c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
If our counseling is truly Christ-centered, then the topic of forgiveness will inevitably come up in the journey toward growth and change.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
The free man does what he likes in his working time and in his spare time what is required of him. The slave does what he is obliged to do in his working time and what he likes only when he is not at work.
— Eric Gill
Edmondson has incisively discussed the ways college campuses have grown akin to upscale retirement homes for the very young, where the promise of intellectually demanding courses ranks far below the lure of new gymnastic facilities.
— Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books
That is the Proctor. He is our Cerberus; he has to keep all undergraduates in good order." "What a task! He ought to have three heads.
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford
If spiritual formation is the purpose of the church, then personal transformation should intentionally be the purpose of the small group ministry. Bible study is great. Fellowship is wonderful. Evangelism is essential. But changing and growing to be more like Christ should be the purpose of the small group ministry.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
We can’t really explain what the goal of mentoring is, until we understand what the church is for.
— Rhys Bezzant
Many pastors would rather preach God's Word and keep their distance than invest in a personal one-on-one counseling ministry. Most pastors counsel because they have to, not because they want to.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
Word-centered people who enter counseling will be more likely follow the guidance set out in Scripture. Because they know more of the depth of their sin, they are more willing to allow other church members to help them stay on that right path.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
If teachers are uncomfortable at their own school, they will pass on their uncertainties or negative attitude to students.
— Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
This is what the Apologists can teach us about the world, culture, and philosophy. The pendulum steadily swings between contempt and wonder. The aim is not compromise between these stances, rather we need both the extremes of the swing simultaneously. Each extreme taken on its own is too confined for Christian teaching, and so: neither unconditional rejection, nor unconditional embrace.
— Dariusz Karłowicz
if we are wayfarers who want to return home, then we must see the world as a means of transportation (terestibus vel marinis vehiculis) and always remember to distinguish the means and ends.
— Augustine of Hippo
Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself.
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
Some Christians believe the harder that one thinks, the colder faith will grow. Augustine grew more brilliant as he grew more pious, more creative as he became more orthodox. His period of heresy was imitative, but his traditional Christianity took mental risks.
— John Mark Reynolds
Paul was terribly personal. The books I like are the ones that make you feel like you are with a person who is being quite vulnerable, telling you all sorts of stuff that is personal, and that's the thing Paul did that makes me like him.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
If the Gospel of Jesus is relational, that is, if our brokenness will be fixed not by our understanding of theology but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only Heaven knows.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
Counseling is ultimately not about the counselee or the counselor, but about the Divine Counselor.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
A healthy Christian life cannot be stitched together from a series of disjointed mountain-top experiences. We need a Christian spirituality that endures the shadowy, low-lying valleys and the rocky slopes in between all those glorious summits.
— Andrew Byers
A colleague like Barnabas could comfort him (Paul) in illness and keep him from overstrain when fit.
— John Charles Pollock, The Apostle: The Life of Paul
Boethius moved from considering history from the actor's point of view to a "timeless" eternal view. From the divine perspective, nothing is ever utterly lost, because all of life is possessed by God in the eternal now. Though time was gnawing away at Boethius and stealing all he valued, God was beyond time and loss. Gaining this philosophical vantage allowed the last Roman to become one of the first men of the Middle Ages.
— John Mark Reynolds
each year, she finds her friendships less volatile and easier, because she increasingly succeeds at looking past their flaws and disappointments and homing in on their pleasures and on what set them in motion to begin with. And she wonders why she didn’t do that sooner, why she gave in to so much fury and sorrow when she could have just let those emotions go.
— Frank Bruno
How do you teach a classroom of Sybils who are breaking apart and reforming right in front of you?
— David Brooks
Paraphrasing Plato's Republic: "Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
The Roman Church has grown and grown, fueled by immigration but also renewed by two pontiffs who have seemed to understand what Tocqueville knew: People want guidance for their souls once they are convinced they have them.
— Hugh Hewitt
We are less interested in the number of disciples and more interested in the quality of discipleship.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half as persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way
— James MacDonald
Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn't have when you're actually living it. It's as though the whole thing were designed to be understood in hindsight, as though you'll never know the meaning of your experiences until you've had enough of them to provide reference.
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
If we are to have real faith, we must study the Word of God and discover what is promised. Then, we must simply believe the promises of God. Trying to believe something that you want to believe is not faith. Believing what God says in His Word is faith.
— R.A. Torrey
Friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends.
— David Brooks
Mentoring is the cultivation of young adults, the tender caring for and nurturing of them so that they will grow, flourish, and be fruitful.
