Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Martin LutherRead
Not only the words (vocabula) which the Holy Spirit and Scripture use are divine, but also the phrasing
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that both the words and their arrangement in scripture are sacred.
Martin Luther's quote suggests that the divine nature of scripture extends beyond just the vocabulary used; the way in which these words are structured and presented also holds a sense of holiness. This perspective encourages deeper contemplation not only of the meaning of individual words but also of how their combinations create profound truths and insights.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the importance of scripture, one might invoke this quote to highlight the sacredness of biblical language.
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, as I reflect that he is Lord over all things. ...God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and wellbeing, he may be enabled to labour, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfiling the law of Christ.
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
In a mouse we admire God's creation and craft work. The same may be said about flies.
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
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