never will. They look at it only with the physical eye. They do not understand the mad throes of this spiritual love. How can they? For one kiss of Thy lips, O Beloved!

2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  With all thy soul love God above;
  And as thyself thy neighbour love.

2.14 - AT RAMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Further, I shall tell him that the textbooks prescribed by the school authorities say that one should love God with all one's soul" (The Master laughs.) MASTER : "At Captain's house I sent for the younger Naren. I said to him:' where is your house? I want to see it.' 'Please do come', he said. But he became nervous as we were going there, lest his father should know about it. (All laugh.) (To a visitor) "You haven't been here for a long time-about seven or eight months."
  VISITOR: "About a year, sir."

3.02 - Mysticism, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  2. Secondly, our charity is energized. Hitherto, to love God
  and one's neighbour might have seemed no more than an

3.1.23 - The Rishi, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Love men, love God. Fear not to love, O King,
  Fear not to enjoy;

3.2.08 - Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Your whole-hearted acceptance of the Vaishnava idea and bhakti becomes rather bewildering when it is coupled with an insistence that love cannot be given to the Divine until one has experience of the Divine. For what is more common in the Vaishnava attitude than the joy of bhakti for its own sake? Give me bhakti, it cries, whatever else you may keep from me. Even if it is long before I can meet you, even if you delay to manifest yourself, let my bhakti, my seeking for you, my cry, my love, my adoration be always there. How constantly the Bhakta has sung, All my life I have been seeking you and still you are not there, but still I seek and cannot cease to seek and love and adore. If it were really impossible to love God unless you first experience him, how could this be? In fact your mind seems to be putting the cart before the horse. One seeks after God first, with persistence or with passion, one finds him afterwards, some sooner than others, but most after a long seeking. One does not find him first, then seek after him. Even a glimpse only comes after long or fervent seeking. One has the love of God or at any rate some hearts desire for him and afterwards one becomes aware of Gods love, its reply to the hearts desire, its response of the supreme joy and Ananda. One does not say to God, Show your love for me first, shower on me the experience of yourself, satisfy my demand, then I will see whether I can love you so long as you deserve it. It is surely the seeker who must seek and love first, follow the quest, become impassioned for the Sought then only does the veil move aside and the Light be seen and the Face manifest that alone can satisfy the soul after its long sojourn in the desert.
  Then again you may say, Yes, but whether I love or not, I want, I have always wanted and now I want more and more, but I get nothing. Yes, but wanting is not all. As you now begin to see, there are conditions that have to be metlike the purification of the heart. Your thesis was, Once I want God, God must manifest to me, come to me, at least give glimpses of himself to me, the real solid concrete experiences, not mere vague things which I cant understand or value. Gods Grace must answer my call for it, whether I yet deserve it or notor else there is no Grace. Gods Grace may indeed do that in certain cases, but where does the must come in? If God must do it, it is no longer Gods Grace, but Gods duty or an obligation or a contract or a treaty. The Divine looks into the heart and removes the veil at the moment which he knows to be the right moment to do it. You have laid stress on the bhakti theory that one has only to call his name and he must reply, he must at once be there. Perhaps, but for whom is this true? For a certain kind of Bhakta surely who feels the power of the Name, who has the passion of the Name and puts it into his cry. If one is like that, then there may be the immediate replyif not, one has to become like that, then there will be the reply. But some go on using the Name for years, before there is an answer. Ramakrishna himself got it after a few months, but what months! and what a condition he had to pass through before he got it! Still he succeeded quickly because he had a pure heart already and that divine passion in it.
  --
  P.S. All this is of course only an answer couched in mental terms to your one objection or inability to conceive how one can love God without having first known Him or had experience of Him. But mental reasoning by itself leads to nothingit is something in yourself that has to see and then there is no difficulty. Fortunately, you are moving near to that. Nor would I trouble at all about this point, if you did not make of it a support for depression and despair. Otherwise it would have no importance, since with one idea or with the other one can arrive at the goal because the soul drives towards it.
  ***

3.5.01 - Aphorisms, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Immortality, unity and freedom are in ourselves and await there our discovery; but for the joy of love God in us will still remain the Many.
  ***