— Jeff Myers, Cultivate: Forming the Emerging Generation through Life-on-Life Mentoring
Despite the huge crowd, He speaks to His disciples as though no one else is there.
— Roma Downey, Son of God
If I am to have faith when I pray, I must find some promise in the Word of God to rest my faith on
— R.A. Torrey
Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.
— David Brooks
(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self.
— David Brooks
Make use of every friend— and every foe.
— Alexander Pope
You get a feeling when you look back on life that all God really wants from us is to live inside a body He made, and enjoy the story, and to bond with Him through the experience.
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Tasks don't have to be high-impact to be worthy of high effort. Most things we do in any given day are relatively low impact. The cumulative impact of thousands of low-impact test is huge. These tasks can be transposed into worship.
— John Piper
Ehimlite universities are strong at delivering their commercial mission. They are pretty strong in developing their cognitive mission. But when it comes to the sort of growth Deresiewicz is talking about, everyone is on their own. An admissions officer might bias her criteria slightly away from the Résumé God and toward the quirky kid. A student may privately wrestle with taking a summer camp job instead of an emotionally vacuous but résumé-padding internship. But these struggles are informal, isolated and semi-articulate.
— David Brooks
In his late forties, an age when men settle to comforts and seek a firm base, Paul began his roughest travels.
— John Charles Pollock, The Apostle: The Life of Paul
Older people make this mistake all the time with younger people, treating them as a finished product when in fact they are in process.
— Andre Agassi, Open
Treat this crisis as practice for the next crisis.
— John Parenti
Our awareness of God starts where self-sufficiency ends.
— Harold S. Kushner
After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The more spiritual successes that Edwards experienced, the more he seemed to intentionally infuse his sermons with language deemed to move a person’s emotional center—their souls—to spiritually and physically respond.
— Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity
What God did for Jesus in standing up for Him, standing behind Him in life and in death, and in standing in communion and solidarity with Him, the Father also does for us, here and now, in our lives.
— Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection
Conversions were easy, but making full-time disciples was hard.
— Larry Eskridge, God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America
The Resurrection is most clearly needed and most clearly revealed in those communities that are constantly seeking to correct and transform the world through the wisdom and power of the Word of God made flesh in their lives and actions in history.
— Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection
Conversion, constant conversion, is the message of the Gospel.
— Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection
No one ever made more trouble than gentle Jesus meek and mild.
— James Gillis
The farther you get from the actual historical person of Jesus and His time, the more the church knows about Jesus and understand more deeply the truth of the Scriptures. We know more of the truth of Jesus the Risen Lord and His Word because we have been the recipients of more than 2000 years of faith, of life lived in the power of the Spirit and the Word in our midst. The power of of the presence of the Risen Lord is not static, but dynamic, and growing ever stronger as the kingdom of the earth comes more into its fullness in time and place. It is an awesome thought that calls us to responsibility and gratefulness for having been given the gift from those who have gone before us in faith. It is our privilege and inheritance, which we must be sure to pass on to those who come after us, in forms that are ever richer, more expressive and inclusive of others.
— Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection
Someone once said that Stephen Austin didn't like preachers at all. He swore that "one preacher could stir up more trouble than a dozen horse thieves." Matthew's Gospel reminds us that it is the role of a disciple of Jesus to stir up trouble by playing an active, resistant role in the struggle of good and evil, by resisting the ways of the world and its power bases – economic, religious, nationalistic, politic, military – which are most often in direct opposition to the ways of the Kingdom of God and the way of discipleship.
— Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection
The Jesus People experience proved to be a staging area for tens of thousands of young Americans who were making up their mind about marriage, schooling, and careers
— Larry Eskridge, God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America
Edwards’s God was glorious, full of beauty, and seemingly uninterested in making people feel insecure. Edwards was a mystic, a man who didn’t simply write or preach about God, he experienced him.
— Matthew Paul Turner, Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity
To be a man, a boy must see a man.
— J.R. Moehringer
Our nearness to the king in love is nearness to those who love not the king.
— William Shakespeare, Richard II
Christian discipleship is a decision to walk in his ways, steadily and firmly, and then finding that the way integrates all our interests, passions, and gifts, our human needs and eternal aspirations. It is the way of life we were created for.
— Eugene H. Peterson
The sweet spot is where duty and delight converge.
