A Quote by William Penn
God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.
Related Quotes
[I]t is the maxim of the saints that when a matter has been decided in the presence of God after many prayers and the seeking of advice, we must reject and consider as a temptation whatever is suggested to the contrary.
What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don't want to discourage it completely.
Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers. God isn't offended by your biggest dreams or boldest prayers-he is offended by Anything Less. If your prayers aren't impossible to You, they are insulting to God- why? Because they don't require divine intervention. But ask God to part the Red Sea or make the sun stand still or float an iron axhead and God is moved to Omnipotent action
Can anything be more absurd than keeping women in a state of ignorance, and yet so vehemently to insist on their resisting temptation?
Whoever has the power to label others as evil is automatically, or reflexively, the good person. Good people label bad people as evil. And once you do that, then it demonizes them. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't sit down at the table with the devil and say, "Okay, let's work this out." What you want to do is destroy evil. Every Catholic kid every night says, or should say, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil." And so you've got to go to God to help you deal with evil rather than your State Department or your negotiators.
God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.
In any trial, in any bitter situation, you are not alone, you are not helpless, you are not a victim. You have a tree, a cross, shown to you by the Sovereign God of Calvary. Whatever the trial or temptation, it is not more than you can bear. It is bearable. It can be handled. You can know as Joseph knew, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive" (Genesis 50:20).
American views today are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of sentiment and clichés.
No one can sense his own weakness is at least a small temptation is not allowed to afflict either his body or his soul. Then, comparing his weakness to the help of God, a man comes to know its magnitude. But whoever does not know that he needs God's help, let him make many prayers. Insofar as he multiplies them, in that measure will he be humbled.
I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy patriotism a little too far. For liberals the temptation is to say the purpose of politics is to straightforwardly bring the kingdom of God to Earth. For conservatives, I talk about Glenn Beck, the temptation is more apocalyptic and messianic, it's the temptation to say we did have a covenant with God, a literal covenant beginning with the Founding, and we are, like Israel in the Old Testament, falling away from it.
A man can pray better because of the prayers of the past; a man can live holier because of the prayers of the past; the man of many and acceptable prayers has done the truest and greatest service to the incoming generation.
...God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we now can resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. God does not do that for us. To confuse the potential for resisting (which God provided) with the responsibility for resisting (which is ours) is to court disaster in our pursuit of holiness.
Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers… The bigger the circle we draw, the better, because God gets more glory. The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect — and they intersect when we draw a circle around the impossible situations in our lives and invite God to intervene.
Here is the life of prayer, when in or with the Spirit, a man being made sensible of sin, and how to come to the Lord for mercy; he comes, I say, in the strength of the Spirit, and crieth Father. That one word spoken in faith is better than a thousand prayers, as men call them, written and read, in a formal, cold, lukewarm way.
Sick or well, blind or seeing, bond or free, we are here for a purpose and however we are situated, we please God better with useful deeds than with many prayers or pious resignation. The temple or church is empty unless the good of life fills it . . . holy if only . . . we offer the only sacrifices ever commanded-the love that is stronger than hate and the faith that overcometh doubt.
We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existenceof evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.
Related Authors
Ban Ki-moon Quotes
South Korean
Leader
Brigham Young Quotes
American
Leader
Dalai Lama Quotes
Tibetan
Leader
Desmond Tutu Quotes
South African
Leader
Ezra Taft Benson Quotes
American
Leader
Henry B. Eyring Quotes
American
Leader
Mahatma Gandhi Quotes
Indian
Leader
Mao Zedong Quotes
Chinese
Leader
Marcus Aurelius Quotes
Roman
Leader
Margaret Thatcher Quotes
English
Leader
Martin Luther Quotes
German
Leader
Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes
American
Leader
Mata Amritanandamayi Quotes
Indian
Leader
Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes
Indian
Leader
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Quotes
Indian
Leader
Vladimir Lenin Quotes
Russian
Leader