Loving God means rejoicing in God, being eager to think of and pray to God. It means being glad to be in God's presence and to be with God alone. It means not grieving God, but rejoicing in God simply because it is God who is involved, and because we are permitted to know and have God, and to speak with and live with God.
Dietrich BonhoefferPossessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which he entrusts to us.
Dietrich BonhoefferIf you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses . . . only through discipline may a man learn to be free.
Dietrich BonhoefferGod loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.
Dietrich BonhoefferThe right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.
Dietrich BonhoefferBecause I am a Christian, therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God's Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scriptures in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer