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I Can Never Know Beforehand How God’s Image Should Appear In Others. That Image Always Manifests A Completely New And Unique Form That Comes Solely From God’s Free And Sovereign Creation. To Me The Sight May Seem Strange, Even Ungodly. But God Creates Every Man In The Likeness Of His Son, The Crucified. After All, Even That Image Certainly Looked Strange And Ungodly To Me Before I Grasped It.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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I Can Never Know

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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I Can Never Know Beforehand How God’s Image Should Appear In Others. That Image Always Manifests A Completely New And Unique Form That Comes Solely From God’s Free And Sovereign Creation. To Me The Sight May Seem Strange, Even Ungodly. But God Creates Every Man In The Likeness Of His Son, The Crucified. After All, Even That Image Certainly Looked Strange And Ungodly To Me Before I Grasped It.

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Time Is The Most Precious Gift In Our Possession, For It Is The Most Irrevocable. This Is What Makes It So Disturbing To Look Back Upon The Time Which We Have Lost. Time Lost Is Time When We Have Not Lived A Full Human Life, Time Unenriched By Experience, Creative Endeavor, Enjoyment, And Suffering. Time Lost Is Time Not Filled, Time Left Empty.

To Recognize The Significant In The Factual Is Wisdom.

Who Is Pure In Heart? Only Those Who Have Surrendered Their Hearts Completely To Jesus That He May Reign In Them Alone. Only Those Whose Hearts Are Undefiled By Their Own Evil--and By Their Own Virtues Too. The Pure In Heart Have A Child-like Simplicity Like Adam Before The Fall, Innocent Alike Of Good And Evil: Their Hearts Are Not Ruled By Their Conscience, But By The Will Of Jesus.

It Is The Task Of Youth Not To Reshape The Church, But Rather To Listen To The Word Of God.

Not Until One Person Desires To Keep His Own Bread For Himself Does Hunger Ensue.

Not To Speak Is To Speak. Not To Act Is To Act.

One Who Loves His Community Destroys Community; One Who Loves Its Members Builds Community.

Let Him Who Cannot Be Alone Beware Of Community. Let Him Who Is Not In Community Beware Of Being Alone.

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It Is Not Your Love That Sustains The Marriage, But From Now On, The Marriage That Sustains Your Love.

Inspirational Marriage

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Once Again, Jesus Calls Those Who Follow Him To Share His Passion.

You Can Only Learn What Obedience Is By Obeying

I Discovered Later, And I'm Still Discovering Right Up To This Moment, That Is It Only By Living Completely In This World That One Learns To Have Faith. By This-worldliness I Mean Living Unreservedly In Life's Duties, Problems, Successes And Failures. In So Doing We Throw Ourselves Completely Into The Arms Of God, Taking Seriously, Not Our Own Sufferings, But Those Of God In The World. That, I Think, Is Faith.

The Pursuit Of Purity Is Not About The Suppression Of Lust, But About The Reorientation Of One's Life To A Larger Goal.

Loving God Means Rejoicing In God, Being Eager To Think Of And Pray To God. It Means Being Glad To Be In God's Presence And To Be With God Alone. It Means Not Grieving God, But Rejoicing In God Simply Because It Is God Who Is Involved, And Because We Are Permitted To Know And Have God, And To Speak With And Live With God.

Desires To Which We Cling Closely Can Easily Prevent Us From Being What We Ought To Be And Can Be; And On The Other Hand, Desires Repeatedly Mastered For The Sake Of Present Duty Make Us Richer.lack Of Desire Is Poverty.

To Endure The Cross Is Not Tragedy; It Is The Suffering Which Is The Fruit Of An Exclusive Allegiance To Jesus Christ.

And If We Ask How Are We To Know Where Our Hearts Are, The Answer Is Just As Simple - Everything Which Hinders Us From Loving God Above All Things And Acts As A Barrier Between Ourselves And Our Obedience To Jesus Is Our Treasure, And The Place Where Our Heart Is.

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There Remains An Experience Of Incomparable Value.

When We Come To A Clearer And More Sober Estimate Of Our Own Limitations And Responsibilities, That Makes It Possible More Genuinely To Love Our Neighbor.

We Have Become So Accustomed To The Idea Of Divine Love And Of God's Coming At Christmas That We No Longer Feel The Shiver Of Fear That God's Coming Should Arouse In Us. We Are Indifferent To The Message, Taking Only The Pleasant And Agreeable Out Of It And Forgetting The Serious Aspect, That The God Of The World Draws Near To The People Of Our Little Earth And Lays Claim To Us. The Coming Of God Is Truly Not Only Glad Tidings, But First Of All Frightening News For Everyone Who Has A Conscience.

