The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.
Interpretation
The church should be an active place for people to work and serve, rather than a passive space for rest and complacency.
This quote by Billy Sunday emphasizes the idea that the church's primary role is to engage and mobilize people in service and action. Rather than being a comfortable place for individuals to simply rest or hide from the challenges of life, the church is portrayed as a battleground where believers should actively participate in their faith and contribute to meaningful work in the community.
In practice
In a sermon about community service, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of active faith.
Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.
I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother.
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.
When I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity.
When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
A Christian is not someone who never goes wrong, but one who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin again, because the Christ-life is inside him.
According to the law that governs the universe,all sufferings are your labor of love to unveil your real self.
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
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