Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
Billy SundayRead
Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of genuine passion and joy in preaching and sharing faith.
Billy Sunday expresses that true preaching comes from a heartfelt desire for people to accept Christ. He conveys that if he ever loses the joy and excitement in witnessing conversions and the accompanying anxiety about acceptance, he would feel it is time to stop preaching. This reflects the importance of passion and authenticity in one's purpose and work.
In practice
During a church service to inspire congregants about the importance of authentic faith.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.
I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother.
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.
The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.
In the difficult moments of life, Christians can turn to the Mother of God and find protection and care.
Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church... nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that every where I am in Thy Presence
My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men, men of prayer.
Sometimes tears are the glasses that we need to see Jesus.
The greatest miracle of the Bible is that the prophets of Israel could keep a religion as clean as a hounds tooth amid all the corruption and idolatry of the nations surrounding them.
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