William P. Young
It is not the nature of love to force a relationship, but it is the nature of love to open the way.Collection: Way
Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe & powerful.Collection: Powerful
Even though you can't finally grasp me, guess what? I still want to be known.Collection: Want
You... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around... Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly... A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image. Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying. I AM love.Collection: Mean
If anything matters, then everything matters.Collection: Matter
I am what some would say 'holy, and wholly other than you.' The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.Collection: Fall
I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had -- Plato's white grandfatherly god -- because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids.Collection: Growing Up
God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellect.Collection: Voice
We've created a theology in the West of a God who is fundamentally self-centered. The imagery of God as distant, unapproachable, unreachable -- that's not a God who is relational. It is a God that gets to declare or judge when he gets pissed off. But there is no basis for love and relationships if God is a fundamentally self-centered being.Collection: Self
Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver...to release you from something that will eat you alive; that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly. Do you think this man cares about the pain and torment you have gone through? If anything, he feeds on that knowledge. Don't you want to cut that off? And in doing so, you'll release him from a burden that he carries whether he knows it or not--acknowledges it or not.Collection: Pain
...humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.Collection: Mean
Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to hold power over another is to chose to limit to onself - to serve. Humans often do this - in touching the infirm and sick, in serving the ones whos minds have left to wander, in relation to the poor, in loving the very old and the very young, or even in caring for the others who has assumed a position of power over them.Collection: Caring
I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.Collection: Journey
I am a verb. I am that I amNouns exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but if the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless 'I am', there are no verbs, and verbs are what makes the universe aliveCollection: Reality
Once you have hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.Collection: Order
I don't see the Father pouring out his wrath on the Son. I see the human race pouring out their wrath on the Son. So I see the only hope for the entire cosmos is what the Son chooses to accept, crawling upon the instrument of our greatest wrath. He met us at the deepest, darkest place.Collection: Jesus
Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself - to serve.Collection: Way
You need boundaries... Even in our material creations, boundaries mark the most beautiful of places, between the ocean and the shore, between the mountains and the plains, where the canyon meets the river.Collection: Beautiful
The Gospel is a declaration of something totally finished apart from our agreement or vote. Inside that declaration is an ongoing and relentless invitation to deepening relationship but any lack of belief or participation on our part has no power to negate the accomplished truth of that declaration.Collection: Agreement
There is only one race ... and it is human!Collection: Race
I think good creative writing opens up space for people to come into. Let God reach out and touch the human soul. That's not my job. I get to be present and create as much space as I can ... That frees me up just to be creative in the way I want to be.Collection: Letting Go
For me, everything is about Jesus and Father and the Holy Spirit, and relationships, and life is an adventure of faith lived one day at a time. Any aspirations, visions and dreams died a long time ago and I have absolutely no interest in resurrecting them (they would stink by now anyway). I have finally figured out that I have nothing to lose by living a life of faith. I know more joy every minute of every day than seems appropriate, but I love the wastefulness of my Father's grace and presence. For me, everything in my life that matters, is perfect!Collection: Dream
City and country -- each has its own beauty and its own pain. Some of the smallness of small towns -- cattiness, everybody knowing everybody's business -- that can be challenging. And cities can be challenging, because no one can connect except electronically.Collection: Country
I believe that, that Christ became sin for us.Collection: Believe
It is my desire and intent to trust the multi-layered good purposes of God than in what humans fabricate out of their need and experience. I specifically ask not to know these purposes so that I might remain a child in their unfolding.Collection: Children
I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.Collection: Religious
It wasn't long ago I was cleaning toilets and now I have protestors. How cool is this?Collection: Long Ago
It is impossible for you to take power over the future because it isn't even real...Collection: Real
Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside.Collection: Punishment
Much as I venerate the name of Newton, I am not obliged to believe that he was infallible. I see ... with regret that he was liable to err, and that his authority has, perhaps, sometimes even retarded the progress of science.Collection: Regret
Thank goodness there are women in our lives -- that's all I can say. We get saved by the women in our lives.Collection: Goodness
Our earth is like a child who has grown up without parents, having no one to guide her... Some have attempted to help her but most have simply tried to use her. Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her with no consideration, other than their immediate needs. And they give little thought for their own children who will inherit their lack of love. So they use her and abuse her with little consideration and then when she shudders of blows her breath. They are offended and raise their fist at God.Collection: Children
Religion and anger has gone together a lot, historically. My father, being very religious and angry, was trying to reconcile the ideas of love and forgiveness with damage in his own heart. We historically create God in the image of someone who will redeem us, or someone who has damaged us. A lot of my imaginations of God was a projection of my own damage because of my father. God is good but he has a lot of expectations, of which I have failed -- just like my dad. But I don't think it's truthful to create God as a projection of either our damage or our altruism.Collection: Religious
Today's minor irritations may become tomorrow's treasured memories. We often don't know what we are missing, until it's missing.Collection: Memories
The enemy of a writer is not controversy but obscurity.Collection: Enemy
I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later.Collection: Heart
Jesus picked up the conversation. "As the crowning glory of creation, you were made in Our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply 'be' in relationship with Me and one another. If you had trully learned to regard one another's concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy.Collection: Jesus
You don't play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship.Collection: Children
And the Law that once contained impossible demands -- Thou Shalt Not... -- actually becomes a promise we fulfill in you.Collection: Law
Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong use to make others conform to what they want.Collection: Strong
You cannot produce trust just like you cannot 'do' humility. It either is or is not.Collection: Humility
Mackenzie, you cannot produce trust, just as you cannot 'do' humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me.Collection: Love You
All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It's not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda.Collection: Relationship
Paradigms power perceptions, perceptions power emotions.Collection: Perception
Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messyCollection: Honesty
When you chose independence over relationship, you became a danger to one another. Others became objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness. Authority as you usually think of it, is merely the excues the strone ones use to make others conform to what they want.Collection: Thinking
Women, in general, will find it difficult to turn from a man and stop demanding that he meets their needs, provides security, and protects their identity, and return to me. Men, in general, find it very hard to turn from the works of their hands, their own quests for power and security and significance, and turn to me.Collection: Men
The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.Collection: Independence
It's quite simple really. Being always transcends appearance-that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simple no longer matter. That is why Elousia is such a wonderful name. God, who is the ground of all being, dwells in, around, and through all things-ultimately emerging as the real-and appearances that mask that reality will fall away.Collection: Real