Joel Hansen > Joel's Quotes

“Though the need of a change of life is preached by the religious leaders and recognized and realized by the most intelligent men, the majority, in spite of their reverential attitude to their leaders, that is, their faith in their teaching, continue to be guided by the old theory of life in their present complex existence. As though the father of a family, knowing how he ought to behave at his age, should yet continue through habit and thoughtlessness to live in the same childish way as he did in boyhood.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“The toiling masses, the immense majority of mankind who are suffering under the incessant, meaningless, and hopeless toil and privation in which their whole life is swallowed up, still find their keenest suffering in the glaring contrast between what is and what ought to be, according to all the beliefs held by themselves, and those who have brought them to that condition and keep them in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“We are all brothers, but I live on a salary paid me for prosecuting, judging, and condemning the thief or the prostitute whose existence the whole tenor of my life tends to bring about, and who I know ought not to be punished but reformed.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“Instead of transforming their life into harmony with their conscience, they try by every means to stifle its voice. But it is in darkness that the light begins to shine, and so the light is rising upon our epoch.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“Often, after a secret service, Christians were caught and sent to prison. There, Chris­tians wear chains with the gladness with which a bride wears a precious jewel received from her beloved.”
― Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ

“Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.”
― John Wesley, John Wesley's Sermons: An Anthology

“When Jesus was moved by compassion, it was not just a feeling he had, but an understanding and conviction of what those people meant to the Father.”
― Shawn Bolz, Translating God: Hearing God's Voice for Yourself and the World Around You

“There is no power from God that is separated from love. If you want to have influence, you have to join yourself to his love nature. This is more than a feeling or an emotion. It is an attitude of acceptance toward everyone and everything that is God’s, even if you can’t control it, manage it, or even nurture it. You are called to love.”
― Shawn Bolz, Translating God: Hearing God's Voice for Yourself and the World Around You

“The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand.”
― Andrew Peterson

“The point behind mysticism is not to dazzle the mind with ecstatic wonders or heady feelings, but to foster real and lasting changes, for the purpose of becoming more like Christ, which is to say, more compassionate, more forgiving, more committed to serving others and making the world a better place.”
― Carl McColman, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism: The Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality

“How much of the ugly does it take to substitute for a lack of the beautiful? How many adventure films does it take to compensate for a lack of adventure? How many superhero movies must one watch, to compensate for the atrophied expression of one’s greatness? How much pornography to meet the need for intimacy? How much entertainment to substitute for missing play? It takes an infinite amount. That’s good news for economic growth, but bad news for the planet.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

“Do not be afraid of the empty place. It is the source we must return to if we are to be free of the stories and habits that entrap us.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

“Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“Humility is a doorway. The quickest way to promotion in God’s kingdom is to truly disconnect from the fleshly desire to promote yourself. Striving and pride will literally thwart you. However, when we humble ourselves, it allows God to trust us. We have to trust Him, too, because His timing is better than ours, and He knows better than we do when is the proper time and place to use our skills and abilities to His glory.”
― Beth Swiger, Desert Trained Warriors: God's Hidden Leaders Emerging from the Wilderness in the Power of the Holy Spirit

“He saved a bride. He chose a counterpart. He mated for life. He desires ultimate collaboration. He wants the depths of His being joined completely to the depths of yours.”
― Beth Swiger, Desert Trained Warriors: God's Hidden Leaders Emerging from the Wilderness in the Power of the Holy Spirit

“When I open my Bible, I’m invited into a jetstream of love.”
― Beth Swiger, Desert Trained Warriors: God's Hidden Leaders Emerging from the Wilderness in the Power of the Holy Spirit

“Turn the love faucet on and leave it on.”
― Beth Swiger, Desert Trained Warriors: God's Hidden Leaders Emerging from the Wilderness in the Power of the Holy Spirit

“You are the minister of the Life of God. You are the access point for God’s glory to fill the earth. The knowledge of his glory fills the earth because you partner with Him and release it.”
― Beth Swiger, Desert Trained Warriors: God's Hidden Leaders Emerging from the Wilderness in the Power of the Holy Spirit

“There is,” wrote William Penn, “something nearer to us than Scriptures, to wit, the Word in the heart from which all Scriptures come.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West

“In those respects in which the soul is unlike God, it is also unlike itself. St. Bernard”
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West

“To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God, for the Ground of God and the Ground of the Soul are one and the same. Eckhart”
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West

“As Neil Evernden has pointed out, our freedom lies not primordially in our actions within a story, but rather in the choosing of our story.”
― Martin Lee Mueller, Being Salmon, Being Human: Encountering the Wild in Us and Us in the Wild

“The discussion on motivation of work usually considers only the first problem, namely whether this or that incentive increases the economic productivity of the worker, but not the second, that of his human productivity”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

“If work were to become interesting without the other spheres of life becoming human, no real change would occur. In fact, it could not become interesting. It is the very evil of present-day culture that it separates and compartmentalizes the various spheres of living. The way to sanity lies in overcoming this split and in arriving at a new unification and integration within society and within the individual human being.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

“Faith, without action, is no faith at all. Love, without sacrifice, is no love at all.”
― John Hendrix, The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler

“We must live in stories. It must be a path we walk, part of the glue that holds us together. Individuals must unite themselves to a body well-formed in love so that we grow up into the logos himself, who is the head. Without that extra step, we will ultimately be dispersed like smoke like wax before the fire.”
― Jonathan Pageau

“Public libraries seem to me a powerful example of the way that gift economies can coexist with market economies, at a larger scale. . . to me, they embody the civic-scale practice of a gift economy and the notion of common property. Libraries are models of gift economies, providing free access not only to books but also music, tools, seeds, and more. We don't each have to own everything. The books at the library belong to everyone. . . Take the books, enjoy them, bring them back so someone else can enjoy them, with literary abundance for all. And all you need is a library card, which is a kind of agreement to respect and take care of the common good.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“God in Christ has taken into Himself the brokenness of the human condition. Hence, human woundedness, brokenness, death itself are transformed from dead ends to doorways into Life. In the divinizing humanity of Christ, bruises become balm.”
― Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation