We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come: he came on the day of Pentecost. He has never left the church.
You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.
You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
Those who put themselves in His hands will become perfect, as He is perfect- perfect in love, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, and immortality. The change will not be completed in this life, for death is an important part of the treatment. How far the change will have gone before death in any particular Christian is uncertain.
God gives His gifts where He finds the vessel empty enough to receive them.
It was part of the reason I almost didn't go public with my diagnosis - I was embarrassed. I felt, 'Oh, I've always talked about exercising. And I got cancer. ' And then I realized it's a great example of showing that cancer can hit anyone at any time.
When virtue is pictured as innocence and innocence equated with childlikeness, the implication is obviously that knowledge and experience are no longer media of goodness, but have become in themselves contaminating. This is a very despairing outlook, in its way as black as Augustine's original sin, for it supposes that original goodness will in all likelihood be defiled. . . It surrenders the attempt to represent virtue in a mature phase.
I have a condition called Aspergers Syndrome, which is like a mild form of autism It means I don't interact properly in certain social situations.
Don't be afraid to take that leap into the unknown.