Taking the above analogy one step further: How can you change your attitude from negative to positive when you don’t particularly feel like being positive? How can you remain upbeat and optimistic when things go wrong? Of course, it’s not easy, but let me explain it like this: It’s as though we have two dogs inside our head – a good dog and a bad dog – and both of them are constantly fighting for the same piece of meat. What we must do, in order to remain upbeat and positive, is to feed the good dog and starve the bad dog. In other words, when your (negative) inner-voice creates anxiety, doubts and fears by rabbiting on and on about why this won’t work or why you shouldn’t attempt to do this or what would happen if you did that etc., this is like the bad dog. You must starve the bad dog (get rid of the negative self-talk) by taking away its food. And exactly how do you do this? Simply by doing the opposite and feeding the good dog with positive self-talk. In other words, use positive affirmations to starve the negative thoughts to death.
R. Ian Seymour
It’s your job to love people, and it’s God’s job to change them! Stop trying to do what only God can do! You simply cannot change other people. You can inspire them and motivate them and even threaten them, but you cannot change them.
Christians are God’s upside-down people. They are to live the other way up from everyone else, as they go for God’s treasure, not the world’s wealth.
Carl Laferton writes: For years I thought “Christ” was Jesus’ surname. I assumed that Joseph and Mary were Mr and Mrs Christ, and so Jesus’ full name was Jesus Christ. But actually “Christ” is a title not a name. Christ is a title which means God’s promised King.
Source: Carl Laferton, Christmas Uncut, 2015, The Good Book Company, p.19
If there were no shadows there would be no sunshine. Think about it.
“Without involvement there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.”
Stephen Covey
“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, Make me feel important.”
Mary Kay Ash (entrepreneur)
Arthur Rubinstein, the famous pianist, used to say, ‘If I don’t practice for one day I know it. If I don’t practice for two days my critics know it; and if I miss three days my audience knows it!’
Source: Powerspeak by Dorothy Leeds, p.64
“Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves.”
Dale Carnegie
It doesn’t matter what a person’s past may have been like; their future is spotless.
A bad habit is like a warm bed: easy to get into and hard to get out of.
Happiness comes from you counting your blessings; unhappiness from thinking your blessings don’t count.
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
“A mistake is just a bend in the road; it is not the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn.”
Anon.
Author, Philip Yancey, writes: ‘Jesus’ audacious claims about himself pose what may be the central problem of all history, the dividing point between Christianity and other religions. Although Muslims and, increasingly, Jews respect Jesus as a great teacher and prophet, no Muslim can imagine Mohammed claiming to be Allah any more than a Jew can imagine Moses claiming to be Yahweh. Likewise, Hindus believe in many incarnations but not one Incarnation, while Buddhists have no categories to conceive of a sovereign God becoming a human being. (…) It is an incontestable fact of history that Jesus’ followers, the same ones who were scratching their heads over his words at the Last Supper, a few weeks later were proclaiming him as the “Holy and Righteous One,” the “Lord,” the “author of life.” By the time the Gospels were written they regarded him as the Word who was God, through whom all things were made.’
Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, 2000, London: Marshall Pickering, p.260
By the mile it’s a trial, by the yard it’s hard but by the inch it’s a cinch!
One of these days really means none of these days.
Nothing is more central to the Bible than Jesus’ death and resurrection. The entire Bible pivots on one weekend in Jerusalem about two thousand years ago.
Don Carson
To the world you may just be another person, but to another person you may be the world.
‘We are involved in spiritual warfare but we are not fighting for victory, we are fighting from victory because this battle has already been won, and we are on the winning side, but Satan is still a powerful enemy. Satan lost his authority but he didn’t lose his power. The truth we need to realise, and the truth that will set us free, is that Satan no longer has authority. That is the key. Authority is the right to use the power you possess. In order for Satan to use his power in your life, he has to keep you from functioning underneath your authority because his power is only effective when he has the right to use it – that is, when we relinquish our authority and allow him to have power over us.’