God Honors Some With Great Suffering And Grants Them The Grace Of Martyrdom, While Other Are Not Tempted Beyond Their Strength. But In Every Case It Is One Cross.

Every Christian Must Be Fully Christian By Bringing God Into His Whole Life, Not Merely Into Some Spiritual Realm.

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Being Free Means "being Free For The Other," Because The Other Has Bound Me To Him. Only In Relationship With The Other Am I Free

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...gratitude Transforms The Torment Of Memory Of Good Things Now Gone Into Silent Joy. One Bears What Was Lovely In The Past Not As A Thorn But As A Precious Gift Deep Within, A Hidden Treasure Of Which One Can Always Be Certain.

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Let Him Who Cannot Be Alone Beware Of Community... Let Him Who Is Not In Community Beware Of Being Alone... Each By Itself Has Profound Perils And Pitfalls. One Who Wants Fellowship Without Solitude Plunges Into The Void Of Words And Feelings, And The One Who Seeks Solitude Without Fellowship Perishes In The Abyss Of Vanity, Self-infatuation And Despair.

If Jesus Christ Is Not True God, How Could He Help Us? If He Is Not True Man, How Could He Help Us?

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The More Deeply We Grow Into The Psalms And The More Often We Pray Them As Our Own, The More Simple And Rich Will Our Prayer Become.

Before Jesus Leads His Disciples Into Suffering, Humiliation, Disgrace, And Disdain, He Summons Them And Shows Himself To Them As The Lord In God's Glory.

The Essence Of Optimism Is That It Takes No Account Of The Present, But It Is A Source Of Inspiration, Of Vitality And Hope Where Others Have Resigned; It Enables A Man To Hold His Head High, To Claim The Future For Himself And Not To Abandon It To His Enemy.

Prayer Is The Supreme Instance Of The Hidden Character Of The Christian Life.

In The Gospels The Very First Step A Man Must Take Is An Act Which Radically Affects His Whole Existence.

The Restoration Of The Church Must Surely Depend On A New Kind Of Monasticism, Which Has Nothing In Common With The Old But A Life Of Uncompromising Discipleship, Following Christ According To The Sermon On The Mount. I Believe The Time Has Come To Gather People Together To Do This.

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It Is Worse For A Liar To Tell The Truth Than For A Lover Of Truth To Lie.... There Is A Truth Which Is Of Satan. Its Essence Is That Under The Semblance Of Truth It Denies Everything That Is Real. It Lives Upon Hatred Of The Real World Which Is Created And Loved By God.

God's Truth Judges Created Things Out Of Love, And Satan's Truth Judges Them Out Of Envy And Hatred.

The Mark Of Solitude Is Silence, As Speech Is The Mark Of Community. Silence And Speech Have The Same Inner Correspondence And Difference As Do Solitude And Community. One Does Not Exist Without The Other. Right Speech Comes Out Of Silence, And Right Silence Comes Out Of Speech.

One Cannot Simply Read The Bible, Like Other Books. One Must Be Prepared Really To Enquire Of It. Only Thus Will It Reveal Itself. Only If We Expect From It The Ultimate Answer, Shall We Receive It. That Is Because In The Bible God Speaks To Us. And One Cannot Simply Think About God In One’s Own Strength, One Has To Inquire Of Him. Only If We Seek Him, Will He Answer Us.

Nothing Is So At Odds With Prayer As Vanity.

It Is The Nature, And The Advantage, Of Strong People That They Can Raise The Crucial Questions And Form A Clear Opinion About Them.

But They All Stood Beneath The Cross, Enemies And Believers, Doubters And Cowards, Revilers And Devoted Followers. His Prayer, In That Hour, And His Forgiveness, Was Meant For Them All, And For All Their Sins. The Mercy And Love Of God Are At Work Even In The Midst Of His Enemies. It Is The Same Jesus Christ, Who Of His Grace Calls Us To Follow Him, And Whose Grace Saves The Murderer Who Mocks Him On The Cross In His Last Hour.

We Are Separated From One Another By An Unbridgeable Gulf Of Otherness And Strangeness Which Resists All Our Attempts To Overcome It By Means Of Natural Association Or Emotional Or Spiritual Union. There Is No Way From One Person To Another. However Loving And Sympathetic We Try To Be, However Sound Our Psychology However Frank And Open Our Behaviour We Cannot Penetrate The Incognito Of The Other Man, For There Are No Direct Relationships, Not Even Between Soul And Soul. Christ Stands Between Us, And We Can Only Get Into Touch With Our Neighbors Through Him.

Many Christians Are Unthinkably Horrified When A Real Sinner Is Suddenly Discovered Among The Righteous. So We Remain Alone With Our Sin, Living In Lies And Hypocrisy...he Who Is Alone With His Sins Is Utterly Alone.

Neighbourliness Is Not A Quality In Other People, It Is Simply Their Claim On Ourselves.

If Our Christianity Has Ceased To Be Serious About Discipleship, If We Have Watered Down The Gospel Into Emotional Uplift Which Makes No Costly Demands And Which Fails To Distinguish Between Natural And Christian Existence, Then We Cannot Help Regarding The Cross As An Ordinary Everyday Calamity, As One Of The Trials And Tribulations Of Life. We Have Then Forgotten That The Cross Means Rejection And Shame As Well As Suffering .

Certainly One Must Try Everything, But Only To Become More Certain What God's Way Is.

Jesus Is No Draughtsman Of Political Blueprints, He Is The One Who Vanquished Evil Through Suffering. It Looked As Though Evil Had Triumphed On The Cross, But The Real Victory Belonged To Jesus.

God Loves Human Beings. God Loves The World. Not An Ideal Human, But Human Beings As They Are; Not An Ideal World, But The Real World. What We Find Repulsive In Their Opposition To God, What We Shrink Back From With Pain And Hostility, Namely, Real Human Beings, The Real World, This Is For God The Ground Of Unfathomable Love.

God Is Not Free From Human Beings But For Them.

A Christian Fellowship Lives And Exists By The Intercession Of Its Members For One Another, Or It Collapses. I Can No Longer Condemn Or Hate A Brother For Whom I Pray, No Matter How Much Trouble He Causes Me. His Face, That Hitherto May Have Been Strange And Intolerable To Me, Is Transformed In Intercession Into The Countenance Of A Brother For Whom Christ Died, The Face Of A Forgiven Sinner.

As God Adds His 'yes' To Your 'yes,' As He Confirms Your Will With His Will, And As He Allows You, And Approves Of, Your Triumph And Rejoicing And Pride, He Makes You At The Same Time Instruments Of His Will And Purpose Both For Yourselves And For Others. In His Unfathomable Condescension God Does Add His 'yes' To Yours; But By Doing So, He Creates Out Of Your Love Something Quite New - The Holy Estate Of Matrimony.

A Christian Fellowship Lives And Exists By The Intercession Of Its Members For One Another, Or It Collapses.

Discipleship Is Not An Offer That Man Makes To Christ.

When Christ Calls A Man, He Bids Him Come And Die.

If There Is No Element Of Asceticism In Our Lives, If We Give Free Rein To The Desires Of The Flesh (taking Care Of Course To Keep Within The Limits Of What Seems Permissible To The World), We Shall Find It Hard To Train For The Service Of Christ. When The Flesh Is Satisfied It Is Hard To Pray With Cheerfulness Or To Devote Oneself To A Life Of Service Which Calls For Much Self-renunciation.

If You Do A Good Job For Others, You Heal Yourself At The Same Time, Because A Dose Of Joy Is A Spiritual Cure.

In A Word, Live Together In The Forgiveness Of Your Sins, For Without It No Human Fellowship, Least Of All A Marriage, Can Survive. Don't Insist On Your Rights, Don't Blame Each Other, Don't Judge Or Condemn Each Other, Don't Find Fault With Each Other, But Accept Each Other As You Are, And Forgive Each Other Every Day From The Bottom Of Your Hearts.

Costly Grace Is The Gospel Which Must Be Sought Again And Again, The Gift Which Must Be Asked For, The Door At Which A Man Must Knock.

It Is The Voice Of The Church That Is Heard In Singing Together. It Is Not You That Sings, It Is The Church That Is Singing, And You, As A Member Of The Church, May Share In Its Song.

Discipleship Is Not Limited To What You Can Comprehend – It Must Transcend All Comprehension. Plunge Into The Deep Waters Beyond Your Own Comprehension, And I Will Help You To Comprehend Even As I Do. Bewilderment Is The True Comprehension. Not To Know Where You Are Going Is The True Knowledge. My Comprehension Transcends Yours.

