In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
Interpretation
True freedom comes from being our authentic selves and embodying our best traits.
This quote by Os Guinness suggests that our truest state of freedom is achieved when we fully embrace our humanity and strive to embody the virtues that define us as individuals. When we are authentic, just, and excellent, we experience a profound sense of freedom that transcends societal expectations and limitations.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about personal development and authenticity.
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.
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.
People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad. I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.
No matter who or what we are, God restores us to right standing with Himself only by means of the death of Jesus Christ.
A person who is obsessed thinks about heaven frequently. Obsessed people orient their lives around eternity; they are not fixed only on what is here in front of them.
My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesnβt believe in something until there is evidence for it, so Iβm agnostic.
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive.
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