Tuuli Platner

“God's agenda is so glorious, and His love and purposes for our lives are so great, that everything else pales in comparison. We should all be like Nehemiah, who, when the enemies of Israel tried to get him to come out of the city and talk with them on the Plain of Ono, said, "...I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”
― Bill Johnson, Strengthen Yourself in the Lord: How to Release the Hidden Power of God in Your Life

“Older forms of indentured servanthood and the bond-service of biblical times had often been harsh, but Christian abolitionists concluded that race-based, life-long chattel slavery, established through kidnapping, could not be squared with biblical teaching either in the Old Testament or the New.”
― Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

“A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.”
― Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

“The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not--Do your duty, but--Do what is not your duty. It is not your duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but Jesus says if we are His disciples we shall always do these things. There will be no spirit of--"Oh, well, I cannot do any more, I have been so misrepresented and misunderstood". . . Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is--Never look for justice, but never cease to live it.”
― Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest