Sermon Illustrations on Actions
Karl Barth
Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.
Church Dogmatics 2/2, The Doctrine of God, Hendrickson Publishers.
Frederick Beuchner
Jesus Christ is what God does, and the cross where God did it.
C.S. Lewis
Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better…. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.
Peter Marshall
Teach us, O Lord, the disciplines of patience, for we find that to wait is often harder than to work.
Quoted in Mr. Jones, Meet the Master: Sermons And Prayers Of Peter Marshall, Pickle Partners Publishing, p.277
Dallas Willard
External manifestation of “Christlikeness” is not, however, the focus of the process; and when it is made the main emphasis, the process will certainly be defeated, falling into deadening legalisms and pointless parochialism. That is what has happened so often in the past, and this fact is a major barrier to wholeheartedly embracing Christian spiritual formation in the present.
American Christopher Society Motto
Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Thomas Carlyle
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Essay: “Signs of the Times,” 1829.
Miguel de Cervantes
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.
Source Unknown
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
Source Unknown
John Locke
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689.
John N. Mitchell
You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say.
Quoted in William Safire, Article: “Watch What We Do”. The New York Times, November 14, 1988.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
Quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, ed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895.
Robert Frost
The best way out is always through.
Poem: A Servant to Servants
Darrow Miller
How you treat a person in the brief moment when you pass together through a revolving door tells the world what you believe about them.
Darrow L. Miller, Servanthood: The Vocation of the Christian, A Monograph. Scottsdale, Ariz.: Food for the Hungry, 1991.
Meister Eckhart
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
In His Quae Patris, Sermon on Luke 2:49. See Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation, trans. Raymond Bernard Blakney (Harper and Brothers: 1941), 111.
Rick Warren
I’m looking for a second reformation. The first reformation of the church 500 years ago was about beliefs. This one is going to be about deeds. It is not going to be about what the church believes, but about what the church is doing.
Dorothy Day
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
Jen Wilkin
If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self.
In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character, Crossway
Elizabeth of the Trinity
Let us ask God to make us true in our love, to make us sacrificial beings, for it seems to me that sacrifice is only love put into action.
Source Unknown
Gary Badcock
A theology of response does not need to be Pelagian; it need only be a theology in which the reality of the human is taken seriously.”
Eugene H. Peterson
Being in God’s story does not mean passively letting things happen to us. It doesn’t mean dumb submission or blind obedience.
Martin Luther
God does not need your good works, but our neighbor does.
Quoted in Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation, Wipf and Stock, 2004, 10.
Parker Palmer
Becoming totally quiet and unreachably alone are two of the signs that life has gone, while activity and lively communication not only signify life but help us evade the prospect that our life will someday cease.
“The Monastic Way to Church Renewal,” Desert Call (Winter 1987): 8–9.
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