The Early Morning Belongs To The Church Of The Risen Christ. At The Break Of Light It Remembers The Morning On Which Death And Sin Lay Prostrate In Defeat And New Life And Salvation Were Given To Mankind

Every Word Of Holy Scripture Was A Love Letter From God Directed Very Personally To Us And He Asked Us Whether We Loved Jesus.

A Pastor Should Never Complain About His Congregation, Certainly Never To Other People, But Also Not To God. A Congregation Has Not Been Entrusted To Him In Order That He Should Become Its Accuser Before God And Men.

When Our Will Wholeheartedly Enters Into The Prayer Of Christ, Then We Pray Correctly.

As Brother Stands By Brother In Distress, Binding Up His Wounds And Soothing His Pain, So Let Us Show Our Love Towards Our Enemy. There Is No Deeper Distress To Be Found In The World, No Pain More Bitter Than Our Enemy's. Nowhere Is Service More Necessary Or More Blessed Than When We Serve Our Enemies.

God Has Willed That We Should Seek And Find God's Living Word In The Testimony Of Other Christians, In The Mouths Of Human Beings.

A Community Of Jesus Which Seeks To Hide Itself Has Ceased To Follow Him.

The Child Asks Of The Father Whom He Knows. Thus, The Essence Of Christian Prayer Is Not General Adoration, But Definite, Concrete Petition. The Right Way To Approach God Is To Stretch Out Our Hands And Ask Of One Who We Know Has The Heart Of A Father.

Bless Them That Persecute You.' If Our Enemy Cannot Put Up With Us Any Longer And Takes To Cursing Us, Our Immediate Reaction Must Be To Lift Up Our Hands And Bless Him. Our Enemies Are The Blessed Of The Lord. Their Curse Can Do Us No Harm. May Their Poverty Be Enriched With All The Riches Of God, With The Blessing Of Him Whom They Seek To Oppose In Vain. We Are Ready To Endure Their Curses So Long As They Redound To Their Blessing.

Help Must Come From The Outside, And It Has Come And Comes Daily And Answers In The Word Of Jesus Christ.

The Incarnation Is The Ultimate Reason Why The Service Of God Cannot Be Divorced From The Service Of Man.

To Be Sure, God Shall Call You, And Us, Only At The Hour That God Has Chosen. Until That Hour, Which Lies In God's Hand Alone, We Shall Be Protected Even In The Greatest Danger; And From Our Gratitude For Such Protection Ever New Readiness Surely Arises For The Final Call

Then Fear Will Grow Pale And Fade Away, And You Will Be Free, Through Your Faith In Our Strong And Living Savior, Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Christ We Have Been Chosen From Eternity, Accepted In Time, And United For Eternity.

With An Abstract Idea It Is Possible To Enter Into A Relation Of Formal Knowledge, To Become Enthusiastic About It, And Perhaps Even To Put It Into Practice; But It Can Never Be Followed In Personal Obedience. Christianity Without The Living Christ Is Inevitably Christianity Without Discipleship, And Christianity Without Discipleship Is Always Christianity Without Christ.

Desires Repeatedly Mastered For The Sake Of Present Duty Make Us Richer. Lack Of Desire Is Poverty.

The Right Way To Pray Is To Stretch Out Our Hands And Ask Of One Who We Know Has The Heart Of A Father.

The Exclusion Of The Weak And Insignificant, The Seemingly Useless People, From A Christian Community May Actually Mean The Exclusion Of Christ; In The Poor Brother Christ Is Knocking At The Door.

If You Board The Wrong Train, It Is No Use Running Along The Corridor In The Other Direction.

Who Stands Firm? Only The One For Whom The Final Standard Is Not His Reason, His Principles, His Conscience, His Freedom, His Virtue, But Who Is Ready To Sacrifice All These, When In Faith And Sole Allegiance To God He Is Called To Obedient And Responsible Action: The Responsible Person, Whose Life Will Be Nothing But An Answer To God's Question And Call.

Christianity Means Community Through Jesus Christ And In Jesus Christ. No Christian Community Is More Or Less Than This.

If Religion Is Onlya Garment Of Christianityand Even This Garment Has Looked Very Different At Different Timesthen What Is Religionless Christianity?

One Act Of Obedience Is Better Than One Hundred Sermons.

Christian Inspirational

The Time Is Short. Eternity Is Long. It Is The Time Of Decision.

Cheap Grace Is The Idea That "grace" Did It All For Me So I Do Not Need To Change My Lifestyle. The Believer Who Accepts The Idea Of "cheap Grace" Thinks He Can Continue To Live Like The Rest Of The World. Instead Of Following Christ In A Radical Way, The Christian Lost In Cheap Grace Thinks He Can Simply Enjoy The Consolations Of His Grace.

Following Christ

If We Look More Closely, We See That Any Violent Display Of Power, Whether Political Or Religious, Produces An Outburst Of Folly In A Large Part Of Mankind; Indeed, This Seems Actually To Be A Psychological And Sociological Law: The Power Of Some Needs The Folly Of Others. It Is Not That Certain Human Capacities, Intellectual Capacities For Instance, Become Stunted Of Destroyed, But Rather That The Upsurge Of Power Makes Such An Overwhelming Impression That Men Are Deprived Of Their Independent Judgment, And...give Up Trying To Assess The New State Of Affairs For Themselves.

In Recent Years We Have Seen A Great Deal Of Bravery And Self-sacrifice, But Civil Courage Hardly Anywhere, Even Among Ourselves.

It Is Only By Living Completely In This World That One Learns To Have Faith.

Just As God's Love Entered The World, Thereby Submitting To The Misunderstanding And Ambiguity That Characterize Everything Worldly, So Also Christian Love Does Not Exist Anywhere But In The Worldly, In An Infinite Variety Of Concrete Worldly Action, And Subject To Misunderstanding And Condemnation. Every Attempt To Portray A Christianity Of 'pure' Love Purged Of Worldly 'impurities' Is A False Purism And Perfectionism That Scorns God's Becoming Human And Falls Prey To The Fate Of All Ideologies. God Was Not Too Pure To Enter The World.

Being A Christan Is Less About Cautiously Avoiding Sin Than About Courageously And Actively Doing God's Will.

It Is Not In Our Life That God's Help And Presence Must Still Be Proved, But Rather God's Presence And Help Have Been Demonstrated For Us In The Life Of Jesus Christ. It Is In Fact More Important For Us To Know What God Did To Israel, To His Son Jesus Christ, Than To Seek What God Intends For Us Today.

Only Those Who Put Tomorrow Completely Into God's Hand And Receive Fully Today What They Need For Their Lives Are Really Secure.

Destruction Of The Embryo In The Mother's Womb Is A Violation Of The Right To Live Which God Has Bestowed Upon This Nascent Life.

When All Is Said And Done, The Life Of Faith Is Nothing If Not An Unending Struggle Of The Spirit With Every Available Weapon Against The Flesh.

A Home Is A Kingdom Of It's Own In The Midst Of The World, A Stronghold Amid Life's Storms And Stresses, A Refuge, Even A Sanctuary.

The 'polymath' Had Already Died Out By The Close Of The Eighteenth Century, And In The Following Century Intensive Education Replaced Extensive, So That By The End Of It The Specialist Had Evolved. The Consequence Is That Today Everyone Is A Mere Technician, Even The Artist.

There Are Only Two Places Where The Powerful And Great In This World Lose Their Courage, Tremble In The Depths Of Their Souls, And Become Truly Afraid. These Are The Manger And The Cross Of Jesus Christ....no Priest, No Theologian Stood At The Cradle Of Bethlehem. And Yet, All Christian Theology Finds Its Beginnings In The Miracle Of Miracles, That God Became Human.

Jesus Says That Every Christian Has His Own Cross Waiting For Him, A Cross Destined And Appointed By God. Each Must Endure His Allotted Share Of Suffering And Rejection. But Each Has A Different Share: Some God Deems Worthy Of The Highest Form Of Suffering, And Gives Them The Grace Of Martyrdom, While Others He Does Not Allow To Be Tempted Above That Which They Are Able To Bear. But It Is The One And The Same Cross In Every Case.

Telling The Truth ... Is Not Solely A Matter Of Moral Character; It Is Also A Matter Of Correct Appreciation Of Real Situations And Of Serious Reflection Upon Them.

The Preaching Of Grace Can Only Be Protected By The Preaching Of Repentance.

In Normal Life We Hardly Realize How Much More We Receive Than We Give, And Life Cannot Be Rich Without Such Gratitude. It Is So Easy To Overestimate The Importance Of Our Own Achievements Compared With What We Owe To The Help Of Others.

