Home > Work > Soul Cravings: An Exploration of the Human Spirit
1 " While religions have historically tried to make us the same, Jesus calls us to be different. If you have ever experienced this, you know your soul bristled at the demand to quietly get in line and conform. But something in your gut told you this was wrong. If there was a God, his value would not be uniformity, but uniqueness. And you were right. Imprinted on your soul is the fingerprint of God. There is something inside you that resists surrendering your soul to legalism. The good news is that all that time it wasn't you fighting against God; you were fighting for what God has created you to become. "
― Erwin Raphael McManus , Soul Cravings: An Exploration of the Human Spirit
2 " We cannot live unaffected by love. We are most alive when we find it, most devastated when we lose it, most empty when we give up on it, most inhumane when we betray it, and most passionate when we pursue it. "
3 " Jesus would rather have us do what is right than what is “Christian.” Earlier "
4 " You also can’t move forward into your future when you are paralyzed by fear. "
5 " the unexpected truth that the safest place for a sinful person to go is to God. "
6 " It’s a troubling thing when your soul demands what your brain rejects. "
7 " When it comes to love, it has to be face-to-face. There has to be contact. Love cannot exist where there is only distance. Love can survive distance, but only by the strength of what comes through intimacy. "
8 " God is not passive, for love is never passive, but always passionate; and passion always leads to action. "
9 " But you might wonder to yourself: What if I never find love? After all, you can’t be held responsible if you’ve searched for love, risked in love, even fought for love, and yet have always found it unrequited. When love does not come to you, it breaks your heart, but when you do not give love away, it hardens your heart. One thing stranger than our need to be loved is our need to love, which again leads me to my conspiracy theory: We are designed for love. "
10 " Where there is no love, there is no value for life. "
11 " Love is not about how many people we have used, but about how much we have cherished one person. "
12 " To give up on love is to choose a life that is less than human. "
13 " happen if people actually began discovering the actual message of Jesus Christ—that love is unconditional? "
14 " Nietzsche’s observation, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. "
15 " We all are flawed. If there was a perfect community, it would be ruined the moment I joined it. "
16 " At least on an unconscious level, a part of our struggle with God is our discomfort with love. It seems no matter how beautiful or wanted we are, there’s always something inside us that remains insecure. All of us find ourselves uncertain when it comes to love. "
17 " goal of spirituality is not to extract from you all desire and passion. The call of Jesus is the exact opposite—delight "
18 " If he’s just watching, then we’re all unwilling participants in the universe’s biggest reality show—the original Survivor. "
19 " Don’t let your shortcomings and flaws convince you that you need to become something other than human. Our brokenness is not proof that God could not or would not love us, but proof that what we need is the God who both created us and loves us. What our souls long to become is not something other than human, but to become beautifully human. "
20 " Asking why isn’t about the survival of the fittest; it is about the soul’s craving for meaning. "