302 results for tag: Quote for today
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 24, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“We might describe Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as a satirical parade, on a grand scale. Jesus riding a donkey is but one paradox of the kingdom of heaven where things of God are not as they seem to human eyes and perceptions…
When King Jesus rode into town his purpose was not to overwhelm, conquer and kill those who opposed him. He rode into town to be killed by those who hated and opposed him. King Jesus was no John Wayne, Clint Eastwood or Denzel Washington.”
Originally published in:
Christianity Without the Religion magazine, April 2021
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 21, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Our God is a God of loving embrace, not a stern, harsh executioner whose wrath can only be satisfied through the death of his son…
There is no doubt that we have all left havoc in our wake. Guilt and shame exist in all of our lives. We do need to be reconciled with God, but not because our sins have driven him to the point of complete exhaustion.
God didn’t lose his temper because we failed to make the grade. The Cross of Christ was the plan from the foundation of the world, according to Revelation 13:8. God was not caught off guard by Adam and Eve – or, for that matter, by you and me. The ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 19, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“The Cross of Christ is not an act of God that balances the books – the Cross of Christ is about forgiveness, not payback.”
Originally published in:
Christianity Without the Religion magazine, June 2022
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 17, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Prayer is both vertical and horizontal. Part of prayer is about our relationship with God, so it’s vertical. But in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus also has us pray about other people, so there’s a horizontal dimension as well. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us that our relationship with God empowers us, so that God’s work will be displayed in our lives.
Because we have been forgiven by God, and because we have received that forgiveness, we will also be enabled to pass that forgiveness on to others. There is no horizontal forgiveness unless and until there is vertical forgive...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 14, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“While there is no doubt that the Second Coming is a prominent feature of the Book of Revelation, it is not the theme. The theme is not primarily about future fulfillments of prophecy. Instead, the Book of Revelation is centered in the past as well as the present. The past watershed event is the cross of Christ, with the present reality being the Risen Lord who is ever alive and ever present with Christians who encounter the real problems of life in the flesh.
Apocalyptic writing is filled with images of violence and war, with woes, with judgment and battles occupying much of its message. ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 12, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“One of my favorite stories concerns a student who asked a seminary professor, ‘When were you saved, Professor?’ The young student, like so many Christians, believed it was important for Christians to pinpoint a time when they believe God saved them, and consequently to tell others of their testimony. That may be a biblically valid assumption. However, many other Christians believe that since we become more like Christ the longer he lives within us, the exact time of our conversion is immaterial. So, the professor asked the young man, ‘When was I saved? Well, I should think my salvation was won ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 10, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Bad News Religion offers us a Santa Claus god who will give us what we want if we are good. Instead, authentic Christianity tells us that God gives us what we need because he is good.
With the focus on what we do, paganism tells us that a god or the gods want us to do the best we can, and at the end he (or they) will judge us based upon our performance. Performance-based religion tells us that a Santa Claus god will let us into his heaven if we qualify, if we overcome and if we are good little boys and girls.
By promising us anything and everything Bad News Religion leads us to slavery, but ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 7, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Jesus came to lift us out of shame and guilt and fear – not to add to our enormous burdens of self-loathing. He didn’t come to start a new religion or slightly modify and upgrade on what was already in place. He didn’t offer a way in which his followers could live more moral lives by virtue of the character they would build if they faithfully obeyed all the steps he advocated. He didn’t tell his followers to prove their worth to him by climbing the highest mountain and fording every stream because the mountains are higher than our abilities to climb and the rivers deeper and more deadly than our ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 5, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“In what is certainly one of the great mysteries of God’s love and grace, Jesus, revealing the love and grace of the Father, extended and offered forgiveness instead of retribution and retaliation. Indeed, the mere idea of turning the other cheek appears to most humans to be one of the most ridiculous and illogical teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The knee-jerk response to God’s grace and love is that it is impractical and perhaps even impossible. The immediate response to Jesus’ teaching that we pray for our enemies and stop the endless cycle of returning evil for evil is that ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
March 3, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Years ago I met the gifted and celebrated French author, Dominique LaPierre in his home in Paris. Though he had written many best sellers, I was most interested at the time in his most recent novel, City of Joy (published in 1985), later turned into a movie by the same name. In the movie, City of Joy, actor Patrick Swayze plays a medical student confronted with overwhelming poverty. In the movie, a woman confronts the young medical student with one of three choices: You can run. You can watch. Or you can count on getting involved with compassionate response.”
