Do you know God? Do you know there is a power greater than ourselves which manifests itself within us as well as everywhere else in the universe? This I call God. Do you know what it is to know God, to have God's constant guidance, a constant awareness of God's presence? To know God is to reflect love toward all people and all creations. To know God is to feel peace within - a calmness, a serenity, an unshakeableness which enables you to face any situation. To know God is to be so filled with joy that it bubbles over and goes forth to bless the world.
Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory. That in art is highest which aims at this.
God is real. God is here now. God is this moment revealed. For the most part, we are lost in the past and future world of the mind. To experience the living Presence of God in all things present, we will have come to where God is. We will have to become fully present. Otherwise we have no choice but to believe in God or disbelieve in God and neither is true, for the truth is beyond belief!
If I were a carpenter, I'd find a way to empower using that skill. I'm using as much as God has given - my mind, my voice, my heart, my art forms. This is the highest form of expression on the planet from God, to me, to you.
I drove away from my mind everything capable of spoiling the sense of the presence of God.... I just make it my business to persevere in His holy presence... My soul has had an habitual, silent, secret conversation with God.
There is One Infinite Mind which of necessity includes all that is, whether it be the intelligence in man, the life in the animal, or the invisible Presence which is God.
I am a very religious person, so it is the presence of God, the constant unwavering, unrelenting presence of God which continues to help me to keep a character which I am proud to show.
God's highest gifts--talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power--they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in you that you may be lost.
Worship is a powerful witness to unbelievers-if God's presence is felt, and if the message is understandable. God's presence must be sensed in the service. More people are won to Christ by feeling God's presence than by all our apologetic arguments combined. Few people, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds. It is the sense of God's presence that melts the heart and explodes mental barriers.
The highest art one can learn is the art of loving, and that the ultimate creativity and the highest art are born out of a knack - meditation.
All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.
Listening to God - which is a key part of practicing His presence - is not a method, but a walk with a person.
None the less, perhaps, the highest pleasure in art is identical with the highest pleasure inscientific theory. The emotion which accompanies the clear recognition of unity in a complex seems to be so similar in art and in science that it is difficult not to suppose that they are psychologically the same. It is, as it were, the final stage of both processes.
The secret of contentment is the realization that life is a gift, not a right. Next to faith this is the highest art - to be content with the calling in which God has placed you.
It is called the real presence, not in an exclusive sense, as though other forms of presence were not real, but by reason of its excellence. It is the substantial presence by which Christ is made present without doubt, whole and entire, God and man.
What exists is a godly existence, a divine existence. God not as a person but as a presence certainly exists. But to understand that presence, you have to understand your own inner presence first, because it is from there that you can take off, it is from there that you can have the first glimpse of what godliness is. If you have not known yourself you will never know God.