Tony Evans, Victory In Spiritual Warfare, 2011, Oregon: Harvest House Publishing, p.42
A young violinist was giving a concert one day in front of a large crowd. He ended his concert with a flourish, and all the people stood up and applauded, shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! What a performance!” But the young man put his head down. As the people continued to clap, his eyes began to fill with tears. There was no smile on his face.
All of a sudden as the applause began to die, an old man sitting up in the balcony stood up and began to clap. As soon as the violinist saw that, a smile came across his face. He wiped the tears from his eyes. He smiled and held up his violin and walked off stage.
A man up in the wings said, “How come you were sad when the people stood up, but when that old man stood up, you became glad again?”
“Because the old man was my violin teacher,” the young musician explained, “and unless he stood up, my concert would have been a failure, because he is the only one who knows all the nuances of the music I played. He knows exactly how each piece is supposed to be played. It does not matter whether the people stand and applaud. I want to know if my teacher is going to stand and applaud.”
My friend, unless God is standing and applauding, we really haven’t done anything. Don’t be fooled by people’s applause. Make sure that Jesus Christ says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Tony Evans
Tony Evans, Time To Get Serious, 1995, Illinois: Crossway Books, p.193
If you give to get you’re not really giving; you’re trading.
Charlie (Tremendous) Jones, writer, speaker
Remember the parable of the fig tree that had plenty of leaves but no fruit. Jesus said to it: ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again’ (Mark 11v14). I love the way Joyce Meyer applies this parable: ‘If our lives revolve around the church but we have no fruit, we are not living out our faith. We can have Christian bumper stickers on our cars, wear Jesus pins, carry our Bibles around, spend the lunch-break sitting alone reading our Bibles, have plaques listing the fruits of the Spirit hanging on our walls, and listen to teaching tapes and say “Praise the Lord! Hallelujah” but if we do not have time to help anyone else or even show kindness, we are like the fig tree with leaves but no fruit… if we have leaves, we need to also have fruit.’
Cited by Nick Gumbel in Bible in One Year (accessed 2/3/2015)
“‘Wait on the Lord’ is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.”
J. I. Packer
J.I. Packer, Knowing God, (1993 edition), London: Hodder and Stoughton, p.271
“God is not so much interested in your ability as He is your availability.”
Zig Ziglar
Do you know people who are not (yet) Christians – they’ve not accepted Christ – but they think they’re good people and they’ll go to heaven when they die? They think God will let them in. If they’ve done anything wrong, they think God will forgive them because of their good deeds or because they have always tried to live a good life.
I used to think like this: I used to think that to get in to heaven God will weigh up your good deeds and your bad, like on a pair of scales, and if the good outweighs the bad, well then you’re in! And I’ve met loads of ‘self-righteous’ people in my time; people who think that God is actually rather pleased with them; they think they are worthy and God will certainly accept them… why wouldn’t he? I’ve had people say things to me like, ‘Ok, I might not be perfect but I’ve never murdered anyone; you know I’m a law abiding citizen; I’m honest – I don’t cheat, don’t steal; I’m a nice person (well, most of the time) and I always try to do what’s right – might not always succeed, but on the whole I’m a decent good person: I’m kind, I’m generous… I give to charity, go to church occasionally… and, I give blood! For heaven’s sake. Of course, God will accept me!’
Now, these are all very worthwhile things, certainly… but there’s a major problem with that kind of philosophy: It’s self-reliant; it depends on us earning favour with God, or doing a deal and trying to work things out so the balance is in our favour. But the Bible nowhere teaches that God judges us like on a pair of scales. In fact, the Bible teaches the opposite! God’s standard is 100% perfection and so none of us can ever be good enough; none of us can be perfect or completely righteous… and yet that’s God’s requirement; the qualification to get into heaven – we have to be perfect, without sin, completely righteous just like Jesus… Or… we have to be made righteous; we have to covered with the blood of Christ. How are we made righteous? Only in accepting – by faith – what Jesus has done for us.
It is by God’s grace that we are saved. Salvation is a gift that comes through faith, not a recompense for our good works! Ephesians 2v8-9 (NIV1984) says: It is by God’s grace that we have been saved, through faith, and not by works so no one can boast… (thinking that they’re good enough).
R. Ian Seymour
If your vision doesn’t scare you it isn’t big enough!
Warren Wiersbe states: ‘No one should take Communion who is not a true believer. Nor should a believer take Communion if their heart is not right with God and with their fellow believers. That’s why churches have a time of spiritual preparation [the confession and making peace with each other] before we take [Communion], so that partakers don’t bring [rebuke and judgment] on themselves.’
So before you drink from the communion cup, just think what was in the cup Jesus drank from in Gethsemane on the night before He was crucified. – You can drink from the cup with sweet assurance because He first drank from the cup in agony. On the eve of His death He prayed: ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death… Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’ (Mark 14:34-36). Note the words ‘overwhelmed with sorrow.’ (If you think your sin is no big deal, perhaps those words will help to change your mind.) Christ drank from the cup of God’s wrath so that you could drink from the cup of God’s grace.
[Note: Source: The UCB Word For Today , 24/10/2013]
Source: The Transformation Study Bible (NLT), Colorado USA: David C. Cook Publishers (2009), Catalyst Notes: Remembering Our Saviour at Communion, p.1768 by Dr Warren W. Wiersbe
When a wife is separated from her husband – maybe for work reasons – she misses him desperately. They talk by phone and email, but she cannot see him face to face. She longs for the day he returns. We, the church, are the bride of Christ. We read His words in the Bible. We talk to Him in prayer. We are one with Him by the Spirit. We look at the bread and wine and marvel at His dying love for us. But soon, soon these will be no longer needed when we see Him face to face.
Explore Bible notes, 3/6/2010
“We don’t wait well. We’re into microwaving; God, on the other hand, He is usually into marinating.”
Dutch Sheets
Dutch Sheets, Intercessory Prayer , p.17
The eagle that chases two rabbits loses them both.
God’s desire is for the believer to overflow with Himself; that we might… ‘Be filled with all the fullness of God (cf. Ephesians 3v19). A glass is only full when it overflows. Fullness can only be measured by overflow. God wants us to be so filled with Himself by the Holy Spirit that we overflow to others.
Humility is not thinking less of yourself it is thinking of yourself less.
Rick Warren
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, Zondervan Publishing, p.148
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
Peter F. Ducker (management expert and author)
“If you ever think you’re too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”
Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop)
Discipline weighs ounces; regret weighs tons!
“When life kicks you; let it kick you forward.”
Eli Stanley Jones (1884-1973), missionary and writer
Remember Jesus did not say pray for the sick; He said heal the sick – because He has delegated authority to us to do that. We don’t need to ask for it because we already have it; we just need to step out in faith and do it. Faith is spelt R.I.S.K. God is not offended, by us taking risks. We need to display reckless abandonment and take risks… And always assume that God wants to heal, because to not do so, is to assume that God is indifferent.
Get fit or fat, the choice is yours.
“The question in life is not whether you get knocked down. – You will. – The question is, are you ready to get back up and fight for what you believe in?”
Dan Quayle
“I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.”
John Ruskin (1819-1900), English writer and social reformer
“He who gains victory over other men is strong, but he who gains victory over himself is stronger.”
Lao-tzu (circa 604-531 B.C.), Chinese philosopher
Almost everyone walks away from a funeral a bit more thankful for the life and loved ones they have. We feel a little more love, a little more gratitude, a little more urgency to make every day count. We realize we have no dominion over death—but we do have control over our daily decisions. We can make better, more purposeful choices—and often at a funeral, we determine to do so.
Source: Clarifying Your Mission in Midlife, reading plan on YouVersion by Peter Greer & Greg Lafferty, day 5 of 7
“What some people need is a really good kick in the seat of their cant’s.”
Anon
There is no such a thing as instant maturity… so stop wishing for it!
“If we did all the things we were capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”
Thomas Edison
We don’t notice ourselves growing older physically until we look at an earlier photograph, and then it hits us! And it’s the same with spiritual growth; it’s hard to gauge how far you have come until you look back and see where you were before Jesus saved you; before He turned your life around.
Bob Gass
Source: The UCB Word For Today, 22/8/2007
“We can believe in what we are doing and feel a permanent sense of fulfilment only if we know we are rendering a service to others.”
