Consecrated to HIS Will

"I do not consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher. I consecrate myself to God to do His will where I am, be it in school, office, or kitchen, or wherever He may, in His wisdom, send me." ~ Watchman Nee

Walk Close to Jesus

“For the one who walks as close to Jesus as possible there comes the reliable exercise of a power that is beyond them in dealing with the problems and evils that afflict earthly existence. Jesus is actually looking for people he can trust with his power.” ~ Dallas Willard

You Have Not Lived...

"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." ~  John Bunyan

Vulnerability

"Receiving love brings us to a place of vulnerability. That is why it is so difficult. So often we live in the illusion that it is much easier to love than to be loved. We may think we can exercise a bit of control in loving another, but there is no control in being loved. The ones who truly love us walk into our hearts, often unnoticed, unannounced, and then reveal to us how genuinely lovable we are. And nothing feels more vulnerable than that." ~ Judy Cannato

Your Problem Is...

“Your problem is, you don’t know who you are. Let me tell you who you are. You are a ray of God’s own light. You say you seek God, but a ray of light doesn’t seek the sun; it’s coming from the sun. You are a branch on the vine of God. A branch doesn’t seek the vine; it’s already part of the vine. A wave doesn’t look for the ocean; it’s already full of ocean.” ~ Martin Laird

Trouble the Waters

“Like a jagged rock thrown into a flowing stream, the church once “troubled the waters.” Now, however, it seems as if the church has slowly, often imperceptibly been worn so smooth by the culture that it no longer creates any disturbance at all.” ~ Charles Campbell

Alive

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

Life With No Regrets

"If you feel as if your life is somewhere out there as opposed to right here, stop and ask yourself: What is missing in my life? What have I put on hold? What am I waiting for? What would really fill my heart and make me happy? What would I regret if I died tomorrow?" ~ Charlotte Davis Kasl

Being

"We mostly spend [life] conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have and to Do. Craving, clutching and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual, even on the religious plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life." ~ Evelyn Underhill

The Work We Do...

"The work we do is only our love
for Jesus in action.
And that action is our wholehearted
and free service—the gift of the poorest
of the poor—to Christ in the distressing
disguise of the poor.

If we pray the work…
if we do it to Jesus
if we do it for Jesus
if we do it with Jesus…
that’s what makes us content."

~ Mother Teresa

Love Comes When...

“Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about his or her reactions to you. When you dare reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.” ~ Dr. Joyce Brothers

When You See a Need ~ Help

"He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it." ~ Dante

What Belongs to God...

"The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness…. The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost.” ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen (Our Greatest Gift)

Sin Will...

"Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay." ~ Unknown

Be the Church

"When the church starts to be the church, it will constantly be adventuring out into places where there are no tried and tested ways. If the church in our day has few prophetic voices to sound above the noises of the street, perhaps in large part it is because the pioneering spirit has become foreign to it. It shows little willingness to explore new ways. Where it does it has often been called an experiment. We would say that the church of Christ is never an experiment, but wherever that church is true to its mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling Word of God to its own age." ~ Elizabeth O'Connor (Call to Commitment)

Stewardship Is...

"Stewardship is everything you do after you say 'yes' to Jesus Christ." ~ Clarence Stoughton

Live Life...

"The important thing to hold in mind is that all of our energies must not be consumed in merely getting through the day or the week. In the living of our lives from day to day we must be geared to goals or purposes that inform the character of all our activities. Our living must be structured by what it is that we are trying to achieve with our lives…. What will be the extent of a man’s life he does not know—in what time or place he will come to an end is not given to him to know. The wise man, therefore, lives his life seriously each day but does not take it seriously." ~ Howard Thurman (The Inward Journey)

Deal With Sin

“Keep in mind that when sin is viewed superficially, it is dealt with superficially.” ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

My Symphony

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurrying never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.” ~ William Ellergy Channing (Masterpieces of Religious Verse)

Be Yourself

"Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. ~ Colossians 3:17 (NIV)

To Love At All

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become breakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." ~ C. S. Lewis

...to Look the Other Way...

"Our growing capacity to look the other way when confronted by poverty in the public sphere lead us to accept not only the segregation of our neighborhoods and public places, but also the segregation of our consciousness and being. When we close the door or turn away from the stranger, a door closes in us as well." ~ Stanley Saunders and Charles Campbell (The Word on the Street)

Trust His Heart

"God is too good to be unkind, too wise to be mistaken; and when you cannot trace His hand, you can trust His heart." ~ Charles Spurgeon

Be As He Was...

"Jesus does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him." ~ Dallas Willard

Cost of Discipleship

For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Jesus Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change. When Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened," He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love. ~ Brennan Manning

Walk with Integrity and Cheerfulness

"Enable us, O Lord God, to walk in your way with integrity and cheerfulness, faithfully believing your word and faithfully doing your commandments, faithfully worshiping you and faithfully serving our neighbor; in the Name of your Son and our Savior Jesus Christ." ~ Jeremy Taylor

Cost of Obedience

"Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one." ~ Oswald Chambers

Prayer for Strength and Wisdom

"O God, give me strength and wisdom to live this day as I ought.

Give me
     Wisdom to know when to speak, and when to keep silent;
     Wisdom to know when to act, and when to refrain from action;
     Wisdom to know when to speak my mind, and when to hold my peace.
Through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen."

~ William Barclay

Choices

"The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side." ~ G. K. Chesterton

Logs Vs. Speck...

"Lord Jesus, help us to see our own faults more clearly than the faults of others." ~ Beryl Bye

Inner Transformation

"When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight." ~ Richard Foster

Bed of Pain

"I have often looked gratefully back to my sick chamber. I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain." ~ Charles Spurgeon

Be Transformed

“Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision.”  ~ David Kinnaman, (UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters)

The Real Problem

"The real problem with the structures of the Church is that they do not often allow us to become engaged in the anguish of people whose needs, and accents, and ways are different from our own. They do not allow us to feel. It was not enough for Moses to see the misery of a slave people. He had to identify with them—to be able to say “my people.” ~ Elizabeth O'Connor