“There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (‘ Man’s search for God’!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? … Worse still, supposing He had found us?”
-- C.S. Lewis
"I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road walking toward me. Years ago he was a swinging speck in the distance; now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face."
-- Donald Miller
"...They know nothing of the life and power of the gospel, nothing of the reality of the grace of God, nor do they believe aright one article of the Christian faith, whose hearts are not sensible of the love of Christ herein. Nor is he sensible of the love of Christ, whose affections are not therein drawn out unto him.
"I say, they make a pageant of religion . . . whose hearts are not really affected with the love of Christ, in the susception [taking to oneself] and discharge of the work of mediation, so as to have real and spiritually sensible affections for him.
"Men . . . have no real acquaintance with Christianity, who imagine that the placing of the most intense affections of our souls on the person of Christ, the loving him with all our hearts because of his love, our being overcome thereby, until we are sick [from] love, the constant motions of our souls towards him with delight and adherence, are but fancies and imaginations."
-- John Owen, quoted by J.I. Packer in "A Quest for Godliness", p. 196
