Home > Topic > a relationship
21 " The journey of prayer for Franciscans is the discovery of God at the center of our lives. We pray not to acquire a relationship with God as if acquiring something that did not previously exist. Rather, we pray to disclose the image of God in which we are created, the God within us, that is, the one in whom we are created and in whom lies the seed of our identity. We pray so as to discover what we already have—“the incomparable treasure hidden in the field of the world and of the human heart. (St. Clare) "
22 " Holiness doesn’t demand denial of happiness, only selfishness. Where unhappiness exists in a relationship, I would submit that such isn’t the price of holiness but a sign of sin. It is an indication that one or both partners is holding to the wrong value system, that of self-love. When husbands and wives love each other with agape, they meet the deepest needs God designed to be met in the very manner He intended. The result is a joy that is complete and a relationship where happiness is the fruit of holiness and meaning is the consequence of a loving relationship. "
― —James Castleton, MD, Mending of a Broken Heart
23 " Scholars, theologians, and even poets have yet to be able to truly describe and touch upon the beauty, romance, and magic of a relationship built on 100% authenticity "
― Steve Maraboli , Life, the Truth, and Being Free
24 " You came here a fighter, Maddie. Maybe you'd lost a round or two, but you were on your feet. You want to stay in Lucky Harbor? Fight for it. You want a relationship with your sisters? Fight for it." " What about you? What about a relationship with you?" He pulled back to look into her face as if memorizing her features. His voice, when he spoke, was low and gravelly with emotion. " I'm already yours. Always have been. All you have to do is step into the ring. "
25 " Only with a relationship with God, can you become light and hope for your country and the whole world "
26 " I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. "
― Brennan Manning
27 " God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder who laid the foundation of his house on the rock, we learn to let our knowledge of God change us. "
― Tyler Edwards , Zombie Church: Breathing Life Back Into the Body of Christ
28 " Faith" will help put us together on the same direction. Faith is building a relationship with God where he is in control. It is about believing although we do not always see. Do we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul? Can we follow his voice? "
29 " Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since.I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since.But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen.As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal.But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong.Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant.The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too.The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up.I mean, what does a child know about faith?It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known.Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about.Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg.I was devastated.I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life.‘Please, God, comfort me.’Blow me down … He did.My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.)To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies.This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes.The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life.This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being.Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree.I had found a calling for my life. "
― Bear Grylls , Mud, Sweat and Tears
30 " Scripture breathes wisdom like we breathe oxygen. It can't not. Through Scripture, God reveals himself. This wisdom cannot be captured, let alone contained, on a neon bumper sticker or rubber bracelet. Wisdom itself invites us to go deeper- right into a relationship with God himself.Through wisdom, we learn to love God and love what he loves. We find rich counsel on the life we were meant for- in our families, communities, and world. We discover our personal responsibilities to others. And we unearth how to put love into action." -Organic God "
31 " Helping professionals, therapists, life coaches, healers can greatly assist you in changing your life for the better, but they pale in comparison to the power thats gained from developing a relationship with yourself. It's you that holds the power for change "
32 " Christ is our Friend; He is also the Righteous King. God is our Father; He is also the Sovereign Lord. Christianity can be said to be both a religion and a relationship. You may often hear the cliché that it is not a religion, but a relationship only - which, I believe, is a bit too vague a statement - 'religion' has long had different meanings and implications depending on who you ask or where you are coming from. Honestly, it is sometimes the case that Christians like to think they are too cool and free and up-close and personal with God to be like other religions. Perhaps that could be argued, that could be the case, as it is written thus: 'You are no longer a slave to sin, but God's child.' So we might very well assert that Christianity is not at all some stale philosophy centered around legalistic guilt and empty rule-keeping, as the modernists so commonly define religion; although by other definitions we might as well be boasting that it is 'The Religion' simply by claiming that it is too real and too special to be deemed 'just another religion'. "
― Criss Jami , Healology
33 " Graduates fared better if, during college, they did any one of these: developed a relationship with a mentor; took on a project that lasted a semester or more; did a job or internship directly connected to their chosen field; or became deeply involved in a campus organization or activity (as opposed to minimally involved in a range of things). "
― Frank Bruni
34 " Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. "
― William Paul Young
35 " The best you can hope for in a relationship is to findsomeone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It isfutile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someonewho is capable of significant change; that sort of personexists only in our imaginations. "
― , God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
36 " What a relationship looks like on the outside isn't the same as what it's like on the inside. You can be more in love with someone in your mind than with the person you see every day. "
― Jean Kwok , Girl in Translation
37 " Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take. "
38 " To respect the dignity of a relationship also implies accepting the end when it comes. Except in my mind, except in my dreams, where the aftertaste of her still lingers. "
― André Brink , Before I Forget
39 " Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim. "
― Thomas Mann , Death in Venice
40 " Just because a relationship ends, it doesn't mean it's not worth having. "
― Sarah Mlynowski , Gimme a Call