Waiting Is An Art That Our Impatient Age Has Forgotten. It Wants To Break Open The Ripe Fruit When It Has Hardly Finished Planting The Shoot. But All Too Often The Greedy Eyes Are Only Deceived; The Fruit That Seemed So Precious Is Still Green On The Inside, And Disrespected Hands Ungratefully Toss Aside What Has So Disappointed Them.

Anyone Who Thinks That His Time Is Too Valuable To Spend Keeping Quiet Will Eventually Have No Time For God And His Brother, But Only For Himself And For His Own Follies.

A Day Without Morning And Evening Prayers And Personal Intercessions Is Actually A Day Without Meaning Or Importance.

What Is The "extraordinary"? It Is The Love Of Jesus Christ Himself, Love That Goes To The Cross In Suffering Obedience.

Death Reveals That The World Is Not As It Should Be But That It Stands In Need Of Redemption. Christ Alone Is The Conquering Of Death.

No Sacrifice Which A Lover Would Make For His Beloved Is Too Great For Us To Make For Our Enemy.

After He Has Been Following Christ For A Long Time, The Disciple Of Jesus Will Be Asked, "lacked Ye Anything?" And He Will Answer "nothing, Lord." How Could He When He Knows That Despite Hunger And Nakedness, Persecution And Danger, The Lord Is Always At His Side?

Following Christ

Only The Believer Obeys — Obedience Follows Faith, The Way Good Fruit Comes From A Good Tree. Only The Obedient Believe.

Christianity Without Discipleship Is Always Christianity Without Christ.

Following Christ

Who Am I? This Or The Other? Am I One Person Today And Tomorrow Another? Am I Both At Once? A Hypocrite Before Others, And Before Myself A Contemptible Woebegone Weakling? Or Is Something Within Me Still Like A Beaten Army Fleeing In Disorder From A Victory Already Achieved? Who Am I? They Mock Me, These Lonely Questions Of Mine. Whoever I Am, Thou Knowest, O God, I Am Thine!

The Psalter Is The Prayer Book Of Jesus Christ In The Truest Sense Of The Word. He Prayed The Psalter And Now It Has Become His Prayer For All Time...we Understand How The Psalter Can Be Prayer To God And Yet God's Own Word, Precisely Because Here We Encounter The Praying Christ...because Those Who Pray The Psalms Are Joining In With The Prayer Of Jesus Christ, Their Prayer Reaches The Ears Of God. Christ Has Become Their Intercessor.

Joy Draws Its Nourishment From Quietness And From The Unfathomable.

The First Service That One Owes To Others Consists In Listening To Them.

The Celebration Of Advent Is Possible Only To Those Who Are Troubled In Soul, Who Know Themselves To Be Poor And Imperfect, And Who Look Forward To Something Greater To Come.

What We Shall Need Is Not Geniuses, Or Cynics, Or Misanthropes, Or Clever Tacticians, But Plain, Honest, Straghtforward Men.

A Love That Left People Alone In Their Guilt Would Not Have Real People As Its Object. So, In Vicarious Responsibility For People, And In His Love For Real Human Beings, Jesus Becomes The One Burdened By Guilt.

As Christ Bore And Received Us As Sinners So We In His Fellowship May Bear And Receive Sinners Into The Fellowship Of Christ Through The Forgiving Of Sins.

The World Upon Whom Grace Is Thrust As A Bargain Will Grow Tired Of It.

God Cannot Endure That Unfestive, Mirthless Attitude Of Ours In Which We Eat Our Bread In Sorrow, With Pretentious, Busy Haste, Or Even With Shame. Through Our Daily Meals He Is Calling Us To Rejoice, To Keep Holiday In The Midst Of Our Working Day.

Battles Are Won, Not With Weapons, But With God. They Are Won Where The Way Leads To The Cross.

Wherever It Pleases God To Put Man In This World, The Christian Must Be Ready For Martyrdom And Death. It Is Only In This Way That Man Learns Faith.

Gratitude Changes The Pangs Of Memory Into A Tranquil Joy.

If We Want To Read And To Pray The Prayers Of The Bible And Especially The Psalms, Therefore, We Must Not Ask First What They Have To Do With Us, But What They Have To Do With Jesus Christ...it Does Not Depend, Therefore, On Whether The Psalms Express Adequately That Which We Feel At A Given Moment In Our Heart. If We Are To Pray Aright, Perhaps It Is Quite Necessary That We Pray Contrary To Our Own Heart. Not What We Want To Pray Is Important, But What God Wants Us To Pray.

