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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes maintaining hope and faith, especially during challenging times, as positive change can occur rapidly.
Os Guinness highlights the transformative power of hope and prayer amidst despair, illustrating that even in our darkest moments, renewal and change are possible. He suggests that just before a breakthrough, negativity can prevail, but with faith and the influence of the Holy Spirit, circumstances can shift remarkably and swiftly.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming life's challenges.
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
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.
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.
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.
Frankly, the idea that we need to be beautiful, if you really think about it, it's odd. But if you can turn it inward and see yourself as beautiful, that's what changes the world.
...you're on this earth with a divine purpose: to rise to the level of your highest creative possibility, expressing all that you are intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically in order to make the universe a more beautiful place.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.
I just always loved comedy and I really wanted to be good at it. And it was heartbreaking, 'cause I started and I wasn't good at it. I was only 17-years-old, so I had a lot to learn about life in general. But I just kept on trying. I was young enough and stupid enough and I had no other choice. I had nothing else I was good at.
Never stop hoping for all of the righteous desires of your heart. But don't close your eyes and hearts to the simple and elegant beauties of each day's ordinary moments that make up a rich, well-lived life
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