E. Stanley Jones Quotes

A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is -- a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is co-operation with God. It is the purest exercise of the faculties God has given us - an exercise that links these faculties with the Maker to work out the intentions He had in mind in their creation.

The early Christians did not say, in dismay, 'Look what the world has come to,' but, in delight, 'Look what has come to the world!”

When man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when man prays, God empowers.

Your capacity to say "No" determines your capacity to say "Yes" to greater things.

The love of God invades me, the peace of God pervades me, the will of God persuades me, and I am wholly His.

Prayer is surrender--surr ender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.

When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God’s idea of God, and God’s idea of God is Christ

There are two ways to be rich - one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants.

We are personalities in the making, limited, and grappling with things too high for us. Obviously we, at very best, will make many mistakes, but these mistakes need not be sins.

The God I find in Christ is a God who overcomes evil with good, hate by love, and the world by a cross.

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

Jesus will meet me today in the person of someone in need-I must not miss him.

The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.

To talk with God, no breath is lost. Talk on! To walk with God, no strength is lost. Walk on! To wait on God, no time is lost. Wait on!

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.

The purpose of religion is not so much to get us into heaven, or to keep us out of hell, but to put a little bit of heaven into us, and take the hell out of us. This has always been the greatest responsibility of religion.

Don't wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts within, not from without.

Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.

The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions.

The BIBLE redirects my will, cleanses my emotions, enlightens my mind, and quickens my total being

An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost, the other a corpse.

Prayer means that the total you is praying. Your whole being reaches out to God, and God reaches down to you.

Worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil.

If you don't surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos.

Very often when I haven't faith in my faith, I have to have faith in His faith. He makes me believe in myself and my possibilities, when I simply can't. I have to rise to His faith in me.

When the Church listens to the Holy Spirit, it becomes fruitful. New movements are born.

A nail-pierced hand holds the sceptre of the universe, and my knees bend before him.

Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver.

When Satan attacks you, command him in the Name of Jesus to bend his neck. On the back of it you'll find there's a nail scarred foot print!

To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe.

While love takes on itself impossible tasks, yet it finds that love lightens all loads. It is the same burden that wings are to a bird, that sails are to a ship. Nothing is hard if done for love's sweet sake. The yoke of love is easy; the yoke of duty is hard. There is all the difference in the world between being drawn by love and being driven by duty. The task may be the same, but love makes everything light, and duty makes everything drudgery.

Be so preoccupied with good will that you haven't room for ill will.

At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.

You don't grow old. You get old by not growing.

In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs. . . . We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are.

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

Prayer is aligning ourselves with the purposes of God.

All coming to Jesus has the feeling of homecoming upon it. All going away from Him has the sense of estrangement upon it. The rich young ruler went away from Jesus "sorrowful." Everybody does. Not only estrangement from God, but also estrangement from oneself. And the universe! And from life! You are not at home with life, unless you are at home with Life. And Jesus is Life!

In conversion you are not attached primarily to an order, nor to an institution, nor a movement, nor a set of beliefs, nor a code of action - you are attached primarily to a Person, and secondarily to these other things.

You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.

Christ is everywhere and He is in me. What more do I want, except more of Him?

Grace makes you gracious. The Giver makes you give.

Recognize negativism and inferiority attitudes as enemies - do not try to dress them as your friends. you will be tempted to look upon negativism as prudence and inferiorities as humility. Strip off those false cloaks and see these attitudes in their nakedness - as enemies of you and of your possibilities.

Suppose you should fail. Is that so terrible? Not to have tried is a worse failure.

Spiritual power comes out of inward fellowship with God and abandonment to his purposes.

Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. ... The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future.

Abundant living means abundant giving.

The moral laws of the Universe are deeply embedded in the constitution of things. We do not break them - we break ourselves upon them.