Home > Topic > the higher power
1 " The Protestants believe in the higher power through the truth they derive from the word of God. They got to know the truth and that truth set them free and they took the truth to the society and set their whole generation free. "
―
2 " If outer events bring him to a position where he can bear them no longer and force him to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief, or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of his dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace. "
― Paul Brunton , The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, the Ego: From Birth to Rebirth
3 " Therefore let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers' (Rom 13.1). The Christian must not be drawn to the bearers of high office; his calling is to stay below. The higher power are over him, and he must remain under them. The world exercises dominion, the Christian serves, and thus he shares the earthly lot of his Lord, who became a servant. 'For there is no power but of God.' (Mark 10.42-45) These words are addressed to the Christians, not to the powers. "
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer , The Cost of Discipleship
4 " The central fact of biblical history, the birth of the Messiah, more than any other, presupposes the design of Providence in the selecting and uniting of successive producers, and the real, paramount interest of the biblical narratives is concentrated on the various and wondrous fates, by which are arranged the births and combinations of the 'fathers of God.' But in all this complicated system of means, having determined in the order of historical phenomena the birth of the Messiah, there was no room for love in the proper meaning of the word. Love is, of course, encountered in the Bible, but only as an independent fact and not as an instrument in the process of the genealogy of Christ. The sacred book does not say that Abram took Sarai to wife by force of an ardent love, and in any case Providence must have waited until this love had grown completely cool for the centenarian progenitors to produce a child of faith, not of love. Isaac married Rebekah not for love but in accordance with an earlier formed resolution and the design of his father. Jacob loved Rachel, but this love turned out to be unnecessary for the origin of the Messiah. He was indeed to be born of a son of Jacob - Judah - but the latter was the offspring, not of Rachel but of the unloved wife, Leah. For the production in the given generation of the ancestor of the Messiah, what was necessary was the union of Jacob precisely with Leah; but to attain this union Providence did not awaken in Jacob any powerful passion of love for the future mother of the 'father of God' - Judah. Not infringing the liberty of Jacob's heartfelt feeling, the higher power permitted him to love Rachel, but for his necessary union with Leah it made use of means of quite a different kind: the mercenary cunning of a third person - devoted to his own domestic and economic interests - Laban. Judah himself, for the production of the remote ancestors of the Messiah, besides his legitimate posterity, had in his old age to marry his daughter-in-law Tamar. Seeing that such a union was not at all in the natural order of things, and indeed could not take place under ordinary conditions, that end was attained by means of an extremely strange occurrence very seductive to superficial readers of the Bible. Nor in such an occurrence could there be any talk of love. It was not love which combined the priestly harlot Rahab with the Hebrew stranger; she yielded herself to him at first in the course of her profession, and afterwards the casual bond was strengthened by her faith in the power of the new God and in the desire for his patronage for herself and her family. It was not love which united David's great-grandfather, the aged Boaz, with the youthful Moabitess Ruth, and Solomon was begotten not from genuine, profound love, but only from the casual, sinful caprice of a sovereign who was growing old. "
― Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov , The Meaning of Love
5 " I believe the higher power in the universe is compassionate, understanding, and all-knowing, and that there is nothing you can do that will change His love for you. I believe God’s love for you is infinite and absolute, and your value as an irreplaceable, unique, one-of-a-kind, divine soul is infinite and absolute too, because it is based in God’s love for you. Does this make sense to you, the way it does to me? I believe this is truth. I believe your value is not on the line; that your value is literally absolute and unchangeable. You have the same infinite value no matter what you do or don’t do. I believe you are a perfect and divine creation and as such your value is secure forever, no matter how many mistakes (driven by fear and misconception) you make down here. I believe God understands that your mistakes are part of your learning process. Mistakes teach you beautiful and important lessons. It makes no sense to condemn you for being lost, confused, scared and stupid down here, when for the most part we all are. We are doing the best we can with what we know, but we don’t know enough and are no where close to perfect. I believe God wants you to keep learning and growing, but that He loves you and accepts you as you are right now. "
― Kimberly Giles , Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness
6 " By learning to contact listen to and act on our intuition we can directly connect to the higher power of the universe and allow it to become our guiding force. "
7 " People always joke that 'dog' spells 'god' backwards. They should consider that it might be the higher power coming down to see just how well they do, what kind of people they are. The animals are right here, right in front of us. And how we treat these companions is a test. "
8 " It is the Higher Power which does everything, and the man is only a tool. If he accepts that position, he is free from troubles; otherwise, he courts them. "