Real Faith Is Refined In The Fires

Too Much Of The World's Happiness Depends On Taking From One To Satisfy Another. To Increase My Standard Of Living, Someone In Another Part Of The World Must Lower His. The Worldwide Crisis Of Hunger That We Face Today Is A Result Of That Method Of Pursuing Happiness. Industrialized Nations Acquire Appetites For More And More Luxuries And Higher And Higher Standards Of Living, And Increasing Numbers Of People Are Made Poor And Hungry. It Doesn't Have To Be That Way.

Praying Puts Us At Risk Of Getting Involved In God's Conditions. Be Slow To Pray. Praying Most Often Doesn't Get Us What We Want But What God Wants, Something Quite At Variance With What We Conceive To Be In Our Best Interests.

Real Faith Is Refined In The Fires And Storms Of Pain.

Every Call To Worship Is A Call Into The Real World.... I Encounter Such Constant And Widespread Lying About Reality Each Day And Meet With Such Skilled And Systematic Distortion Of The Truth That I'm Always In Danger Of Losing My Grip On Reality. The Reality, Of Course, Is That God Is Sovereign And Christ Is Savior. The Reality Is That Prayer Is My Mother Tongue And The Eucharist My Basic Food. The Reality Is That Baptism, Not Myers-briggs, Defines Who I Am.

The Vocation Of Pastor Has Been Replaced By The Strategies Of Religious Entrepreneurs With Business Plans.