Sayings of Samuel Godfrey George - March 2015

Blessings are of many kinds. Some seem good, others seem bad.

A touch of love is more than enough most of the time, One word of love can quieten the fires of fury that are intent on destruction. Yet to speak this word of love sincerely we need a mountain of strength. That can come only from God.

Let us not forget what God is calling us to do today. He is not calling us to lament over something, or complain about something. He is not calling us to denounce and curse others who we feel are unfair to us. He is not calling us to be rude and impolite and hateful. He is calling us to rejoice over his goodness, and to trust in his timing. He is calling us to love and bless others with our words and deeds. He is calling us to be like him. For all that he expects from us, he has already done for us. If we are his children, we must act like him.

Let me pray for the offender today. Let me pray that she recognizes a God who loves her just as she is. Let her receive the love of God today, and when she does, she will be able to accept God's forgiveness. And when she knows that she is forgiven she will be free to love and forgive everyone who irritates her.

The offender is a greater victim than the person she victimizes.

To be able to turn to God any time we sin, in the confidence that he will hear our prayers and forgive us, is the great confidence that God has blessed us with.

Knowing that there is a God who loves us unendingly is our greatest blessing.

Let our eyes be fixed on God. Let his loving words dwell in our hearts. Let his promises be the rock on which we stand. Let us not be distracted by the hatred around us, and let us not pay attention to the curses uttered to us. Let us absorb God's love and forgive the vilest offender today. O God grant us the grace to do this!

The eye is the lamp of the body. To be able to see like God is the greatest of blessings.

God's love is our greatest blessing. It is not based on who we are but on who God is. And God's love never ends.

Take time to enjoy the blessings that are out there right in front of you now. And celebrate God's love for you.

To live well you must dare to experiment. You must be willing to fail in your attempt.

With God you are most likely to walk into uncharted territory. And the only way to do this is to stop questioning and start trusting.

If I could only tolerate myself as God tolerates me, I will be at peace.

You must learn to live with your imperfections to be at peace with yourself.

The undeserving me is the best candidate for God's grace.

A day with myself is the best therapy for my pride.

The first step in love is forgiveness. Forgiving who you are and forgiving what others are are the necessary ingredients of this forgiveness. We need to forgive ourselves for our moral ugliness, and forgive others for theirs. And the next step in love is tolerance. If we can tolerate who we are, when we know who we are, then we should do the same for others. If we cannot do so we are being terribly unfair.

When I know myself, I can only love others.

People are people. You either welcome them with open arms, or do a background search to screen out the undesirable, and then let in only those who make you feel comfortable. I wonder what the Jesus approach is.

With God it is impossible not to enjoy life.

Let what happens in my life today be according to God's will. Let God govern every thought, word and act that proceed from my mind.

How many outsiders will look on the Christian community and see a loving, tight-knit group of people devoted to glorifying God without being negatively impacted by individual differences and peculiarities that mark people in general? How many will see Christians as a compassionate group of people who are driven purely by the motive of sharing God's unconditional love with others in the same unconditional way?

What is the use of faith and devotion when you can't treat one another well? What is the use of knowing the Bible like the back of your hand, without being able to be kind and considerate in your dealings with others? As Saint Paul said, all the heavenly and earthly knowledge amount to nothing if we don't have love. Let us today focus on the one thing that makes us something - love. And let us first receive that love from God graciously and then give it to others also graciously.

The hypocritical talk regarding sin must stop first. Who has not sinned in this world? By God's definition everyone has sinned and is actively sinning every day. There's nothing we can do about it as long as we are in this world. So if we have anything to say, let us lift one another up, and encourage one another. There is a God in this world who loves us despite our sins. This is the message that we must send out. This is the joyful truth by which we must live.

God does not always answer prayers affirmatively. When we do not receive an answer to repeated prayers, we must still thank God and affirm our faith in his greatness. We must trust in him to do what is best for us in his time.

Our love for one another must reflect God's constant love for us. If God is constant the people of God should also be constant. To be constant one must commit to loving at any cost, to enduring any situation or reaction. It is to persist in understanding love, persevering despite the challenges in the expression of that love. This alone can be our greatest act of worshipping a constant God.

If you are troubled and you believe in God, remember that Jesus Christ told us not to worry. To worry is to betray fear. And to worry a lot does indicate a flagging confidence in God. Let us remember the times in the past when God stood by us and saved us from many difficulties. What he did then he will do again, if we would only believe.

To forgive you must love.

Only God can recover his own territory. And the territory that God prizes the most is the human heart. And slowly but surely human beings are turning back to God.

Who are the children of God? And where are the children of God? Do the children of God necessarily carry the label Jew and Christian? Are they located geographically in certain pockets of the world? A child of God is any human being who has gone through a process of regeneration, when his spirit has been transformed into divine likeness by the mysterious work of the holy spirit in all those who have believed in God's love for the world expressed in the act of sacrificing his own son, Jesus Christ, on the cross as the expiation for all the sins committed by humans from beginning to end. Such a transformed person cannot carry any label other than the child of God, and any other man-made label such as Christian or Jew or anything else is only secondary in nature. He may be found anywhere in the world, and groups of people like him may also be found anywhere in the world, not necessarily in a politically defined geographical area. In essence the children of God are transformed spirits existing everywhere and anywhere in this world.

The entire world is God's territory. And he will have it bit by bit if necessary. But he will have it eventually and entirely. According to the biblical story, the world was given to Man for safekeeping. And Man gave it away to Satan, when he became the devil's slave through his fallen nature. The world will now be wrested away from the devil and his demons degree by degree. The first and the foremost act in this direction was accomplished by Jesus Christ through his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead many years ago. Now God is gradually reconciling humans to himself by the preaching of his gospel to the ends of the world, and by turning men and women to himself, he is recovering the most important territory, the hearts and minds of people. This is far more significant than any geographical conquest.

It is difficult to remember the great deeds of God when we tread a problem-ridden path. Every time we face a problem on such a path, we tend to panic and even lose our faith. No one saw miracles of the kind that the Israelites witnessed on their way out of Egypt into the promised land. Yet frequently they panicked and lost hope. They gave up on God many times. But God did not give up on them. Today as we go through problems in life, let us remember the times when God saved us in difficult, even impossible situations. And let us keep the faith when we come upon bitter waters in a time of great thirst.

Do not embrace your weakness. Embrace your strength.

We shall fall, and we cannot prevent that. But we shall also rise every time we fall in the strength of God. This we must not fail to do.

Christ lives in us. But we are responsible for the extent to which we allow Christ to be seen in us. And the more we reveal Christ along with our prejudices and insecurities, he will come across to others as a god who is also marked by prejudice and insecurity.

God exists. He exists in us. When people see us they see God in us. Let us take care as to how we reveal God to others.

We teach love by showing love. Let us show love today. And let us show it to everyone regardless of who he or she is.

We are never in a position to discriminate between who is good and who is bad. We are certainly not in that position at a moment's notice. The danger of not letting someone in is this: this person may be someone whom God has sent to us for a purpose, and only by letting him in will that purpose be fulfilled. If we let our superficial, faulty judgement of the character of this person come in the way of our ministering to him, or his ministering to us, we miss out on God's will either way.

If you are worried about the one who knocks on your door, remember that you too knocked on Christ's door disfigured and distorted by sin. He took you in just as you were. If you are in Christ, then you are like Christ. And if you are like Christ you cannot turn away the person who knocks on your door, no matter how terrible he is. However, this belief is neither accessible nor practicable to all. We are still a fear-ridden, self-protective group of people desperate to be like Christ, yet without the daring to be like him.

When someone knocks on your door, the most Christ-like thing you can do is to let him in.

Spiritual arrogance is more deadly than worldly arrogance.

Jesus Christ did not come into the world to begin a religion called Christianity. He came into the world to reveal God's love for all people in the world. Let us not pretend that God is only for a select group of people called Christians. And even Christians are terribly divided and uncertain of any commonality. Our greatest act of worship is love, modelled on the love of God for all people. If we wish to honour God, let us love and respect one another and believe in our equal access to his throne of grace, despite our various, dissimilar paths. On the contrary, to believe that Christians alone have an access to God denied to others, and Christ can be perceived only by Christians, may be a severe underestimation.

No one should be absolutely sure that he belongs to God. God alone will decide who is his and who is not his. We must always seek him in the awareness of our own unworthiness, the depths of which we have not fully discovered.

A discriminating mind is not a loving mind. To discriminate people based on differences is not the way of love. Ultimately we are all children of God, not just the Jews, not just the Christians. To glory in our state of being the elect, is a terrible kind of arrogance, which is not in keeping with what Jesus Christ taught.

Fear is from the devil. Faith is from God. Yet we cannot see the power of faith in the absence of fear. When faith rises above fear and hopes in God even in dire circumstances it becomes glorious.

