March 3 1997

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Real tests
God is always testing us, and his testing does not come when we are warned and ready. Anyone can pass a test then . …

God's tests catch us unprepared, off-guard. It is when we are confronted with some simple situation no one will know about that the tests of life really come. When you are relaxing at home and the phone rings and suddenly you are confronted with a call for help, or a demand for a response-and you had planned to relax and enjoy yourself all afternoon-what happens then? That's the test.

-Ray C. Stedman in
Man of Faith

Don't misplace tolerance
Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error.

-Fulton J. Sheen in
Old Errors and New Labels

No God of the gaps
When we cannot explain certain phenomena, to satisfy ourselves we refer to God, making him the explanation or cause or reason that we cannot find elsewhere. God is thus an easy temporary replacement until we find the real explanation, which will, of course, be scientific . …
The tendency here is to make of God no more than a vague spiritual essence, or in any case something different from what science might eventually come across. In other words, God is totally detached from the reality of the world and reduced to an insubstantial vapor. To save him they repress him. For me God is certainly not the God of the gaps.

-Jacques Ellul in
What I Believe

Self-induced poverty We may have as much of God as we will. Christ puts the key of the treasure-chamber into our hand, and bids us take all that we want. If a man is admitted into the bullion vault of a bank, and told to help himself, and comes out with one cent, whose ...