Naguib Mahfouz Quotes

'Rust' really started with the passing of my dad, and me really looking back inward to my self about where I stand with all things on a faith/religious/spiritual level. And it's really put me on this interesting road and very educational, I might add, road back to understanding the role of faith in God and Christ in my life.

A spiritual life is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How do you live? What's true? How do you respond? It's not about living by beliefs; it's about wanting to know.

I partly know why I have not led a perfect life like other believers. But I avow to my Lord, and I do not lie, that from the time when I first knew him, the love of God and the fear of him has grown in me from my youth so that I have, by the power of God, always till now kept the faith.

I didn't really have a religious upbringing in my life, which was tough at times because I was searching for some kind of meaning, but it also gave me an avenue to find my own sense of connection.

All God's children need traveling shoes.

We are traveling on with our staff in hand... We are pilgrims bound for the heavenly land.

There are not three stages in spiritual life-worship, waiting, and work. Some of us go in jumps like spiritual frogs. We jump from worship to waiting to work. God's idea is that the three should go together. They were always together in the life of our Lord.

From the Rabbis of the early Talmudic age I learned that there is never a last word on God. There's, you always continue to question. Even God himself could be questioned and you can keep arguing with one another and there will be no end to this conversation about the divine because no human expression of God can be ultimate.

There are no planes in the spiritual life; we are either going uphill or coming down.

. . . in the spiritual life you must practice. And the only way to practice is by trying to solve your problems with prayer. This develops your spiritual power and it also trains you to use that spiritual power in the most effective way.

The spiritual journey is one that we must take "alone together," in the same way that a good marriage involves a dance between solitude and communion. The life of the spirit entails a continuous alternation between retreating into oneself and going out into the world: it's an inward-outward journey. There is a solitary part to it, but that solitude helps us to develop richer and more in-depth relationships with our friends, our children, our community, and the political world.

We don't know all the reasons that propel us on a spiritual journey, but somehow our life compels us to go.

One of the disconcerting facts about the spiritual life is that God takes you at your word.

Life is about Jesus. We are not here to tell our story, but His.

Put God first in everything you do ... Everything that I have is by the grace of God, understand that. It's a gift ... I didn't always stick with Him, but He stuck with me.

The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world.

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be.

Prayer is the lungs through which holiness breathes. Prayer is not only the language of spiritual life, but also makes its very essence and forms its real character. O for a faith that will not shrink though pressed by every foe; That will not tremble on the brink of any earthly woe. Lord, give us such a faith as this... whatever may come.

The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I'm the biggest sinner of them all.

I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.

I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Spiritual growth is marked by a growing realization of just how much grace you need.

Even though I have never had an abrupt conversion experience, religion has been real to me and closely knitted to life. In fact the two cannot be separated; religion for me is life.

When I was a missionary in London fifty years ago, my companion and I would shake hands in the morning and say to one another, 'Life is good'. Life in the service of the Lord is good. It is beautiful. It is rewarding.