Christianity Means Community Through Jesus Christ And In Jesus Christ. No Christian Community Is More Or Less Than This. Whether It Is A Brief, Single Encounter Or The Daily Fellowship Of Years, Christian Community Is Only This. We Belong To One Another Only Through And In Jesus Christ.

I Saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, Before Taking Off His Prison Garb, Kneeling On The Floor Praying Fervently To His God. I Was Most Deeply Moved By The Way This Lovable Man Prayed, So Devout And So Certain That God Heard His Prayer. At The Place Of Execution, He Again Said A Prayer And Then Climbed The Steps To The Gallows, Brave And Composed. His Death Ensued In A Few Seconds. In The Almost 50 Years That I Have Worked As A Doctor, I Have Hardly Ever Seen A Man Die So Entirely Submissive To The Will Of God.

Jesus Christ Has To Suffer And Be Rejected... Suffering And Being Rejected Are Not The Same.

Costly Grace Is The Treasure Hidden In The Field; For The Sake Of It A Man Will Gladly Go And Sell All He Has. It Is The Pearl Of Great Price To By Which The Merchant Will Sell All His Goods.

Time Is The Most Valuable Thing That We Have, Because It Is The Most Irrevocable.

Valuable Things

The Deceit, The Lie Of The Devil Consists Of This, That He Wishes To Make Man Believe That He Can Live Without God's Word.

The More Isolated A Person Is, The More Destructive Will Be The Power Of Sin Over Him, And The More Deeply He Becomes Involved In It, The More Disastrous Is His Isolation.

Our Community With One Another Consists Solely In What Christ Has Done To Each Of Us.

Anything I Cannot Thank God For For The Sake Of Christ, I May Not Thank God For At All; To Do So Would Be Sin. ... We Cannot Rightly Acknowledge The Gifts Of God Unless We Acknowledge The Mediator For Whose Sake Alone They Are Given To Us.

The Fact That We Do Not Speak It But Sing It Only Expresses The Fact That Our Spoken Words Are Inadequate To Express What We Want To Say, That The Burden Of Our Song Goes Far Beyond All Human Words.

God Has Reserved To Himself The Right To Determine The End Of Life, Because He Alone Knows The Goal To Which It Is His Will To Lead It. It Is For Him Alone To Justify A Life Or To Cast It Away.

Innumerable Times A Whole Christian Community Has Broken Down Because It Had Sprung From A Wish Dream… Every Human Wish Dream That Is Injected Into The Christian Community Is A Hindrance To Genuine Community And Must Be Banished If Genuine Community Is To Survive. He Who Loves His Dream Of A Community More Than The Christian Community Itself Becomes A Destroyer Of The Latter, Even Though His Personal Intentions May Be Ever So Honest And Earnest And Sacrificial.

As Long As We Let The Word Of God Be Our Only Armor, We Can Look Confidently Into The Future.

Christianity Preaches The Infinite Worth Of That Which Is Seemingly Worthless And The Infinite Worthlessness Of That Which Is Seemingly So Valued.

Whenever Christ Calls Us, His Call Leads Us To Death.

Where A People Prays, There Is The Church; And Where The Church Is; There Is Never Loneliness.

We Are Silent At The Beginning Of The Day Because God Should Have The First Word, And We Are Silent Before Going To Sleep Because The Last Word Also Belongs To God.

If You Believe, Take The First Step, It Leads To Jesus Christ. If You Don't Believe, Take The First Step All The Same, For You Are Bidden To Take It.

It Is God's Earth Out Of Which Man Is Taken. From It He Has His Body. His Body Belongs To His Essential Being. Man's Body Is Not His Prison, His Shell His Exterior, But Man Himself. Man Does Not "have" A Body; He Does Not "have" A Soul; Rather He "is" Body And Soul. Man In The Beginning Is Really His Body. He Is One. He Is His Body, As Christ Is Completely His Body, As The Church Is The Body Of Christ

Thus The Call To Follow Christ Always Means A Call To Share The Work Of Forgiving Men Their Sins. Forgiveness Is The Christlike Suffering Which It Is The Christian's Duty To Bear.

Earthly Goods Are Given To Be Used, Not To Be Collected.... Hoarding Is Idolatry.

God Is Not A God Of The Emotions But The God Of Truth.

A Prison Cell, In Which One Waits, Hopes...and Is Completely Dependent On The Fact That The Door Of Freedom Has To Be Opened From The Outside, Is Not A Bad Picture Of Advent.

