E. Stanley Jones
Some have said that the power of a Redeemer would depend upon two things: first, upon the richness of the self that was given; and second, upon the depths of the giving. Friend and foe alike are agreed on the question of the character of Jesus Christ.Collection: Jesus
Prayer is commitment. We don't merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment.Collection: Prayer
The action carries a sense of incompleteness and frustration, but not of guilt. Victorious living does not mean perfect living in the sense of living without flaw, but it does mean adequate living, and that can be consistent with many mistakes.Collection: Mistake
We are personalities in the making, limited, and grappling with things too high for us. Obviously we, at very best, will make many mistakes, but these mistakes need not be sins.Collection: Mistake
Grace makes you gracious. The Giver makes you give.Collection: Giving
When the Christian doesn't find joy on account of his happenings, he can always find joy in spite of them.Collection: Christian
The moral laws of the Universe are deeply embedded in the constitution of things. We do not break them - we break ourselves upon them.Collection: Law
When I met Christ, I felt that I had swallowed sunshine.Collection: Sunshine
In conversion you are not attached primarily to an order, nor to an institution, nor a movement, nor a set of beliefs, nor a code of action - you are attached primarily to a Person, and secondarily to these other things.Collection: Order
Everything that happens to me can help me along in my Christian life.Collection: Christian
Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. ... The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future.Collection: Adventure
Recognize negativism and inferiority attitudes as enemies - do not try to dress them as your friends. you will be tempted to look upon negativism as prudence and inferiorities as humility. Strip off those false cloaks and see these attitudes in their nakedness - as enemies of you and of your possibilities.Collection: Attitude
Spiritual power comes out of inward fellowship with God and abandonment to his purposes.Collection: Spiritual
God doesn't have any grandchildren.Collection: Grandchildren
If we know how to pray, we know how to live.Collection: Praying
Earth's blackest day and earth's brightest day are only three days apart.Collection: Three
The universe does not make sense without God.Collection: Doe
In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs. . . . We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are.Collection: Country
Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. Like produces like. Grace makes you gracious, the Giver makes you give.Collection: Giving
You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.Collection: Giving Up
We must continue to pursue the thought that we do not merely belong to the Kingdom - the Kingdom belongs to us.Collection: Kingdoms
All coming to Jesus has the feeling of homecoming upon it. All going away from Him has the sense of estrangement upon it. The rich young ruler went away from Jesus "sorrowful." Everybody does. Not only estrangement from God, but also estrangement from oneself. And the universe! And from life! You are not at home with life, unless you are at home with Life. And Jesus is Life!Collection: Jesus
In the prayer time, the battle of the spiritual life is lost or won.Collection: Spiritual
Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.Collection: Mistake
A Johns Hopkins doctor says that 'we do not know why it is that the worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact.' But I, who am simple of mind, think I know we are inwardly constructed, in nerve and tissue and brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. Therefore, the need of faith is not something imposed on us dogmatically, but it is written in us intrinsically. We cannot live without it. To live by worry is to live against Reality.Collection: Fear
No person is free until he or she is free at the center. When we let go there, we are free indeed. When the self is renounced, then one stands utterly disillusioned, apart, asking for nothing. If anything comes to us, it is all sheer gain. Then life becomes one constant surprise.Collection: Letting Go
In the pure, strong hours of the morning, when the soul of the day is at its best, lean upon the window sill of God and look into his face, and get the orders for the day. Then go out into the day with the sense of a hand upon your shoulder and not a chip.Collection: Strong
Suppose you should fail. Is that so terrible? Not to have tried is a worse failure.Collection: Failing
We must be willing to be guided of God, not merely now and then, but as a life proposition.Collection: Now And Then
Prayer means that the total you is praying. Your whole being reaches out to God, and God reaches down to you.Collection: Prayer
The God I find in Christ is a God who overcomes evil with good, hate by love, and the world by a cross.Collection: Hate
Don't wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts within, not from without.Collection: Self
Very often when I haven't faith in my faith, I have to have faith in His faith. He makes me believe in myself and my possibilities, when I simply can't. I have to rise to His faith in me.Collection: Believe
Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.Collection: Spiritual
The only thing you believe in is the thing you believe in enough to practice. Your creed is your deed.Collection: Believe
While love takes on itself impossible tasks, yet it finds that love lightens all loads. It is the same burden that wings are to a bird, that sails are to a ship. Nothing is hard if done for love's sweet sake. The yoke of love is easy; the yoke of duty is hard. There is all the difference in the world between being drawn by love and being driven by duty. The task may be the same, but love makes everything light, and duty makes everything drudgery.Collection: Love
If you don't surrender to God, don't think you don't surrender. Everybody surrenders -- to something.Collection: Thinking
I see that I am inwardly fashioned for faith and not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear and doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry my being is gasping for breath - these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence I breath freely - these are my native air.Collection: Fear
Nothing is ever really yours until you share it.Collection: Share
Whatever we focus on determines what we become.Collection: Focus
Faith is not merely you holding on to God- it is God holding on to youCollection: Christian
Be so preoccupied with good will that you haven't room for ill will.Collection: Ill Will
Abundant living means abundant giving.Collection: Mean
To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe.Collection: Brother
Everybody who belongs to Christ belongs to everybody who belongs to ChristCollection: Christ
Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver.Collection: Forever
The opponent strikes you on your cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically, and you hit him spiritually.Collection: Spiritual
A nail-pierced hand holds the sceptre of the universe, and my knees bend before him.Collection: Hands
When we can sing in the face of death, we can sing in the face of anything.Collection: Faces