Megan > Megan's Quotes

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenin

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

“I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“Until we free our shepherds from our insistence that they be our servants, let us remember that there is someone who listens. He is available to all of us, all of the time, all of our lives. The Listener. We have only to talk to him. Now. Today. Tonight. He understands our language, our semantics, our terrors, our secrets, our sins, our crimes, our sorrow. He will not consider you sentimental if you speak fondly of the past, if you are old. He will not turn you away if you are a liar, a thief, a murderer, a hypocrite, a betrayer.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Listener

“What frightful forces men can now control! But they cannot control the most frightful of all things: their own hearts. They can speed with the sun, but they cannot speed mercy, or justice, or peace, for these are not in them. They can ban the midnight, but not the malignancy of their minds. They can illuminate the heavens, but not their spirits. They can climb the loftiest stratosphere and eye the moon, but they cannot climb the dunghill of their sins and their crimes against each other. They can divide and fission and fuse the atom--how dreadful!--but they cannot part themselves from the terror that lives in them; they cannot fuse God to their souls.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Listener

“Trying to contain the small giggle welling up in her chest from the sincerity of my question, Santoria, full of confidence, responded while looking toward my direction, "Yes, Jackie.The gospel didn't just save you, it also keeps you.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been

“When Jesus died and rose, He gave you the power to defeat sin. Literally. Like you don't have to give in. Every single time you are tempted to sin, just remember the reality that Jesus defeated it already. You're not a slave. You are free. You just have to believe that and walk in it.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been

“It is the identity that we ascribe to God out of doubt or faith in His Scriptures that will determine the identity we will give ourselves and ultimately the life that we inevitably live. If He is the Creator, then we are created. If He is Master, then we are servants. If He is love, then we are loved. If He is omnipotent, then we are not as powerful as we think. If He is omniscient, then there is nowhere to hide. If He cannot lie, then His promises are all true.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been

“He is so much greater than the greatest thing and much more glorious than the most glorious glory the eyes could see. Knowing this, He becomes the aim of all our doing. Because, if God is bigger than we can imagine, we are wasting our time to chase after something or someone lesser than Him. And because we know that He is our all in all, in our temptations, our trials, and our victories, we must place our ultimate identity not in who we are, but in who we know God to be.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been

“In almost every other usage, tsela refers to the side of a sacred piece of architecture like the tabernacle or the temple. And this meaning informs its usage here in Genesis 2. Adam and Eve's bodies are compared to sacred pieces of architecture, resonating with everything we've seen so far about the image of God. Temples embody God's presence, and so do bodies.”
― Preston Sprinkle

“If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what we are like and what we should become, look at Jesus.”
― Preston M. Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say

“Christian acceptance is always acceptance into a flawed community seeking holiness and repentance. It's acceptance into a countercultural family with a different pattern of life, a fresh way to be human, an otherworldly ethic rooted in creation and longing for resurrection.”
― Preston Sprinkle

“It is a gross misunderstanding to believe that anything that feels natural is righteous.”
― Becket Cook, A Change of Affection: A Gay Man's Incredible Story of Redemption

“It's easy to forget that Jesus was single, poor, and homeless.”
― Becket Cook

“He had two stories to live. In the first, God had saved his eye. In the second, God had taken his eye. Both were true.... It was up to him which story he chose to live out every day. The lost eye or the saved eye. The blind man or the sighted one. The God who had abandoned him or the God who had saved him.”
― Tessa Afshar, The Hidden Prince

“If I don't know how to attend to the reality that is my own inner turmoil, I shall fail in responding to the needs of someone else.”
― Williams, Rowan

“If we trivialize the depth of our human need for God, we shall never be instruments to others of reconciliation.”
― Williams, Rowan

“Without silence, we will not get any closer to knowing who we are before God.”
― Rowan Williams, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another

“If your God never disagrees with you, you might be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.”
― Tara-Leigh Cobble, The Bible Recap: A One-Year Guide to Reading and Understanding the Entire Bible

“The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“In 40:31 he says to wait for God because God will renew their strength as they wait for Him. The word wait is the Hebrew word qavah, which means 'to bind together, to be joined, to meet, to expect, to be confident, trust, endure.' If we read this verse with all those definitions included, it would say, 'Those who are bound together with the Lord, joined with the Lord, who meet with the Lord, who confidently expect and trust and endure... will renew their strength.' The image here is more than just an expression of time; it's an expression of unity. It's about relationship--knowing Him, trusting His character. When we live in that space, He strengthens us for whatever we're enduring.”
― Tara-Leigh Cobble, The Bible Recap: A One-Year Guide to Reading and Understanding the Entire Bible

“Belonging to God sets limits on our lives. Sometimes they are hard limits to bear. It is not easy to stand before God, even with grace. Moment by moment we must set aside our sinful desires, even the ones closest to our heart, to live sacrificially. I do not want to lie to you. This is a difficult life.”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“No matter how much we consciously affirm that our existence is already justified through God, virtually every other voice we interact with will tell us, “No. Keep striving. You haven’t done enough. If you quit now, your life will be a waste. Do something else to make it worthwhile.”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“The faithful Christian life looks like thousands of little deaths to self every day.”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“While belonging to the church, you will be hurt. You will have to learn to love people who look different from you, who have different interests, passions, and languages. You’ll have to give sacrificially to support people who in a strict meritocracy don’t “deserve” your compassion or aid. You’ll have to submit to the right leadership of elders. You’ll have to get over yourself and get out of your head. Maybe hardest of all, you’ll have to do all this while rejecting the lie that it is your love and service that makes you righteous or important or justified. You are righteous because Christ is righteous. You love and serve because He loved and served you.”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“Instead of desiring and pursuing our own good, we are obligated to desire and pursue the good of others (Galatians 6:10; Philippians 2:3”
― Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

“What brings us comfort in life and death is our belonging to a loving, personal God, who dwells with us, one with whom we have union, one who is able to desire and bring about our good without neglecting His own will. If we belong to anyone else--our passions, a political movement, an ideal, a man or woman--inevitably they will abuse their relation to us by sacrificing our good for their own gain.... Only in Christ can we find belonging without violence or abuse, a belonging that grounds and fulfills our personhood rather than effacing it.”
― Alan Noble