Cavett Robert (motivational speaker, writer)
The only place in the world where achievement comes before commitment and where success comes before work is in a dictionary.
Vidal Sasoon (international hair stylist, designer and entrepreneur)
When things get tough we learn how to really pray. Maybe that’s one of the reasons things get tough.
Tony Evans
It is not just positive thinking… it is positive thinking coupled with positive action that counts. Some people simply overdose on the positive thinking stuff, falsely believing that a positive mental attitude will create miracles. Like the optimist who fell off the top of a multi-storey building: as he passed by each floor he was heard to say, “So far so good!”
One of life’s great mysteries is that whatever you constantly think about and move towards will, eventually, also move towards you.
A man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks, – he is!
“We are not responsible for the thoughts that come into our minds, only for what we do with them.”
Jinny Ditzler, author
To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life.
“Jesus always had time for other people. He talked to them, fed them, healed them, and forgave them. He often met physical needs in order to address spiritual needs. If we’re too busy even to interact with the people around us, let alone engage with their struggles, then we’re not following Christ’s example.”
Craig Groeschel
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”
Benjamin Franklin
Trust in the Lord’s provision. Has he ever abandon you or let you down? No. What cause then to worry?
Every two years, the eyes of much of the world focus on the Summer or Winter Olympics. Have you ever watched the opening ceremonies and the Parade of Nations? With athletes from more than 175 nations parading under the banner of their nation’s flag. It is quite a sight! Yet it pales in comparison to the multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language that will gather together before the throne of God (see Revelation 7:9-10).
Joyce Meyer
The Everyday Life Bible, 2018, Faith Words: New York, p.2121
I loved Pete Grieg’s recent tweet: “Jesus had three years to save the planet and still found time for parties, picnics and fishing trips. #relax.”
The number one reason people cite for not believing in Christianity is because of all the evil and suffering in the world. And yet, the number one reason people accept the Christian message is because of all the suffering in the world. In a nutshell, they know that evil and suffering are not right and so they turn to Christ seeking help and get their answers.
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.”
Charles (Chuck) Swindoll
“Courage is just fear that has said its prayers.”
Karl Barth, Swiss theologian.
“Many are the plans of a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’S purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21 NIV). We are not in control of life’s circumstances or masters of our own destiny – God is. It is God’s purpose that prevails, not ours.
As Christians we worship our triune God: we have God as our Father, Jesus Christ as our Saviour and the Holy Spirit as our in-dweller. These three equal and yet individual persons of the godhead we refer to as the Trinity – trinity simply means tri-unity: there’s plurality in God’s unity. Within the Trinity there is perfect unity in diversity. God is a community in diversity… and that’s what He wants for us. In the church there is meant to be unity in diversity. Just as the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are a community in diversity, so is the Christian church; we are a community in diversity; unified but diverse. We are all different, and we all have different views and opinions and different tastes. However, our unity means that our diversity does not become division. And our diversity means that our unity does not become uniformity. If Jesus truly is Lord in our lives, then there should be unity in the church. Division and dissension in the church only weakens our united testimony! We are not created to be the same. We are not meant to become carbon copies of each other. We are created with differences; there’s variety between us and this is meant to be harmonious and complimentary. We are a community in diversity.
Adapted from Explore Bible notes
Having the Holy Spirit is not enough; the Holy Spirit must also have us. God will not take control of our lives by force! We have the Spirit to help us but we can still suppress or quash the Holy Spirit.
“Man has two creators – God and himself. His first creator furnishes him with his raw material and his moral conscience with which he can make of his life what he will. His second creator, himself, has marvellous powers he rarely realizes. It is what a man makes of his capacities that counts.”
William George Jordan (1864-1928)
Confession is not primarily something that God has us do because He needs it. We need to confess in order to heal and be forgiven and changed. When we confess properly two things happen. The first is that we are liberated from guilt. The second is that we will be at least a little less likely to sin in the same way in the future, than if we had not confessed. Sin will look less attractive to us.
John Ortberg
John Ortberg, 2002, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishers, p.129-130
We must correctly distinguish regret, remorse, and true repentance. Regret is an activity of the mind, whenever we remember what we’ve done and ask ourselves, “Why did I do that?” Remorse includes both the heart and the mind, and we feel disgust and pain, but we don’t change our ways. But true repentance includes the mind, the heart, and the will. We change our mind about our sins and agree with what God says about them; we abhor what we have done; and we deliberately turn from our sin and turn to the Lord for his mercy.
Warren Wiersbe
The Transformation Study Bible (NLT), Colorado USA: David C. Cook Publishers (2009), supplementary commentary by Dr Warren W. Wiersbe, p.1398
Life can be tough sometimes and we are often afflicted by the PLOM syndrome – poor little old me! We feel like God has abandoned us; our prayers go unanswered; we are left wandering around in no-mans-land, in the desert, and we think God has forgotten us. But God has not forgotten: God sees, God hears, God knows. God has not forgotten you. Your trials and troubles serve to refine your faith and trust in Him; they develop character, strength and perseverance. God says: “I, the LORD, made you, and I will not forget you” (Isaiah 44v21)… “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? [Maybe] Though she may forget, I will not forget you, says the Lord (Isaiah 49v15).” ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ (Hebrew 13v5). – God is working behind the scenes. Trust in his promises. He will provide for you. He will protect you. He will give you peace and rest in Him.
The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart
What causes people to do bad things? Is it their upbringing, their education, their relationships? All those things factor into who we are and what we do. But the Bible locates the source of our trouble inside of us, not outside of us! Jeremiah 17v9 says: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?’ Our deepest problem is located inside of us, in our heart. – Woody Allen once tried to justify a scandalous relationship with a young woman by saying: “The heart wants what it wants.” Those words are full of biblical truth! – Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, every aspect of our lives is marred by sin. Our hearts, which are the centre of our emotions, intellect and will, are deceitful and self-protective… What might heart deception look like in your life? Think about:
- Have you even justified yourself when you knew you were wrong?
- Have you ever been sure that you were right, only to find out that you were totally wrong?
- Have you ever found yourself doing something that’s wrong without knowing why you were doing it?
Explore Bible notes, 30/8/2012
“By perseverance the snail reached the ark.”
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), English preacher.
John MacArthur writes: “One thing I have observed in all my years of ministry is the most effective and important aspects of evangelism usually take place on an individual, personal level. Most people do not come to Christ as an immediate response to a sermon they hear in a crowded setting. They come to Christ because of the influence of an individual. Keep that in mind, and allow both your life and your lips to give testimony to your neighbours and loved ones about Christ.”
John MacArthur, From Ordinary to Extraordinary, 2009, Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson, p.129
James 1v2 says: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” How can we actually have this perspective? Notice that James begins: “Consider”. He tells us not so much how to feel as how to think. He is not saying: Pretend this is fun. He is telling us: Remember what God is doing in this. God will use trials to make us rounder Christians – to grow us into the very people we were created and saved to be. So trials are the spiritual equivalent of growbags – faith grows by learning to persevere in hardship (see Romans 5:3-4). Difficulties are opportunities to cling on to the promises of God more tightly. So we are not to be joyful about suffering; but we are to be joyful in suffering, because we know what God can and does do for us through suffering.
Sam Allberry
Explore Bible notes, 1/10/2015
“Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act on must inevitably come to pass.”
Mary Kay Ash, entrepreneur
The church is not meant to be just a pleasure boat or cruise ship, it’s also meant to be a lifeboat, and we’re the crew, the rescue party. Evangelism is a body ministry – and it should be all hands on deck! But evangelism is process, not an event. Evangelism does not necessarily mean we have to preach the whole of the gospel to everyone we meet. Let me ask you this: If you pray for someone to know Christ, or you invite someone to Alpha, is that not evangelism; is that not part of the process? Of course, it is. Some of us are evangelists who teach and preach the gospel but ALL of us should be involved in evangelism.
R. Ian Seymour
We all like to think we are good and deserve a happy ending. As N.T. Wright says, “We want to hear a nice story about God throwing the party open to everyone. We want (as people now fashionable say) to be ‘inclusive’, to let everyone in. We don’t want to know about judgment on the wicked, or demanding standards of holiness, or about weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But, like it or not, that is exactly what we do hear in the Bible.
