Are you a fruit bearer?

If your life consistently bears no fruit, God will intervene to discipline you. If your life bears some fruit, God will intervene to prune you. If your life bears a lot of fruit, God will invite you to abide more deeply with Him.

~ Bruce Wilkinson

A Spiritual Narcissist?

The gentlest form of spiritual narcissism is the idea that one can accomplish one's own spiritual growth... The belief that 'I can do it' is intimately associated with the assumption that 'it is my idea, my desire, to do it.' spiritual narcissism works to deny the realization that our spirituality comes from God.

~ Gerald May

Me a Hero?

Dependence upon God makes heroes of ordinary people like you and me!

~ Bruce Wilkinson

How's Your Character?

Snarling at other folks is not the best way of showing the superior quality of your own character. He is blind who thinks he sees everything. The observant man recognizes many mysteries into which he can not pretend to see, and he remembers that the world is too wide for the eye of one man. But the modern sophists are sure of everything, especially if it contradicts the Bible.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What Does Suffering Do for You?

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of person...... the one who accepts the call of God in Christ Jesus.

~ Oswald Chambers

What Good is Pain?

I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.

~ Elisabeth Elliot

It's Contagious!

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

~ Billy Graham

Fixing Problems

Men try to fix problems with duct tape. God did it with nails.

~ Anonymous

Porn Addiction Not Just a Male Issue

I read an article with a shocking title and I wanted to share a little from it...

According to Trueman, the concept of pornography as a "victimless crime" is a complete fallacy. He argues his case by looking at the influence literature can have on one's life. "We know that anybody who has a steady diet of good books and literature is advanced in society," he points out. "Their knowledge is enhanced. Their conversation is enhanced. Their goals are enhanced."

But someone who "debases themselves with a steady diet of pornography," he says, is going to be harmed by it. "They have a tortured view of normality in society," Trueman explains. "They want to act out what they've seen in pornography." And that, he claims, leads to increased incidence of sexual diseases, withdrawal from society, and breakdown in relationships -- particularly marriages.

One News Now Editor's Note: For help in overcoming pornography addictions -- whether you are male or female -- contact Pure Life Ministries.

Go here to read the complete article.

~ Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow - 7/23/2008 5:00:00 AM

What is Faithful?

A wife who is 85% faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ.

~ Vance Havner

Fight to the End

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while children go hungry, as they do now I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight; I'll fight to the very end!

~ General William Booth

Difference between good and bad?

In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom.

~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

Snuggle with Jesus

Snuggle in God's arms. When you are hurting, when you feel lonely, left out. let Him cradle you, comfort you, reassure you of His all-sufficient power and love.

~ Kay Arthur

God Can Do Anything

He does not need to transplant us into a different field, but right where we are, with just the circumstances that surround us, he makes his sun to shine and his dew to fall upon us, and transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances into the chiefest and most blessed means of our growth. No difficulties in your case can baffle him, no dwarfing of your growth in years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in any of your past development, can in the least mar the perfect work that he will accomplish, if you will only put yourselves absolutely into his hands and let him have his own way with you.

~ Hannah Whitall Smith

Get in the habit of...

It is the habit of making sacrifices in small things that enables us for making them in great, when it is asked of us. Temper, love of preeminence, bodily indulgence, the quick retort, the sharp irony, - in checking these let us find our cross and carry it. Or, when the moment comes for some really great service, the heart will be petrified for it, and the blinded eyes will not see the occasion of love.

~ Anthony W. Thorold

Impossible to Forget...

A wise person truly said, "It ought to be as impossible to forget that there is a Christian in the house as it is to forget that there is a ten-year-old boy in it."

~ Roger J. Squire

Is it too late to change?

For you who wonder if you've played too long to change, take courage from Jacob's legacy. No man is too bad for God. To transform a riverboat gambler into a man of faith would be no easy task. But for God, it was all in a night's work.

~ Max Lucado

Anger?

Is it any merit to abstain from wine if one is intoxicated with anger?

~ Augustine

Theological Wilderness

The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness.

~ A. W. Tozer

What is Wrong with the World?

Do you ever sit down and wonder what is wrong with the world? Do you ever ask yourself why it is that Christians seem to have so little influence, why they seem to achieve so little, for all their numbers, in putting the world right? To each of those two questions there is ultimately but one answer. It is this: we lack the mind of Christ.

~ J. Arthur Lewis

God Determines the End of Life

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Pray about Everything

Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.

~ George Macdonald

Live in the Moment

I was regretting the past and fearing the future. Suddenly God was speaking: "My name is I am." I waited and God continued: "When you live in the past, with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I was. When you live in the future, with its problems and fears, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I will be. When you live in this moment, it is not hard. I am here. My name is I AM."

~ Helen Mellincost

Don't Worry about Tomorrow

Be not miserable about what may happen tomorrow. The same everlasting Father, who cares for you today, will care for you tomorrow.

~ Francis de Sales

God will do the best for us...

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

~ (Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis (Into The Wardrobe)

Take Your Troubles to God

We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love. For love does not measure by a merchant's scales, not with a surveyor's chain. It hath a delicacy... unknown in any handling of material substance.

~ (Reuben Archer) R. A. Torrey

Great Faith

We often think of great faith as something that happens spontaneously so that we can be used for a miracle or healing. However, the greatest faith of all, and the most effective, is to live day by day trusting Him. It is trusting Him so much that we look at every problem as an opportunity to see His work in our life. It is not worrying, but rather trusting and abiding in the peace of God that will crush anything that Satan tries to do to us. If the Lord created the world out of chaos, He can easily deal with any problem that we have.

~ Rick Joyner

What is the Significance in Laundry or...?

We tend to bristle and think, There must be something more significant than that! What homemaker hasn’t found herself asking, after the fiftieth load of laundry in a week or when facing yet another sink full of dirty dishes, “Is there anything significant about what I’m doing here?” Yet in God’s eyes, nothing is more significant than servanthood. The path to genuine greatness lies in serving.

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage)

...to Forgive...

God’s nature is to forgive. God’s character is such that he died a brutal death for the sake of the very people who abused him. Such forgiveness doesn’t come naturally to any of us. It must be learned and often learned again, even though the process can be excruciatingly painful, hurtful, and horrendous. If we refuse to take the “harder road” because it’s more difficult, we’ll never mature.

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage)

Flying...

If a bird is flying for pleasure, it flies with the wind, but if it meets danger it turns and faces the wind, in order that it may fly higher.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Love the Sinner

C.S. Lewis confessed that he too struggled with how to truly love the sinner while hating the sin. One day it suddenly became clear: It occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did such things.

C.S. Lewis (taken from Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas)

Our Natural Tendency is to flee, but...

When disagreements arise, the natural tendency is to flee. Rather than work through the misunderstanding (or sin), we typically take a much more economical path – we search for another church, another job, another neighborhood, another friend, another spouse.

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage)

What is Apathy in Marriage?

Most of us, in fact, probably never approached the relationship of marriage with the thought that “apathy” is the antithesis of Christian love. As long as we’re not mean, vindictive, or cruel, we may think we’re fulfilling our Christian duty. But we’re not.

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage)