This understanding of the gospel as power may be seen in [Romans] 11:28; 15:16, 19, in proclamation which brings about the inauguration of the eschatological order of salvation of the kaine diatheke [i.e., new covenant] (2 Cor 3:6ff.). In this covenant God himself intervenes in the world with power as Lord, Creator, and Judge. He does so by establishing the present Christian message without, however, merging into it. The Christ event both precedes the message and continues itself in the message, so that it is not the content of an idea or of one doctrine among others.
-- Ernst Kasemann, Commentary on Romans

[Editor's Note: I have omitted the references Kasemann makes to external literature and have added the bold font to accent my reason for posting this excerpt.]

"God's own," "set apart for God" - that is the basic meaning of the word "saint" in the Bible. A man becomes a saint not when he has attained moral perfection but when God's call has consecrated him for God's uses; moral excellence is the result of sainthood, not the condition for it.
-- Martin H. Franzmann, Romans: A Commentary

Jeremiah 7[:22*, 23*], “For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God. . . .’ ” How may we suppose that the Israelites received this sermon, which seems to conflict openly with Moses? Clearly God had given the Fathers commands about burnt offerings and sacrificial victims. But Jeremiah condemns an opinion about sacrifices that God had not delivered, namely, that these acts of worship pleased God ex opere operato. However, concerning faith he adds that God had commanded: “Obey my voice,” that is, “believe that I am your God and that I want to be recognized when I show mercy and help you, for I do not need your sacrifices. Believe that I want to be God, the one who justifies and saves, not because of works but because of my Word and promise. Truly and from the heart seek and expect help from me.”
-- Apology of the Augsburg Confession, XXIV, para 28 from Robert Kolb et al., The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 263.

A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because woulds and pains become openings and occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength.
-- Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

The liturgical assembly is in the world, yet not of the world. Here heaven intersects with earth. And so, like Moses before us, we remove our shoes in the presence of God. We may speak and act a bit differently in the liturgy than we do ordinarily, but then we are in extraordinary circumstances. For the ground upon which we stand is holy ground. Whenever and wherever we step into the liturgy, we step on holy ground; we step into the presence of God.
The liturgy strikes some people as cold and impersonal, but that's because it is an extraordinary situation. Ritual for its own sake is idolatry, but even secular society has certain revered rituals. The formal changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery, for example, reinforces the solemn honor a grateful nation accords its dead heroes. No one calls the soldiers of the honor guard hypocrites because they act differently at those tombs than they would, say, at the beach or the movies. Solemn assembly calls for solemn actions.
-- Harold L. Senkbeil in Dying to Live: The Power of Forgiveness

[Jesus] is indeed a baby, but He is also the Word, who is not silent even in His infancy, but says, as our Emmanuel, "God with us," "Comfort, comfort my people" (Isaiah 40:1).
-- Bernard of Clairvaux as quoted in the entry for 23 August in Treasury of Daily Prayer, 650

In many and various ways, God spoke to His people of old by the prophets. But now in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. Hebrews 1:1-2a

But our opponents, clever men that they are, pick out garbled sentences to put something over on the inexperienced. Then they add something from their own opinions. It is necessary to consider passages in their context, because according to the common rule it is improper in an argument to judge or reply to a single passage without taking the whole law into account. When passages are considered in their own context, they often yield their own interpretation.
-- Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Quatro Edition, Article IV, Paragraph 280 translated in The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. ( ed. Theodore G. Tappert;Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 149.

When God encourages us with warnings and exhortations at the same time He stirs up our hearts so that the exhortations are not in vain and do not pass away without effect. Therefore we cannot gather from precepts and exhortations the power a man has of himself or the capacity of his free will, for the attention which the apostle here requires [Hebrews 12:15] is the gift of God.
-- John Calvin, Calvin's New Testament Commentaries: Hebrews and I & II Peter, translated by William B. Johnston, page 196

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were able to overcome our inbred sinfulness and reflect the love of Christ in everything you thought, said and did? You would be stricken, smitten and afflicted, scorned and rejected by men. Sadly, you are not able; gladly, Jesus is. (Hebrews 12:3-4)

"My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words." 1 Cor ii. 1-5.
Paul was a scholar and an orator of the first rank; he is not speaking out of abject humility; but saying that he would veil the power of God if, when he preached the gospel, he impressed people with his "excellency of speech." Belief in Jesus is a miracle produced only by the efficacy of Redemption, not by impressiveness of speech, not by wooing and winning, but by the sheer unaided power of God. The creative power of the Redemption comes through the preaching of the Gospel, but never because of the personality of the preacher. The real fasting of the preacher is not from food, but rather from eloquence, from here are the impressiveness and exquisite diction, from everything that might hinder the gospel of God being presented. The preacher is the representative of God - "as though God did beseech you by us." He is there to present the Gospel of God. If it is only because of my preaching that people desire to be better, they will never get anywhere near Jesus Christ. Anything that flatters me in my preaching of the Gospel will end in making me a traitor to Jesus; I prevent the creative power of his redemption from doing its work.
"I, if I be lifted up ..., will draw all men unto Me."
-- Oswald Chambers, "The Miracle of Belief," My Utmost for His Highest

I suggest that our lay peoples' lives are the best bridge from the church to America's unchurched, individualized spirituality.  Laypeople can tell the story and their stories with a credibility pastors and pamphlets don't have.
-- Dale Meyer, "Why Go to Church?", Concordia Journal, Spring 2010, 92.

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

--Attributed to Martin Luther

The Word or absolution, I say, is what you should concentrate on, magnifying and cherishing it as a great and wonderful treasure to be accepted with all praise and gratitude.

If all this were clearly laid out, and along with that if the needs that ought to move and induce us to confession were clearly indicated, there would be no need of coercion or force. Their own consciences would persuade Christians and make them so anxious that they would rejoice and act like poor, miserable beggars who hear that a rich gift of money or clothes is being given out at a certain place; they would hardly need a bailiff to drive and beat them but would run there as fast as they could so as not to miss the gift.

Suppose, now, that the invitation were changed into a command that all beggars should run to the place, with no reason being given and no mention made of what they were to seek or receive there. How else would beggars go but with resentment, not expecting to receive anything but just letting everyone see how poor and miserable they are? Not much joy or comfort would come from this, but only a greater hostility to the command.

-- Martin Luther, "A Brief Exhortation to Confession" from The Large Catechism in Robert Kolb, ed., The Book of Concord, 476.

The painful effort which prayer involves is no proof that we are doing something we were not created to do.

If we were perfected, prayer would not be a duty, it would be a delight. Some day, please God, it will be. The same is true of many other behaviors which now appear as duties. If I loved my neighbor as myself, most of the actions which are now my moral duty would flow out of me as spontaneously as a song from a lark or a fragrance from a flower. Why is this not so yet? Well, we know, don't we? Aristotle has taught us that delight is the "bloom" of an unimpeded activity. But the very activities for which we were created are, while we live on earth, variously impeded: by evil in ourselves or in others. Not to practice them is to abandon our humanity. To practice them spontaneously and delightfully is not yet possible. This situation creates the category of duty, the whole specifically moral realm.

It exists to be transcended. Here is the paradox of Christianity As practical imperatives for here and now the two great commandments have to be translated "Behave as if you loved God and man." For no man can love because he is told to. Yet obedience on this practical level is not really obedience at all. And if a man really loved God and man, once again this would hardly be obedience; for if he did, he would be unable to help it. Thus the command really says to us, "Ye must be born again."

-- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

St. Ignatius of Loyola (I think it was) advised his pupils to begin their meditations with what he called a compositio loci. [...] If I started with a compositio loci I should never reach the meditation. The picture would go on elaborating itself indefinitely and becoming every moment of less spiritual relevance.

There is indeed one mental image which does not lure me away into trivial elaborations. I mean the Crucifixion itself; not seen in terms of all the pictures and crucifixes, but as we must suppose it to have been in its raw, historical reality. But even this is of less spiritual value than one might expect. Compunction, compassion, gratitude - all the fruitful emotions - are strangled. Sheer physical horror leaves no room for these. Nightmare. Even so, the image ought to be periodically faced. But no one could live with it. It did not become a frequent motive of Christian art until the generations which had seen real crucifixions were all dead.
--C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

There is no subject in the world (always excepting sport) on which I have less to say than liturgiology. And the almost nothingwhich I have to say may as well be disposed of in this letter.
I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given andmake the best of it. And I think we should find this a greatdeal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same.
To judge from their practice,very few Anglican clergymen take this view. it looks as if they believed people can be lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications, and complications of the service. And itis probably true that a new keen vicar will usually be able toform within his parish a minority who are in favour of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain - many give up churchgoing altogether - merely endure.
Is this simply because the majority are hide-bound? I think not. They have a good reason for their conservatism. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don't go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enales us to do these things best - if you like, it "works" best - when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. God reading becomes possible when you ened not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would be on God.
But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. The important question about the Grail was "for what does it serve?" "'Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god."
--C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

