My Journey

"I am not my wound, or my defense against my wound. I am my journey." ~ James Hollis

May God Bless You

"May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart." ~ Craig Groeschel

Pray Anywhere

"Brother, if you have two knees and even if you're stiffened up with arthritis so you can't get on your knees, you can look up in your heart. For prayer isn't getting on your knees—prayer is the elevation of the heart to God. That's all a man needs. You can pray in a prison, you can pray in an airplane, you can pray in a ship; you can pray anywhere and you can worship God, because it's Himself that we want, Himself." ~ A.W. Tozer

Game Changer

"What if the world isn’t here to make me happier, but I am here to make this world happier for someone else? Now that, would change some things." ~ Joshua Becker

Do You Want to?

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it." ~ Stephen Colbert

Journal Entry of John Adams

"The great and Almighty author of nature, who at first established those rules which regulate the world, can as easily suspend those laws whenever his providence see sufficient reason for such suspension. This can be no objection, then, to the miracles of Jesus Christ." ~ John Adams (March 2, 1756 ~ Journal Entry)

Are you down, depressed or sad?

"Feeling blah? Do something for someone. Call your grandmother. Take a child to a park. Thank your pastor. Volunteer in a food pantry. Sit with a chemo patient. Drive a senior adult to an appointment. Get creative. You’ll change your world." ~ Lester

I am Resolved

"I am resolved never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life." ~ Johnathan Edwards

Pray for Power

"Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you will wonder at yourself and at the richness of life that has come to you by the grace of God." ~ Phillips Brooks

Children Learn...

"Pay attention to your example. Children not only learn from what we say to them, but also from what we do. The Bible's advice to those who teach applies also to us as parents: "In everything set them an example by doing what is good" (Titus 2:7). ~ Billy Graham

Living Messages

"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." ~ Neil Postman

Teachings of the Bible Are Interwoven...

"Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure ourselves what that life would be if these standards were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We Are All Desperate

"We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God." ~ Philip Yancey

Plant Trees

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." ~ Greek Proverb

Refer It to God

"Sainthood lies in the habit of referring the smallest actions to God." ~ C. S. Lewis

Apart from Him

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." ~ C. S. Lewis

The Sacrifice that Hinders

"Sometimes I wonder if all the purchases we make throughout life begin to add up against us in ways we don't fully comprehend.

We purchase.
We collect.
We organize.

And while we believe we can successfully manage all of our possessions without intrusion into our lives, I wonder if we've actually sacrificed far more than we realize."

~ Joshua Becker

Who Is Your Neighbor?

"Your neighbor is to be construed as meaning anybody who needs you." ~ Frederick Buechner

Finish Well

"Someday our life's journey will be over. In a sense we are nearing home. As we do, I pray that you and I may not only know what it means to grow older but, with God's help, also learn to grow older with grace and find the guidance needed to finish well." ~ Billy Graham (Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well)

God's Mercy

"There is nothing that can keep us humble like this sense of God's mercy. It is the great antidote to pride, for pride and a deep awareness of God's mercy simply cannot coexist." ~ Mike Treneer

God's Sovereignty

"God's sovereignty does not always answer the questions we face as we traverse through life. But more important than giving us the why, it anchors our faith in the Who and teaches us that chance is not in God's vocabulary." ~ Curtis W. Anderson

Pray

"Pray, even if you feel nothing, see nothing. For when you are dry, empty, sick or weak, at such a time is your prayer most pleasing to God, even though you may find little joy in it. This is true of all believing prayer." ~ Julian of Norwich

Fed and Nurtured

“Love must be fed and nurtured…first and foremost it demands time.” ~ David Mace

The Over-scheduled Child

"Parents worry about kids' boredom, so they schedule their lives to keep them busy...But empty hours teach children how to create their own happiness." ~ From the book, The Over-scheduled Child

Open to the Holy Spirit

"God waits for each of us to hear him say, “Behold, I do a new thing—through you!” The question is always: Can we open our lives so that the Holy Spirit may descend and new power break that we may be the kind of person around whom renewal begins?" ~ Elizabeth O'Connor (Call to Commitment)

The world is too much with us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a solid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.- Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth, Romantic poet (1770 - 1850)

The Cost of Small Purchases

"Sometimes I wonder if all the little purchases we make throughout life begin to add up against us in ways we don’t fully comprehend. We purchase. We collect. We organize. Soon, we move to a bigger house with bigger closets, a bigger basement, and a bigger garage. And while we believe that we can successfully manage all of our possessions without intrusion into our life, I wonder if we've actually sacrificed far more than we realize…" ~ Joshua Becker

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~ Luke 12:34 (NIV)

Only One Life

"Only one life, it'll soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. ~ C.T. Studd

Live Freely and Nobly

“It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.” – Bertrand Russell

I Pray Today...

"I pray today with my head, Lord, lifting it heavenward in adoration.
I pray today with my eyes, Lord, looking for the things that are not seen.
I pray today with my hands, Lord, raising them in jubilant praise.
I pray today with my knees, Lord, bowing in submission and contrition.
I pray today with my feet, Lord, working with all my might.
May you be pleased with my prayer. Amen."

~ Richard J. Foster

Exploration

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"

~ T.S. Eliot

...for God

"We are not built for ourselves, but for God. Not for service for God, but for God." ~ Oswald Chambers

Tradition

"What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship and all that lies in the human heart is there to encourage it." ~ Thomas Caryle

Be Patient with Others

"Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others, for thou hast many faults and imperfections of thy own that require a reciprocation of forbearance." ~ Thomas A` Kempis

Needy and Dependent...

"Anything that makes me need God is a blessing. We want to be confident strong and capable. God wants us to be needing and dependent." ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Deepest Fear ~ Greatest Grace

"To see ourselves as we truly are—a wisp of love itself—is perhaps our deepest fear. But it is also our greatest grace. If we are to be the new human, we must begin by embracing love, which always seeks to incarnate itself. Love is enfleshed everywhere. Everywhere the Holy One is shouting and whispering, ‘Let me love you.’ And all that is asked of us is to receive. In reality, that is our life’s work. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less." ~ Judy Cannato

Deep Relationships

"The hunger deepens and becomes more and more insistent for ridding ourselves of the tremendous burden of pretensions. We long for relationships in which it is no longer needful for us to pretend anything. The clue to the answer is in the awakening within us of the sense of living our lives consciously in God’s presence." ~ Howard Thurman

Relationships and Things

"Taking the view that God alone can properly be said to own anything means that our own relationship to the things of the world is an indirect one. We have them only as we receive them from God. It is commonly said that this is true for ourselves as well, that we owe our lives to God, or that our souls belong to God. But it quickly becomes obvious that this is not taken seriously when, having claimed that we belong to God, we nevertheless insist on our property rights to something less important, like our money or our house." ~ Theodore W. Jennings

Peace

“A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it.” ~ D.L. Moody

Un-Coerced Love

"True love is embodied in expectancy, an eagerness to love God now as a preparation for God’s Kingdom. Our ultimate hopes are expressed by whom and what and how we now love…. True love is embodied in the act of giving and forgiving, without stint or stipulations, without anxiety or compulsion. The forgiven is not made dependent upon the giver, but upon a free un-coerced love."
~ Paul S. Minear

A New Kind of Thinking

“You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.” ~ Henri Nouwen

We Need Each Other

"In each one of us there is such a deep wound, such an urgent cry to be held, appreciated and seen as unique and valuable. The heart of each one is broken and bleeding…. An experience of being loved and accepted in community, which has become a safe place for us, allows us gradually to accept ourselves as we are, with our wounds and all the monsters. We are broken, but we are loved." ~ Jean Vanier

Spiritually Free

"You cannot be spiritually free and financially bound." ~ Larry Burkett

Jesus Walked

"Jesus walked a lot, and not only during the last week of his life. The four gospels are peppered with accounts of him walking into the countryside, walking by the Sea of Galilee, walking in the Temple, and even walking on water…. This gave him time to see things. If he had been moving more quickly–even to reach more people–these things might have become a blur to him. Because he was moving slowly, they came into focus for him, just as he came into focus for them. Sometimes he had a destination, sometimes he did not. For many who followed him around, he was the destination…. While many of his present-day admirers pay close attention to what he said and did, they pay less attention to the pace at which he did it." ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

It's Impossible

"I keep forgetting that living the Jesus life on my own isn’t difficult. It’s impossible. Alone, I stumble. Alone, I overthink and overdo. Only together will we freely, even joyfully, have the heart to meet the angels that come, whatever their distressing disguises. Only together will we become whole." ~ Kayla McClurg

Tuned Up

"Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life." ~ A. W. Tozer

Do You Follow Jesus?

I met this preacher from Australia—

He’d read the Bible searching for its dominant themes—
And he counted 87 times when Jesus said, “Follow me!”
Well, you know that got me thinking,
Maybe that’s the bottom line of what “Christian” means.
‘Cause “I follow Jesus” is deeper than “I believe.”
It don’t take much to mentally agree
With a set of beliefs written down in some creed.
Now, don’t get me wrong. We need to know what we believe,
But lately I’ve been wondering . . .
Am I following Jesus or just believing in Christ?
‘Cause I can believe and not change a thing,
But following will change my whole life.
He never said, “Come, acknowledge my existence,
Or “Believe in me, I’m the Second Person of the Trinity!”
But 87 times he said, “Follow me!”

~ Bryan Sirchio

Follow God's Commands

"Give me a lively, zealous, active and cheerful spirit that I may vigorously perform whatever thou commandest and be ever ardent to obey in all things thy holy love." ~ John Wesley

Prayer & Bible Study Unite

"Too long have prayer and Bible study been divorced, and with sad results. What God has joined together, we should never have put asunder." ~ W. Graham Scroggie

Unchanging Principles

"We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles." ~ Jimmy Carter