— Thomas Mann
If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal list, you can let go of the irritations on the small lists of time. Ultimate security allows you to suffer small insecurity without tremendous effort. If you are tethered at some center point, it is amazing how far out you can fly and not get lost.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
Deal mildly with his youth; for young hot colts, being rag's, do rage the more.
— William Shakespeare, Richard II
There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects.
— George Eliot, Silas Marner
Any believer who has not encountered the Cross is not yet a follower of Christ
— S. E. Entsua-Mensah
His Majesty has done absolutely nothing but waste his time darling around eating sweets, contributing to the boy's adolescent chubiness, and to the sense of the country's political drift. Rather than being encouraged to govern, the Shah's courtiers preferred to encourage him in his idleness.
— Charles Emmerson, 1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War
You can't grasp the wonderful and keep your feet on the ground.
— The Afters
[Mary] says her memories Will help those of usNewly come to our Lord’s mercy,To live in His light.
— Jessica Coupé, Daystar Rising: A Story of the First Christmas
Your job is to abide in my pastureEating sweet grass and drinking pure water,And sharing both with others—That is a lamb’s business.
— Jessica Coupé, Life Abundant a 30 day devotional for Latter-day Saint Women
Maybe you have been looking for peace for no one but yourself.
— Building 429
Redemption came as a wave of relief, but then it followed with a burden.
— Building 429
There's a difference, you know, between faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow. The other one will make you sleep.
— Rich Mullins
Men need men to keep their edges hot and clean, whereas women keep us warm and soft.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
Mine is to chew on the appropriate texts and make them delectable.
— Gregory of Nyssa
You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
You cannot contain evil by shaming it, or making people feel guilty, but only by revealing it toward it is, and then seeing the good as better.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
If you do not acquire good training in detachment, you may attach to all the wrong things.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
When I am not king, then THE Kingdom has its best chance of breaking through.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
Every missed rite of passage leads to a new rigidification of the personality.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
His Kingship, precisely because it is so broad, so total, is doomed to be rejected by anybody who is still into tribalism, or small belonging systems. We don't really like the big Kingdom if it gets in the way of our smaller kingdoms, and it always does.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
There was (and is) nothing palatable about Jesus Christ of Nazareth to those who love the world and have made their home in it.
— David D. Flowers
Managing games comes second. Managing people comes first.
— John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball
the decision to stand unapologetically for the gospel has been tantamount to a new conversion. It brings peace
—  it dissolves fears
It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying.
— Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
You think you're a role model, and they (protégés)turn around and tell you you're a negative role model.
— Judith Rodin
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, The Normal Christian Life
Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess.
— Charles W. Colson
We have to grow into Scripture, like a young boy inheriting his older brother's clothes and flopping around in them, but he gradually builds out and grows up. Perhaps it's a measure of our maturity when parts of Scripture that we found odd or even repellent suddenly come up in a new light. Our sense is overtaken by a sense of the whole thing, wide, multicolored, and unspeakably powerful.
— N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters
I must first have the sense of God's possession of me before I can have the sense of His presence with me.
— Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life
We use the word cross in our hymns, in our piety, in our prayers, and in our pastoral language. But we use it too cheaply. We say that a person has to live with some sort of suffering in life: a sickness that cannot be cured, an unresolvable personality conflict within the family, poverty, or some other unexplainable or unchangeable suffering. Then we say, “That person has a cross to bear.” Granted, whatever kind of suffering we have is suffering that we can bear in confidence that God is with us. But the cross that Jesus had to face, because he chose to face it, was not—like sickness—something that strikes you without explanation. It was not some continuing difficulty in his social life. It was not an accident or catastrophe that just happened to hit him when it could have hit somebody else. Jesus’ cross was the price to pay for being the kind of person he was in the kind of world he was in; the cross that he chose was the price of his representing a new way of life in a world that did not want a new way of life. That is what he called his followers to do.
— John Howard Yoder, Radical Christian Discipleship
There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.
— James     Baldwin
There is nothing stereotyped about God's dealings with His children. Therefore, we must not by our prejudices and preconceptions make watertight compartments for the working out His Spirit, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We must leave God free to work as He wills and to leave what evidence He pleases of the work He does.
— Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life
The author tells a story wherein a missionary friend of his was invited by unbelievers on a train ride to play cards. The friend declined, saying that he did not bring his hands with him. He explained to the astonished group that the hands attached to what they saw as his body belonged to the Lord, and he was thereby able to explain the Gospel.
— Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life
We think in terms of apostolic journeys. God dares to put His greatest ambassadors in chains.
— Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life
What Paul understands by holiness or sanctification (is) the learning in the present of the habits which anticipate the ultimate future.
