Quotes about Personal

Now the parable takes on a very personal focus. We can no longer enjoy observation without participation. We are part of the drama that is staged in this parable. Jesus came. What have we done with the truth of His message and the gift of His forgiving death?

A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

If I were living near you, I should try to make you understand that it might perhaps be more practical for you to paint with me than to write, and that you might be able to express your feelings more easily that way. In any case I can do something personally about your painting, but I am not in the writing profession.

True Christianity is not merely believing a certain set of dry abstract propositions: it is to live in daily personal communication with an actual living person - Jesus Christ.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred.

Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.

Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out, 'God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found.

God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love, said Augustine.

Knowledge is passive, intellectual; suffering is active, personal. No intellectual answer will solve suffering. Perhaps this is why God sent his own Son as one response to human pain, to experience it and absorb it into himself.

Unlike the scary movies and sermons from my youth, not one of them focuses on personal salvation as a way of escaping hell in the afterlife. Rather, they present how the good news about eternity should transform this life. The Christian sees the world as a transitional home badly in need of rehab, and we are active agents in that project.

In spiritual warfare, as we detect enemy activity and deploy the various pieces of armor, our prayers need to be fervent and specific, strategic and personal, tied to the specific needs arising at that specific occasion.