Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
Show me where a man spends his time & money, and I'll show you his god.
Interpretation
A person's priorities are revealed by their spending habits and how they allocate their time.
This quote highlights the idea that people's true values and beliefs are reflected in their choices about time and money. It suggests that where one invests their resources speaks volumes about their priorities and what they hold sacred or important in life, essentially indicating that one’s 'god' or ultimate focus can be identified through their actions and expenditures.
In practice
In a discussion about personal finance, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of mindful spending.
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.
We are all jars of clay, fragile and poor, yet we carry within us an immense treasure.
Eating, bathing, going to the toilet, talking, thinking, and many other activities related to the body are all work. How is it that the performance of one particular act is alone (considered) work? To be still is to be always engaged in work. To be silent is to be always talking.
Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
Whatever is, is in its causes just.
While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.
Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope.
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