Peter A. Hayes

“The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He is a potter working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally, he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for a kingdom. A LONG OBEDIENCE”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God

“One individual life may be of priceless value to God’s purpose, and yours may be that life.”
― Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

“In efforts to restore us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the subtleties of commentators, nor paraphrased into meanings totally foreign to its character, it would at this day have been the religion of the whole civilized world. But … the maniac ravings of Calvin, tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities, as to drive into infidelity men who had not time, patience, or opportunity to strip it of its meretricious trappings, and to see it in all its native simplicity and purity. I trust however that the same free exercise of private judgment which gave us our political reformation will extend its effects to that of religion.”
― Bill O'Reilly, Killing the Witches: the Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

“PAYING ATTENTION TO GOD We bless GOD, oh yes—we bless him now, we bless him always! PSALM 115:18, THE MESSAGE Prayer is the most thoroughly present act we have as humans, and the most energetic: it sockets the immediate past into the immediate future and makes a flexible, living joint of them. The Amen gathers what has just happened into the Maranatha of the about to happen and produces a Benediction. We pay attention to God and lead others to pay attention to God. It hardly matters that so many people would rather pay attention to their standards of living, or their self-image, or their zeal to make a mark in the world. The reality is God: worship or flee. THE CONTEMPLATIVE PASTOR”
― Eugene H. Peterson, God's Message for Each Day: Wisdom from the Word of God