Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Everything that happens to me can help me along in my Christian life.

Christianity is not a sprint but an endurance run. Therefore it is not how we start the race that counts, but how we complete it. How we finish is determined by the choices we make, and those are often formed by patterns we develop along the way.

The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self, and that this process goes on very far inside. One's most private wishes, one's point of view, are the things that have to be changed.

Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you.

That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.

Confession should be a daily activity for the Christian, whose entire pilgrimage is characterized by the spirit of repentance.

A Christian is never in a state of completion but always in a process of becoming.

I am discovering that in trying to find God's will and the shape of the Christian life I have begun an adventure so great that its total completion will always be ahead.

Faith shows us that we are never alone. Transformation helps us to love the mystery.

There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.

I thought when I became a Christian I had nothing to do but just to lay my oars in the bottom of the boat and float along. But I soon found that I would have to go against the current.

Grace and glory differ very little; the one is the seed, the other is the flower; grace is glory militant, glory is grace triumphant.

Hoist the sails of your own spirit to catch the winds of God.

I do not believe one can experience conversion or the fullness of the Christian life apart from the church.

It is implanted in the Christian soul, by the side of the running waters, under the sky of the theological virtues, amid the breaths of the seven gifts of the Spirit. It is natural for it to bear Christian fruit.

Our great tendency in this age is to increase our speed, to run faster, even in the Christian life. In the process our walk with God stays shallow, and our tank runs low on fumes. Intimacy offers a full tank of fuel that can only be found by pulling up closer to God, which requires taking necessary time and going to the effort to make that happen.

And therefore you who think so basely of the gospel and the professors of it, because at present their peace and comfort is not come, know it is on the way to them, and comes to stay everlastingly with them; whereas your peace is going from you every moment, and is sure to leave you without any hope of returning to you again. Look not how the Christian begins, but ends. The Spirit of God by his convictions comes into the soul with some terrors, but it closeth with peace and joy.

The world provides no cheerleaders on the pathway to godliness.

Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam--he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

Jesus was clear that He had come, not to make life easy, but to make men great.

We may go to church once a week, but our Christian life is daily - step-by-step.

The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.

And now run the race which is set before thee, in the royal way of universal love.

As children of God we are somebody. He will build us, mold us, and magnify us if we will but hold our heads up, our arms out, and walk with him.