Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Prayer immediately turns us into something greater than ourselves.

The most universally awesome experience that mankind knows is to stand alone on a clear night and look at the stars. It was God who first set the stars in space; He is their Maker and Master . . . such are His power and His majesty.

There is no greater joy for me than looking at the sky on a clear night with an attention so concentrated that all my other thoughts disappear; then one can think that the stars enter into one's soul.

I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. I think throughout the day, I'm constantly asking myself questions about what I'm doing, why am I doing it.

The moment we change our thinking and start connecting with God, we start connecting with His plans, which always exceed our small plans.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.

My faith in God is a huge part of my life, and yeah He has blessed me with an amazing family, and group of friends. In the Bible he tells us to think positively about ourselves, to not be down on ourselves. So I just try to live the way He wants me to, and make the best decisions I can.

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.

God is preparing you for greater things. He's going to take you further than you thought possible, so don't be surprised when He asks you to think better of yourself and to act accordingly.

I don't think God's through with me.

If you are a stranger to prayer, you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings.

Prayer has not been a part of my life in the sense that truth has been.

Remember the words of Christ: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." These words are literally true, not figures or fiction. They were the outflow of the heart's blood of one of the greatest sons of God who have ever come to this world of ours; words which came as the fruit of realisation, from a man who had felt and realised God himself; who had spoken with God, lived with God, a hundred times more intensely than you or I see this building.

Spiritual life is like living water that springs up from the very depths of our own spiritual experience. In spiritual life everyone has to drink from his or her own well.

Engage with the Bible. Meditate on it day and night. Think and rethink about God's Word. Let it be your guide. Make it your go-to book for questions. Let it be the ultimate authority in your life.

Maybe it's good if God gives you something to think about every so often.

But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

Religion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own.

I feel like shouting, hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever I knew Joseph Smith, the Prophet.

Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.

In my 39 years on this earth, the Holy city of Makka had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of all and felt like a complete human being

Actually when I was wounded and recovering in Japan. I went to church there and I remember on the air base where their hospital was, I remember coming out of that church and feeling like I had been - at that point I just felt very, very close to God and that I'd done the right thing with my life. And I knew I wasn't going back to Vietnam. I just knew I wasn't going back.

Sometimes people say yo do you think rap changed you. No doubt it changed me. If I wasn't making records I'd still be hanging every night.

It really has lifted my spirits. It's intensified my faith, given me more hope. That's what music does for me.

Earlier in my career I just thought "I'm not very confident, I don't like singing to people." But people had some faith in me, and here we are. Sometimes I think "Oh maybe I should just be a backing singer." But I've got an amazing team of people who tell me to shut up when I'm like "Oh god, I can't do it." But now, I can't really imagine it being the other way.