Worth Quoting

Along the way I collect quotes that I think are particularly thought-provoking or inspiring. I wanted to include one today.

God must be worshipped ‘in truth.’—Worship is an affair of the mind as well as of the heart. Our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, ‘Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship, for the salvation is of the Jews.’

It is not enough to have the spirit to worship. That spirit must be rightly
directed, so as to bring the worshipper into touch with reality. There are many sincere, yet blinded, worshippers, whose minds are filled with false notions about god and who go far astray, following their own imaginations. They worship ‘in spirit’ but not ‘in truth.’ They do not know the object of their worship, they are not in communion with the true God.

We need to emphasize this element of ‘truth’ in worship. For there is a strong tendency in our time to regard all the religious aspirations of man as being much on the same level. The African sacrificing to his fetish, the Hindu bowing before his idol, the Buddhist with his prayer wheel, are doing the same thing. Now, we may regard all these with sympathy, we may not question their complete sincerity. They may all be worshipping ‘in spirit’ but not worshipping God ‘in truth.’ Again, here is a theory which has found wide acceptance in our time, that all religion is sheer imagination, nothing more than a projection upwards of the human soul. It is just an elaborate process of building castles in the air. It does not bring us into touch with reality. Man’s spirit goes searching and groping outwards towards the void, but there is nothing there to meet it.

But our gospel is that in Jesus Christ we have a revelation given us of the
true God, and are enabled to worship and commune with Him. ‘I am the truth’, He said, and again, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.’ Here, then, we come into touch with the ultimate reality. ‘ We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.’

‘The Father seeketh such to worship him.’—Religion is not merely man’s search for God , as it has too often been represented to be. Pathetic pictures have been drawn of man as a painful climber on the “altar stairs that slope through darkness up to God.” If that were the whole story, then man might well give up his search and his climbing in despair. But God is a seeker as well as man. This is our hope. ‘Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you.’ Say not, ‘Who am I that I should find God or have fellowship with Him?’ Ours is no unaided or hopeless search. The heavenly Shepherd seeks the sheep, the Father seeks His children. Therefore are we encouraged to believe that if we seek we shall surely find.

In Christ, timothy.
maranatha ” Timothy Glendenning ”

Would you like more thoughts to think about? Something on the topic of speaking to your audience perhaps?

This one from Cicero

[25.89] Since, because of time which has great power, it very often turns out that utility is at war with honor, and since this competition between them usually results in deliberations, so that we do not let go of opportunities for the sake of our dignity, nor of honor for the sake of utility, we should recall some rules for settling this difficulty.

[90] And because our speech should be accommodated not only to the truth, but also to the opinions of our those who listen, we must first of all understand this, that there are two kinds of people, one uneducated and coarse, which always places utility before honor, and the other humane and civilized, which places honor before everything. Before the latter kind are set forth merit, honor, glory, trustworthiness, justice, and all the virtues, while before the former are set the gain and enjoyment of profit. And even pleasure, which is the greatest enemy of virtue and which adulterates the nature of the good by fallaciously imitating it, and which is followed most passionately by those who are most gross, who place it not only before honorable things but also before necessities–even this will quite often need to be praised in persuasive speeches when you are giving advice to that kind of person.

-Cicero

I realize I don’t do that well. I’ll have to tell my story on why I do not aim to be popular ( oh yes, there is a conscious choice in this thing)…sometime or another