Destruction Of The Embryo In The Mother's Womb Is A Violation Of The Right To Live Which God Has Bestowed Upon This Nascent Life. To Raise The Question Whether We Are Here Concerned Already With A Human Being Or Not Is Merely To Confuse The Issue. The Simple Fact Is That God Certainly Intended To Create A Human Being And That This Nascent Human Being Has Been Deliberately Deprived Of His Life. And That Is Nothing But Murder.

We Are So Afraid Of Silence That We Chase Ourselves From One Event To The Next In Order Not To Have To Spend A Moment Alone With Ourselves, In Order Not To Have To Look At Ourselves In The Mirror.

How Wrong It Is To Use God As A Stop-gap For The Incompleteness Of Our Knowledge. . . . We Are To Find God In What We Know, Not In What We Don't Know; God Wants Us To Realize His Presence, Not In Unsolved Problems But In Those That Are Solved. . . . God Is No Stop-gap; He Must Be Recognized As The Center Of Life, Not When We Are At The End Of Our Resources.

Many People Are Looking For An Ear That Will Listen. They Do Not Find It Among Christians, Because These Christians Are Talking Where They Should Be Listening.

The Word Of Cheap Grace Has Been The Ruin Of More Christians Than Any Commandment Of Works.

The Devil Doesn't Fill Us With Hatred For God, But With Forgetfulness Of God.

I Need The Christ That Is In You, And You Need The Christ That Is In Me.

Human Love Is Directed To The Other Person For His Own Sake, Spiritual Love Loves Him For Christ's Sake. Therefore, Human Love Seeks Direct Contact With The Other Person; It Loves Him Not As A Free Person But As One Whom It Binds To Itself.

So Many People Come To Church With A Genuine Desire To Hear What We Have To Say, Yet They Are Always Going Back Home With The Uncomfortable Feeling That We Are Making It Too Difficult For Them To Come To Jesus.

Uncomfortable Feeling

It Is Much Easier For Me To Imagine A Praying Murderer, A Praying Prostitute, Than A Vain Person Praying. Nothing Is So At Odds With Prayer As Vanity.

When One Person Is Struck By The Word, He Speaks It To Others. God Has Willed That We Should Seek And Find His Living Word In The Witness Of A Brother, In The Mouth Of Man. Therefore, The Christian Needs Another Christian Who Speaks God’s Word To Him. The Christ In His Own Heart Is Weaker Than The Christ In The Word Of His Brother; His Own Heart Is Uncertain, His Brother’s Is Sure.

God Does Not Love Some Ideal Person, But Rather Human Beings Just As We Are, Not Some Ideal World, But Rather The Real World.

Christ Became Our Brother In Order To Help Us. Through Him Our Brother Has Become Christ For Us In The Power And Authority Of The Commission Christ Has Given Him. Our Brother Stands Before Us The Sign Of The Truth And The Grace Of God. He Has Been Given To Us To Help Us. He Hears The Confession Of Our Sins In Christ's Stead And He Forgives Our Sins In Christ's Name. He Keeps The Secret Of Our Confession As God Keeps It. When I Go To My Brother To Confess, I Am Going To God.

Good Friday And Easter Free Us To Think About Other Things Far Beyond Our Own Personal Fate, About The Ultimate Meaning Of All Life, Suffering, And Events; And We Lay Hold Of A Great Hope.

Cheap Grace Is Grace Without Discipleship.

Christian Discipleship

I Believe That Nothing That Happens To Me Is Meaningless And That It Is Good For Us All That It Should Be So, Even If It Runs Counter To Our Own Wishes. As I See It, I'm Here For Some Purpose, And I Only Hope I May Fulfill It.

In The New Testament Our Enemies Are Those Who Harbor Hostility Against Us, Not Those Against Whom We Cherish Hostility, For Jesus Refuses To Reckon With Such A Possibility.

The Church Is Not A Religious Community Of Worshippers Of Christ But Is Christ Himself Who Has Taken Form Among People.

We Must Be Ready To Allow Ourselves To Be Interrupted By God. God Will Be Constantly Crossing Our Paths And Canceling Our Plans By Sending Us People With Claims And Petitions.

The Wars Of Israel Were The Only 'holy Wars' In History... There Can Be No More Wars Of Faith. The Only Way To Overcome Our Enemy Is By Loving Him.

Death Is Hell And Night And Cold, If It Is Not Transformed By Our Faith. But That Is Just What Is So Marvelous, That We Can Transform Death.

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