Enthusiasm Bible Quotes

Then it happened that whenever he began to see Mari's [Mary Magdalene] passionate enthusiasm, her eyes emanating a light that amply showed how contended she was aiding so many people, Jesus could not help but be proud of his most-beloved disciple. Mari, likewise, felt indebted and grateful to Jesus as she saw her fellow sisters gradually being saved on all counts, some even going on to become some of Jesus's staunchest disciples...

He was bursting with enthusiasms. He probably loved many things: the hawk in flight, the god-damned ocean, full moon, Balzac, bridges, stage plays, the Pulitzer Prize, the piano, the god-damned Bible.

The more you read the Bible, the more transform your life will be.

1:16 — I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. We must never feel ashamed of our connection to Christ or the salvation He freely offers to all. It is a high privilege to represent Him, and we must do so with boldness and enthusiasm.

Religious enthusiasm among students is now an embarrassment; belief in the authority of the Bible and the deity of Jesus Christ is treated as naivety to be enlightened rather than life to be nourished. Scholars in the arts, letters, and sciences who show signs of Christian devotion are likely to be shrugged off as simplistic and eccentric.

Suppose that members of a religious movement, such as Christianity, maintain that the existence of some powerful god and its goals or laws can be known through their scriptures, their prophets, or some special revelation. Suppose further that the evidence that is available to support the reliability of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations is weaker than that God is hypothetically capable of producing. That is, suppose that Christians maintain that Jesus was resurrected on the basis of the Gospels, or that God’s existence can be known through the Bible, or Muslims insist on the historical authenticity of the Koran. Could God, the almighty creator of the universe, have brought it about so that the evidence in favor of the resurrection, the Bible, or the Koran was better than we currently find it? I take it that the answer is obviously yes. Even if you think there is evidence that is sufficient to prove the resurrection, a reasonable person must also acknowledge that it could have been better. And there’s the problem. If the capacity of that god is greater than the effectiveness or quality of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations, then the story they are telling contradicts itself. 'We know our god is real on the basis of evidence that is inadequate for our god.' Or, 'The grounds that lead us to believe in our god are inconsistent with the god we accept; nevertheless, we believe in this god that would have given us greater evidence if it had wished for us to believe in it.' Given the disparity between the gods that these religious movements portend and the grounds offered to justify them, the atheist is warranted in dismissing such claims. If the sort of divine being that they promote were real and if he had sought our believe on the basis of the evidence, the evidential situation would not resemble the one we are in. The story doesn’t make internal sense. A far better explanation is that their enthusiasm for believing in a god has led them to overstate what the evidence shows. And that same enthusiasm has made it difficult for them to see that an all powerful God would have the power to make his existence utterly obvious and undeniable. Since it’s not, the non-believer can’t possibly be faulted for failing to believe.

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true.

The mighty Toyota Company was born from the ashes of a failed weaving business. And perhaps you have heard of Wrigley’s gum? William Wrigley started off his company trying to sell baking soda and soap, but he never turned a profit, and so he turned to making and selling chewing gum instead. These men share one thing in common—they were open to change and they listened to their intuition. Sometimes we hear a whisper in the air that guides us positively. This whisper we hear, it is not passive—it is a response to our own enthusiasm, passion, and commitment. We put in the effort and we get back a divine message. Call it inspiration if you want. Call it an entrepreneurial muse. But it feels and sounds like a whisper in your soul. If you hear it, listen to it. You must be willing to change course when it tells you to.

MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AFTER BEING ORDAINED as a pastor almost finished me. I was called to be the assistant pastor in a large and affluent suburban church. I was glad to be part of such an obviously winning organization. After I had been there a short time, a few people came to me and asked that I lead them in a Bible study. “Of course,” I said, “there is nothing I would rather do.” We met on Monday evenings. There weren’t many—eight or nine men and women—but even so that was triple the two or three that Jesus defined as a quorum. They were eager and attentive; I was full of enthusiasm. After a few weeks the senior pastor, my boss, asked me what I was doing on Monday evenings. I told him. He asked me how many people were there. I told him. He told me that I would have to stop. “Why?” I asked. “It is not cost-effective. That is too few people to spend your time on.” I was told then how I should spend my time. I was introduced to the principles of successful church administration: crowds are important, individuals are expendable; the positive must always be accented, the negative must be suppressed. Don’t expect too much of people—your job is to make them feel good about themselves and about the church. Don’t talk too much about abstractions like God and sin—deal with practical issues. We had an elaborate music program, expensively and brilliantly executed. The sermons were seven minutes long and of the sort that Father Taylor (the sailor-preacher in Boston who was the model for Father Mapple in Melville’s Moby Dick) complained of in the transcendentalists of the last century: that a person could no more be converted listening to sermons like that than get intoxicated drinking skim milk.[2] It was soon apparent that I didn’t fit. I had supposed that I was there to be a pastor: to proclaim and interpret Scripture, to guide people into a life of prayer, to encourage faith, to represent the mercy and forgiveness of Christ at special times of need, to train people to live as disciples in their families, in their communities and in their work. In fact I had been hired to help run a church and do it as efficiently as possible: to be a cheerleader to this dynamic organization, to recruit members, to lend the dignity of my office to certain ceremonial occasions, to promote the image of a prestigious religious institution. I got out of there as quickly as I could decently manage it. At the time I thought I had just been unlucky. Later I came to realize that what I experienced was not at all uncommon.

Delight is a social phenomenon. It is imitative. We delight in what we see others delighting in—especially those we admire. ... All other projects of group enthusiasm are pale imitations of what the church is meant to be—a body of believers incandescent with Christ’s love.

In 1163 a Council of the Romish Church at Tours,[43] called together by Pope Alexander III, forbade any intercourse with Waldenses because they taught “a damnable heresy, long since sprung up in the territory of Toulouse.” Before the close of the 12th century there was a numerous Waldensian church in Metz, which had translations of the Bible in use. The church in Cologne had long been in existence in 1150 when a number of its members were executed, of whom their judge said “They went to their death not only with patience but with enthusiasm.

In 571 Mohammed was born in Mecca, and at his death in 632 the religion of Islam, of which he was the founder and prophet, had spread over the greater part of Arabia. Islam, or “submission to the will of God”, had as its creed: “There is no God but God and Mohammed is His Prophet”. It utterly repudiated images or pictures of any kind. Its book, the Koran, contains many confused references to persons and events spoken of in the Bible. Abraham as the Friend of God, Moses the Law of God, Jesus the Spirit of God, are all venerated, but are excelled by Mohammed the Prophet of God. This religion was mercilessly spread by the sword, and such was the resistless energy of the new enthusiasm that in less than a hundred years from the death of Mohammed, the dominion and religion of his followers stretched from India to Spain. The choice of conversion to Mohammedanism or death constantly reinforced the armies of Islam, but untold numbers died rather than deny Christ.

One of the oldest books in our Bible contains a hymn of praise to the Creator that rambles on for chapter after chapter. It’s the longest such hymn in the Bible, skipping about through all the earth and all the universe with the wide-eyed, giddy enthusiasm of a kid in a candy shop, marveling at all the wondrous things that God has made. But this isn’t a psalm of David or a song of Moses. This is from the book of Job, and the one speaking, according to that story, is none other than God. No human speaker in the Bible matches the goofy enthusiasm, delight and affection for all creation that God expresses there in the final chapters of Job.

Winston Churchill’s great remark that “success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

My days of laziness have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous endeavor; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine that rages in my soul.

2Enthusiasm without knowledge is not good. If you act too quickly, you might make a mistake.

Proverbs 19:1-3 1 Better to be poor and honest        than to be dishonest and a fool. 2 Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good;        haste makes mistakes. 3 People ruin their lives by their own foolishness        and then are angry at the LORD.

Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all your heart. 7 Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 8 Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free.

NO ONE GIVES ADVICE WITH MORE ENTHUSIASM THAN AN IGNORANT PERSON.

