The World Motivation
But what if you're wrong?
“We are in God’s hands, but He does not look kindly upon Babel-builders.”
“Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say.”
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
“Only God is awesome.”
“For, what is order without common sense, but Bedlam’s front parlor? What is imagination without common sense, but the aspiration to out-dandy Beau Brummell with nothing but a bit of faded muslin and a limp cravat? What is Creation without common sense, but a scandalous thing without form or function, like a matron with half a dozen unattached daughters?”
“God closed the doors, because He wanted you to realize that He tears down walls. God didn’t move the mountain, because He wanted you to understand that the view from the top more than made up for the climb. God didn’t take away your pain, because that would rob you of the growth that will equip you to overcome all pain. God didn’t save your relationship, because some things need to die in order for better things to be born. God didn’t grant you your dream, because God’s not going to let you be held captive to the mediocrity of the ‘possible,’ when He stands ready to help you break the back of the impossible. God didn’t give you a lot of the things that you asked for, because He wants to save you from the smallness of your requests so that He can bless you with the fullness of Himself. No…God doesn’t always do things the way that we want them done. And thank God that He doesn’t.”