Quotes from James Bryan Smith

It takes a long time to ruin a life. It all starts with the stories we live by.

I've failed many times to avoid those kinds of temptations. But that's not what the devil was really interested in. What he was trying to do is make me feel apart from God. Now I know that what Satan would like most to take from us is our true knowledge of who we are—which is children of God.

God gives blessings to all without regard to their behavior. Terrible things happen to wonderful people. Wonderful things happen to awful people. We cannot look around the world we live in and build a case that sinners are punished and righteous people are blessed. Reality simply does not bear this out.

To trust someone is to believe that he or she has your best interests in mind, that the person will protect you from harm and is reliable.

is true. We change not by mustering up willpower but by changing the way we think, which will also involve changing our actions and our social environment. We change indirectly. We do what we can.

What would it be like to be Christ? I mean, did He ever play ball? Did He ever knock a window out of somebody's house and did He ever have to explain to His dad that He had to borrow twelve dollars?

The line in this song that slayed me the first time I heard it, and slays me every time I hear it, is 'I cannot explain the way that You came to love me, except to say that nothing is beyond You.

One hidden act of kindness is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of Christians so preoccupied with cultivating their prayer lives that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the barrio.

Rather we must seek out9 the good things peculiar to the good, and give the widest berth to the evils peculiar to evil men.

The most important aspects of our lives cannot be rushed. We cannot love, think, eat, laugh, or pray in a hurry...When we are in a hurry--which comes from overextension--we find ourselves unable to live with awareness and kindness.

Christianity doesn't answer all my questions or make me comfortable and happy. What it does do is give me a context for living.

Spiritual life is not a life of laws and precepts but a life of participation, affection and love, a life mingled and mixing with God.