Marva J. Dawn > Quotes

“A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Reality is what we notice on the surface – what we feel or see, what superficial perspectives we might gain, for example, from television's evening news. Truth is much larger. It encompasses everything that genuinely is going on. The reality might be that our world looks totally messed up, that war and economic chaos seem to control the globe. But the truth is much deeper – that Jesus Christ is still (since His ascension) Lord of the cosmos, and the Holy Spirit is empowering many people to work for peacemaking and justice building as part of the Trinity's purpose to bring the universe to its ultimate wholeness. The reality might be that you do not feel God, but the truth is that God is always present with you, perpetually forgiving you, and unceasingly caring for you with extravagant grace and abundant mercy. Not only that, but the very process of dealing with our lack of feelings and our resultant doubts about God is one of the ways by which our trust in the Trinity is deepened.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity

“One of my biggest problems in dealing with the breakdown of my body is that I keep looking in the wrong direction. I look to the past and the capabilities I once had, instead of looking to the future and what I will someday become in the presence and by the grace of God. Perhaps that is the strongest temptation for you too. Our culture reinforces that mistake by its refusal to talk about heaven, as if it were an old-fashioned and outdated notion. We also intensify the problem by craving present health (as limited as it can be) more than we desire God.

A friend once said to me. "This is so hard getting old—there are so many things we can‘t do any more. I guess the Lord wants to teach us something." Indeed, our bodies will never be what they previously were, and we find that difficult because we miss our former activities. But God wants to teach us to hunger for Him, our greatest treasure. Instead of rejecting the notion of heaven, we genuinely ache in our deepest self to fill that concept with a larger landscape of the Joy of basking in God‘s presence.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity

“...we are to be lights in the world. It is God's business to light us, to set us on the lampstand, and to bring the people into the house. Our only duty is to shine forth with the gospel.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time

“God's revelation... unmasks our illusions about ourselves. It exposes our pride, our individualism, our self-centeredness - in short, our sin. But worship also offers forgiveness, healing, transformation, motivation, and courage to work in the world for God's justice and peace - in short, salvation in its largest sense.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time

“On feeling guilty about lack of 'productivity':
"In a time of infirmity, the illness IS one's work. Taking care of all the disciplines that our health problems require IS the other part of the small daily fidelity to which we are called, beside the faithfulness of being attentive to God. We can be well simply by our diligence in being who we are at the moment."
--Marva Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill pg 137”
― Marva Dawn

“One of the greatest gifts for my life as one who serves God is observing the Sabbath. Celebrating a holy day and living in God's rhythm for six days of work and one of rest is the best way I know to learn the sense of our call - the way in which God's Kingdom reclaims us, revitalizes us, and renews us so that it can reign through us. Before we can engage in the practice of our call, we need to be captured afresh by grace, carried by it, and cared for.”
― Marva J. Dawn, The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World

“The goal of the Christian life is that for more and more seconds of each day what we think and do and say is to God's glory, that every moment is worship of the true God instead of various idolatries of our making or of our culture's.”
― Marva J. Dawn, In the Beginning, GOD: Creation, Culture, and the Spiritual Life

“Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”
― Marva J. Dawn, In the Beginning, GOD: Creation, Culture, and the Spiritual Life

“If we lived more simply most of the time, our feasts would be distinctive events. As it is, since most Americans have all kinds of special things to eat every day, for many the only way to make Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts uncommon is by eating more. It would be good if we could restore the concept of feasting not as something to regret (don’t we all have to lose a few pounds after the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s season?), but as a delight.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Our negative ceasing to possess must be accompanied by a positive choosing to be generous.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“We definitely do not conform to our culture if we choose not to be dominated by possessions or by the anxiety to acquire more of them, but decide instead to give away much of what we have and use what we have been given as good stewards who desire to enjoy the things of God for the purposes of God.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“In contrast to our society’s mistaken emphasis on positive emotions in our relationship with God, the great Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross (1542–1591), who is most famous for his reflections on the “dark night of the soul,” also wrote a piece called “Advice on Disregarding Spiritual Sweetness.” In this work St. John compliments the person who loves God without feeling any emotional sweetness, for that individual is focusing on truly loving God and not the feelings. To set our will on gratifying and soothing sensations, to concentrate on capturing them and basking in them, is simply to set our will on what God has created, instead of God Himself. Thereby, we turn those created feelings into the end instead of a means—and a non-necessary means at that. According to St. John, we are ignorant if we suppose that because we fail to have any sweetness or bliss God is failing us. Similarly, we are uninstructed if we presume that in having such delectable emotions we have God. But the height of ignorance, he claims, is if we would follow God only to seek the sweetness and consequently stopped our yearning for God to wallow in delightful feelings when we acquired them.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity

“Praise” that uses only “upbeat” songs can be extremely destructive to worshipers because it denies the reality of doubts concerning God, the hiddenness of God, and the feelings of abandonment by God that cloud believers going through difficult times.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time

“To say “I am going to church” both reveals and promotes bad theology.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Grant, O heavenly Father, that the spiritual refreshment I have this day enjoyed may not be left behind and forgotten as tomorrow I return to the cycle of common tasks. Here is a fountain of inward strength. Here is a purifying wind that must blow through all my business and all my pleasures. Here is light to enlighten all my road. Therefore, O God, do Thou enable me so to discipline my will that in hours of stress I may honestly seek after those things for which I have prayed in hours of peace.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“The important point in all our imitation [of God] is its deliberate intentionality. We don’t just think God’s values are good. We embrace them wholly.... To embrace is to accept with gusto, to live to the hilt, to choose with extra intentionality and tenacity. —Marva Dawn”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Joy born of deep suffering is nourished by moments of celebration.... Celebration properly understood is the acceptance of life in an ever growing recognition that it is so precious.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting