Persistent Struggle

"There is no spiritual life without persistent struggle and interior conflict."

~ Thomas Merton

Wounds Sometimes Bring Us Closer...

"There are wounds of the spirit which never close, and are intended in God's mercy to bring us ever nearer to Him, and to prevent us leaving Him by their very perpetuity...This is how I comfort myself in my own great bereavements."

~ John Henry Newman

God Always Leads

"It sometimes happens that God leads us by an obscure intuition which makes us go to a particular place without our knowing what awaits us there. It sometimes happens, too, that He leads us by means of events that seem to have no religious significance. There is no such thing as chance."

~ Paul Tournier

Mountain Climbing - Don't Do It Alone

"No matter how steep the mountain is, the Lord is going to climb it with you!"

~ Helen Stiner Rice

Your Burden

"No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added tot he burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourself so. If you find yourself so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present."

~ George MacDonald

Like Yourself

"Jesus I like what I am because it was your idea. Help me to find adventure in my uniqueness and not want to be someone else. God, if I lose sight of the fun of being me, your dream of what I can be in this world will die. Always help me remember that this is your way of being creative!"

~ Ann Kimel

What can be changed?

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

~ James Baldwin

Choose Kindness

"I choose kindness... I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me."

~ Max Lucado

Sin is...

Sin is a ceaseless, undying power in our life. A ceaseless, undying power must come against it. And there is only one such power in the universe - only one, which has a chance against sin; the power of the living Christ.

~ Henry Drummond (Taken from A Beautiful Fight by Gary Thomas)

Waiting for Jesus

We go to church service hoping that Christ will appear in the "temple" - a church building - but all the while God is looking at us and hoping that Christ will appear in us - the true temple of God.

~ R. T. Nusbaum (taken from The Beautiful Fight by Gary Thomas)

A Changed Church Requires...

At the heart of the logic of all renewal is the recognition that there is no changed Church without the changed lives among the members.

~ Elton Trueblood (taken from The Beautiful Fight by Gary Thomas)

The deepest mark...

"The deepest mark of committed Christianity is the difference it makes."

~ Elton Trueblood (taken from The Beautiful Fight by Gary Thomas)

Contempt vs. Respect

"Contempt is conceived with expectations. Respect is conceived with expressions of gratitude. We can choose which one we will obsess over –expectations or thanksgivings. The choice will result in a birth – and the child will be named either contempt, or respect."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage)

The Pilgrim's Way

"One who faces his own failures is steadily advancing on the pilgrim's way."

~ William Temple

We can't love God without...

Once we enter the marriage relationship we cannot love God without loving our spouses as well.

~ Gary Thomas

Marriage Puts Love to the Test

Marriage creates a climate where this love is put to the greatest test. The problem is that love must be acquired. Katherine Anne Porter writes, “Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.”

~ Taken from Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas (page 40)

As He Is - vs- As If He Were

“If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What Matters Most?

"I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts…no amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls."

~ David Brainerd

Love God

"The sovereign God wants to be loved for Himself and honoured for Himself, but that is only part of what He wants. The other part is that He wants us to know that when we have Him we have everything - we have all the rest."

~ A. W. Tozer

Who Am I?

"Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?...
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine."

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Mother's Day

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavour by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts."

~ Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Most Important Thing a Parent Can Do

"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."

"The most important thing a mother can do for her children is to love their father."

~ Unknown

The Decision to have a Child

"Making the decision to have a child-it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

~ Elizabeth Stone

HALT!

Thank you Carol from Quotes and Notes for this useful quote we can all learn from...

"Weariness can cause you to lose perspective and make decisions based on what's convenient, rather than what's good for you in the long term. Remember the H.A.L.T. sign: when you're Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired you're vulnerable, and you'll make bad decisions."

("The Word for You Today", Spring 2008, pg. 39)

Mothers

"There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it."
~ Chinese Proverb

No sin is so great...

"No sin is so great but the satisfaction of Christ and His mercies are greater; it is beyond comparison. Fathers and mothers in tenderest affections are but beams and trains to lead us upwards to the infinite mercy of God in Christ."

~ Richard Sibbes

Don't share gossip and if you share truth remember God is listening...

"Never believe anything bad about anybody unless you positively know it to be true; never tell even that unless you feel that it is absolutely necessary - and that God is listening while you tell it."

~ William Penn

Bring it All to Jesus

"If you feel stuck, bring your whole self to Christ, not just the problem, but you. Ask God to change your heart. Commit yourself to pray to that end. It's God's heart to give good gifts to His children."

~ Sheila Walsh

Think about this before judging another...

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

~ The Case for Christianity (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis

Seek Advice from the Wise

"It is excellent to seek advice about everything, but only from those with experience. It is dangerous to ask questions of the inexperienced, because they do not possess discrimination. Discrimination knows when the time is ripe, what means to employ, the inner state of the questioner, what level he has reached, his strength, his degree of spiritual knowledge and his intention, as well as God's purpose and the meaning of Holy Scripture."

~ Peter of Damaskos

Help in Adversity

"He comes to us in the brokenness of our health,in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. He saves us in our disasters, not from them. He emphatically does not promise to meet only the odd winner of the self-improvement lottery: He meets us all in our endless and inescapable losing."

~ Robert Farrar Capon

What is our hiding place?

His will is our hiding place.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Salvation

"Salvation comes through a cross and a crucified Christ."

~ Andrew Murray