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.
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
If I have not been exposed and am not in any danger of pursuit. But I have been exposed, I am pursued - by myself! That is a pursuer that does not readily let go.
Absolute nakedness was intrusive, confusing to the senses. Paradoxically, it both revealed and diminished identity.
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
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