Sermon quotes on charity
Augustine of Hippo
What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
“Homily on 1 John 4:1-12,” Homilies on the First Epistle of John
John Calvin
There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments which we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed for the good of our neighbor.
Andrew Carnegie
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
G.K. Chesterton
Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
Henry Drummond
The words which all of us shall one Day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints, but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines, but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books, but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ.
Dixie Fraley
We’re most like God when we’re giving.
Thomas Fuller
Charity begins at home, but should not end there.
Billy Graham
We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.
Matthew Henry
The riches we impart are the only wealth we shall always retain.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
Robert Lupton
While we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or actually harms the people it is targeted to help.
Rupertus Meldenius
In Essentials Unity, In Non-Essentials Liberty, In All Things Charity
Myles Munroe
The value of life is not in its duration, but in its donation. You are not important because of how long you live, you are important because of how effective you live.
R.G. LeTourneau
I shovel [money] out, and God shovels it back…but God has a bigger shovel!
Francis Quarles
There is no such merchant as the charitable man; he gives trifles which he could not keep, to receive treasure which he cannot lose.
Francis Quarles
The place of charity, like that of God, is everywhere.
John Wesley
Make all you can, save all you can, so that you can give away all you can.
Smith Wigglesworth
God has chosen us to help one another.
Ever Increasing Faith
Esau McCaulley
Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts reveals (if only to us) our dependence on God.
The private acts Jesus calls for include acts of mercy toward the needy… Ash Wednesday, then, reminds us of one of the things it is easy to forget during the course of our journey with God: the stepped on people of the world… Lent is not merely about extended reflections on our own mortality. It’s a chance to open our lives and hearts to the pains of the world in imitation of our Lord, who looked with compassion on those with spiritual and material needs.
Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal (IVP, 2022), 24-25.
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