Francis of Assisi Quotes

The hand of the wicked can't stir one moment before God allows them to begin, and...one moment after God commands them to stop.

That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God.

They babble and talk absurdly who, in the place of God's providence, substitute bare permission - as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events , and his judgments thus depended upon human will.

It is for us to make the effort. The result is always in God's hands.

To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either permits it to happen, or He brings it about Himself.

It is God alone who can subdue and govern the unruly wills of sinful men.

Satan can do only what the sovereign God allows him to do.

Regardless of the cause, none of your problems could happen without God's permission.

God just has his own agenda, and he does what he wants to do with stuff.

We are taught in an especial manner to pray that God would give his Holy Spirit unto us, that through his aid and assistance we may live unto God in that holy obedience which he requires at our hands.

Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body--and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands--that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary.

The spirits perverse with easy intercourse pass to and fro, to tempt or punish mortals.

You can't resist the will of God and receive the grace of God at the same time.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

God is never at a loss because He cannot find someone to cooperate with Him in carrying out His plan. He so moves in the hearts of people - either Christians or non Christians, it makes no difference - that they willingly, of their own free will carry out His plans.

When the Holy Spirit is in full control of our lives, He will expect our obedience to the written Word of God. But it is part of our human problem that we would like to be full of the Spirit and yet go on and do as we please!

Events of all sorts creep or fly exactly as God pleases.

God put laws into being - we put them into motion.

Prayer puts God's work in his hands-and keeps it there.

Every person in every generation has a choice: to obey God or to do his own thing.

We cannot but believe that He who made the world still governs it.

I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord. He may cut or sharpen the pencil. He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants. If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it.

When heaven breaks, who fixes it?

I gaze lovingly at "Hilal" a love that is reflected through time or what we imagine to be time, as in a mirror. She was never mine and never will be; that is how it is. We are both creators and creatures, but we are also puppets in God's hands, and there is a line we cannot cross, a line that was drawn for reasons we cannot know. We can approach and even dabble our toes in the river but we are forbidden to plunge in and let ourselves be carried along by the current.