Quotable Quotes

January 12

Because I live, you also will live (John 14:19 NIV).

Relationship with God today in so many directions, and over such a wide range, is not a living relationship. There is an acknowledgment of God, there is a form of worship of God, there are rites connected with God; yes, there is a recognition in a greater or lesser measure of a kind of devotion to God, worship of God, acknowledgment of God, perhaps desire for God, but all short of a living relationship with God. Yet that He is the living God means that those who are related to Him should live. He would say, "Because I live ye shall live also." A living relationship with God is possible....

It is not a relationship with some dead order of things, but with a living Person. But I must ask: Have you that living relationship? Are you following a system, an order, or are you in living fellowship with a living God? The Lord desires that such a relationship with Him shall be living all the way along. It is a great thing to know that you have access to the living God. You do not know whether a thing is right or wrong? Well, you have the living God, ask Him; He is open, He is accessible, He is alive; you can have dealings with Him. Just to enjoy a living relationship with a living God is how He wills it to be. The desire of His heart is that you should treat Him as being a living God. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." We must believe, when we come, that He is -- not feeling out into the universe, the vacant, empty universe. No, we are coming to a living Person; we believe that He is! There is nothing vague about that.

By T. Austin-Sparks from: The Living God 

This photograph is by Eric Jonas Swensson of Sound Shore Media.