spiritual stagnation Quotes

I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satisfied. I was filled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless.

People who get comfortable in their spirit miss what they were created for. They were created to magnify the glory of the world.

The ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant busy in self-improvement, thus binding him or her to the fact that the self is still there behind all the improvements. For why should the ego kill itself?

Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul.

I've been studying the Bible for a long time. I remember that after the first five years or so of diligently studying the Word, I didn't feel like I had made any progress. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of order, and I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.

In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.

We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.

Spiritual stagnation ensues when man's environment becomes unpredictable or when his inner life is made wholly predictable.

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

Sin is more than turning our backs on God - it is turning our backs on life! Immorality is much more than adultery and dishonesty: it is living drab, colorless, dreary, stale, unimaginative lives.

A church in the land without the Spirit is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else's way; you are a fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow.

Almost two thousand years, and no new god!

There are many reasons our prayers may lack power. Sometimes they become routine. Our prayers become hollow when we say similar words in similar ways over and over so often that the words become more of a recitation than a communication.

That which is destroying the Church is not the outward groping of those within it nor the inward groping of those without, but the professionals who control it and who have removed the bells from its steeples.

It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man.

You can tell by looking at most people that the world remains a stone to them and a closed door.

Take a good look at your mind. Examine it closely. The first thing you will come to know is that the mind has become the master - not you and not your soul! The mind says: Do this! And you do it! If you don't the mind creates problems. It become sad, and the sadness of the mind becomes your sadness. If you do as it says you get nowhere, for the mind is blind. Where can you reach by obeying the mind! The is unconsciousness. If you listen to it you reach nowhere.

How frightful a thing it is for the preacher when he becomes accustomed to his work, when his sense of wonder departs, when he gets used to the unusual, when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy One; when, to put it bluntly, he gets a little bored with God and heavenly things.

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds: Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which yet they never enter, and with their hand on the doorlatch they die outside.

Christ said, "I and my father are one", and you repeat it. Yet it has not helped mankind. For nineteen hundred years men have not understood that saying. They make Christ the saviour of men. He is God and we are worms!

We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him.

Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks.

When a Christian stops growing, help is needed. If you are the same Christian you were a few months ago, be careful.

For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the promises of God at fault. It is the unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord's professed people that have kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years

I believe this is a mistake a great many of us are making; we are trying to do God's work with the grace God gave us ten years ago. We say, if it is necessary, we will go on with the same grace. Now, what we want is a fresh supply, a fresh anointing and fresh power, and if we seek it, and seek it with all our hearts, we will obtain it.