Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the internal and external struggles of moral choices and the importance of personal agency.
Martin Luther's quote highlights the continuous battle between good and evil that exists both internally within individuals and externally in the world. It underscores the idea that individuals possess free will, empowering them to make choices that shape their moral and ethical paths amidst this struggle.
In practice
During a seminar on ethics, one could reference this quote when discussing the importance of decision-making.
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, as I reflect that he is Lord over all things. ...God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and wellbeing, he may be enabled to labour, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfiling the law of Christ.
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
In a mouse we admire God's creation and craft work. The same may be said about flies.
Public emergencies may require the hand of severity to fall heavily on those who are not personally guilty, but compassion prompts, and ever urges to milder methods
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.
Too often, ill-informed rhetoric has led to emotional hysteria that obfuscates solid evidence regarding the real problems faced by poor people and, in overwhelmingly great proportions, by black people.
It's not the wickedness of the pagan that breaks my heart. It's the compromise of the Christian that grieves my soul.
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