Inspirational Quotes by Brother Andrew

“I'm just an ordinary person." That, of course, was exactly the appeal of this story. How, indeed, had God been able to use a fellow, with a bad back, a limited education, no sponsorship and no funds, to do things that well-connected, well-endowed people said were impossible? For us and other ordinary people, that was what made Brother Andrew's adventures so intriguing.”

“The hospital to which I had been assigned was run by Franciscan sisters. I soon fell in love with every one of them. From dawn until midnight they were busy in the wards, cleaning bedpans, swabbing wounds, writing letters for us, laughing, singing. I never once heard them complain. One day I asked the nun who came to bathe me how it was that she and the other sisters were always so cheerful. 'Why, Andrew, you ought to know the answer to that - a good Dutch boy like you. It's the love of Christ.' When she said it, her eyes sparkled, and I knew without question that for her this was the whole answer: she could have talked all afternoon and said no more.”

“One reason Muslims are so angry at the West is because seven-eighths of the Muslim world was occupied and ruled by “Christian” nations until the end of World War II. I”

“Karl Marx had said, “Give me twenty-six lead soldiers and I will conquer the world,”

“At the end of my little talk the pastor said the most interesting thing of all. “We want to thank you,” he said, “for being here. Even if you had not said a word, just seeing you would have meant so much. We feel at times as if we are all alone in our struggle.” That night, lying on my cot in the mathematics classroom, I got to thinking about how different these two churches had been. One, apparently, was following the route of cooperation with the government: It attracted larger crowds, it was acceptable to young people. The other, I felt, was walking a lonelier path.”

“I became aware of the slow wearing-down process the government was exerting on Christians. The effort seemed to be centered on the children. Leave the old folks alone, but wean the young people away from the Church. One of the first churches Nikola and I visited was a Roman Catholic one in a small village not far from Zagreb. I noticed that there was not a single person under twenty in the entire congregation, and I asked Nikola about it. In answer he introduced me to a peasant woman who had a ten-year-old son. “Tell Brother Andrew why Josif is not here,” said Nikola. “Why is my Josif not with me?” she asked. Her voice was bitter. “Because I am a peasant woman with no education. The teacher tells my son there is no God. The government tells my son there is no God. They say to my Josif, ‘Maybe your Mama tells you differently, but we know better, don’t we? You must remember that Mama has no education. We will humor her.’ So? My Josif is not with me. I am being humored.” A”

“What was it I was hanging on to? What was it that was hanging on to me? What was standing between me and my freedom? The rest of the house was asleep. I lay on my back with my hands under my head staring at the darkened ceiling and all at once, very quietly, I let go of my ego. With a new note in the wind yelling at me not to be a fool, I turned myself over to God - lock, stock, and adventure. There wasn't much faith in my prayer. I just said, 'Lord, if You will show me the way, I will follow You. Amen.' It was as simple as that.”

“a missionary church is an alive church.”

“Here they came now, the young Socialists, marching down the avenue. Not for a moment did I believe they were there under coercion. They marched because they believed. They marched eight abreast: healthy, vital, clean-cut. They marched singing, and their voices were like shouts. On and on they came for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, rank after rank of young men and young women. . . . The effect was overwhelming. These were the evangelists of the twentieth century. These were the people who went about shouting their good news. And part of the news was that the old shackles and superstitions of religion, the old inhibiting ideas about God, no longer held. Man was his own master: The future was his to take. What”

“One of the students was a doctor, a German woman, and I used to watch her scouring garbage pails as though she were preparing a room for surgery.”

“But I knew that we had really met, she the Catholic from Eastern Europe, I the Protestant from the West. There on the crowded tramway platform we had met as Christians.”

“...I could hardly wait to tell Corrie what God had done with the thimbleful of willingness we had offered Him.”

“As I did, there, in perfect condition, to be admired by five sets of wondering eyes, was an enormous, glistening, moist, chocolate cake.”

“Technology, Andrew says, makes us far too accessible to the demands and pressures of the moment. ‘Our first priority should be listening in patience and silence for the voice of God.”

“...once again I saw that incredulous question, that dawning hope: We are not alone, then? We have brothers in other places? We have friends we never knew?”

“Uncle Hoppy only laughed. “Just you wait,” he said. “Before we get home we will meet the man who was supposed to be in that chair. And when we do, his heart will be prepared. Time and place are our own limitations, Andy; we mustn’t impose them upon God.” And”

“She began by reminding me of the scriptural injunction that the ox grinding the corn must not be kept from enjoying the grain. Did I think God felt less about His human workers? Hadn't I better examine myself to be sure I was not nursing a Sacrificial Spirit? Wasn't I claiming to depend upon God, but living as if my needs would be met by my own scrimping?”

“At Seabury House, headquarters of the Episcopal church, David was asked the touchiest question of all--the one that in the past had led to more ill-will toward the Pentecostals than any other. He'd been talking to a group of clergymen for thirty minutes or so about the Pentecostal experience when one of the priests stood up suddenly and said with some asperity, "Mr. du Plessis, are you telling us that you Pentecostals have the truth, and we other churches do not?" David admits he prayed fast. "No," he said. "That is not what I mean." He cast about for a way to express the difference Pentecostals feel exists between their church and others--a feeling so often misunderstood--and suddenly he found himself thinking about an appliance he and his wife had bought when they moved to their Dallas home. "We both have the truth," he said. "You know, when my wife and I moved to America, we bought a marvelous device called a Deepfreeze, and there we keep some rather fine Texas beef. "Now, my wife can take one of those steaks out and lay it, frozen solid, on the table. It's steak all right, no question of that. You and I can sit around and analyze it: we can discuss its lineage, its age, what part of the steer it comes from. We can weigh it and list its nutritive values. "But if my wife puts that steak on the fire, something different begins to happen. My little boy smells it from way out in the yard and comes shouting: 'Gee, Mom, that smells good! I want some!' "Gentlemen," said David, "that is the difference between our ways of handling the same truth. You have yours on ice; we have ours on fire.”

“With no change in the tone of her voice, Lydia began to pray in tongues. And at that instant I felt--actually felt--a wave of warmth pass from her hands into my head and then swiftly down through my chest and arms. The sensation was of heat, but without the effect of heat: I didn't feel flushed or hot. It was like coming close to some immense source of heat, a blast furnace or a sun, that had no burning quality whatever.”

“One of the linguists reported that although he did not identify words, he felt that one prayer had been structured in much the same way a modern poem is structured. "Modern poetry depends upon sound as much as upon verbal meaning to get across its message," he said. "In this one prayer, I felt that although I didn't understand the literal sense of her words, I did catch the emotional content of what she was saying. It was a hymn of love. Beautiful." It was interesting, too, that although no language known to these men was recorded, they had frequently identified language patterns on the tapes. The "shape" of real language, the variety of sound combinations, infrequency of repetition and so forth, is virtually impossible, so they said, to reproduce by deliberate effort. Remembering Dina Donohue's parody of tongues-speaking, I had slipped onto the tapes two instances of pure made-up gibberish, one by our son, Scott, and one by Tib. They had tried to sound as much as possible like the tongues on the rest of the tape, but the linguists spotted the deception immediately. "That's not language," one man said. "That's just noise.”