Sacred Pathways Quotes

“Finding fulfillment in God is the most powerful antidote to any sin.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Good spiritual directors understand that people have different spiritual temperaments, that what feeds one doesn’t feed all. Giving the same spiritual prescription to every struggling Christian is no less irresponsible than a doctor prescribing penicillin to every patient.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“I know this may sound radical, but we live in a very arrogant society, fostered in part by the wrong notion that everybody’s opinion is just as valid as anybody else’s. This wrong notion is the child of relativism. We live in an age of polls and are encouraged to develop and publicize uninformed opinions. But there are some matters where my opinion is worth no more than a wild guess. It would be arrogant for me to seriously question someone who has a much better basis on which to form their opinion.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“I no longer call you servants,…I have called you friends.”14 Servants is a “doing” word; friends is a “being” word. What do servants do? They cook, clean, et cetera. A friend, however, is something you are, not something you do. A servant is Martha, a friend is Mary.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Seeking miraculous experiences simply for the sake of experiencing the miraculous makes us spiritual drug addicts who simply want to get “high.” This book is about learning to love God, not learning to join a spiritual circus. Enthusiasts need to be especially careful to remain true to seeking and loving God rather than searching for new experiences. When we seek “spiritual experiences” for their own sake, they can actually become, and be used for, evil.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“At its deepest root, ambition is often a fight against powerlessness and a fight for control. The ambitious person is also inherently selfish. This search for control, unimpeded by thoughts of concern for another’s welfare, certainly provide a fertile seedbed for sexual lust, which may therefore find a particularly comfortable home in an ambitious soul. I was speaking to a group of Christian activists not that long ago, and I sobered them with the words, “The very qualities that help you succeed as an activist may tempt you to fail as a Christian.” Ambitious men and women need to allow others to hold them accountable. Ambition coupled with secrecy is a fertile ground for sexual sin; throw in fatigue, and you’re almost certain to embarrass yourself and the ministry God has given you. The activist may face more temptation in this regard than many of the other temperaments.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“A mask partially conceals, but it also tells us that something is behind the mask.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“I’ve learned that we must first create a space of time, quiet, and isolation before we can truly see God. Three elements are necessary for this. We need to first believe, then learn to perceive, and finally receive.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“How often do we Christians “take the Lord’s name in vain” during our worship? It matters to God if we lie, even if we’re singing, and even if everybody around us is singing the same thing. Music can make us feign a commitment that just isn’t there, causing us to become callous, insincere believers.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“God has much to say to us, but we are often too busy to listen. Our minds have a tendency to get too occupied during the day, or sometimes we are too busy praying to God with our own agendas and have lost our listening ears. Dreams are one way God can “break in” and get something across to us that we might not be open to hearing during the day.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“In the study of Christian spirituality, real contemplation is actually an experience with a beginning and an end that Christians pass through. Contemplation is not generally considered a life-state that one exists in, so I’m adapting the word somewhat when I use it as a label for a spiritual temperament.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“A Christian who has a hard time living by his or her faith while driving, for instance, could hang a symbol—a cross or a fish—on their rearview mirror to challenge them when their temper begins to flare. (That’s certainly preferable to putting a Christian bumper sticker on the back of the car for all to see, and then driving like a son of perdition!) A pastor friend of mine uses a pond near his home as a symbol. As soon as he drives by that pond, he is reminded that he is going home and needs to prepare himself to focus on his wife and children, leaving the cares, worries, and concerns of the church on the north side of the pond. He can pick them back up the next morning when he passes the pond on his way to work. A symbol can be found to meet virtually every need in every situation. Men”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“When I first began spending daily time in prayer, I often grew frustrated at how I could forget about God’s presence by lunchtime, even after praying for an hour in the morning. Shorter but more frequent times of prayer may actually help us to live with an increasing awareness of God’s presence in our lives. How difficult would it be for us to set aside five minutes in the morning, five minutes at noon, and five minutes before or after dinnertime to meet God in prayer?”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Imagine the power of reading a psalm at age eighty that you read daily in your thirties. Rituals can tie our years together with”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“There are three elements of the traditionalist pathway: ritual (or liturgical pattern); symbol (or significant image); and sacrifice. Evelyn Underhill, a popular Christian writer in the early part of this century, calls these three elements “sensible signs of supra-sensible action.”9 They are ways we use the physical world to express nonphysical (spiritual) truths.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“We cannot receive, however, unless we set aside time for God to speak—and then let him set the agenda for our discussion. I’ve found that my agenda is frequently different from God’s. He must be the initiator in my spiritual walk. He knows what I need to hear. When I’m consumed with my temporal problems, I miss the blessing of being out of doors.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Healthy Christians create. It is the nature of our God to create. He’s introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator of everything. One of the last images given to us in the book of Revelation is God creating the new heaven and the new earth. The Bible is literally framed around the act of God creating.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“One of the most powerful antidotes to addiction is participating in different activities, lifting the addicts out of themselves and into positive, constructive acts of creation.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Christians who demonstrate compassion because they are passionately in love with God will thus speak prophetically to a selfish culture and, sometimes, a selfish church. Selfishness distorts true sacrifice, and sacrifice is at the heart of true care. Mother”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Sincerity and effort are two strong legs, but two legs are not enough to stabilize a stool. Christian activists need sincerity, effort, and thoughtful prayer. A minister who had misgivings about the prohibition movement remarked that “the churches in the long run would get further if their activities were marked by less commotion and more insight.”24 It is hard to disagree with this. Jesus, as always, is the perfect model of a man who worked hard during the day and prayed hard during the morning and night. Peter is the model of a man who acted fast (cutting off a soldier’s ear, for instance) and had much to repent.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“It wasn’t easy. In junior high, I was voted “most polite,” and it took some time for me to realize that being perceived as a “nice guy” and being a faithful Christian don’t always go hand in hand.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“It is this strict side of the ascetic’s life that is perhaps the least understood, not only by our culture, but also by other Christians. Especially among evangelicals, who champion salvation by grace through faith, a strict faith can seem perilously close to legalism; and in some cases, it might be. For healthy ascetics, however, strictness is a cherished method of expressing love for God.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Ascetics are “strict” only because they want to reserve a major portion of their lives for their passionate pursuit of God.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Don’t you know where God is leading on this?” I was asked once. “Yes, I do,” I said. “And that’s the problem. I’m waiting for my willingness to catch up with God’s.” That’s why I identify so much with Christ, alone and in agony, as he prayed in Gethsemane. It is the ultimate picture of Christianity, the picture of us struggling spiritually as God aligns our will with his. It’s the picture that fuels the ascetic spiritual temperament.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“It is in these dark, intense, and lonely times that ascetics’ souls awaken. I think that anyone who has been stretched in ministry knows that the real battle was fought at Gethsemane, not Calvary. To be sure, only Calvary provided payment for our sins and thus was absolutely necessary, but Gethsemane was the real spiritual battleground where Jesus made the final decision to be obedient. In a wrenching, courageous act of self-denial, Jesus proved the mettle of his faith.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Most of our solitude is forced, not chosen, creating loneliness rather than spiritual intimacy with the Father, and our culture is anything but morally strict. We gravitate toward the trite and trivial rather than the somber and grave, and we pride ourselves on adornment and complexity rather than simplicity, often because many of us are trying desperately to hide our true selves. Ascetics, perhaps more than any of the other spiritual temperaments, must truly go against their culture to practice loving God.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“The world is full of religions and religious people who don’t know God. Religion can serve faith, but it doesn’t substitute for faith, and it can never replace faith. Meaningful expressions of the heart, mind, and will become lifeless if they’re not mixed with a deep and abiding faith.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“I may not receive any new insights and God may not feel particularly close. This has taught me that the demand for spiritual experience can be as gluttonous as the desire for food, money, or sex. Desire for spiritual highs needs to be contained so that we can develop other parts of our being.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Expecting all Christians to have a certain type of quiet time can wreak havoc in a church or small group. Excited about meaningful (to us) approaches to the Christian life, we sometimes assume that if others do not experience the same thing, something must be wrong with their faith. Please, don’t be intimidated by others’ expectations. God wants to know the real you, not a caricature of what somebody else wants you to be. He created you with a certain personality and a certain spiritual temperament. God wants your worship, according to the way he made you. That may differ somewhat from the worship of the person who brought you to Christ or the person who leads your Bible study or church.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God

“Ultimately, it’s a matter of spiritual nutrition. Many Christians have never been taught how to “feed” themselves spiritually. They live on a starvation diet and then are surprised that they always seem so “hungry.”
― Gary L. Thomas, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God