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Quote by William Barclay

Work

The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV-Year C

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Author

William Barclay
William Barclay

William Barclay, born on December 5, 1907 in Scotland, was a prominent British author. His works covered a wide range of subjects including biblical studies, religious philosophy, and theology, which had a profound impact on religious thought in the 20th century. more

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“The author of the hymn 'Amazing Grace', John Newton, who once was a slave ship captain, and who became a Christian preacher and an enemy of the slave trade, once said: 'I have reason to praise [God] for my trials, for, most probably, I should have been ruined without them.' The author of The Gulag Archipelago , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who suffered for twenty years in the hellish prison camps he describes in that book, wrote: 'Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.' This does not mean that Newton would have chosen to go through his trials, or that Solzhenitsyn in any way enjoyed the terrible suffering of his imprisonment. But it means that in retrospect they can see that God used those difficulties to bless them in the long run.”

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“Praying to God involves both us and God. God wants us to participate in what he is doing, and for sure one of the main ways we participate in what he is doing is by prayer. We can also participate in what he is doing by feeding the hungry and helping the poor and caring for the sick and giving of our resources to those who have little. God wants us to partner with him. So there is a paradox at work, and a mystery. On the one hand, the Bible says that apart from God we can do nothing. And yet, on the other hand, God invites us to do some things with him. This is at the heart of the mystery of prayer. God wants us to use our faith and to pray. But we can focus so much on the importance of our faith and our prayers that we forget about God and think it is our faith and our prayers that perform the miracle, rather than the God to whom we pray and in whom we have faith as we pray.”

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“Stop being fake and start being real. Start being real with the people around you, and start being real with God. Churches are not Broadway musicals where we can play the role of a Christian. You may think that you can play a role with people and get away with it, but I tell you today that you can't play that role with God. He sees through your plastic smiles and fake veneers.”

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