First: At the beginning of the formation of a new habit put force and enthusiasm into your expression. Feel what you think. Remember that you are taking the first steps toward making the new mental path; that it is much harder at first than it will be afterwards. Make the path as clear and as deep as you can, at the beginning, so that you can readily see it the next time you wish to follow it. Second: Keep your attention firmly concentrated on the new path-building, and keep your mind away from the old paths, lest you incline toward them. Forget all about the old paths, and concern yourself only with the new ones that you are building to order. Third: Travel over your newly made paths as often as possible. Make opportunities for doing so, without waiting for them to arise through luck or chance. The oftener you go over the new paths the sooner will they become well worn and easily traveled. Create plans for passing over these new habit-paths, at the very start. Fourth: Resist the temptation to travel over the older, easier paths that you have been using in the past. Every time you resist a temptation, the stronger do you become, and the easier will it be for you to do so the next time. But every time you yield to the temptation, the easier does it become to yield again, and the more difficult it becomes to resist the next time. You will have a fight on at the start, and this is the critical time. Prove your determination, persistency and will-power now, at the very beginning. Fifth: Be sure that you have mapped out the right path, as your definite chief aim, and then go ahead without fear and without allowing yourself to doubt. “Place your hand upon the plow, and look not backward.” Select your goal, then make good, deep, wide mental paths leading straight to it.

And for those who cannot curb their enthusiasm, seeing the cup half full, and for those who cannot find the way to be happy because the cup is half empty, we can meet not in the middle, but being our kind, the human kind, meet where the cup runneth over, and everyone can choose not to make another unhappy.

Our kids learn about life and the world through exposure. Little people love what their adults love. When you introduce your small kids to Scripture from and early age, with enthusiasm, they will naturally want to know more about the wonderful book you delight in, the Jesus you adore, and the salvation in Christ that you treasure.

As wonderful as a personal relationship with Jesus is, the people that show the most enthusiasm for it do not give much thought to all the things that have to be in place in order for it to be possible. Take the Bible, for instance, or the sacraments, or the creeds, or even prayer. All of these things must be in place before you can even imagine having a personal relationship with Jesus. Without archivists, and translators, and publishers, we wouldn’t have Bibles that tell us about Jesus. Then there are Church councils that gave us the creeds which summarize what the Bible says about Jesus and His divine nature. And this is just a start. Even beyond those things, just consider all the ways that the Christian religion has influenced Western civilization for the good. Think about how the arts, the sciences, and our laws, customs, and holidays wouldn’t even exist in their current forms without the Christian religion. No, you cannot reduce Christianity to a relationship; it is bigger than that. Religion really is a better word than relationship for describing what it is.

[...] certainly explains why the woman feels that she needs to be careful and not to excite love prematurely. The great enthusiasm of the woman, in contrast o her feeling that the man is not sending her signals on the same wavelength as she is sending them to him. [...] It odes not express intimacy; on the contrary, it suggests the woman's apprehension that the man is not as interested as she is [...] which reflects her feelings towards the man's attitude. Therefore it is only natural that after the woman has expressed her desire in such strong terms she feels that this desire is likely to intimidate her beloved and cause him to withdraw.

And yet, mighty as Time is, priceless in comparison to all else in the world, Time is the freest thing in existence. Perhaps that is why so many fail to grasp it with earnestness and with enthusiasm? Perhaps that is why so few realize its presence and let it pass on?

Do every detail of your day’s work as though it was to be viewed by a Master eye. Make every job a great job. Put Dignity and Joy and Enthusiasm into everything attempted, forgetting not for the shortest minute that — Success Power is in the Reserve.

Now it may seem to be a peculiar trait, but the truth is that most people will not grant favors just to please others. If I ask you to render a service that will benefit me, without bringing you some corresponding advantage, you will not show much enthusiasm in granting that favor; you may refuse altogether if you have a plausible excuse for refusing.

Now it may seem to be a peculiar trait, but the truth is that most people will not grant favors just to please others. If I ask you to render a service that will benefit me, without bringing you some corresponding advantage, you will not show much enthusiasm in granting that favor; you may refuse altogether if you have a plausible excuse for refusing. But if I ask you to render a service that will benefit a third person, even though the service must be rendered through me; and if that service is of such a nature that it is likely to reflect credit on you, the chances are that you will render the service willingly.

To become successful you must be a person of action. Merely to “know” is not sufficient. It is necessary both to know and do. Enthusiasm is the mainspring of the mind which urges one to put knowledge into action.

Enthusiasm bears the same relationship to a human being that steam does to the locomotive-it is the vital moving force that impels action. The greatest leaders of men are those who know how to inspire enthusiasm in their followers. Enthusiasm is the most important factor entering into salesmanship. It is, by far, the most vital factor that enters into public speaking.

Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good;        haste makes mistakes.

Americans’ enthusiasm for apocalyptic fantasy probably owes more to movies like The Exorcist and The Omen than to the Bible itself.