A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by us and not done by us.
Related Quotes
Many talk much, and indeed well, of what Christ has done for us: but how little is spoken of what he is to do in us! and yet all that he has done for us is in reference to what he is to do in us.
Sitting down and weeping is what women have done for centuries, and it has done no good at all. Nor praying. God has given us the earth. He is not waiting in the next room, ready to fix it for us if we ruin it. If we do not care for it, no one will. On other worlds, other races of men perhaps do better than we have done. He cares for us, but he does not control what we do.
Real meditation is not done by us. It is done by our Inner Pilot, the Supreme, who is constantly meditating in and through us. We are just the vessel, and we are allowing Him to fill us with His whole Consciousness.
Many of us are tempted to find the key in doing, but the answer is actually found in being. It is vital that we are routinely humbled by the reminder that Christian life is grounded, not in what we can do, but what has been done for us and what we need done to us.
None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.
The gospel is saying that, what man cannot do in order to be accepted with God, this God Himself has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ. To be acceptable to God we must present to God a life of perfect and unceasing obedience to his will. The gospel declares that Jesus has done this for us. For God to be righteous he must deal with our sin. This also he has done for us in Jesus. The holy law of God was lived out perfectly for us by Christ, and its penalty was paid perfectly for us by Christ. The living and dying of Christ for us, and this alone is the basis of our acceptance with God
Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.
None of us went to university, none of us went to college, none of us played in a different band before, none of us done anything. We were the last great band to come out of nowhere, on an indie label. We've sold 50 million records. That's still the benchmark. Until someone does what we've done, I'll always consider myself the last big songwriter
Nothing can tend so much to humble us before the mercy and justice of God as the consideration of His benefits and our own sins. Let us, then, consider what He has done for us, and what we have done against Him; let us call to mind our sins in detail, and His gracious benefits in like manner, remembering that whatever there is of good in us is not ours, but His, and then we need not be afraid of vainglory or of taking complacency in ourselves.
He gave us the lakes for our Northern boundary, and the rivers stretching to the seas upon whose waters floats our commerce to the nations of the world; while man has done all that can be done by science to bind us together.
Before we can begin to see the cross as something done FOR us, leading us to faith and worship, we have to see it as something done BY us, leading us to repentance. Only the man or woman who is prepared to own his share in the guilt of the cross may claim his share in its grace.
The gothic reminds us that we are mainly driven by our passions; the Gothic deals in illicit desires, in what is prohibited by society.
Give us Direction; the best of goodwill; Put us in touch with fair winds. Sing to us softly, hum the evening's song. Tell us what the blacksmith has done for you.
Sometimes it seems unfair that events so old can reach forward through the years, sinking claws into one's life and twisting all that follows it. Yet perhaps that is the ultimate justice: we are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us. There is no escaping that, not for any of us.
Focusing on what we ought to do for God creates only frustration and exhaustion; focusing on what Jesus has done for us produces abundant fruit. Resting in what Jesus has done for us releases the revolutionary power of the gospel.
Don't you realize it's the doing that often gets us into trouble? It's not the doing that makes God happy. It's not about what we've done...it's about what been done for us.
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