Godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions
Jonathan EdwardsRead
Sincere friendship towards God, in all who believe him to be properly an intelligent, willing being, does most apparently, directly, and strongly incline to prayer; and it no less disposes the heart strongly to desire to have our infinitely glorious.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Sincere friendship with God motivates believers to pray and seek a deeper connection with the divine.
In this quote, Jonathan Edwards emphasizes that a genuine friendship with God naturally leads believers to engage in prayer. When individuals view God as an intelligent and willing entity, their hearts are drawn towards a desire for a more profound relationship with Him, reflecting an understanding of His infinite glory and the importance of communication through prayer.
Themes
FriendshipGodPrayerBelieversDesire
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon about the importance of relationship with God, one could use this quote to illustrate how prayer stems from a sincere friendship with God.
More from Jonathan Edwards
All quotes →Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.
Jonathan EdwardsRead
So that it must be only by the imagination that Satan has access to the soul, to tempt and delude it, or suggest anything to it. And this seems to be the reason why persons that are under the disease of melancholy are commonly so visibly and remarkably subject to the suggestions and temptations of Satan... Innumerable are the ways by which the mind may be led on to all kind of evil thoughts, by the exciting of external ideas in the imagination.
Jonathan EdwardsRead
The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.
Jonathan EdwardsRead
Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.
Jonathan EdwardsRead
True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory.
Jonathan EdwardsRead
Similar quotes
When men do not love their hearth, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
John RuskinRead
All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Find a printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it. Imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid. (Broilers are never in cages, and never on multiple levels.) Now enclose the grid with windowless walls and put a ceiling on top. Run in automated (drug-laced) feed, water, heating, and ventilation systems. This is a farm.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
Any person, brought into the presence of this fact, stops for a few moments and remains pensive and silent; and then generally leaves, carrying with him forever a sharper, keener sense of our incessant motion through space.
Leon FoucaultRead
The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Time is the brush of God, as he paints his masterpiece on the heart of humanity.
Ravi ZachariasRead