The five essential words for a healthy marriage are “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present. Unwrap yours right now!
Understanding your uniqueness, and your own gifts and talents frees you from the need to measure yourself by the runner in the next lane.
“The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.”
Winston Churchill (nicknamed, The British Bulldog)
“One of the most powerful forces in the world is the will of men and women who believe in themselves, who dare to hope and aim high, who go confidently after the things they want from life.”
Rich DeVos, co-founder of Amway Corporation
GRACE means God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense
Forgive, forget and move forward or resent, remember and remain trapped.
If you fail to plan you are really planning to fail.
No Peace = No God (Pause)
Know Peace = Know God (Proceed)
“When you change from wishing and whinging to setting powerful value-driven goals, you move to a more positive and productive life. Negative emotions like frustration, fear, anxiety, stress, anger and depression plague people with no direction and therefore no focus or hope. Setting goals moves us from dreams with a remote possibility and reliance on blind luck to the results and relationships we are looking for. Living life with the attitude, ‘let’s wait and see how it turns out’ is a waste of your potential and your power.”
Jinny Ditzler
Source: Jinny Ditzler, 1994, Your Best Year Yet, London: Thorsons, p.139
“Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.”
Dr Joyce Brothers
‘The Steadfast Love’ (hymn)
The steadfast love
Of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning,
New every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord,
Great is thy faithfulness.
by Edith McNeill
St Augustine wrote: ‘God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love.’
“Consider the postage stamp: It always sticks to a thing till it gets there!”
attributed to Craig Degnan
Why pray? Why present your requests to God at all? What’s the purpose, when he already knows what you are going to ask? Prayer is actually for your benefit. It allows you to act in faith on what you know about his character. When you pray in specific ways and you see God respond in specific ways, your faith grows. You come to trust that God will always be there for you, even in the midst of the most anxiety-producing moments. – Max Lucado
Max Lucado, Anxious For Nothing, devotional on YouVersion, day 3 of 5
“Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, so that our lives matter, and our world will at least be a little bit better for our having passed through it.”
Harold Kushner (rabbi and author)
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another, with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
There comes a point when enough is enough. We know we cannot continue down the path we are on because it’s a dead end relationally, physically, or spiritually. It may not kill us, but it will eat us alive. The good news is this: you are only one decision away from a totally different life. One risk can revolutionise your life. One change can change everything. If you start small and stay consistent, anything is possible. A one percent change, given enough time, can make a ninety-nine percent difference in your life. But you cannot leave change to chance. You’ve got to grab it and go for it.
Mark Batterson
Mark Batterson, 2013, All In, Grand Rapids: Michigan, Zondervan, p.110
“The art of war is a science in which nothing succeeds which has not been calculated and thought out.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), French Emperor and General
“The difference between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of becoming a Christian is not that before, you sinned, and that after, you are sinless. No – the difference is that before becoming a Christian, sin was in character, it did not really worry you or me. Whereas after becoming a Christian, it is utterly out of character, you do not want to do it. It causes you pain and regret when you do. Not so much because you have let yourself down – although there is that. But because you want to be pleasing Christ – and you have failed him.”
Nicky Gumbel
Source: Bible in One Year – Alpha, Day 203, accessed 22/7/2014
There are lots of ways that God communicates to us: through his Word and Spirit especially, but also through nature and creation; through other believers; through music and worship; through circumstances and signs; though angels (maybe sometimes); through prayer and meditation; through prophecy and words of knowledge, and also through dreams and visions. We must never limit how God can communicate with us, but the primary way that God speaks to us is through his Word – that’s why He gave us the Scriptures, and through meditation/prayer – that’s why He gave us his Holy Spirit. So what’s the difference between a dream and a vision? A vision is given when a person is awake while a dream is given when a person is asleep. Visions are waking dreams.
Never lose hope. Never lose faith. Never stop trusting? Keep on keeping on. – It didn’t look good at the crucifixion but remember this… It might be Friday but Sunday is coming!
