The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.
Interpretation
Faith is only valuable when actively applied; otherwise, it becomes ineffective.
This quote by Os Guinness emphasizes the importance of actively using one's faith for it to have significance. Just as a boy cannot learn to ride a bicycle without practice and might give up if he faces challenges, faith requires engagement and effort to bear fruit. Merely possessing faith without action leads to stagnation and disappointment, likening faith to a bicycle that only serves its purpose when ridden.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire action among attendees.
By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching committment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful, but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine outselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant
The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.
In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.
Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.
At the supreme moment of his dying Jesus so identified himself with men and the depths of their predicament and agony that no man can now sink so low that God has not gone lower.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.
I worked for Harper’s Bazaar. They fired me. I recommend that you all get fired; it’s a great learning experience.
Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.
When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy. …People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.
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