Neal A. Maxwell Quotes

They babble and talk absurdly who, in the place of God's providence, substitute bare permission - as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events , and his judgments thus depended upon human will.

When afflictions arrest us, we shall murmur and grumble and struggle until we see that it is God that strikes.

The hand of the wicked can't stir one moment before God allows them to begin, and...one moment after God commands them to stop.

Worry is momentary atheism crying out for correction by trust in a good, sovereign God. Suffering breaks self-reliance.

You can't resist the will of God and receive the grace of God at the same time.

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

If we are going to learn to trust God in adversity, we must believe God will allow nothing to subvert His glory so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us.

By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man

Nothing is or can be accidental with God.

Don't ask God to cram His plan into your puny little mind, because then God would be limited by your understanding.

If we rejoice in the acts of God without discovering His ways, we'll question who He is when He doesn't do what we've asked.

God is never at a loss because He cannot find someone to cooperate with Him in carrying out His plan. He so moves in the hearts of people - either Christians or non Christians, it makes no difference - that they willingly, of their own free will carry out His plans.

It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He too, is God's minister, And labors for some good By us not understood.

God will take you through hell, just to get you to heaven.

You cannot create a thing-not a thought, an object, an event-no experience of any kind-which is outside of God's plan. For God's plan is for you to create anything-everything-whatever you want.

Satan tried to put Jesus Christ on the way to becoming King of the world and Savior of men in a way other than that predetermined by God.

God's promises are not always fulfilled as quickly as or in the way we might hope; they come according to His timing and in His ways.

I think it's my job or the artist's job, to try and find some solution or some reason to accept things. But given the grimmest reality, I feel the grimmest facts are the real facts, the true facts: that you're born, you die, you suffer, it's to no purpose, and you're gone forever, ever, ever, and that's it.

The dark moments of our life will last only so long as is necessary for God to accomplish His purpose in us.

The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil.

There are no 'if's' in God's world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety - let us pray that we may always know it!

Unfortunately, some Christians are guilty of throwing out an equivalent sentiment when they play the "God is sovereign" card as a way to trump every evil that comes your way.

If you are experiencing confusion, pain, and suffering, it may be that God is working things out for you in his own way. It is most often the sovereign work of our God unfolding a master plan known only to him.

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering.

Really, doesn´t everything make sense? There are, of course, things from which we more or less recover, although some of them are too harsh even for saints. But that is no reason to accuse God. Even if there are reasons to doubt him, the fact that he did not arrange the world like a well-ordered parlor is not one of them. It speaks rather in his favor. This used to be much better understood.