Surely conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows his creatures' hearts. A conversion without a clean heart is, in my opinion, a denial of God and Religion. Conversion without cleanliness of heart can only be a matter of sorrow, not joy, to a godly person.
I do make conversion, if conversion means really turning people to God - to have a clean heart and to love God. That's the real conversion.
When you go after someone who has a deep ideological belief set that is contradictory with your own, it's conversion. Conversion is hard. Conversion is miraculous. We have entire religions built around the idea of conversion. Politics is not a religion. Politics is about persuasion.
Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience". "What's pessimism?" I said. "Religion without God.
The beginning of prayer is silence. If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. And to be able to see that silence, to be able to hear God we need a clean heart; for a clean heart can see God, can hear God, can listen to God; and then only from the fullness of our heart can we speak to God. But we cannot speak unless we have listened, unless we have made that connection with God in the silence of our heart.
The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? It is impossible for there to be a person with no religion (i.e. without any kind of relationship to the world) as it is for there to be a person without a heart. He may not know that he has a religion, just as a person may not know that he has a heart, but it is no more possible for a person to exist without a religion than without a heart.
Regeneration is God's disposing the heart to Himself; conversion is the actual turning of the heart to God.
Conversion is not only changing the faith. Conversion is changing the heart and working over there is the grace of God. Then only comes the question of change of faith. Nobody can force you, not even the holy prophets.
We Christians forget (if we ever learned) that attempts to redress real or imagined injustice by violent means are merely another exercise in denial - denial of God and her nonviolence towards us, denial of love of neighbor, denial of laws essential to our being.
I want clean water and clean air and conservation... that's not what extreme environmentalists are all about. For them, it is a religion. They believe in trees and animals, not God.
If anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of religion is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of primary importance is to seek God in the heart of mankind.
I mean, I know my heart is not clean, and your heart is not clean, and none of our urban hearts are clean. But you can be washed again.
The conversion of Paul was no conversion at all; it was Paul who converted the religion that has raised one man above sin and death.
I am against conversion (to Buddhism). In my speech at UN, the first thing I said was that I am for conversion, but not from one organised religion to another, but from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation.
If religion means primarily God-consciousness, or the realization of God both within and without, and secondarily a body of beliefs, tenets and dogmas, then, strictly speaking, there is but one religion in the world, for there is but one God.
Always remember that there is no conversion to God if there is no conversion to the oppressed.