Faith - christiansquoting.org.uk

Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, but faith looks up.

I wish I could leave you my most cherished possession -- my faith in Jesus Christ.

When you have come to the edge
Of all light that you know
And are about to drop off into the darkness
Of the unknown
Faith is knowing
One of two things will happen:
There will be something solid to stand on or
You will be taught to fly.

I believe in the sun, even when it doesn't shine.
I believe in love, even when I don't feel it.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.
Inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne where some Jews remained hidden for the entire duration of thewar.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman

Credo ut intelligam (Anselm)

I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God.There is a distinction between *belief* in a set of propositions and a *faith* which enables us to put our trust in them. ~Karen Armstrong

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. --. Augustine

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.
Augustine (354-430) In Ioannis Evangelium

Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love and the future to God's providence. -- Augustine

Faith is not only a commitment to the promises of Christ; faith is also a commitment to the demands of Christ.
William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter

The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Ps. 9:9 -10.

Preach faith until you have it.-- Peter Bohler (1712-1775) in The Lion Christian Quotation Collection, 1997

Faith is rest, not toil. It is the giving up all the former weary efforts to do or feel something good, in order to induce God to love and pardon; and the calm reception of the truth so long rejected, that God is not waiting for any such inducements, but loves and pardons of His own goodwill, and is showing that goodwill to any sinner who will come to Him on such a footing, casting away his own poor performances or goodnesses, and relying implicitly upon the free love of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. ... Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), "The Everlasting Righteousness"

Only he who believes is obedient. Only he who is obedient, believes. Bonhoeffer

There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that 'belief' must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method. - Max Born (1882-1970) "Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance," Appendix One.

I hear men praying everywhere for more faith, but when I listen to them carefully, and get to the real heart of their prayer, very often it is not more faith at all that they are wanting, but a change from faith to sight. Faith says not, "I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it," but, "God sent it, and so it must be good for me." Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its hand more closely.... Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Much faith will yield unto us here our heaven, but any faith, if true, will yield us heaven hereafter.- Thomas Brooks

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.- Augustine

If you would have a clear evidence that that little love, that little faith, that little zeal, you have is true, then live up to that love, live up to that faith, live up to that zeal that you have; and this will evidence beyond all contradiction. THOMAS BROOKS

We often don't always know why things happen to us and others in a given situation or cirumstance but we know why we trust God who does know why. DAVE BROWN

Flee formulae, bear with the weak. While all faith is placed in Christ, the thing is safe. It is not given for all to see the same thing at the same time. --Martin Bucer (1491-1551)

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. Samuel Butler

There is no other method of living piously and justly, than that of depending upon God. Calvin on Gen 17:1.

Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit. John Calvin (1509-1564)

The weakest measure of faith is to be accepted in those who desire to be admitted into the church, because weak Christians, if sincere, have the essence of the faith, repentance, and holiness which are required in church members. Moreover, these weak Christians have most need of the church's ordinances for the confirmation of their faith and their growth in grace.-- Cambridge Platform, 10:3.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had [to] do it again, I'd do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action. Fidel Castro (1927-____) N: In "New York Times," 22 Apr. 1959.

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. ~Oswald Chambers 1874-1917

Man is what he believes. Anton Chekhov

A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. --G. K. Chesterton, _Heretics_, 1905

The less you feel and the more firmly you believe, the more praiseworthy is your faith and the more it will be esteemed and appreciated; for real faith is much more than a mere opinion of man. In it we have true knowledge: in truth, we lack nothing save true faith.... Meister Eckhart (1260?-1327?)

Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou biddest me come to Thee
O, Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Charlotte Elliott

Faith, without trouble or fighting, is a suspicious faith; for true faith is a fighting, wrestling faith. RALPH ERSKINE

Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible. ~ Frank L. Gaines

Alongside getting faith out of a heart that is utterly hostile and unbelieving, making a silk purse out of a sow's ear or getting blood from a turnip is child's play. JOHN GERTSNER

Faith is like breath in an infant's lungs. Breath is not the cause of life; but where there is no breath, there is no life. Even so, faith is not the cause of life, but where there is no faith, there is no spiritual life. JOHN GILL

In religion, we are not asked to make up our minds, we are asked to make up our lives... We may refuse to make up our minds, but our lives get made up, one way or the other... Whatever we believe with our minds, our lives are committed either to God's way or to the God-denying way, and what matters in religion is the act of commitment.... A. Leonard Griffith (1920- ), Barriers to Christian Belief [1962]

The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God. WILLIAM GURNALL

The ultimate ground of faith and knowledge is confidence in God. Charles Hodge

When we inculcate that faith ought to be certain and secure, we conceive not of a certainty attended with no doubt, or of a security interrupted by no anxiety; but we rather affirm, that believers have a perpetual conflict with their own diffidence, and are far from placing their consciences in a placid calm never disturbed by any storms. Yet, on the other hand, we deny, however they may be afflicted, that they ever fall and depart from that certain confidence which they have conceived in the divine mercy. ... Charles Hodge (1797-1878), Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans

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

More important than any belief a man holds is the way he holds it. --Sidney Hook

The axioms of reason are non-demonstrable assumptions. Why should faith not be granted the same privilege? The denial of the truths of faith is, in the last analysis, no less a faith than faith itself, for it rests on personal assumptions which are apart from scientific necessity. In other words, as the truth of reason carries its own evidence, so also with faith. To the mind to whom the axioms of reason are not self-evident, they cannot be proven. So also in the case of faith: for the mind that is not enlightened by faith, the evidence of faith is ridiculous. But for the man whose eyes have been enlightened by the Spirit, faith has its proper evidence, though different from that of reason. The only sufficient ground of faith is the authority of God Himself as he addresses me in His Word. Paul K. Jewett, Emil Brunner's Concept of Revelation

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.-- Julius Caesar

Faith is required of thee, and a sincere life, not loftiness of intellect, nor deepness in the mysteries of God.
Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, IV

O Lord, how happy should we be,
If we could cast our care on Thee,
If we from self could rest;
And feel at heart that One above
In perfect wisdom, perfect love,
Is working for the best.

How far from this our daily life
How oft disturb'd by anxious strife,
By sudden wild alarms;
Oh, could we but relinquish all Our earthly props,
and simply fall On Thine Almighty arms!
John Keble.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.... Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up.

This is true Christian resignation to God, which requires no more to the support of it than such a plain assurance of the goodness of God as Abraham had of His veracity. And if you ask yourself what greater reason Abraham had to depend upon the Divine veracity than you have to depend upon the Divine goodness, you will find that none can be given. ... William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728]

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it. C.S.Lewis, MereChristianity

It is a dreadful truth that the state of having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most... It is good of Him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.'-- C.S. Lewis

Now Faith...is the art of holding on to things your reason 'has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.
C S Lewis -- _Mere Christianity_

With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another. G. C. Lichtenberg

Faith is the bird that sings while it is yet dark. MAX LUCADO

Your eyes look in the mirror and see a sinner, a failure, a promise-breaker. But by faith you look in the mirror and see a robed prodigal bearing the ring of grace on your fingers the kiss of your Father on your face . -- Max Lucado

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times. - Martin Luther

Faith is not what some people think it is. Their human dream is a delusion. Because they observe that faith is not followed by good works or a better life, they fall into error, even though they speak and hear much about faith. ``Faith is not enough,'' they say, ``You must do good works, you must be pious to be saved.'' They think that, when you hear the gospel, you start working, creating by your own strength a thankful heart which says, ``I believe.'' That is what they think true faith is. But, because this is a human idea, a dream, the heart never learns anything from it, so it does nothing and reform doesn't come from this `faith,' either. Instead, faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn't stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words. Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace. Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! Therefore, watch out for your own false ideas and guard against good-for-nothing gossips, who think they're smart enough to define faith and works, but really are the greatest of fools. Ask God to work faith in you, or you will remain forever without faith, no matter what you wish, say or can do. MARTIN LUTHER, from "An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans

The whole being of any Christian is Faith and Love... Faith brings the man to God, love brings him to men .
Martin Luther (1483-1546)

If God promises something, then faith must fight a long and bitter fight, for reason or the flesh judges that God's promises are impossible. Therefore faith must battle against reason and its doubts............. Faith is something that is busy, powerful and creative, though properly speaking, it is essentially an enduring than a doing. It changes the mind and heart. While reason holds to what is present, faith apprehends the things that are not seen. Contrary to reason, faith regards the invisible things as already materialized. This explains why faith, unlike hearing is not found in many, for only few believe, while the great majority cling to the things that are present and can be felt and handled rather than to the Word. ~ Martin Luther, The Promises

Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. As Paul teaches us, Christ and the soul become one flesh by this mystery (Eph 5:31-32). And if they are one flesh, and if marriage is for real - indeed, it is the most perfect of all marriages, and human marriages are poor examples of this one true marriage - then it follows that everything that they have is held in common, whether good or evil. So the believer can boast of and glory of whatever Christ possesses, as though it were his or her own; and whatever the believer has, Christ claims as his own. Let us see how this works out, and see how it benefits us. Christ is full of grace, life and salvation. The human soul is full of sins, eath and damnation. Now let faith come between them. Sins, death and damnation will be Christ's. And grace, life and salvation will be the believer's. MARTIN LUTHER

We are justified propter Christum per fidem - that is, on acount of Christ, through faith. The basis of God's decision to place us in right relationship with Him lies in Christ Himself. We are justified on account of His obedience during His lifetime and His death upon the cross. It is because of Him, and nor because of anything we have done or will do, that we are made right with God. But the means by which we are justified is faith. Faith is like a channel through which the benefits of Christ flow to us...both the external foundation and the internal means of appropriation of justification are God-given. Faith is not something we can achieve; it is something achieved within us by God. ALISTER McGRATH

Feeling always seeks something in itself; faith keeps itself occupied with who Jesus is. Do not forget that the faith of which God's Word speaks so much stands not only in opposition to works but also in opposition to feelings, and therefore for a pure life of faith you must cease to seek your salvation not only in works but also in feelings. Let faith always speak against feeling. When feeling says "In myself I am sinful, I am dark, I am weak, I am poor, I am sad", let faith say, "In Christ I am holy, I am light, I am strong, I am rich, I am joyful". - Andrew Murray

Now I can do no more. We must trust to the great disposer of all events, and to the justice of our cause.
Nelson to Sir Henry Blackwood, at Trafalgar having signalled the fleet to engage the enemy more closely.

This is faith: a renouncing of everything we are apt to call our own and relying wholly upon the blood, righteousness and intercession of Jesus. John Newton

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. John Henry Newman

Men love to trust God (as they profess) for what they have in their hands, in possession, or what lies in an easy view; place their desires afar off, carry their accomplishment behind the clouds out of their sight, interpose difficulties and perplexities -- their hearts are instantly sick. They cannot wait for God; they do not trust Him, nor ever did. Would you have the presence of God with you? Learn to wait quietly for the salvation you expect from Him. John Owen (1616-1683)

We admit no faith to be justifying, which is not itself and in its own nature a spiritually vital principle of obedience and good works. John Owen (1616-1683)

. ...the essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. JOHN PIPER

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him....the capacity to taste a thing must precede our desire for its sweetness...the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever and of living by faith in future grace...the essence of faith is being satisfied with all God is for us in Jesus. JOHN PIPER - Future Grace

Faith, the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the human race;
whose continuing mission is to trust God in all areas and not waver,
to seek out new insights from His Word,
and to boldly offer Salvation to all who'll listen.
Graham Pockett (with apologies to Gene Roddenberry)

Faith, without trouble or fighting, is a suspicious faith; for true faith is a fighting, wrestling faith. RALPH ERSKINE