4.02 - Divine Consolations., #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  8.: Practise what I advised in the preceding mansions, then-humility, humility! for God lets Himself be vanquished by this and grants us all we ask.24 The first proof25' that you possess humility is that you neither think you now deserve these graces and consolations from God, nor that you ever will as long as you live. You ask me: 'How shall we receive them, if we do not try to gain them?' I answer, that there is no surer way to obtain them than the one I have told you, therefore make no efforts to acquire them, for the following reasons. The first is, that the chief means of obtaining them is to love God without self-interest. The second, that it is a slight lack of humility to think that our wretched services can win so great a reward. The third, that the real preparation for them is to desire to suffer and imitate our Lord, rather than to receive consolations, for indeed we have all offended Him. The fourth reason is, that His Majesty has not promised to give us these favours in the same way as He has bound Himself to bestow eternal glory on us if we keep His commandments. 'The faculties are not lost, neither are they asleep; the will alone is occupied in such a way that without knowing how it has become a captive it gives a simple consent to become the prisoner of God.' 'The other two faculties help the will that it may render itself capable of the fruition of so great a good; nevertheless, it occasionally happens even when the will is in union that they hinder it very much.' We can be saved without these special graces; He sees better than we do what is best for us and which of us love Him sincerely. I know for a certain truth, being acquainted with some who walk by the way of love (and therefore only seek to serve Jesus Christ crucified), that not only they neither ask for nor desire consolation, but they even beg Him not to give it them during this life: this is a fact. Fifthly, we should but labour in vain: this water does not flow through aqueducts, like that we first spoke of, and if the spring does not afford it, in vain shall we toil to obtain it. I mean, that though we may meditate and try our hardest, and though we shed tears to gain it, we cannot make this water flow. God alone gives it to whom He chooses, and often when the soul is least thinking of it. We are His, sisters, let Him do what He will with us, and lead us where He will. If we are really humble and annihilate ourselves, not only in our imagination (which often deceives us), but if we truly detach ourselves from all things, our Lord will not only grant us these favours but many others that we do not know even how to desire. May He be for ever praised and blessed! Amen.

4.03 - The Meaning of Human Endeavor, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  To be pure of heart means to love God above all
  things and at the same time to see him everywhere
  --
  we love God, something of our inner activity, our
  operatio, will never perish. But what of the results

4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  53. This is a miracle that men can love God, yet fail to love humanity. With whom are they in love then?
  54. The quarrels of religious sects are like the disputing of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalising nectar. Let them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in whatever pot and attain immortality.

4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  219. love God in thy opponent, even while thou strikest him; so shall neither have hell for his portion.
  220. Men talk of enemies, but where are they? I only see wrestlers of one party or the other in the great arena of the universe.

4.3 - Bhakti, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  410. Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.
  411. After I knew that God was a woman, I learned something from far-off about love; but it was only when I became a woman and served my Master and Paramour that I knew love utterly.
  --
  450. To love God, excluding the world, is to give Him an intense but imperfect adoration.
  451. Is love only a daughter or handmaid of jealousy? If Krishna loves Chandrabali, why should I not love her also?
  --
  Then shouldst thou be disliked because thou dost not love God perfectly.
  456. There is one thing especially in which creeds and churches surrender themselves to the devil, and that is in their anathemas.

BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  These are the considerations which one must keep in view, that he may answer the question whether any evil happens to the faithful and godly which cannot be turned to profit. Or shall we say that the question is needless, and that the apostle is vapouring when he says, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God?"[48]
  They lost all they had. Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the hidden man of the heart, which in the sight of God are of great price?[49] Did they lose these? For these are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle[Pg 15] said, "Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."[50]

BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  The remaining part of philosophy is morals, or what is called by the Greeks , in which is discussed the question concerning the chief good,that which will leave us nothing further to seek in order to be blessed, if only we make all our actions refer to it, and seek it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake. Therefore it is called the end, because we wish other things on account of it, but itself only for its own sake. This beatific good, therefore, according to some, comes to a man from the body, according to others, from the mind, and, according to others, from both together. For they saw that man himself consists of soul and body; and therefore they believed that from either of these two, or from both together, their well-being must proceed, consisting in a certain final good, which could render them blessed, and to which they might refer all their actions, not requiring anything ulterior to which to refer that good itself. This is why those who have added a third kind of good things, which they call extrinsic,as honour, glory, wealth, and the like,have not regarded them as part of the final good, that is, to be sought after for their own sake, but as things which are to be sought for the sake of something else, affirming that this kind of good is good to the good, and evil to the evil. Wherefore, whether they have sought the good of man from the mind or from the body, or from both together, it is still only from man they have supposed that it must be sought. But they who have sought it from the body have sought it from the inferior part of man; they who have sought it from the mind, from the superior part; and they who have sought it from both, from the whole man. Whether, therefore, they[Pg 318] have sought it from any part, or from the whole man, still they have only sought it from man; nor have these differences, being three, given rise only to three dissentient sects of philosophers, but to many. For diverse philosophers have held diverse opinions, both concerning the good of the body, and the good of the mind, and the good of both together. Let, therefore, all these give place to those philosophers who have not affirmed that a man is blessed by the enjoyment of the body, or by the enjoyment of the mind, but by the enjoyment of God,enjoying Him, however, not as the mind does the body or itself, or as one friend enjoys another, but as the eye enjoys light, if, indeed, we may draw any comparison between these things. But what the nature of this comparison is, will, if God help me, be shown in another place, to the best of my ability. At present, it is sufficient to mention that Plato determined the final good to be to live according to virtue, and affirmed that he only can attain to virtue who knows and imitates God,which knowledge and imitation are the only cause of blessedness. Therefore he did not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it certainly follows that the student of wisdom, that is, the philosopher, will then become blessed when he shall have begun to enjoy God. For though he is not necessarily blessed who enjoys that which he loves (for many are miserable by loving that which ought not to be loved, and still more miserable when they enjoy it), nevertheless no one is blessed who does not enjoy that which he loves. For even they who love things which ought not to be loved do not count themselves blessed by loving merely, but by enjoying them. Who, then, but the most miserable will deny that he is blessed, who enjoys that which he loves, and loves the true and highest good? But the true and highest good, according to Plato, is God, and therefore he would call him a philosopher who loves God; for philosophy is directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.
  9. Concerning that philosophy which has come nearest to the Christian faith.

BOOK XIV. - Of the punishment and results of mans first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  He who resolves to love God, and to love his neighbour as himself, not according to man but according to God, is on account of this love said to be of a good will; and this is in Scripture more commonly called charity, but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of good.[25] And when the Lord Himself had asked Peter, "Hast thou a regard for me (diligis) more than these?" Peter replied, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee." And again a second time the Lord asked not whether Peter loved (amaret) Him, but whether he had a regard (diligeret) for Him, and he again answered, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee." But on the third interrogation the Lord Himself no longer says, "Hast thou a regard (diligis) for me," but "Lovest thou (amas) me?" And then the evangelist adds, "Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou (amas) me?" though the Lord had not said three times but only once, "Lovest thou (amas) me?" and twice "Diligis me?" from which we gather that, even when the Lord said "diligis," He used an equivalent for "amas." Peter, too, throughout used one word[Pg 11] for the one thing, and the third time also replied, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee."[26]
  I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion that charity or regard (dilectio) is one thing, love (amor) another. They say that dilectio is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love. But it is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction. However, it is for the philosophers to determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings sufficiently testify that they make great account of love (amor) placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas; and we have already shown that amor is used in a good connection. And if any one fancy that amor is no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says, "He that loveth (diligit) iniquity hateth his own soul;"[27] and the words of the Apostle John, "If any man love (diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him."[28] Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense. And if any one demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, "For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money."[29]

BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  The whole use, then, of things temporal has a reference to this result of earthly peace in the earthly community, while in the city of God it is connected with eternal peace. And therefore, if we were irrational animals, we should desire nothing beyond the proper arrangement of the parts of the body and the satisfaction of the appetites,nothing, therefore, but bodily comfort and abundance of pleasures, that the peace of the body might contri bute to the peace of the soul. For if bodily peace be awanting, a bar is put to the peace even of the irrational soul, since it cannot obtain the gratification of its appetites. And these two together help out the mutual peace of soul and body, the peace of harmonious life and health. For as animals, by shunning pain, show that they love bodily peace, and, by pursuing pleasure to gratify their appetites, show that they love peace of soul, so their shrinking from death is a sufficient indication of their intense love of that peace which binds soul and body in close alliance. But, as man has a rational soul, he subordinates all this which he has in common with the beasts to the peace of his rational soul, that his intellect may have free play and may regulate his actions, and that he may thus enjoy the well-ordered harmony of knowledge and action which constitutes, as we have said, the peace of the rational soul. And for this purpose he must desire to be neither molested by pain, nor disturbed by desire, nor extinguished by death, that he may arrive at some useful knowledge by which he may regulate his life and manners. But, owing to the liability of the human mind to fall into mistakes, this very pursuit of knowledge may be a snare to him unless he has a divine Master, whom he may obey without misgiving, and who may at the same time give him such help as to preserve his own freedom. And because, so long as he is in this mortal body, he is a stranger to God, he walks by faith, not by sight; and he therefore refers all peace, bodily or spiritual or both, to that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God, so that he exhibits the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law. But as this divine Master inculcates two precepts,the love of God and the[Pg 323] love of our neighbour, and as in these precepts a man finds three things he has to love,God, himself, and his neighbour, and that he who loves God loves himself thereby, it follows that he must endeavour to get his neighbour to love God, since he is ordered to love his neighbour as himself. He ought to make this endeavour in behalf of his wife, his children, his household, all within his reach, even as he would wish his neighbour to do the same for him if he needed it; and consequently he will be at peace, or in well-ordered concord, with all men, as far as in him lies. And this is the order of this concord, that a man, in the first place, injure no one, and, in the second, do good to every one he can reach. Primarily, therefore, his own household are his care, for the law of nature and of society gives him readier access to them and greater opportunity of serving them. And hence the apostle says, "Now, if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."[643] This is the origin of domestic peace, or the well-ordered concord of those in the family who rule and those who obey. For they who care for the rest rule,the husb and the wife, the parents the children, the masters the servants; and they who are cared for obey,the women their husbands, the children their parents, the servants their masters. But in the family of the just man who lives by faith and is as yet a pilgrim journeying on to the celestial city, even those who rule serve those whom they seem to command; for they rule not from a love of power, but from a sense of the duty they owe to othersnot because they are proud of authority, but because they love mercy.
    15. Of the liberty proper to man's nature, and the servitude introduced by sin,a servitude in which the man whose will is wicked is the slave of his own lust, though he is free so far as regards other men.

COSA - BOOK III, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Can it at any time or place be unjust to love God with all his heart,
  with all his soul, and with all his mind; and his neighbour as himself?

Epistle to the Romans, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,
  to those who are called according to His purpose.

Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   loveth not his neighbour whom he hath see, how shall he love God whom
   he hath not seen?
  --
     One must love God, and not fear Caesar; as it is written in the Holy
     Book, "He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword."

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  He will surely be pleased to accept the worship, knowing that it is meant for Him alone. love God; that is
  the duty nearest to you.
  --
  enjoyments). I t is given to pure souls alone, uncontaminated by the world, to love God and to have a
  single aim, namely, to have the mind fixed wholly upon the Lord.
  --
  that is, God. Secondly it helps one to work unattached. One cannot love God and at the same time love
  riches, pleasure, fame, or power. He who has once tasted the drink prepared with the Ola sugar candy

the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  28) If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? ~ John IV. 20
  29) No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us. ~ John IV. 12

The First Letter of John, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  15 Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. 16 We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.
  God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.
  17 In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, "I love God," but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
  CHAPTER 5
  --
  1 Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. 2 In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy.
  4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith.

The Gospel According to John, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  John in his writings particularly expresses the love God and his Son Jesus have for mankind - "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16).
  His Gospel is the only one which presents the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana, the discourse on the Bread of Life, the raising of Lazarus, the references to the living water and the Holy Spirit, the washing of the disciples' feet, the Prayer of Jesus, and his words to Mary and John at the Cross. John portrays Jesus in control of the events leading up to the Crucifixion, as events He must undergo to be obedient to his Father and save mankind.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra text, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  the desert? Was it not because I loved man all-toomuch? Now I love God; man I love not. Man is for me
  too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me."

WORDNET














IN WEBGEN [10000/18]

Wikipedia - Hindu Love Gods (band) -- Blues rock band
Wikipedia - The Love God? -- 1969 film directed by Nat Hiken
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13083672-love-god-and-the-art-of-french-cooking
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7960890.The_Love_Goddess__Cooking_School
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7960890-the-love-goddess-cooking-school
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14235121.Love_God_Greatly
Kheper - How_To_Love_God -- 4
The Love God?(1969) - An ornithologist(Don Knotts)unknowingly sells his bird lovers magazine to an adult magazine publisher (Edmond O'Brien).
https://warrenzevon.fandom.com/wiki/Hindu_Love_Gods
https://warrenzevon.fandom.com/wiki/Hindu_Love_Gods_(album)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Love_God,_Love_Neighbor.webm
Hindu Love Gods
Hindu Love Gods (band)
Love God, Love People
Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals
Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess
Samurai Love God
The Love God?



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