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.
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.
You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.
We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.
Before competition, as I stand in shoulder pads and cleats, my helmet in my left hand, adrenaline flowing and my heart raging under my right, I never forget the ills of America, but for a moment I envision its potential, remember its prosperity, and give thanks to God for the land He has placed me in and the people I love who live in it.
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