I can let Christ grip me; but I cannot grip him. I love to sit on Christ's knee; but I cannot set my feet to the ground, for afflictions bring the cramp upon my faith. All I now do, is, to hold out a lame faith to Christ, like a beggar holding out a stump, instead of an arm or leg; and cry, Lord Jesus, work a miracle. ... Samuel Rutherford, letter [1637]

Just as the only basis for the removal of our guilt is the finished work of Christ upon the cross in history, plus nothing, so the only instrument for accepting that finished work of Christ upon the cross is faith. This is not faith in the twentieth-century or Kierkegaardian concept of faith as a jump in the dark --not a solution on the basis of faith in faith. It is believing the specific promises of God; no longer turning our backs on them, no longer calling God a liar, but raising the empty hands of faith and accepting that finished work of Christ as it was fulfilled in history upon the cross. The Bible says that at that moment we pass from death to life, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God's dear Son. We become, inividually, children of God. We are children of God from that time on. I repeat, there is no way to begin the true Christian life except through the door of spiritual birth, any more than there is another way to begin physical life except through the door of physical birth. F A Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Chapter 1

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession. ~GBS

The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in. R. C. SPROUL

Faith untried may be true faith, but it is sure to be little faith, and it is likely to remain dwarfish so long as it is without trials. Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against her: tempests are her trainers, and lightnings are her illuminators. When a calm reigns on the sea, spread the sails as you will, the ship moves not to its harbour; for on a slumbering ocean the keel sleeps too. Let the winds rush howling forth, and let the waters lift up themselves, then, though the vessel may rock, and her deck may be washed with waves, and her mast may creak under the pressure of the full and swelling sail, it is then that she makes headway towards her desired haven. No faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs in adversity. Tried faith brings experience. Faith increases in solidity, assurance, and intensity, the more it is exercised with tribulation. Faith is precious, and its trial is precious too. Charles Spurgeon, "Morning and Evening Daily Readings"

Who has ever seen an idea? Who has ever seen love? Who has ever seen faith? The real things in the world are the invisible spiritual realities. Is it so difficult then, to believe in God? Charles Templeton Life Looks Up

'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Mister Harry-- every man of every nation has done that-- 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost. --W. M. Thackeray, Henry Esmond

Everybody should believe in something....I believe I'll go fishing. -- Thoreau

Everbody should believe in something....I believe I'll have another beer.

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. . . . How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?"-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

We believe, but we do not know how to enjoy what we believe. --Henri de Tourville (1842-1903)

Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God... a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. --A. W. Tozer

True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie. It is enough that God has said it. --A. W. Tozer

Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves -- blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One.... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God

Faith is not belief without proof but trust without reservation.--D. Elton Trueblood

In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith.
Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) In "The Ultimate Success Quotations Library

It is never on account of its formal nature as a psychic act that faith is conceived in Scripture to be saving...It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or nature of faith, but in the object of faith. B. B. WARFIELD

Faith lives in a broken heart. 'He cried out with tears, Lord, I believe.' True faith is always in a heart bruised for sin. They, therefore, whose hearts were never touched for sin, have no faith. If a physician should tell us there was a herb that would help us against all infections, but it always grows in a watery place; if we should see a herb like it in colour, leaf, smell, blossom, but growing upon a rock, we should conclude that it was the wrong herb. So saving faith always grows in a heart humbled for sin, in a weeping eye and a tearful conscience. - THOMAS WATSON

Immediately it stuck into my mind, "Leave off preaching. How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?" I asked Boehler, whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered "By no means." I asked, "But what can I preach?" He said, "Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith." -- John Wesley, Journal, 4 Mar 1738

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all the saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.
WESTMINSTER CONFESSION

Faith is not a feeling. It is not even the feeling that something is going to happen in answer to our prayers. Faith may be easier to exercise when such feelings are present. Nevertheless, feelings of that sort never constitute faith. Faith is a response on our part, the obedient response of our wills to who God is and what He says.-- John White