Quotes of the Day for April 16, 2026 – Thoughts on faith, faithfulness, success, and failure
- 14 hours ago
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“Whatever circumstances I am in, I can serve God. We may think that serving God means successfully accomplishing great and miraculous things. But St Paul saw himself serving God even when he languished in a prison cell. Even through the many disasters he endured (2 Corinthians 11:23-28), he believed he was there to do God’s will. The spiritual life is not always about success as the world measures it. Sometimes it is about remaining faithful no matter what.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“We most often experience cause and effect as a sense of control. Our failures haunt us while we obsess about what might have been. Some seek to partner with God, looking for ways of praying and living that rig the game in their favor. Much of this is utterly contrary to the purposes of God in our life. We seek for success and accomplishment. We look for rewards and things we perceive to be desirable and good. Surely no one prays and asks for difficult things. And yet the difficult things are precisely the place where the refining fire of God’s grace burns brightest and best. No one is saved by success and prosperity.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“Those who teach that faithfulness to Christ is a means to wealth, power, glory, personal satisfaction, and the success of whatever partisan factions they happen to like reveal only their lack of faith by doing so. They attempt to use the Lord to serve their distorted desires and earthly agendas every bit as much as the disciples did. Those who do so will become as spiritually weak as the disciples when they were powerless to heal the epileptic boy. Such corruption of the faith is more dangerous than its outright rejection, for it is entirely possible to think that we serving the Lord when we are actually serving only ourselves…Though no one forces us to choose today between idolatry and faithfulness, we often freely worship idols when we ground the meaning and purpose of our lives in some vision of success in the world, regardless of how noble it may seem….At the very least, it behooves those who are seeking worldly success to do so in a Godly, righteous manner.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters, Fr. George Morelli)
“The new life in Christ, born through Baptism and sealed with the Holy Spirit in Chrismation, is a serious calling. Today’s culture doesn’t easily make room for corporate worship, silence, prayer, or communion with God. In a world driven by personal success, fame, power, and wealth, the call to holy living feels out of place. Yet we know that worship and holy living must be our priorities. Through them, we honor God. We become what He created us to be. We draw nearer to His likeness, and we grow through the practice of edification.” (Reverend Christopher T. Metropulos, D. Min)
“We need to be careful how we judge success in our lives and not see it strictly through worldly lenses. If we are experiencing prosperity, we can slip into thinking ourselves successful but we need to take inventory of our hearts and make sure we are still living according to how Christ calls us to live. If we are experiencing failure, we need to remember that we don’t always see the whole picture, or the big picture, and continue to be faithful to discern how God may be working within what we think is our failure.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
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