Tell it on the Mountain Quotes

“you’re mine two times over—I made you, and now I’ve bought you!” God made you, God created you, and He bought you at Golgotha with the blood of Jesus Christ. You are His, twice over! He has a claim on you. As the beloved Apostle Paul put it: “He are not your own for ye are bought with a price.” He has a right to everything you are and everything you have; to your mind, your soul, your tongue, your hands and feet, your talents, your capacities, your life, and above all, He claims your obedience, obedience in the receiving of His Last Supper, obedience in love, love for Him and for all men everywhere. Through His Church, those who rule it and those who compose it, “make it up,” He has a right to demand everything of you, even your life. There is nothing you may withhold from Him. So, remember Jesus Christ. He has a claim on you! But if you remembered only this, I couldn’t promise that your life would be great and wonderful. Indeed, it could become quite intolerable. For if you were only aware that God has a right to demand anything of you, anything at all, in the end you might become angry with Him for requiring so much. Or you might despair, of God first of all, but especially of yourself when”
― Roy Harrisville, Tell it on the Mountain: A Collection of Sermons

“There are some angry and desperate people in the Church. That is because they hear only God’s command, only His demands, because they remember only this much about Jesus Christ. They cannot see Him as a gracious and good God; they see Him only as a Boss or a Tyrant. There is something else for which you must remember Him, without which remembering your lives can’t be great or wonderful—His love, His infinite love, His inexhaustible, prodigal, wonderful love, high as the sky, deep as the sea, love that moved Him to the cross to suffer for His enemies, love that still loves Him to forgive when we have wronged Him and one another.”
― Roy Harrisville, Tell it on the Mountain: A Collection of Sermons