Month: October 2011

Quote: Dignity

God has made every human in such a way that simply being human could make his presence known. For this reason, you have great dignity as a human being, not primarily because of your own goodness but because you are made of the kind of stuff that is capable of making God’s much greater goodness visible to others. This is the bedrock upon which the enduring dignity of every person is established — no matter how sinful, abused, impaired, or oppressed. Male and female from the womb, every race — we are all created in his image and likeness.

— Mike Wilkerson

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Quote: Controversy

“I dream of great defenders of true doctrine who are mainly known for the delight they have in God and the joy in God that they bring to the people of God — who enter controversy, when necessary, not because they love ideas and arguments, but because they love Christ and the church.”

— John Piper

Quote: Brethren

“It would be a very useful exercise to our hearts if we would often give thanks to God for the gifts and graces which we discover in our Christian brethren. I am afraid we are more inclined to spy out their faults, and to suppose that we deplore them, than we are to discern the work of the Holy Spirit in them, and from the bottom of our hearts to give thanks to God for them.”

— Charles Spurgeon

Quote: Vision


God gives us a vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. While still in the light of the glory of the vision we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work.

— Oswald Chambers


Quote: Devastating


“Every day I read theologians and scholars pore over the Bible in an endless effort to unravel its endless layers. On paper, theology is captivating, it stirs the heart and mind and seizes the imagination. In person, theology is devastating, it shocks a man to his very core to see with his own eyes and feel in his very bones the truth that prayer changes reality and that Jesus, God of the universe, is moving in the world today.”

— Josh Dies, Showbread


Quote: Remembering


For the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

— Steve Jobs


Quote: Speechless


“When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, dissapointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship … when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.”

— Oswald Chambers


Quote: Invisible


“Sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible, the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race.”

— A.W. Tozer


Quote: Planned


“You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned for you but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand, life will not make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny.”

— Rick Warren


Quote: Eternity


“I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: just hovering over a great gulf; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing — the way to heaven: … God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one Book]. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven.”

— John Wesley


Quote: Word


“How did the early Church ever function without the “expertise” we have today? Yet, those Christians turned the world upside down, and they did it without any celebrity testimonies, without modern management techniques, without psychotherapy, without mass media, and without most of the means the contemporary church seems to view as essential. All the had was God’s Word and the power of His Spirit, but they knew that was sufficient.”

— John MacArthur