It is never too late to say thank you. Say thank you to someone today, no matter how delayed your thanks may be.

Let us never treat the elderly with disrespect. They need us and let us be there for them, no matter how difficult they are to be with.

Be kind to your brother and sister today, even if this person has hurt you.

Let us not sow bad seeds today. Let us not punish people for their behaviour towards us. Let us not fail to show kindness to everyone, especially to the one who has hurt us. Let us ask God to give us the strength to do this.

Faith in the absence of fear is no faith.

Faith must walk alongside fear and overcome it.

Do not fear today whatever the trouble. Cast your cares on God. Trust in him to deliver you. Sing a song of praise no matter how you feel. Believe. Just believe.

A love for God and all that God has done is what will unite the people of God. Doctrines and theologies emerging from human understanding can only divide.

I entrust all my cares to God. And I will be happy today. For this is God's will for all his children.

Great weaknesses bring about a great humility.

I need to have a child-like faith in God above all book knowledge and spiritual wisdom.

I have lost many things in this life lived for God. Still Jesus Christ will always remain mine, and I will always remain his.

Let all brothers and sisters learn from Joseph, son of Jacob. He did not curse his brothers even once, though he had much reason to. God has not given us brothers and sisters so that we may curse them, no matter what the provocation. Let us learn to forgive and coexist in love. It is certainly good and pleasant when brothers and sisters live in harmony.

What can a human curse do to me when I have God's blessing on me?

If someone curses you, bless that person. Forgive that person and pray to God that he may heal that person Say boldly, "I am blessed and I cannot be cursed, If God is for me, no one can be against me."

The greatest need today is to receive God's love. If we taste God's love we can forgive anybody and anything.

No day is a bad day to say thank you to God.

God will not let his children be humiliated. So just believe that you will be all right.

It is sad when the children of God instead of building each other up are tearing each other down. Instead of looking at what is good and admirable in others they are distracted by what they find bad and distasteful. No one in this world can satisfy another perfectly. Since each one of us falls short of the glory of God, and still God accepts everyone just as he or she is, we must do the same for one another. If we fail to do that we prove that we only want to receive grace but not return it to others.

Jesus has proved conclusively that we are absolutely in no position to throw stones at anyone. So let's put down our stones, and remove the beams from our eyes.

Do you work quietly. Love everyone. Judge no one. Leave everything to God.

Do the right thing. Don't do the selfish thing. It brings immediate satisfaction. But the right thing brings lasting satisfaction even if it hurts at the beginning.

There was a time when I gave and very few were willing to receive. But I continued to give. That is why I'm still giving and there are now many who are willing to receive.

Even if some people don't welcome you, you welcome everyone.

God, help me see the good in everyone. And let me not be quick to judge anyone. Grant me compassion to see people as you see them, so that I will not condemn them.

I just want to take my eyes off the world and look only at God. This is my prayer today.

Losing our temper is our excuse for uttering curses. We say that we spoke in anger and didn't really mean it. If we didn't really mean it, we should have never spoken those hurtful words. Once we have spoken them we have become responsible for them. And we will not escape from being condemned by them.

Let our rage not become our excuse to destroy others. We are all capable of verbal destruction. But blessed is the human who can rein in those terrible words even after a horrible provocation.

Even an unuttered curse in our hearts is as bad as an audibly spoken curse. And we must account for that.

If we want a blessing we must bless others. It is that simple. Yet the last thing we do sometimes is to bless others. In fact many times the first thing we want to do is to curse others.

Let's do a hard thing today. Let's bless the one who has cursed us. Let's pray for this person and ask God to heal the mind of this person.

There is a terrible truth regarding words. We can't undo the words we speak. And it is impossible to tame the tongue. Let us pray today and ask God for mercy and grant us the grace to speak words that will not destroy both others and us.

God requires people to show faith in him. Without faith it is impossible to please God. So those who ask for proof to believe in God are wasting their time.

A particularly good test of Christ-likeness is when one is repaid evil for doing good.

What really hurts the Christ worker is not rejection by non-Christians but rejection by Christians. I have said this before. I say it again. Christianity is hurt most by Christians.

There is no point in running away from temptation. You must face it boldly and study it thoroughly. You must know yourself, and know your weakness. You must ask God to grant you his strength, for you cannot overcome your weakness without the strength of God. And the release from your bondage will be gradual. You must trust in God and believe that he will grant you the grace to overcome your temptations degree by degree. Finally don't run away from your weakness. For when you are weak then you are strong. God works best in your weakness.

