Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week  inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

Here are a few noteworthy quotes seen this last week:

From The Holiness of God by R. C. Sproul, seen at Challies:

People in awe never complain that church is boring.

Oh, that we might maintain that awe of God.

Seen on a friend’s Facebook status:

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining — they just shine.” Dwight L. Moody

This was seen at Lizzie‘s, quoted at Robin Lee Hatcher‘s from her church’s devotional book, quoted from Francis Chan’s Crazy Love:

When I am consumed by my problems — stressed out about my life, my family, and my job — I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God’s command to always rejoice. In other words, that I have a “right” to disobey God [and his command to rejoice always] because of the magnitude of my responsibilities.

Worry implies that we don’t quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what’s happening in our lives.

Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.

Guilty on all counts. I’m thankful for that accurate though painful perspective. We never really have an excuse to sin, and God is able to meet our needs without our stressing over them.

And again from Challies:

“God sometimes blesses a poor exegesis of a bad translation of a doubtful reading of an obscure verse of a minor prophet.” —Alan Cole

I need to remind myself of that when I get frustrated with a well-meaning preacher’s poor exegesis. (Edit: I thought I’d better come back and explain myself on this one. I don’t think it is saying it is all right to handle the Word of God carelessly or deceitfully because He will bless it anyway, and I definitely wouldn’t share a quote to that effect. And I don’t think it is saying there is no need to exercise discernment: there definitely is such a need, because not everyone who teaches or preaches from the Word does so correctly. Even the devil quotes Scripture. But my husband and I were privileged to be under the ministry of a master teacher and expositor for fourteen years when we were first married, and sometimes I have trouble listening to other preachers who don’t handle the Word in quite the same way. Yet none is perfect, and in what little bit of speaking and writing I’ve done, I know what it is to be almost paralyzed for fear of making a mistake and to depend on God for the right way of handling the Word and trusting Him to overcome any mistakes I make and to keep me from serious ones. If you’ve ever read C. H. Spurgeon’s testimony, he was saved at a meeting where a layman substituted for the preacher who couldn’t get there because of bad weather, and though he was not trained in how to present the passage and may have even rubbed some people the wrong way, he was earnest and did the best he could, and God used His Word given through that man to save one of the greatest preachers we know. So that’s what this quote means to me: it is not a license to be lazy in studying the Word or writing or speaking from it, but as a listener, I need to remember it is God’s Word and Spirit which convicts and enlightens, and I need to be careful in my judgment of those handling it.)