12/27/2013 – On Jesus the Light of the World
“The Bible says that Jesus is ‘the’ light of the world. If you know you are in his love, and that nothing can snatch you out of his hand, and that he is taking you to God’s house and God’s future–then he can be a light for you in dark places when all other lights go out.” – Timothy Keller
12/17/2013 – On Prayer
“To pray is to change. This is a great grace. How good of God to provide a path whereby our lives can be taken over by love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.” – Richard Foster (“Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home,” p.6)
12/16/2013 – On the Holy Spirit
“We’re meant to live this way, full of the Spirit, filled daily like jars with the oil of joy.” – Mike Mason (“Champaigne for the Soul”, p. 67.)
10/29/2013 – On Jesus and Prayer
“If the key is prayer, the door is Jesus Christ. How good of God to provide us a way into his heart. He knows that we are stiff-necked and hard-hearted, so he has provided a means of entrance. Jesus, the Christ, lived a perfect life, died in our place, and rose victorious over all the dark powers so that we might live through Him. This is wonderfully good news. No longer do we have to stand outside, barred from nearness to God by our rebellion. We may now enter through the door of God’s grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.” – Richard Foster (“Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home”, pp. 2-3.)
8/21/2013 – On Prayer
“We tell ourselves, ‘Strong Christians pray a lot. If I were a strong Christian, I’d pray more.’ Strong Christians do pray more, but they pray more because they realize how weak they are. They don’t try to hide it from themselves. Weakness is the channel that allows them to access grace.” – Paul E. Miller
8/20/2013 – On Pain
“Yes, I pray that my pain might be removed, that it might cease; but more so, I pray for the strength to bear it, the grace to benefit from it, and the devotion to offer it up to God as a sacrifice of praise.” – Joni Eareckson Tada
8/15/2013 – On Comfort
“If you aspire to be a person of consolation,if you want to share the priestly gift of sympathy, if you desire to go beyond giving commonplace comfort to a heart that is tempted, and if you long to go through the daily exchanges of life with the kind of tact that never inflicts pain, then you must be prepared to pay the price for a costly education- for like Christ, you must suffer.” – Frederick William Robertson
6/18/13 – On Self Control
“I do not know of anyone who died as a believer exercising self-control who wished he had been an atheist or had lived an indulgent life, but I have known many in the reverse situation.” – Ravi Zacharias
5/30/2013 – On Tolerance
“Forgiveness is held as a virtue by many in our world… We know we don’t do it, by and large, but we think we should. The result of this, unfortunately, is that we have developed a corollary that is neither love nor forgiveness–namely, tolerance.” – N. T. Wright
5/25/2013 – On Virtue
The Christianly virtuous person is not thinking about his or her own moral performance. He or she is thinking of Jesus Christ, and of how best to love the person next door. – N. T. Wright
5/16/2013 – On Love
“…love is a virtue. It is a language to be learned, a musical instrument to be practiced, a mountain to be climbed via some steep and tricky cliff paths but with the most amazing view from the top.” – N. T. Wright
5/10/2013 – On Community
“I’ve watched so many people totally miss God’s gift of community in the midst of a Plan B situation because they assumed God wasn’t with them. They assumed nothing good could come out of their pain. They failed to appreciate or even recognize the “me too” people who appeared in their lives, offering comfort and strength in the midst of darkness.” – Pete Wilson (Plan B, p. 125.)
5/8/2013 – On Circumstances
“Every day we have this choice to make: Am I going to define God by interpreting my circumstances or am I going to simply trust God is who He says He is?” – Andy Stanley
4/17/2013 – On Discipleship
…until we pour into others’ lives we’re going to hit a ceiling in our own life spiritually. As long as it’s just about us, then our sanctification will not happen as effectively as it would if we are working to lead others to faith in Christ. – David Platt (“Radical Calling,” Leadership Magazine, Winter 2013, p. 27.)
3/12/2013 – On Salvation
The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. – John Stott
2/19/2013 – On Patience
1/25/2013 – On Remembering
Go back… a little way to the choice mercies of yesterday, and though all my be dark now, light up the camps of the past; they shall glitter through the darkness, and thou shalt trust in the Lord till the day break and the shadows flee away. – Charles Spurgeon
2/15/2012 – On Purpose
Follow the grain of your own wood. – Howard Thurman
2/1/2012 – On Prayer
“Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.” – Oswald Chambers
1/31/2012 – On Receiving Praise
“You just collect roses, the praise and compliments, during the day; you hold them, put them together in a bouquet, then at the end of the day, you get on your knees and say, ‘Here, Father, these were yours all along. I just held them for you.'” – Corrie Ten Boom
1/30/2012 -On Power
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but it you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
1/23/2012 – On Persecution
Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble. – G. K. Chesterton
12/31/2011 – On Opportunities
One day is worth a thousand tomorrows. – Benjamin Franklin
12/22/2011 – On Christmas
The real reason Christmas should be a festive holiday is because in the birth of Jesus, the Lord God came into our midst—and didn’t kill us! If we are not absolutely overwhelmed by the Christmas story, we are not reading carefully enough. – M. Craig Barnes (Sacred Thirst, p. 197.)
12/21/2011 – On Christmas
Jesus not only died among criminals but was numbered as one of them, and therein lies the heart of the gospel. … At his birth He was surrounded by beasts, and now, in His death, with criminals. Let no one say that God has stayed aloof from the brokenness of our fallen world. – Erwin W. Lutzer (Cries From the Cross, p. 54.)
12/20/2011 – On Christmas
“Blessed of God? Highly favored? Great things? Not if ‘blessed’ means knowing a life of ease and prosperity. Not if ‘great things’ have to do with earthly power and prestige and success. How then, was Mary blessed? Ah, she knew the glory of living for divine purpose.” – Stanley C. Baldwin(When Death Means Life, p. 32,33.) [This quote was the origin of the song I wrote, “O Mary.”]
12/19/2011 – On Christmas
“If Jesus were born one thousand times in Bethlehem and not in me, then I would still be lost.” – Corrie Ten Boom
12/16/2011 – On Parenting
“A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.” – Dave Barry
12/15/2011 – On Originality
No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. – C. S. Lewis (From “Membership” in The Weight of Glory, p. 119.)
12/14/2011 – On Opportunity
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is “look under foot.” You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.—John Burroughs
12/13/2011 – On Obedience
“But the word which we fail to do is no rock to build a house on. … That is why as soon as the hurricane begins we lose the word, and find that we have never really believed it. The word we had was not Christ’s, but a word we had wrested from him and made our own by reflecting on it instead of doing it. So our house crashes in ruins, because it is not founded on the word of Jesus Christ.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Disciplines for the Inner Life, p.127.)
12/12/2011 – On Negativity
If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet. – Isaac Singer
12/9/2011 – On Motivation
“The greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason” – T.S. Eliot
12/5/2011 – On Mothers
The relationship between a teen and his or her mother is the most important relationship of all. Teens who said they were not emotionally close to their mothers were three times more likely than other teens to describe themselves as “lonely.” Teens close to their mothers exhibit longer-lasting and closer friendships than those not close to their mothers. – Larry Keefauver (Lord, I Wish My Teenager Would Talk With Me, p. 137.)
12/4/2011 – On Morality
The virtue of man ought to be measured, not by his
extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct." ~Blaise Pascal
11/30/2011 – On Mistakes
When Jacques Plante, the great National Hockey League goalie, retired, someone asked him how he liked being a goalie. He quipped, “How would you like a job where if you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and eighteen thousand people boo?” – Ben Patterson (He Has Made Me Glad, p. 115.)
11/29/2011 – On the Mind
“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
11/28/2011 – On Missions
“Let’s face it… 99% of us (maybe more) are scared silly of the word missions. We really like the idea of someone ‘forsaking all for Christ and the Gospel’… as long as that someone is someone else.” – Sid McCollum (Quoted in In The Gap, p. 53.)
11/24/2011 – On Gratitude
“Anyone too busy to say thank you will get fewer and fewer chances to say it.” – Harvey Mackay
11/23/2011 – On Mercy
“Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy.” – Detrick Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship, p.41)
11/18/2011 – On Mentoring
If the mantra regarding the value of real estate is “location, location, location,” then the core ingredient in making disciples is “relationship, relationship, relationship.” – Greg Ogden (Transforming Discipleship, p. 135.)
11/17/2011 – On Meekness
“They show by every word and gesture that they do not belong to this earth. Leave heaven to them, says the world in its pity, that is where they belong. But Jesus says: ‘They shall inherit the earth.” – Detrick Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship, p. 123.)
11/16/2011 – On Mediocrity
“The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore – on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe.” –
Dorothy Sayers (quoted in Living in the Light of Eternity, p.157.)
11/15/2011 – On Marriage
“The problem with most troubled marriages is that both partners are trying to accomplish far too many things in the world, and in the process, like Martha in Luke 10:42, they neglect the ‘one thing needful’. Next to the love of God, the ‘one thing’ that is by far the most important in the life of all married people is their marriage, their loving devotion to their partner. Nothing on earth must take
precedence over that, not children, jobs, other friendships, nor even ‘Christian work’. – Mike Mason (The Mystery of Marriage, p.
99.)
11/14/2011 – On Love
“I will love Him in the hungry person. Not only for a piece of bread, but hungry for understanding love. I will love Him in the naked person who is not only naked for a piece of cloth, but naked for that human dignity and respect that has been taken away. I will love him in the homeless person who
longs not just for a home of bricks, but for a home of understanding love.” – Mother Teresa (Introduction to Evangelism, p.120.)
11/10/2011 – On Listening to God
Perhaps we do not hear the voice because we do not expect to hear it. Then again, perhaps we do not expect it because we know that we fully intend to run our lives on our own and have never seriously considered anything else. The voice of God would therefore be an unwelcome intrusion into our plans. – Dallas Willard
11/9/2011 – On Listening
“I was sitting, torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly, he said things I knew were true. I was unmoved except to wish he’d go away. He finally did. Another came and sat beside me. He just sat beside me for an hour and more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go.”
– Joseph Bayly (Written after the death of 3 of his sons, quoted in Stories from the Heart, p.213.)
11/8/2011 – On Limits
A refusal to work within limits is a stubborn, rebellious refusal to receive life as a gift. … Limits don’t limit us from being fully human. They only limit us from being God. A violinist does not complain that her violin has only four strings. A poet doesn’t rail against the limit of fourteen lines in the sonnet he is writing. Every so-called limit is access to gift, a gift of love, a gift of beauty, all gifts on offer to be received by open hands. – Eugene Peterson (Tell it Slant, p. 184.)
11/3/2011 – On Legalism
Legalism has no pity on people. Legalism makes my opinion your burden, makes my opinion your boundary, makes my opinion your obligation. Nothing will keep a Christian more immature than trying to keep a long list of rules.” (Up Words, May 1993)
11/1/2011 – On Learning
“If I have learned anything, I owe it neither to precepts nor to books, but to a few opportune misfortunes. Perhaps the school of misfortune is the very best.” – Louise Honorine de Choiseul (1734-1801)
10/31/2011 – On Leadership
There’s a fine line between delegating authority and turning the asylum over to the inmates. – Bill Parcels (quoted in The Ministry Playbook, p. 141.)
10/28/2011 – On Justice
A Christian can fight what is wrong in the world with compassion and know that as he hates these things, God hates them too. God hates them to the high price of the death of Christ. – Francis A. Schaffer (The God Who is There, p. 117.)
10/27/2011 – On Judgment
[A] boy… wired his mother that he had flunked all his exams and ‘please prepare Father.’ He got a wire right back, “Father is prepared. Prepare yourself.” – George B. Gilbert (Forty Years a Country Preacher, p. 3.)
10/26/2011 – On Joy
“You and I were created for joy, and if we miss it, we miss the reason for our existence… if our joy is honest joy, it must somehow be congruous with human tragedy. This is the test of joy’s intregrity: is it compatible with pain?… Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy.” – Lewis Smedes
10/25/2011 – On Jesus
To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have declawed the lion of Judah and made Him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies.” – Dorothy Sayers
10/24/2011 – On Integrity
“Integrity is keeping my commitments even if the circumstances when I made those commitments have changed.” – David Jeremiah
10/22/2011 – On Influence
Every man is a missionary. … He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing, spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world. But a blank he cannot be. – Thomas Chalmers, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland during the 1800s (Quoted in Outreach Magazine, January/February 2007, p. 19.)
10/21/2011 – On Initiative
If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one. – Dolly Parton
10/20/2011 – On Idolatry
“Follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money and your allegiance. At the end of that trail, you’ll find a throne; and whatever, or whomever, is on that throne is what’s of highest value to you. On that throne is what you worship.” – Louie Giglio, The Air I Breathe
10/19/2011 – On Hypocrisy
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
10/18/2011 – On Humility
"Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less." - Ken Blanchard
10/17/2011 – On Hope
If it were not for hopes, the heart would break. – Thomas Fuller (quoted in Overcoming Overload by Steve and Mary Farrar, p. 29.)
10/13/2011 – On the Holy Spirit
The Spirit does not lend Himself to such tangible human categories, descriptions or definitions. Our vocabulary, our language, even our theology clouds the Spirit and conceals more than reveals. Light cannot be put into a bushel or the ocean into a bucket. – Edward J. Farrell (Surprised
by the Spirit, quoted in Disciplines for the Inner Man, p. 34, Bob Benson, editor.)
10/12/2011 – On Holiness
He may fear God’s power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even imagine. – A. W. Tozer
10/11/2011 – On Growth
I saw a sign on a strip of highway once that I would like to have copied on my gravestone. It said, “End of construction. Thank you for your
patience.” —Ruth Bell Graham, poet, writer, and wife of evangelist Billy Graham (1920–2007)
10/6/2011 – On Gratitude
Here ends another day during which I have had eyes, ears, hands, and the great world around me, and tomorrow begins another. Why am I allowed two? –
G. K. Chesterton (Quoted by John Ortberg in Love Beyond Reason, p. 106.)
10/4/2011 – On Grace
“… God makes room in His agenda for those hapless failures who are committed to keep on going. This is a God of the second chance! Consequences? Of course. Restoration and hope? Most definetly. No one need run or hide. His grace calls us out into the open, to a
fresh start.” – Gordon MacDonald (Rebuilding Your Broken World, p.51)
10/3/2011 – On Goodness
Small courtesies, small considerations, habitually practiced in our daily lives, give a greater charm to the character than any display of great talents or accomplishments. – M.A. Kelty
10/1/2011 – On Forgiveness
“If I say, ‘Yes, I forgive, but I cannot forget,’ as though the God, who twice a day washes all the sands on all the shores of all the world, could not wash such memories from my mind, then I know nothing of Calvary love.” – Amy Carmichael
9/30/30 – On Fellowship
“He who leaves his father for Jesus’ sake does most assuredly find father and mother, brothers and sisters again, and even lands and houses. Though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do not remain alone. If we take him at his word and dare to become individuals, our reward is the fellowship of the Church. Here is a visible brotherhood to compensate a hundredfold for all we have lost.” – Detrick Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship, p.113)
9/29/2011 – On Fear
I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. – E. StanleyJones
9/28/2011 – On Fathers
[My father] never once told me he loved me, and he never had a loving hand to lay on his children,” Cash noted. “He said once that he didn’t have to tell people he loved them for them to know it, and perhaps that was true. Still, it would have meant an awful lot for me to have heard it, just once, before he died. – Johnny Cash (The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash, p. 11.)
9/27/2011 – On the Faithfulness of God
No one yet has ever set out to test God's promises fairly, thoroughly,and humbly, and had to report that God's promises don't work. - Peter Marshall
9/26/2011 – On Faith
Some people think the prayer of faith is crawling out on a limb and then begging God to keep someone from sawing it off. But that is not real prayer, that is presumption. If God makes it clear that he wants you out on a limb, fine–you will be perfectly safe there. If not, it is presumptuous to crawl out on that limb, expecting God to keep you there. – Ray C. Stedman in Man of Faith
9/24/2011 – On Failure
“Failure is an event, not a person.” – Zig Ziglar (Courtship After Marriage, p. 50.)
9/23/2011 – On Eternity
“He who provides for this life but takes no care for eternity is wise for a moment but a fool forever.” – John Tilotson (Living in the Light of Eternity, p. 147.)
9/22/2011 – On Enemies
The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals.
– Abraham Joshua Heschel (In A Passion for Truth)
9/21/2011 – On Encouragement
“One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement… It is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet.” – William Barclay (Quoted by Charles Swindoll from Strengthening Your Grip, p. 48)
9/20/2011 – On Empathy
[Definition of] Empathy: Your pain in my heart. – Jess Lair.
9/19/2011 – On Emotions
“We have choices when it comes to our emotions: we can master them, or they can master us.” – John Maxwell (from Leadership Wired newsletter. Cited in Preaching Now Newsletter, August 6, 2002.)
9/17/2011 – On Discipleship
“…being a disciple means living a disciplined life, and it is not likely that you will get other disciples, unless you are one first.” – Evelyn Underhill
9/16/2011 – On Disappointment
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
9/15/2011 – On Depression
“Faith is not denying the weather that sweeps over your life. It’s believing that behind the clouds and beyond the storms waits a faithful God.” – Dave Dravecky (When You Can’t Come Back, p. 169)
9/14/2011 – On the Cross
….it is safe to say, [there is] no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion,
ours is not the religion of Jesus. – John R. W. Stott (The Cross of Christ, p. 68.)
9/13/2011 – On Criticism
"He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help." - Abraham Lincoln
9/12/2011 – On Creation
God’s creative genius is endless. He never, fatigued and unable to maintain the rigors of creativity, resorts to mass-producing copies. Each life is a fresh canvas on which he uses lines and colors, shades and lights, textures and proportions that he has never used before. – Eugene Peterson (Run With the Horses, p. 13.)
9/10/2011 – On Courage
Courage is fear that has said its prayers. – Karl Barth
9/9/2011 – On Contentment
“The person with the discontented heart has the attitude that everything he does for God is too much, and everything God does for him is too little.” – Don Kistler
9/8/2011 – On Consequences
The thorns that I have reaped are of the tree I planted. They have torn me and I bleed. I should have known what sort of truth would
spring from such a seed. – Lord Byron
9/7/2011 – On Conflict
It’s safe to say that no Christian can advance the cause of Christ while punching the bride of Christ. – Mark Atteberry (The 10 Dumbest Things
Christians Do, p. 109.)
9/5/2011 (Labor Day)
“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.” – A.W. Tozer
9/1/2011 – On Confidence
Shortly after I became a Christian, someone wrote in the flyleaf of my Bible these words: “When I try, I fail. When I trust, He succeeds.” – Howard Hendricks
8/30/2011 – Brennan Manning on Confession
“One of the most healing words I ever spoke as a confessor was to an old priest with a drinking problem. ‘Just a few years ago,’ I said, ‘I was a
hopeless alcoholic in the gutter in Fort Lauderdale.’ ‘You?’ he cried. ‘O thank God!'” When we bring a smile to the face of someone in pain, we have brought Christ to them.” – Brennan Manning
8/29/2011 – Ravi Zacharias on Compassion
…at the end of your life one of three things will happen to your heart: it will grow hard, it will be broken, or it will be tender. Nobody escapes. Your heart will become coarse and desensitized, be crushed under the weight of disappointment, or be made tender by that which makes the heart of God tender as well. – Ravi Zacharias (The Grand Weaver, pp. 39-40.)
8/27/2011 – On Church
As we come to believe that the Holy Spirit alone can fill our thirsty souls, we are set free from seeking this living water at other wells. The church is one of these “other wells.” It cannot satisfy our thirst, for it is never more than a community of thirsty people. But when we return to this community, no longer expecting it to be more than it is, we are able to receive the gifts it has for us. – M. Craig Barnes (Sacred Thirst, p. 153.)
8/26/2011 – On Character
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, because your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are. – John Wooden, the legendary college basketball coach
8/25/2011 – On Change
God creates out of nothing—wonderful, you say: yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. –
Soren Kierkegaard (The Journals included in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall, p. 10.)
8/24/2011 – On Caring
…most seekers won’t pay attention to our gospel before they have seen our love and care for them as persons. If our hearers do not sense that the motive for our proclaiming the gospel message is love, then all of our efforts will be perceived as “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). – Rebecca Manley Pippert (Out of the Saltshaker, p. 150.)
8/23/2011 – On Busyness
Our two greatest problems are gravity and paper work. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paper work is overwhelming. — Dr. Wernher von Braun (German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer)
8/22/2011 – On Burn Out
Many leaders expend their personal well-being in the pursuit of ministry goals that go far beyond their assigned mission. They attempt to do their part, everybody elses’s part, and God’s part too! Burned out leaders forget how to count blessings—all they can see are the burdens. – Wayne Schmidt (Lead On, p. 160.)
8/20/2011 – On Boredom
If you are living a hum-drum life, and you do nothing to change it, ten years from now you will be a product of ten more years of hum-drumidness. – David Campbell
8/19/2011 – On Bitterness
For the sweetest thing turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. – William Shakespeare (Sonnett #94, Poetry:
Past and Present, p. 97.)
8/18/2011 – On the Bible
“If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the Living God.” – A. W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God, p. 82.)
8/17/2011 – On Awe
The world is not lacking in wonders, but in a sense of wonder. – G.K. Chesterton. (Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 4.)
8/16/2011 – On Authenticity
There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity is never included in the list of heresies and schisms. – Soren Kierkegaard
8/15/2011 – On the Attributes of God
A comprehended god is no god. – St. John Chrysostom (345?-407)
8/13/2011 – On Ambition
Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people – which is what I think it does mean – then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn’t wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can be possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.” – C. S. Lewis (God in the Dock, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” pp. 55, 56.)
8/12/2011 – On Alertness
But we who would be born again indeed, must wake our souls unnumbered times a day. – George MacDonald (Spiritual Discipline Handbook, p. 29.)
8/11/2011 – On Agnosticism
Once we have been born, trying to put off deciding what to do about God is like jumping off a diving board and trying to put off actually entering the water. – John Ortberg (Faith and Doubt, p. 30.)
8/10/2011 – On Aging
(Cartoon)
“I am so sick of being fifteen years old! I wanna be old enough to drive! I wanna be old enough to go places! I wanna be old enough to make a difference.”- Son
“That’s funny. I’m old enough to do all of those things, and I’d rather sit here and watch Jeopardy.” – Father
“Age is wasted on the Aged.” – Son
– Zits Cartoon by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman (Zits Calander, Jan 8th, 2004)
Pastor Presnell's Blog 