John Owen Quotes

When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in Scripture do we find indeterminate or purely mystical vocation.

You have no idea what hangs in the balance of your decision on what to do with the burden God put in your heart.

People get caught up in asking whether Americans should be going here or there. What it boils down to is the call of the Lord. If the Lord has called you to a specific area, that's where you are going to see the fruit.

I was a lousy nun. I couldn't do it. I couldn't find God. It wasn't suitable for me. It is suitable for very few people.

Even though it's my job to be an actor, I have given my life to God.

I personally claim no special insight into Satan's methods, but I have at times been able to identify his influence and his actions in my life and in the lives of others. When I was on my first mission, Satan sought to divert me from my future path and, if possible, to destroy my usefulness in the Lord's work.

To preach the Gospel requires that the preacher should believe that he is sent to those whom he is addressing at the moment, because God has among them those whom He is at the moment calling; it requires that the speaker should expect a response.

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

Religious life is an encounter with the living God. Sometimes that encounter is preceded by a kind of soul-searching agony that tries desperately not to hear, runs in the opposite direction, and frantically tries to reason itself out of answering the invitation.

The popularity's got its pluses and minuses, and there are many days that I would rather just be a Christian and not known at all, but that's not what God has called me to do.

I remember telling the Lord - I was about seventeen or eighteen - I'm like, 'Lord, I'm never gonna sing. You know that's my family's thing; that not what I do.'

How very hard it is to be a Christian!

When you become consumed by God's call on your life, everything will take on new meaning and significance. You will begin to see every facet of your life - including your pain - as a means through which God can work to bring others to Himself.

Vocations are born in prayer and from prayer; and only in prayer can they persevere and bear fruit.

God gives God-sized dreams to people with God-shaped hearts.

I think theres just this mystique of writing a book that appeals to people. A person has to really check their motives and say, Am I really being called by God to do this? Or is this just something that would look neat in my funeral? I dont mean to be harsh but I think a person really needs to, so they wont be disappointed.

God calls you to make definitive choices, and He has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move toward personal fulfillment.

I don't want to play with marbles, when God told me to move mountains!

Live as with God; and, whatever be your calling, pray for the gift that will perfectly qualify you in it.

The discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples. Young people, if they know how to pray, can be trusted to know what to do with God's call.

Those whom God will employ are first struck with a sense of their unworthiness to be employed.

The one supreme business of life is to find God's plan for your life and live it

The person who understands Dharma will have the opposite reaction to a "hard" job. That person will be eager to get started, no matter what kind of work is in front of her, because she understands that she's doing God's work. And when you're working for God, nothing is too hard.

God doesn't call the equipped, son. God equips the called. And you have been called.

The hardest part of being a Christian is surrendering and that is where the real struggle happens. Once we have overcome our own desire to be elevated, our own desire to be recognized, our own desire to be independent and all those things that we value very much because we are Americans and we are part of this American culture. Once we have overcome that struggle then God can use us as a part of His body to accomplish what the body of Christ was left here to accomplish.