— N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters
you don’t have to live in community long to realize that lives which are blessed and instructive are still flawed. The grace of the gospel isn’t only that the Word was made flesh in Jesus, but also that the eternal Word is made present in weak and wonderful people.
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church
The desire we so often hear expressed today for “episcopal figures,” “priestly men,” “authoritative personalities” springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
we all want to be called servants until someone treats us like one.
— Albert Baylis
The author sees Joseph of Genesis as a type of Christ's Pentecostal power. He who was thought dead has been raised in power, and the power is evident in the chariot he sends for his own.
— Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life
I was determined to get them away from the idea that their education is a private experience.
— Joan Countryman
I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject.
— William Zinsser
let anyone using those weasel words “freedom of worship” know, they have “freedom of worship” in China and it is meaningless and it is vile. “Freedom of worship” says you may do what you like in that building on Sunday mornings or whenever you like, but when you come out you will bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state. That is the antithesis of what the Founders meant in guaranteeing “freedom of religion.
— Eric Metaxas
If you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because he himself is the way.
— Thomas Aquinas
When God interrupts your life, He is calling you to follow Him in a new way. By breaking into your settled pattern, He is moving you to a new place where you can make fresh discoveries of His grace. Embracing God’s call is never easy, but this is where the pursuit of a God-centered life begins, and where the shame of a self-centered life is exposed.
— Colin S. Smith, Jonah: Navigating a God-Centered Life
The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
If we spend our days trying to avoid the landmines of stepping out of God's will, then will be afraid to take any risks for his kingdom. But when you know there is a net of grace, when you know that God will catch you and set you back on his path when you fall, then you'll feel the freedom to pursue the adventure that kingdom living is all about.
— Will Davis Jr., 10 Things Jesus Never Said: And Why You Should Stop Believing Them
It takes practice to stand with others facing pain of death, and it helps if you don't have to do it all alone. We should practice on the small stuff so that we will be better able to stand together for what we believe and for what we love, who may someday need our support.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrusts in turn brings forth war.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people’s.
— Tullian Tchividjian
Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.
— W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
Jesus enters the garden, in preparation, intending to face his fears by facing his God, his Father, His greatest fear is to offend his Father, to disobey his own calling, its integrity, and the word of God on his life.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
The cross is a crisis point for all societies which seek to produce me in and women of quiescence, men and women who are trained to give unquestioning, uncritical obedience to worldly powers and not to Christ.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
Jesus is dangerous to society, to the status quo, and to contemporary piety. This clarity of preaching cannot be allowed to continue. It is like a cold, a virus that infects all who suffer and who love under conditions that only worsen, in a world that blames those who are poor and do not live up to religious expectations.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than observance. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world
—  it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allowed to starve.
Throughout history the cross stands as a symbol of protest and revolt; protest against all claims, whether by religious or political power, to absolute unquestioning control over human minds and bodies; revolt against all systems and ideologies, all regimes and institutions, which continue to push individuals and groups beyond the pale, outside the gate.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
Yanked out of the present, Adam discovered the richness of the past in people's stories.
— Randy Alcorn, Courageous
Peter's denial was not just a personal weakness. He was in a leadership position, honored as the one who spoke for the group, and was second in command (when Jesus wasn't around). But his choice to publicly deny his place in the community at the side of Jesus had massive repercussions for the other disciples. They ran and hid, and from this point on in the Way of the Cross there is no mention of the disciples again in the Passion narrative. The sheep are scattered, routed, and demoralized. Peter's sin tore open the seems that held them together.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
Today we must begin again. Step by small step, without any more protection than comes from our own bodies.
— Eduardo Galeano
Many of your relationship problems are not really relationship problems. They're personal problems that spill over into relationships.
— Rick Warren
It's much easier to talk about following Jesus when you are making general statements rather than specific commitments.
— Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus
Be ruthless in one important area: Yourself. Be ruthless about your commitment to Christ. Be ruthless about your intellectual growth. Be ruthless about finishing well. One of the biggest areas we should be ruthless about is our time. How much time do you spend complaining about your problems to people who can't help you solve them? How much time do you talk when you should be doing? When it comes to others, be gracious. But when it comes to you and your time, be ruthless.
— Phil Cooke
The big idea here is not, have you sinned, but are you changing?
— Mark Driscoll
You know your Bible too well and life too little.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
The genealogy of blessing always traces back to God-ordained risk.
— Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
The problem with spiritual procrastination is the uncertain time of the deadline.
