Catherine Marshall Quotes

Poverty is a scandal of our times because it CAN be changed.

Why should a child's future be shaped by where they are born?

God's way of dealing with us is to throw us into situations over our depth, then supply us with the necessary ability to swim.

... where there was hunger there would also be bread.

Despite disappointments, the Christian is obligated to pray for the sick because we are bidden to do so and because the crumb of our caring is but a morsel broken from the whole loaf of the Father's infinite and tender love.

Living in the middle of beautiy like this, we've no call to have puny ideas about God. Why do you suppose His world is so fancy-fine, so full of wonderment if He doesn't want everything to be good and perfect and right and healthy? But we can spoil His good work. When we mess things up, then we shouldn't blame Him and try to make ourselves feel better by contending that it's what He wanted.

Often God has to shut a door in our face, so that He can subsequently open the door through which He wants us to go.

Of course you'll encounter trouble. But behold a God of power who can take any evil and turn it into a door of hope.

Have you ever thought that the only ugl things in this Cove are man's fault, while the beautiful things are God's work? Look at those mountains.

I learned that true forgiveness includes total self-acceptance. And out of acceptance wounds are healed and happiness is possible again.

The unfolding of our friendship with the Father will be a never-ending revelation strretching on into eternity

God is the only one who can make the valley of trouble a door of hope.

I still don't understand anything- exept that somehow I know that You are love. And that in my heart has been so great a love for Christy as I did not know could exist on this earth. You, God, must be responsible. You must have put it there. So what do I do with it now?

Acceptance says, True, this is my situation at the moment. I'll look unblinkingly at the reality of it. But I'll also open my hands to accept willingly whatever a loving Father sends me.

Whence comes this idea that if what we are doing is fun, it can't be God's will? The God who made giraffes, a baby's fingernails, a puppy's tail, a crooknecked squash, the bobwhite's call, and a young girl's giggle, has a sense of humor. Make no mistake about that.

Truth could never be wholly contained in words. All of us know it: At the same moment the mouth is speaking one thing, the heart is saying another.

A Christian has no business being satisfied with mediocrity. He's supposed to reach for the stars. Why not? He's not on his own anymore. He has God's help now.

Once we recognize our need for Jesus, then the building of our faith begins. It is a daily, moment-by-moment life of absolute dependence upon Him for everything

The cross stands as the final symbol that no evil exists that God cannot turn into a blessing. He is the living Alchemist who can take the dregs from the slag-heaps of life - disappointment, frustration, sorrow, disease, death, economic loss, heartache - and transform the dregs into gold.

When you heart is ablaze with the love of God, when you love other people - especially the ripsnorting sinners - so much that you dare to tell them about Jesus with no apologies, then never fear, there will be results.

Our prayers must not be efforts to bend God to our will but to yield ourselves to His.

The search for God begins at the point of need.

I experienced the reality of the spiritual body and learned that it has every faculty of the physical body, though with greater sensitivity and some dimensions added... There will be nothing shocking in the transition, only a continuation of who I am now.

The house, it's already been a-settin' here for a hundred years. It'll be right here tomorrow. It's today I must be livin'.

The only time I ever find my dealings with God less than clear-cut is when I'm not being honest with Him. The fuzziness is always on my side, not His.

When we hold a photo negative up to the light all objects are reversed. Black is white, white is black. Moreover, the character lines of any face in the picture are not clear. Once placed into the developing solution, what photographers call "the latent image" is revealed in the print-darkness is turned to light; and, lo, we have a beautiful picture.

I believe the old cliché, 'God helps those who help themselves,' is not only misleading but often dead wrong. My most spectacular answers to prayers have come when I was so helpless, so out of control as to be able to do nothing at all for myself.

Evil is real - and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where we stand, how we're going to live our lives. We can try to persuade ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn't so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it , and say it's none of our business. Or we can work on God's side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.

I learned that true forgiveness includes total acceptance.

Clean up a pigsty," she commented one evening, "and if the creatures in it still have pig-minds and pig-desires, soon it will be the same old pigsty again.

If your every human plan and calculation has miscarried, if, one by one, human props have been knocked out, and doors have shut in your face, take heart. God is trying to get a message through to you, and the message is: "Stop depending on inadequate human resources. Let me handle the matter.".

God insists that we ask, not because He needs to know our situation, but because we need the spiritual discipline of asking.

Satan cannot create anything new, cannot create anything at all. He must steal what God has created. Thus he twists love and God's wonderful gift of sex into lust and sadism and myriad perversions. He disfigures the heart's deep desire to worship God and persuades us to bow before lesser gods of lust or money or power.

One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying.

My father always told us that if we will let God, He can use even our disappointements, even our annoyances to bring us a blessing. There's a practical way to start the process too: by thanking HIm for whatever happens, no matter how disagreeable it seems.

When the dream in our heart is one that God has planted there, a strange happiness flowers into us. At that moment all of the spiritual resources of the universe are released to help us. Our praying is then at one with the will of God and becomes a channel for the Creator's always joyous, triumphant purposes for us and our world.

Lord, what are you trying to teach me?

The purpose of all prayer is to find God's will and to make that our prayer

No matter how little you have, you can always give some of it away.

in rejecting secrecy I had also rejected the road to cynicism.

So many people never pause long enough to make up their minds about basic issues of life and death. It's quite possible to go through your whole life, making the mechanical motions of living, adopting as your own sets of ideas you've come to any conslusion for yourself as to what life is all about.

Some of what I wrote bordered on blasphemy....If there was a God, He would have to be truth. And in that case, candor--however impertinent--would be more pleasing to Him than posturing.