Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.
Oswald ChambersRead
Many people have turned back because they are afraid to look at things from God's perspective. The greatest spiritual crisis comes when a person has to move a little farther on in his faith than the beliefs he has already accepted.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the challenge of expanding one's faith beyond familiar beliefs.
Oswald Chambers speaks to the spiritual struggle individuals face when they must confront and adopt a broader perspective on faith. Many retreat from this challenge due to fear, yet true growth often requires moving beyond established beliefs and embracing a deeper understanding of spiritual truth as seen from a divine viewpoint.
In practice
In a sermon about faith, you could use this quote to encourage congregants to embrace challenges in their spiritual life.
Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.
Never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer your prayer.
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion. But strictly speaking, there is no call to that. Service is what I bring to the relationship and is the reflection of my identification with the nature of God.
When we preach the love of God there is a danger of forgetting that the Bible reveals not first the love of God but the intense, blazing holiness of God, with His love at the center of that holiness.
It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration.
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion.
Every being has its own interior, its self, its mystery, its numinous aspect. To deprive any being of this sacred quality is to disrupt the total order of the universe. Reverence will be total or it will not be at all. The universe does not come to us in pieces any more than a human individual stands before us with some part of his/her being.
The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.
Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads.
Now I know what a piece of bacon feels like when it is suddenly picked out of the pan on a fork and put back on the shelf!" "No you don't!" he heard Dori answering, "because the bacon knows that it will get back in the pan sooner or later; and it is to be hoped we shan't. Also eagles aren't forks!
Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.
Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . . . Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.
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