— Kevin Thoman
Jesus did not spend the same amount of time with everyone. He chose twelve and spent a majority of his time with them. There were toxic people that he spent hardly any time with. For example, the Pharisees were against him from the outset of his ministry. He engaged them only when he needed to. Most of his time he poured himself into a small circle of disciples.
— Rick Brown
A wilderness experience includes a long walk back.
— Dennis Garvin, Case Files of an Angel
The man who goes to the top is the man who has something to say and says it when circumstances warrant. Men who keep silent underdressed are moral cowards.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
An animal will conquer others. A Spirit-filled man conquers himself – self-discipline, self-control.
— Mark Driscoll
Get evangelical Christian made them receptive to the possibility of redemption in the here and now.
— George F. Will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation
Bono has commented often that U2 did everything the wrong way around. Other bands started singing about girls and then found the issues in the cosmos and started singing about God
—  U2 started singing about God and eventually ended up doing a love album.
The evangelical wing of the Church spends a lot of energy on being "born again" but little time on "growing up" again. There is a failing to encourage newborn believers out of the maternity ward and into a big world where they will spend the rest of their spiritual lives trying to find what they are looking for.
— Steve Stockman
The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.
— Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
Jesus, Willard says, “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, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
Those who are not true leaders will just affirm people at their own immature level.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
The Bible Belt is collapsing. The world of nominal, cultural Christianity that took the American dream and added Jesus to it in order to say, 'you can have everything you ever wanted and Heaven too,' is soon to be gone. Good riddance.
— Russell D. Moore
I was used to being the smartest guy in the room, and then God dropped me in a place that was well beyond me. It was painfully awesome.
— Matt      Chandler
You cannot force people to walk with God. You cannot force them to repent. All you can do is live with integrity and invite them to do so as well. Take things a step at a time. Give them consequences when they refuse to deal with serious issues, and pray. Pray like the dickens. Pray every step of the way.
— John Eldredge, Love and War: Finding the Marriage You've Dreamed Of
Evangelism cant be our focus! We must not stop sharing the good news, but here’s the deal, here’s the wonderful thing, it gets done along the way as you do discipleship. Great commission is just about going to disciple the nations and you know what happens... as you disciple them evangelism takes place, because it’s done in the context of discipleship.Here’s the issue: We have to reframe evangelism within the context of discipleship
— Alan Hirsch
God's word tells us that righteousness is a gift; it cannot be earned. But godliness is not a gift. We must pay a price to touch godliness through a daily decision to die to self and embrace the cross. God calls us to learn godliness in the classroom of life among people as we sit on airplanes and buses, walk among our neighbors and labor at our factories or desks.
— K.P. Yohannan, Touching Godliness
Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.
— T.H. White, The Ill-Made Knight
Let us live not only to serve God ourselves
—  let us live to help our children and their children live for God.
Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus’ day who faithfully parroted the Law without the remotest notion of what was going on around them spiritually,” wrote Tozer. “They fed the same diet to all and seemed wholly unaware that there was such a thing as meat in due season.
— A.W. Tozer
I want every one of our members to grow into maturity more quickly than they seem to, but the Lord has taught me to shepherd people, call them to repentance and let Matthew 18:12­–14 play out.
— Matt      Chandler
As frustrating as the battle for purity must be, I suppose it's easier if you've got company.
— Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University
My understanding from the Word of God is that I am supposed to preach for the maturation of the believer with a view that lost people are there.
— Matt      Chandler
God's way leads always into trial, so far as sight and sense are concerned. Nature always will be tried in God's ways.
— Answers To Prayer
The years have simply reconciled us to the fact that we are all here for the transformation.
— John Eldredge, Love and War: Finding the Marriage You've Dreamed Of
Kings can only use their best tools.
— T.H. White, The Ill-Made Knight
I do not politicize Christianity nor my discipleship as Jesus did not politicize either His divinity nor his humanity.
— R. Alan Woods, The Humanity of Jesus Christ: Wholly God, Holy Man
The Must be worthless by our estimation or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
In every historical period, the religious groups that grow most rapidly are those that set believers at odds with the surrounding culture.
— Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity
To love with expectations is, in the end, an oppressive, driven thing, and people know it when they receive it.
— Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit
So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
...there is still a need for those of us nestled deep within the Christian bubble to look beyond the status quo and critically assess the degree to which we are really living biblically.
— Francis Chan, Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit
If you are going to walk with Jesus Christ, you are going to be opposed.... In our days, to be a true Christian is really to become a scandal.
