Ruth Burrows > Quotes

“To turn mass time into a sacred concert, or a prayer meeting, to make it too lively and interesting, with things to do and rollicking songs, is a disservice. It is substituting for the effort of faith.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus

“Faith is that movement whereby
we accept God's nearness, and his nearness must always mean the death of the ego.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus

“Humility has everything to do with love.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus

“We are afraid to trust ourselves to love. We do not really believe in God's groundless, unmerited, eternal love for us. This must be the rock, the solid rock beneath us. God loves me, not because I am good but because He is good. This conviction must be lived out at every moment of the day. God made me in order to give Himself to me, and He wants nothing of me, literally nothing, other than to let Him love me, let Him pour Himself out upon me in everlasting joy.”
― Ruth Burrows, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer

“Are not conscientious agnostics and atheists often nearer to the kingdom than its chosen children? What they are rejecting is not God but that caricature of God and of Jesus, which would be blasphemous were it not innocent, presented to the world by many christians, and not mere nominal christians but those who pride themselves on their upholding of the faith.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus

“Each of us has to look into our dark world, recognise the forces that bind us, the blind instincts, the compulsions which , though they give the illusion of power, freedom , adulthood, ensnare us.”
― Ruth Burrows, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer

“Jesus has followers among those who do not know him explicitly: `I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice' On 10: 16). Jesus died, he says, `to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad' On 11: 52) in every age, in every race. In my endeavour to express what believing in Jesus means, I hope it will become clear that there are many `not of this fold' who are listening to his voice though they know it not, who despite this, believe in him. They cannot name him, they may even deny that the Lord of their hearts is Jesus, and this because they have only met his image and his teaching in the garbled version we have given them. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world and his redeemed are in every age,
even before his coming in historical time. They are scattered now, unknown to themselves and to any but God.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus

“Continually we must hold two strands in our hands and not let go of one or other if we would get across what a life of deep faith entails. First, everything is gift and God must do all. Man can do nothing to bring himself to God. Secondly, man must not sit with his hands in his lap. He must act. He must do all he possibly can to grow and to respond to God and without this preparation God cannot work in man as he wishes. We have to learn from Jesus what God's will is and try to fulfil it. God isn't standing by saying: `Now let me see you trying. When I see you have really tried, I will step in and help'. No, this delay of God is in the nature of things. God is offering himself to me here and now but I cannot receive him. I must have reached a certain level of development before I can begin to do so. New wine cannot be poured into old skins otherwise the skins are spoiled and the wine runs away. God can only come in with his mystical `over-and-above' help when man has reached his limits and can go no further.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus

“We want a God we can hold within our minds and categories of thought. We want to understand him and be able to predict
how he will act. We do not want dark areas. Whereas we must accept being led into the darkness of his mystery, a darkness which is truly luminous in the Holy Spirit. But while we cling to our formulas as though they were God himself, we shall never know that luminous darkness which is developed faith, faith which is pure gift, a share of God's own knowledge communicated directly to the human spirit.”
― Ruth Burrows, To Believe in Jesus