Many are the troubles of God's people. But God will deliver us from them all eventually. This is the promise we must bear in mind as we undergo troubles in life. And God does not give us only troubles. He also gives us moments of relief and joy, when we can replenish ourselves to continue the struggle.

Without the Bible there can be no proper understanding of God and his mission in this world. The great story of God's love will not emerge in its present clarity without the biblical texts that progressively reveal the heart of God to the point of climax in Jesus Christ. For me, the Bible is essentially a message of love and forgiveness to the world, and a reminder of God's faithfulness to his people, whom he loved to the extreme extent of sacrificing his own beloved Son for them. It also presents God as the ultimate judge who cannot accept sin and those who sin and by sinning transgress his holy law. Still the perfectly just God emerges in the Bible as the one who above all knows that there is no human being other than Jesus, who can ever fulfil the requirements of his law and merit the reward of eternal life in heaven. That is why Jesus fulfilled the requirements of God's law for all of us. It is by resting in Christ by faith that we fulfil every commandment that God has laid out for us. When we do this there is no place for boasting in our lives, for nothing in our path to salvation is achieved by our own efforts. And the greatest of God's commandments are to do with love. We must love God with all our heart and mind and might, and this we can do only when we love one another as we love ourselves. This brings us to the ultimate point. How can we love ourselves? Can we love ourselves by rejecting ourselves? Only if we can do that we can reject others whom we love. Or can we love ourselves by not even knowing ourselves? Only then we can love others by not knowing them, by not even associating with them. None of God's commandments can we fulfil without being in Christ. When this is the case no man should boast of his ability to do God's will. And the will of God is that we should know his love and share it with others as we receive it ourselves. The Bible should lead us to this realization and not impede it. A legalistic and literal understanding of the biblical texts will lead to a strident, inflexible interpretation of the spiritual life, which is devoid of love and compassion, the ultimate guiding principles of life.

You can't find those who are lost by keeping your distance from them.

Abandoning everything to seek the lost is the distinguishing characteristic of Christ and all who follow him.

You can't choose the people you love. You can't run away from the people you love. The one who chooses and distances himself from those he claims to love, is no lover in the order of Christ.

Love is not love if it is controlled by fear. Love bears all things. Love conquers all. Anyone who says he loves and yet fears what might result from that love cannot love at all.

Ultimately the people of Christ should be characterized by love - accepting, embracing, forgiving and participating love. Such love must also show compassion for all those unlike us, because we ourselves were like them, when Jesus Christ reached out to us. Jesus did not leave us or forsake us even when we were lost in our sins. He was very much with us loving us until we recognized his presence in our lives. We, the body of Christ in whom Christ lives and works must learn to love people as Christ loved us. We must not reject or despise people for being different from us. We must not condemn or denounce them for their imperfections. We must love them even when they hate us and bless them even when they curse us. Above all we must care for them even when they reject and kill us. This is the love of Jesus, which must reside in us, if we are to be anything like him.

The difference between Jesus Christ and Saint Paul is this. Paul taught us love, but it was Jesus who showed us love. Paul spelt out the faith. Jesus demonstrated that faith through his own life. Paul led us to Christ. But it is Christ who saved us ultimately. Paul is a servant of God speaking for God. Jesus is God, speaking for himself. Knowing this difference will make it easier for us to understand the Bible.

Jesus said before he went to the cross, "Love one another as I have loved you." Our question as Jesus followers should be this. "How did Jesus love us? Did he love us even when we didn't love him? Did he love us even when we were sinners totally removed from his light? Or did he love only those who responded to him and sought his light? Did he love us by coming to us and spending time with the most despised among us, or did he love us by distancing himself from us? How did he respond to those who felt lost? Did he let them go, or did he go after them, determined to find them at any cost?" Once we arrive at the answers, we must ask a further question. "If Jesus loved like this, should we also not love like this, as he commanded?" And we must ask God to give us the grace to love like that.

God doesn't change people by teaching them. He changes them by loving them.

The last thing a sinner needs is a lesson in morality. Give him love and forgive him completely. That is what he needs to turn around.

To love people we must be with them without trying to teach them something. If possible let us try to learn from them.

If we spend our time being afraid of people then we will have no time to love them.

If compassion and humanity are the hallmarks of Christianity, then the world will pay attention to it.

The problem with being like Jesus lies in being with people we would rather avoid.

