Top 154 Quotes & Sayings by William P. Young - Page 3

Thank goodness there are women in our lives -- that's all I can say. We get saved by the women in our lives.

I think good creative writing opens up space for people to come into. Let God reach out and touch the human soul. That's not my job. I get to be present and create as much space as I can ... That frees me up just to be creative in the way I want to be.

There is only one race ... and it is human!

I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later.

I believe that, that Christ became sin for us.

City and country -- each has its own beauty and its own pain. Some of the smallness of small towns -- cattiness, everybody knowing everybody's business -- that can be challenging. And cities can be challenging, because no one can connect except electronically.

You do understand," she continued, "that unless I had an object to love -- or, more accurately, a someone to love -- if I did not have such a relationship within myself, then I would not be capable of love at all? You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could love only as a limitation of his nature.

Religion and anger has gone together a lot, historically. My father, being very religious and angry, was trying to reconcile the ideas of love and forgiveness with damage in his own heart. We historically create God in the image of someone who will redeem us, or someone who has damaged us. A lot of my imaginations of God was a projection of my own damage because of my father. God is good but he has a lot of expectations, of which I have failed -- just like my dad. But I don't think it's truthful to create God as a projection of either our damage or our altruism.

I am what some would say 'holy, and wholly other than you.' The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.

I am especially fond of you.

I make a distinction between true and real. I think that the story is true, it’s just not real. That’s what a parable is. It takes things that we all know are real, and it takes life events that actually happens, and it weaves them into a fiction that allows truth to actually be embedded.

Even though you can't finally grasp me, guess what? I still want to be known.

But, enough of that for now. Let’s get lost again in the starry night.

Through . . . lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. . . . Lies become an inhibitor in your relationship . . . .

The intricacy and the inherent beautiful fragility of the human soul is such that it is uniquely damaged and only God knows how to heal it, and it's going to take time.

True love never forces.

It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.

Because you continue to inhabit and believe your metaphors, you cannot see what is true.

If anything matters, then everything matters.

Emotions are the colors of the soul.

It is remarkable how a seemingly insignificant action or event can change entire lives.

If you and I are friends, there is an expectancy that exists within our relationship. When we see each other or are apart, there is an expectancy of being together, of laughing and talking. The expectancy has no concrete definition; it is alive and dynamic and everything that emerges from our being together is a unique gift shared by no one else.

It is not the nature of love to force a relationship, but it is the nature of love to open the way.

"Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly"... "And if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

Truth will set you free. And Truth has a name.

Why do children love to hide and seek? Ask any person who has a passion to explore and discover and create. The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life.

I give you an ability to respond and your response is to be free to love and serve in every situation, and therefore each moment is different and unique and wonderful.

Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe & powerful.

Every human being is a universe within themselves. Your mother and father participated with God to create a soul who would never cease to exist. Your parents, as co-creators, supplied the stuff, genetics and more, uniquely combined to form a masterpiece, not flawless but still astounding; and we took from their hands what they brought to us, submitting to their timing and history and added what only we could bring to them -- life. You were conceived, a living wonder who exploded into being.

The world in many ways would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled. There would have been fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power.

And when you learn, over the course of your life, that it's not about pleasing God, it's about learning how to trust God. That's a huge watershed, because trust is a whole different ballgame than appeasement or pleasing.

You... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around... Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly... A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image. Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying. I AM love.

Evangelicals have like millions of rules. And it's just, uh, we have sort of an accepted, rationalism within which we frame religion. And we think that belief, intellectually, is of the same as relationship. And in our Western family conversation, that's become an incredible impediment toward actual wholeness, where the heart and the head are aligned and relationship -- with not just God but with each other.