Life Together Quotes

“Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exists without the weak.”

“The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship.”

“Therefore, at the beginning of the day let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought of the first word belong to him to whom our whole life belongs.”

“One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it.”

“Every member serves the whole body, either to its health or to its detriment.”

“We are gentle and we are severe with one another, for we know both God’s kindness and God’s severity.”

“Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God… Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing.”

“The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.”

“Has fellowship served to make the individual free, strong, and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has it taken him by the hand for a while in order that he may learn again to walk by himself, or has it made him uneasy and unsure?”

“When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we, too, were made ready to forgive the brethren. What God did to us, we then owed to others.”

“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.”

“At the threshold of the new day stands the Lord who made it.”

“We are members of a body, not only when we choose to be, but in our whole existence.”

“The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it.”

“He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

“Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate the the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he comes involved in it, the more disastrous his isolation.”

“Only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of God’s love and mercy.”

“One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”

“Where the heart is not singing there is no melody, there is only the dreadful medley of human self-praise.”