If you want to be like Jesus you must accept all who come to you.

I who hated and despised God have become a worker for God. I who hated and despised my human father was led to him just before his death, and given the grace to apologize and seek forgiveness. God has led me from darkness to light. And this testimony is true.

Don't let yourself be condemned today. Jesus Christ paid a price for you, and that is the one and only payment required. You don't have to do anything more to retain your salvation. The work of Jesus Christ is truly finished in you today.

Perhaps none of us is normal. Every one of us may be disabled in some way. Yet many of us find ourselves in many ways less disadvantaged than those whom the world labels disabled. Let us who find ourselves in this position give thanks to God for what we have.

Even I couldn't see God once. Now I see him in all the life forms around me. I see him particularly in the human being, who consciously desires to be good. This desire alone speaks powerfully for God, to whom the human seems irreversibly linked. Yet this is not a link that everyone discovers.

God is everywhere, even in your heart if you have welcomed him there. You can worship him wherever you are.

Now it certainly looks bleak. But it will not stay like this forever. Believe in God. Trust in his working.

Let us not give God give any time frame for acting. He will act in his time.

Some people don't like the idea of God because it seems so primitive, and so remotely detached from the intellectual giants that they have become. Also the acknowledgement of God may lead to the imposition of an external authority on them, which may not agree with their liberated temperaments. So to avoid this regression to God, they try their very best to progress to a godless scenario, which is difficult to demonstrate. Yet this difficulty cannot dissuade them from venturing further, for a godless universe is a premise that they will not discard.

God showed clearly through Jesus that he identified with the poor and the humble people of this world. So let us also stay with the poor and identify ourselves with them.

Sex is God's gift to Man. But when sexuality occupies a place that only God should occupy in a person's life, it has become a bondage. And no man can overcome this bondage on his own, for lust of this kind cannot be humanly tamed. It must be submitted to God, who alone can liberate a person from this bondage.

Show me love today, O Lord. And you will have shown me everything.

There is always something to be afraid of if you want to give in to fear. But if you have God in your life why should you fear? The last thing God wants you to be is to be afraid.

Do not fail to help those who are dependent on you. These are your family members and your spouses. Be firmly committed to helping and supporting them in their time of trouble.

Our troubles are very little in comparison with those of Christ on Calvary many years ago. His suffering is on a different scale and may even be in a different dimension. But we participate in the sufferings of Christ to be identified with him in death so that we may be identified with him in his glorious resurrected life as well. Though the intensity of our suffering cannot be the same as that of Christ, it is still rather severe and cannot be ignored. We suffer with Christ so that we may be glorified with him. This is the essence of it. And what we undergo to achieve this is by no means little.

Love the people you have in your life today. And love them well. This is the one task that you must fail to do. For if you do so you will also love God.

It is indeed good when brothers and sisters live together in unity. But will they? Let us pray for this unity.

It's good to crawl towards God. For once I was just sitting without moving towards him.

Love someone today who least expects your love. Show kindness to someone today who least expects your kindness.

The best parenting I've had is from God. I've had good human parents. But without God I cannot even stand.

Let there be more of hope and less of dread in my faith. The tendency to fear is so great in the human being that God had to repeat "Fear not" hundreds of times.

There is only so much I can do (and even that I cannot do without Christ living in me). Everything else must be done by God.

Don't be afraid of being weak. Because when you are weak, then you are strong. God works best in people who are so weak that they cannot function without him.

The best way to convey Christ to someone who does not know Christ is to love him unconditionally and do our very best for that person without forcing him to believe in Jesus Christ or imposing any other theological demand on him. Any forced act of belief is not belief at all.

The act of telling people about Jesus Christ does not automatically lead to salvation of souls. People may hear the audible message and fail to respond to it with their hearts. The act of conveying a message is twofold: one, the ability of the speaker and two, the receptivity of the hearer. The success of communication lies equally with the hearer, whose mental and spiritual states, if he is hearing about Jesus, are vital to his receiving the message. So ultimately success in the process of telling people about Christ does not lie in the hands of the speaker but in the hands of God who alone facilitates both the speaking and the hearing.

Tell children about Christ. But tell a story about him. Don't theorize. Don't get into theology. Tell the story of the prodigal son, for there is no other story that better illustrates our great forgiving God. And make it clear that God forgives so much because he loves so much.

Children cannot understand what Christ has done for them. Even I, a 43 year old, have not yet grasped what Christ has done for me.