Sermon quotes on gifts
Neil T. Anderson
Your greatest fulfillment in life will come when you discover your unique gifts and abilities and use them to edify others and glorify the LORD.
Augustine of Hippo
God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.
Thomas A Kempis
A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.
Martin Luther
Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God’s Word, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health; or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding, skill, wisdom! Yet men toil for them day and night, and take no rest. Therefore God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom he gives nothing else.
F.B. Meyer
I used to think that God’s gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grow in Christian character the more easily we could reach them. I now find that God’s gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower.
A.J. Swoboda
The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest.
Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World, Baker Publishing Group, 2018, Kindle Location 131.
Mother Teresa
“To be alone with Jesus in adoration and intimate union with Him is the Greatest Gift of Love – the tender love of Our Father in Heaven.
John Owen
The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.
Cornelius Plantinga
We know the excitement of getting a present – we love to unwrap it to see what is inside. So it is with our children they are gifts we unwrap for years as we discover the unique characters God has made them.
David Platt
Forgiveness is God’s greatest gift because it meets our greatest need.
Philip Schaff
Freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts of God to man, without distinction of race and color. He is the author and lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to stand between God and the conscience.
Philip Yancey
Grace is a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.
C.S. Lewis
A man whose hands are full of parcels can’t receive a gift
Peter O’Brien
How then can we pursue what are already God’s gifts to us? The proper response is that they should be worked out concretely in our lives as believers
The Letter to the Hebrews, Eerdmans
Parker J. Palmer
Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them them than we are of breathing.
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Thomas Fuller
When thou makest presents, let them be of such things as will last long; to the end they may be in some sort immortal, and may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver.
Mary Oliver
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
Gordon T. Smith
It is more helpful to recognize that God is looking for people of ability who will make their ability available to God.
Taken from Courage and Calling by Gordon T. Smith. ©2011 by Gordon T. Smith. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Sam Storms
The gifts are God himself working in and through us. They are concrete, often tangible, visible, and vocal disclosures of divine power showcased through human activity. A charisma or gift of the Spirit is the Holy Spirit himself coming to clear and sometimes dramatic expression in the lives of God’s people as they minister one to another.
Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life, HarperCollins Publishing
Dorothy Sayers
The Power—the Spirit—is thus a social power, working to bring all minds into its own unity, sometimes by similarity and at other times by contrast. There is a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit.
The Mind of the Maker, Harper Collins 1941, 1987, 121.
Wesley Tracy
Some people have the notion that following your spiritual gifts is spending the days and years of your life doing only those things which come naturally, easily, with no effort, discipline, or practice.
Leadership, Vol. 3, no. 4.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.
Malcom Guite
Most of us are under pressure, external and internal, to do everything, be good at everything, be accountable to everyone for everything! It is not so. In the divine economy each of us has a particular grace, gift and devotion. Finding out what that is, and learning how to be guilt-free about not doing everything else, may be part of what our Lenten journey is for.
The Word in the Wilderness (Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd., 2014).
Hilda Of Whitby
Trade with the gifts God has given you.
Martin Luther
If silver and gold are things evil in themselves, then those who keep away from them deserve to be praised. But if they are good creatures of God, which we can use both for the needs of our neighbor and for the glory of God, is not a person silly, yes, even unthankful to God, if he refrains from them as if they were evil?
Seneca
He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.
On Benefits , 2.22.1
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