Kevin Stilley

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October 21, 2012 by kevinstilley

John Donne – select quotes

Reason is our Soules left hand,
Faith is her right, …

No man is an Iland intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is thelesse, as well as if a promontorie were, as well as if a mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
~ in Devotions

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

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Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captive, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except your ravish me
~ Sonnet no. 14

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Quotes, Theology Tagged With: Blog, death, devotions, Faith, homily, John Donne, Philosophy, poetry, Quotes, reason, religion

October 17, 2012 by kevinstilley

Faith – select quotes

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence; faith is daring something regardless of the consequences.
~ Sherwood Eddy

I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Now faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.
~ Dwight L Moody

Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding on to.
~ Patrick Overton

Faith is the Christian’s foundation, hope is his anchor, death is his harbor, Christ is his pilot and Heaven is his country.
~ Jeremy Taylor

Faith today is treated as something that only should make us different, not that actually does or can make us different. In reality we vainly struggle against the evils of this world, waiting to die and go to heaven. Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that the essence of faith is entirely a mental and inward thing.
~ Dallas Willard

I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining. And I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it. I
believe in God, even when he’s silent.
~ Inscription on the wall in Nazi Germany

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
~ Indian proverb

If it is true that you know how to describe faith, it only proves that you are a poet, and if you can do it well, it proves that you are a good poet; but this is far from proving that you are a believer. Perhaps you can also weep in describing faith, that would prove then that you are a good actor.
~ Soren Kierkegaard, in For Self-Examination

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes Tagged With: belief, Faith, Hope

January 9, 2012 by kevinstilley

Faith and Reason – select quotes

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Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.
~ Aristotle

No one indeed believes anything unless he has first thought that it it to be believed.
~ Augustine of Hippo

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.
~ Augustine of Hippo

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep faith alive and moving.
~ Frederick Buechner

A comprehended God is no God.
~ Dio Chrysostom

If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
~ Denis Diderot, in A Philosophical Conversation

Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith is her right, …
~ John Donne

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because hey manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions; the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
~ Steve Eley

The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
~ T.S. Eliot, in his Introduction to Pascal’s Pensees

I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

Proof is only applicable to very rarefied areas of philosophy and mathematics…. For the most part we are driven to acting on good evidence, without the luxury of proof. There is good evidence of the link between cause and effect. There is good evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. There is good reason to believe my mother loves me and is not just fattening me up for the moment when she will pop arsenic into my tea. And there is good reason to believe in God. Very good reason. Not conclusive proof, but very good reason just the same…. I believe it is much harder to reject the existence of a supreme being than accept it.
~ Michael Green, in Faith for the Non-religious

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
~ Ralph Hodgson

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
~ David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Concerning Human Understanding

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
~ Robert Jastrow, in God and the Astronomer

The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust Him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.
~ J. Gresham Machen

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration—courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
~ H. L. Menken

The faith that does not come from reason is to be doubted, and the reason that does not lead to faith is to be feared,
~ G. Campbell Morgan

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
~ Blaise Pascal

Faith is reason at rest in God.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

God cannot be understood by logical reasoning but only by submission.
~ Leo Tolstoy, in Wise Thoughts for Every Day

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion.
~ George Washington

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Books on Faith & Reason

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes, Theology, Worldview Tagged With: Apologetics, Blog, Christianity, Epistemology, Faith, God, origins, Philosophy, Quotes, reason, religion, Science, Theology, theory

May 31, 2011 by kevinstilley

What Do You Think?

What are some ways that you see people living out their faith?

Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Filed Under: Blog, Ethics / Praxis, What Do You Think? Tagged With: discipleship, Ethics, Faith, Praxis

May 15, 2011 by kevinstilley

Evangelism – select quotes

The hardest people to reach with the love of God are not the bad people. They know they are bad. They have no defense. The hardest ones to win for God are the self-righteous people.
~ Charles L. Allen

A theology of response does not need to be Pelagian; it need only be a theology in which the reality of the human is taken seriously.
~ Gary Badcock in The Way of Life

Evandalism. n. Using spray paint to write “John 3:16” on public structures.
~ Pete Briscoe, in Belief Matters: Grappling With the Essentials of the Christian Faith, page 117.

Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence, or learning.
~ Frederick W. Faber

We’ve drifted away from being fishers of men to being keepers of the aquarium.
~ Paul Harvey

If every person in the world had adequate food, housing, income; if all men were equal and every possible social evil and injustice were done away with, men would still need one thing: Jesus Christ!
~ J. W. Hyde

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Filed Under: Blog, Evangelism, Quotes Tagged With: Christianity, Evangelism, Faith, gospel, quotations, quote

April 18, 2011 by kevinstilley

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard – select quotes

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He who is not alone with God’s word is not reading God’s word.
~ in For Self-Examination

If it is true that you know how to describe faith, it only proves that you are a poet, and if you can do it well, it proves that you are a good poet; but this is far from proving that you are a believer. Perhaps you can also weep in describing faith, that would prove then that you are a good actor.
~ in For Self-Examination

It is my joy that the female sex, far from being more imperfect than man, is on the contrary the most perfect.
~ in Stages on Life’s Way

Longbridge gets its name from its length, for as a bridge it is long, though as a road the length of the bridge is not very considerable, of which one can convince oneself by crossing it.
~ Quidam, in Soren Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way

A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them, their sound beomes like the sound of beautiful music . . . . And men flock about the poet saying, “Sing for us soon again; that is to say, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before.
~ quoted by Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet (NY: Harper, 1972), page 53

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful, you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Philosophy, Quotes Tagged With: existentialism, Faith, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, reason, Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard

February 9, 2011 by kevinstilley

God Uses The Imperfect Person

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
~ Henry van Dyke

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
~ C.S. Lewis

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
~ Mother Teresa

If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done. God will use anybody if you’re available.
~ Rick Warren

Filed Under: Blog, Ethics / Praxis, Quotes Tagged With: Faith, ministry, service

February 9, 2011 by kevinstilley

Frederick Buechner – select quotes

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep faith alive and moving.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes, Theology Tagged With: Christianity, Faith, God

May 14, 2010 by kevinstilley

What Do You Think?

Why do some people become uncomfortable discussing spiritual matters?

(Share your answers in the comments below.)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: belief, Blog, certainty, Epistemology, Faith, religion, spirituality, warrant, What Do You Think?

November 27, 2009 by kevinstilley

Faith & Doubts – select quotes

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep faith alive and moving.
~ Frederick Buechner

We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit.
~ Pascal

There is a never-known second at which the last link in the chain begins to collapse, at which the tenacity of resistance of the metal begins to wobble around. There is a split second that lifts the gull. A single second when unawareness loses its grip. A single second when faith becomes stronger than fear.
~ Marguerite Reiss

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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Filed Under: Apologetics, Blog, Front Page, Quotes Tagged With: doubt, Faith, quotations, quote

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