Originally published in: ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 29, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“God’s grace is dynamic – it flows. It’s more like a river than it is a lake or a reservoir. God’s grace is not given to be held in trust in a religious safe deposit box. God’s grace is not given so that we may bury it in a napkin and present it to the Lord upon his return, proving to him that we stored it up, saved it and never lost it. God’s grace is given to be given. God’s grace is a free-flowing river – religion endeavors to be a reservoir of good deeds. God’s grace grows as it is used, it is a gift which must be given, not merely to be replenished, but to grow. God’s grace ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 27, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Given the prevailing assumption that a little grace is good but too much can be hazardous to your spiritual health, ‘old-fashioned’ holiness preaching often immediately follows a message of grace with a legalistic counterpunch that brings a congregation back to its senses. Such preaching centers on external acts and behaviors that we humans do or don’t do, and, given such an emphasis, is an absolute contradiction to the gospel of Jesus Christ that is based upon faith alone, grace alone, and Christ alone.”
Originally published in:
Bad News Religion
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 25, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“The crowds who greeted Jesus making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem – triumphal in terms of their welcome, in terms of the accolades they heaped on him and the acclaim they gave him – projected their hopes on to Jesus, seeing him as a military savior.
The crowds wanted to see blood – the blood of their oppressors. Jesus gave them blood, but not the blood of those from whom they wanted revenge.”
Originally published in:
Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul, Volume 1
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 22, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“While it is a complex book to study, Revelation is a breath of fresh air. Revelation contains no ambiguity, no shades of gray. It is not hamstrung by political correctness. It minces no words in describing sin and evil. Revelation is clear about the evils of performance-based religion. The apocalyptic imagery of Revelation is inked in stark black and white. There is no middle ground. The people described in Revelation are either followers of Antichrist or followers of Christ. If you are not with Christ, you are part of the enemy camp. Revelation calls us out of complacency and our ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 20, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Jesus is not only our guide on our journey, but he is the Way – he is the path, he is the road. We are Christ-followers and we are people of the Way because he walked this way before us – he blazed the trail before us – and we follow in his footsteps.
As people of the Way, we follow Jesus and as we journey with our risen Lord, we mature in him. He builds us into his temple – a spiritual house where he dwells. When it comes to church membership, Christ-followers must ask if they first and foremost belong to Jesus or if they think Jesus belongs exclusively to their religious ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 18, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“In a ‘Dennis the Menace’ cartoon, Dennis and his pal Joey are seen leaving next-door-neighbor Mrs. Wilson’s house loaded up with a plate full of cookies. Joey says to Dennis, ‘I wonder what we did to deserve this?’ The forever-in-trouble, always-in-hot-water Dennis, well aware that he is far from perfect, astutely advises Joey, ‘Look, Joey, Mrs. Wilson didn’t give us these cookies because we’re nice, but because she’s nice.’
The first lesson of grace… is this: We don’t deserve God’s love – God is not obligated to give us cookies because we think we have ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 15, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Along with its equally seductive cousin of religious legalism, prediction addiction had been the language of my life, the drum beat of my religious soul. Prediction addiction is an obsession, a compulsion to continually seek exhilarating ‘fulfillments of Bible prophecy’ in current events of the day. In my experience, the bondage of legalism combined with an addiction to prediction addiction gave meaning and order to my world while at the same time being the perfect one-two punch religion needed to control me. Legalism told me what I had to do in order to earn God’s love and the ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 13, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“Jesus voluntarily allowed himself to be killed rather than to kill. Jesus didn’t seek to intimidate those who would express hatred and violence toward him by arming the disciples with the best weapons available at the time. In Matthew 26:51-52, Jesus told one of his disciples, companions and followers, who drew his sword to prevent the arrest of Jesus: ‘Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.’ Jesus didn’t believe in peace produced by intimidation via a display of force that would cause his enemies to fear doing harm to him. There is no question ...
Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 11, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“The Beatitudes are descriptive of what Jesus does and will do in the lives of his followers – they are not prescriptions or lesson plans for those who will become blessed because of their own blood, sweat and tears.”
Originally published in:
Beautiful Sayings – Beatitudes of Grace
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Reflections Along the Jesus Way
February 8, 2024 - Quote for the Day:
“God’s love says: ‘I know all about you and I still love you anyway.’
God’s love says: ‘I am going to love you forever – you can’t stop me loving you.’
God’s love says: ‘Nothing you can do, positively or negatively, can make me love you more or less than I already do. My love does not depend on what you do or fail to do.’”
Originally published in:
Letters to My Friends
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