Gerhard Tersteegen > Quotes

“A God comprehended is no God. (Ein begriffener Gott is kein Gott.)”
― Gerhard Tersteegen

“62. The stranger gets nothing I am a pilgrim here and that is why I get nothing and all that I do is as if done in a strange land by someone else. . .”
― Gerhard Tersteegen, The Spiritual Flower Garden: 101 Devotional Poems of Gerhard Tersteegen, a Protestant Mystic (1697-1769 A.D.) [Translated]

“Prayer brings to us blessings which we need, and which only God can give, and which prayer can alone convey to us ... This service of prayer is not a mere rite, a ceremony through which we go, a sort of performance. Prayer is going to God for something needed and desired. Prayer is simply asking God to do for us what he has promised us he will do if we ask him ... Asking is man's part. Giving is God's part. The praying belongs to us. The answer belongs to God.”
― Gerhard Tersteegen

“Aus Ehrerbietung stille schweigen,
Sich kehren ein und tief sich beugen:
So tut man, wenn der Herr ist da,
Gedenk', er ist auch jetxt dir nah!”
― Gerhard Tersteegen, Gerhard Teersteegens Geistliche Lieder.

“He brings to naught, destroys and rejects all that is not His own work; how He draws everything to Himself and absorbs it, that at last He may live and work in us and through us and reign alone as king. Happy the soul who refuses nothing to love, but places everything at His disposal, for only thus may all our works be done more and more in God.”
― Gerhard Tersteegen