The business of the modern historian is to survey with comprehensive eye, to digest, to reduce to proper dimensions, and with a skillful hand to mold his materials into the form of pleasing yet faithful narration; that of the primitive historian was rather to transcribe what was most important from the existing documents of the day. [...] He [Eusebius] was at least faithful to his purpose by culling, [...], the appropriate extracts from ancient writers.
-- C. F. Cruse in his 1850 "Preface by the Translator" in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History reprinted in 1998 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.

[NOTE: It is extremely important that period writings are examined in the context of their period and also of their author as a man or woman from that same period. To impose modern notions of the discipline of scientific history (as Cruse calls it) on ancient historians is to decide a priori to misunderstand the writing.]

Let it be noted, too, that if the object of justifying faith is the entire Scriptures, there can be no assurance of the forgiveness of sins. Again and again doubt will rise in one’s mind, and indeed in the mind of the most learned theologian, as to whether his understanding of all Scripture, including the historical portions of it, is the correct one. The inevitable product of Bellarmine’s contention, as indeed of the whole Roman Catholic system, is the monstrum incertitudinis [monstrous uncertainty]. A person may have the fides iustificans [faith that justifies] and salvans [saves] though he is ignorant of certain parts of Scripture and even in weakness errs in certain doctrines of Scripture. The Bible teaches this explicitly (Rom. 14:1 ff.). Orthodoxy and true faith are not identical. Genuine orthodoxy is in every case the result of saving faith (for only in those hearts which accept the Gospel the Holy Ghost is active), but there are cases where saving faith has not as yet produced the acceptance of all doctrines of Scripture. This truth has been unhesitatingly professed by Luther, the Lutheran Confessions, and the Lutheran dogmaticians, though, at the same time, they unhesitatingly have refused to concede to any man the right to surrender any portion of the Christian doctrine.
-- Pieper, Francis. Christian Dogmatics, Vol. II. Saint Louis (Concordia Publishing House): 1953. (424-425)

Luther: "We have the promise and hope of heaven, and the recompense and reward of our present misery will be so great that we shall rebuke ourselves severely for ever having dropped one tear or sigh on account of this contempt and ingratitude of the world. Why, we shall say, did we not suffer even worse things? I never would have believed that there could be such surpassing glory in eternal life; else I should not have so dreaded to suffer even much worse things." (St. L. II: 1237; Erl., Exeg. Opp. Lat. 9, 235.)
-- Pieper, Francis. Christian Dogmatics, Vol. III. Saint Louis (Concordia Publishing House): 1953.

Many are led either by pride, dislike, or rivalry to the conviction that they can profit enough from private reading and meditation; hence they despise public assemblies and deem preaching superfluous. But, since they do their utmost to sever or break the sacred bond of unity, no one escapes the just penalty of this unholy separation without bewitching himself with pestilent errors and foulest delusions.
-- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.i.5 quotes in Hugh T. Kerr, ed., Calvin's Institutes: A New Compend, 132.

Discussing the mystery of the Incarnation, Luthardt voices the correct principle (which, however, he does not consistently follow): “The reality is not based on our thinking and our ability to comprehend it, but we must adjust our thinking to the facts. Our conceptions do not determine the facts, as the old sophists taught, but the facts determine our conceptions,” (Christl. Glaubenslehre, 1898, p. 350 f.) The “old sophists” have, sad to say, many followers. All deviations from the Christian doctrine spring from the propensity of men to make their own thoughts the measure of things and accordingly “correct” the facts of God’s Word. [...] Since man after the Fall no longer accepts God as the Center of his life and thinking, he has in foolish self-conceit made himself the center and measure of things. That is the bane of our day, particularly of our “scientific theology.”
-- Pieper, F. (1999, c1950, c1951, c1953). Christian Dogmatics (electronic ed.). St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

We are not to conceive the Christian faith as a bare knowledge of God which rattles around the brain and affects the heart not at all... But it is a form and solid confidence of the heart by which we securely repose in God's mercy promised us through the Gospel.
-- John Calvin, 1538 Catechism, Art. 14 quoted by I. John Hesselink's "Calvin's Theology" in McKim, Donald K., Ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Cambridge (Cambridge Univ. Press): 2004, 86.