“Sooner or later he [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish …

“He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand …

“Our cause [Satan] is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy’s [God’s] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

– Uncle Screwtape (The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis)

“Nazi death camp survivor Viktor E. Frankl (1905-1997) wrote, 

‘Happiness [is] the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.’

“This explains why so many of us aren’t happy – we’re our own biggest cause, the most important people in our lives. And we’re way too small and powerless to create or sustain our own happiness.”

– Randy Alcorn (Happiness – Page 172)

“Prayer is never just asking, nor is it merely a matter of asking for what I want. God is not a cosmic butler or fix-it man, and the aim of the universe is not to fulfill my desires and needs.

“On the other hand, I am to pray for what concerns me, and many people have found prayer impossible because they thought they should only pray for wonderful but remote needs they actually had little or no interest in or even knowledge of.”

– Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy – Page 242)

“Today very few people any longer understand what it means to ‘hallow’ something and are apt to associate hallow only with ghosts and Halloween.

“So we would do better to translate the language here as ‘let your name be sanctified.’

“Let it be uniquely respected.

“Really, the idea is that his name should be treasured and loved more than any other, held in an absolutely unique position among humanity.”

– Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy – Page 258)

“The most important commandment of the Judeo-Christian tradition is to treasure God and his realm more than anything else. That is what it means to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

“It means to treasure him, to hold him as dear… then we will also treasure our neighbors rightly, as he treasures them.”

– Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy – Page 203)