You and I, the people of God, have permission to come before the throne of Heaven at any time we will, and we are encouraged to come there with great boldness.
Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.
I remember Ella Fitzgerald sort of coming into my life like a bolt of lightning - like, what is that? It was one of the purest examples of God in art that I'd ever seen.
Do you see how the god always hurls his bolts at the greatest houses and the tallest trees. For he is wont to thwart whatever is greater than the rest.
America is beyond power; it acts as in a dream, as a face of God. Wherever America is, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions. Beneath her patient bombers, paradise is possible.
The Israelites' slavery in Egypt is the equivalent of our slavery to sin. God sent Moses to deliver them from bondage, and He sent Jesus Christ to set us free.
The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine.
But inside, I'm going, 'Oh my God, is my zipper up? Do I have a booger in my nose?' That's my inner monologue.
If you watch home videos, at 4 years old, I was doing nothing but being the entertainer. Singing 'Boot Scootin' Boogie' in the living room. Then, I guess, just by the grace of God I started writing songs, and somebody happened to like them.
You booked him, and you didn't worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.
You can only learn so much from books. You can only learn so much from education. Ultimately, it is the wisdom of God that will carry you through in the toughest situations of life.
We think when God speaks to us, there's going to be a boom out of Heaven or we're going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God's talking to us all the time. He's talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it's the Holy Spirit talking to us.
In my heart, I've always wanted to do right, but I never knew what right was... but it's weird: God reached down, He said, 'Boom! This is what you are!' and I was like, 'Whoa!'
Prayer in the hour of need is a great boon. From simple trials to our Gethsemanes, prayer - persistent prayer - can put us in touch with God, our greatest source of comfort and counsel.
Salman Khan gave me a break, and that proved to be a boon. By the grace of God, my first song was a blockbuster.
Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.
It's an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God when they're not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.
Thank God we're going to try to continue and effectively defend our frontiers with the Border Patrol, with the Customs Department, with the Coast Guard, with the Armed Forces.
I'm a God-fearing man, go to church every Sunday, and have since I was a boy. But if I ever found out that God cared one way or another about a borderline illegal fist-fight on Saturday night, I would be so greatly disappointed that it would make rethink my entire belief system.
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
