Renovare > Quotes

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Jesus-centered spiritual formation is the process of being transformed into the image of Christ, through a relationship of intimacy with God, by the power of the Spirit, in order to live a good and beautiful life of faith, hope, love, joy, and peace—a life that will be a blessing to oneself and to others and will glorify God now and for all eternity. — James Bryan Smith”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Today, try living out this wisdom from Brother Lawrence: “God does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“The disciple is one who, intent upon becoming Christ-like and so dwelling in his “faith and practice,” systematically and progressively rearranges his affairs to that end.”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. — Søren Kierkegaard”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Jesus Christ is alive and here to teach his people himself. He has not contracted laryngitis. His voice is not hard to hear, his vocabulary is not difficult to understand. — Richard Foster”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Second, one must intend and decide to actually do something to bring the vision into reality. A vision without intention is merely a daydream.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“It’s vital to uncover the difference between our “professed” images of God—the things we say we believe about him—and our “default” pictures of God—the ideas we hold deep down, perhaps unaware, that are profoundly shaping us.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Jesus Christ carries on intercession for us in heaven; the Holy Ghost carries on intercession in us on earth; and we the saints have to carry on intercession for all men. — Oswald Chambers”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world. — Frederick Buechner”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“And so this is the virtuous life: to follow the astounding teacher, to remain with him, to listen and do the will of his Father in heaven—which is to love God and your neighbor.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“The Spiritual Disciplines in and of themselves have no merit whatsoever. They possess no righteousness, contain no rectitude. Their purpose—their only purpose—is to place us before God. After that they have come to the end of their usefulness. But it is enough.”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“When Jesus walked among humankind there was a certain simplicity to being his disciple. Primarily it meant to go with him, in an attitude of observation, study, obedience, and imitation. There were no correspondence courses. One knew what to do and what it would cost.”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“The purpose of God’s gifts is to unite us in a unity which is like the unity of the Father and the Son. — Thomas Aquinas”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Rest. Rest. Rest in God’s love. The only work you are required now to do is to give your most intense attention to His still, small voice within. — Madame Jeanne Guyon”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“A world-class violinist was once asked how she came to master her instrument. “Planned neglect,” she responded. When she began violin, she explained, other necessary work came before practicing violin. It wasn’t until she decided to neglect everything else each day until after violin practice that she started becoming a virtuoso.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God’s will and his grace. — Thomas Merton”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Any kingdom that defines glory in terms of a bloody cross is obviously peculiar. — Stanley Hauerwas”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action by which we do what we can do in order to receive from God the ability (or power) to do what we cannot achieve by direct effort.”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“The truth is that we only learn to pray all the time everywhere after we have resolutely set about praying some of the time somewhere. — John Dalrymple”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. Jesus is the divine life operating under human conditions. — C. S. Lewis”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Spiritual Disciplines involve doing what we can do to receive from God the power to do what we cannot do. And God graciously uses this process to produce in us the kind of person who automatically will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“over many centuries and through multiple human authors, God has so superintended the development of the Bible that it speaks to us about real life (zoë) and teaches us how to live “with God”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“So take good care of your time. Watch how you spend it, for nothing is more precious. In the twinkling of an eye, heaven can be won or lost.”
― Renovare, 25 Books Every Christian Should Read: A Guide to the Essential Spiritual Classics

“If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, and a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus without loss to itself communicates its superabundant water. In the Church at the present day we have many canals but few reservoirs.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“I believe that although the two disciples did not recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus recognized them, that he saw them as if they were the only two people in the world. And I believe that . . . he also sees each of us like that. — Frederick Buechner”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“Freedom comes not from the absence of restraint but from the presence of discipline.”
― Renovare, Living the Mission: A Spiritual Formation Guide – An Acts Study to Follow Jesus and Experience the Holy Spirit

“The truth is, we cannot just think ourselves into a new way of being; we must live ourselves into a new way of being.”
― Renovare, 25 Books Every Christian Should Read: A Guide to the Essential Spiritual Classics

“Relationship with God is personal but not private, intimate but not individualistic. When you choose to follow Jesus, you join a community, the church: a community so connected to Jesus that Scripture calls it his very body, the body of Christ.”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups

“[Jesus is] the Divine life operating under human conditions. — C. S. Lewis”
― Renovare, The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups