Behold the Lamb of God Quotes

“But Israel’s God was different. He was definite, and his character was immutably fixed. And they were to love him for it with everything they had. They were to love him with all their heart. In the seat of their deepest dreams and desires, in the place where they wrestled with their sorrows and clung to flickering hopes, they were to love him. They were to love him with all their soul. In the place that made each individual unique, in the inner court of the mind where decisions were made, in the forming of the bonds between friends and lovers, as well as in the coming together of a community, they were to love him. They were to love him with all their might. In the outward expressions of the passions and decisions of the heart and soul, in the places where men’s thoughts turned to action and resolve turned to progress, they were to love him. In their creativity and in their learning, in their working and in their resting, in their building up and in their tearing down, they were to love him. They were to love him as whole people, in all their weakness and in all their strength. On their best days and on their worst, in the darkest hours of their loneliest nights, and at the tables of their most abundant feasts, they were to love him. This was the heart of Israel’s religion: love. Only divine love made sense of the world. This love went beyond a mere feeling. This love was doctrine. Israel’s story was a story of being kept, and the only reasonable response was to love the Keeper.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“deep inside the smoldering stump of Israel, a remnant of life was rising to push back the darkness and break through the crust of the desolation of the people of God to find the light of day. Though they struggled to see it, God loved them. He loved them with an everlasting, unfailing love. Salvation was coming, and when all was said and done, “He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. ” (Rev 21:3-4) “Behold,” he says, “I am making all things new.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“The pain of this downward cycle was not something God manufactured as a means of discipline. The pain was simply the fruit of everyone doing what was right in their own eyes—nothing more, nothing less. God didn’t need to manufacture punishment to awaken them to their sin. The natural consequence of their sin of rejecting him brought a world of pain all its own.”
― Russ Ramsey, The Advent of the Lamb of God

“My other realization was that when I look back on my life as a performing songwriter, among all my regrets, all the moments of embarrassment and shame from having blabbered too much from the stage, not once have I regretted proclaiming the gospel of Christ. It is only those times when I have strayed from that one luminous subject that I’ve wished I had said less. No man, when he comes to die, will ever say, “I spoke too much of the grace of God.” Let Satan accuse me of that. I welcome it.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“The Law of the Lord is a love story.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“Often worship requires stillness. Stillness allows a mind to hold complicated thoughts without losing them.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“What Joseph’s brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. (Gen 50:20) God meant for this prince, whose heart had been broken by his own people, to save them. And God meant to bring these people—the ones he had called to himself as his own—out of their peril and hunger and into a place where they would have to connect in their minds the life-giving provision of the king with the unearned mercy and grace of the prince. Though the brothers meant to kill the prince, he gave them life in his name—life to the fullest. (John 10:10)”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“As parents told their sons and daughters this story of the Garden, eventually the children would ask about the man and the woman standing there, awkward and embarrassed in their fig leaves. What happened to them? The parents answered, “The LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” (Gen 3:21) The blood of the innocent was shed to cover the shame of the guilty. It wasn’t the man or the woman who shed this blood to make these coverings. This was the work of the Lord. And by the blood of the calf or the lamb, the man and woman would come out of hiding and stand again before their God. And this was only the beginning of the story.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“Everything else the Maker had created according to his imagination, but mankind he made according to his image.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“When the angel Gabriel stood before Mary, the hypothetical gave way to the real. The ordinary stories all at once glistened under the extraordinary light of this celestial storyteller.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“call on the lives of his people has always been, above all else, a call to himself. He”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative