Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
Let the man who would hear God speak, read Holy Scriptures.
Interpretation
To understand divine guidance, one should engage with sacred texts.
This quote emphasizes the importance of reading and studying Holy Scriptures as a way to connect with and understand God's voice. It suggests that those seeking spiritual insight and truth should turn to these texts, as they are considered a primary source of divine wisdom and instruction.
In practice
During a sermon, one could quote this to encourage the congregation to engage with the Bible more deeply.
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.
The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.
The ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. And even I grow tired.
I adore the struggle you carry in yourself. I adore your terrifying sincerity.
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