— George Whitefield, The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A...: Containing All His Sermons and Tracts Which Have Been Already Published: With a Select Collection
It never cost a disciple anything to follow Jesus
—  to talk about cost when you are in love with anyone is an insult.
If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
If we are cut loose from the anchor of God's Word, we will not be free. We will be slaves of personal passions and popular trends.
— John Piper, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to Be Saved?
The main characteristic which is the proof of the indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word.
— Oswald Chambers
Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God.
— Oswald Chambers, Bringing Sons Into Glory and Making All Things New
God is not preparing you for anything
—  obedience is its own end in the purpose of God
The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
You can either be god of certain areas of your life, or let Me be God of your whole life.
— The Skit Guys
My life is too short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are “in the soup” of actual circumstances.
— Oswald Chambers, Shade of His Hand
The call of God is a call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers, and is not of any moment. The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, “God called me there.” If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us.
— Oswald Chambers, The Psychology Of Redemption
Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For true disciples, however, it cannot mean hoarding or using kingdom assets self-indulgently.)
— Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity
The one single use of things which we call our own is that they might be his who hath need of them.
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays
Don't get me wrong, I like NASCAR and shopping at Nordstrom's, but discipleship is intrinsic as a lifestyle."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
There are no shortcuts to maturity in discipleship; it was, is, and always will be learned over time and under pressure walking in union with Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
[God says] Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all.
— A.W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest
Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.
— Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God
Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in shadows.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot
Any religious person who says he does not really need human friends because God is his Friend is calling God a liar because He's the One Who says we also need human friends.
— Mark Driscoll, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together
2 Timothy 3:16 says the speaker, instructs us, to draw from the Word of God for doctrine – what is right. He instructs us to draw from the Bible for reproof – pointing out what is wrong – as well as correction that will tell people how to get right. Last, the Word also gives us instruction in how to stay right.
— John Pereira
It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot
Many pastors have been reduced to secular "mentors" and "coaches" in exchange for authentic disciplers of men.
— John Paul Warren
The positive effect music has in our lives is understated. It can influence mind-state and motivate us to reach for the stars.
— Independent Zen
Until you take your profession as passion, each and every activity looks as a headache
— Vignesh S.V., Adventures of Dollar Right
With your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs under control, you can have as much as the richest man and be as peaceful as a Buddhist monk . You can experience inner-happiness and euphoric love.
— Maddy Malhotra, How to Build Self-Esteem and Be Confident: Overcome Fears, Break Habits, Be Successful and Happy
I am not surprised by any situation.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
If you repeat your negative memories in your mind and feel self-pity, then YOU are both the abuser and the victim - not those who wronged you in the past. Your present and future will be happier if you take control of your thoughts.
— Maddy Malhotra, How to Build Self-Esteem and Be Confident: Overcome Fears, Break Habits, Be Successful and Happy
The storm is here and now. The rains come and water floods our lives. Nothing last forever and the rainbow always appears.
— Michaelson Williams, Trainwashing: The Secrets of Positive Brain Washing
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
— Og Mandino
Stop wasting so much energy hating your body; it makes you weaker. Everything good in your life begins from the moment you begin accepting, understanding, respecting, and loving your true self.
— Harry Papas
In any situation you have the choice to stay positive and embrace it with courage, faith, and hope.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Time is the sole photographer of all the times, from the Big Bang till the possible Big Crunch!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Knock the door or ring the bell but don't ever push it! Be gentle!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Let us drink wine to remember what kind of mystical beauties life offers us and to comprehend what sort of magic potions existence has!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
You don’t have to love the storm but you have to know its language in case you meet it!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
People are perfectly capable of ruining their own lives by very themselves without taking any wrong guidance from outside!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Lukewarm living and claiming Christ's name simultaneously is utterly disgusting to God.
— Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
All heroes are shadows of Christ
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. (“Tomorrow”)
— Yevgeny Zamyatin
I am a fool for Christ...whose fool are you?
— Brother Andrew, The Narrow Road: Stories of Those Who Walk This Road Together
God without Christ is no God.
— John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
In that most burdensome moment of all human history, with blood appearing at every pore and an anguished cry upon His lips, Christ sought Him whom He had always sought—His Father. “Abba,” He cried, “Papa,” or from the lips of a younger child, “Daddy.” This is such a personal moment it almost seems a sacrilege to cite it. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night—together.
— Jeffrey R. Holland
One night I dreamed a dream.I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. There was only one set of footprints. I realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma. "Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me."He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.
— Margaret Fishback Powers
To be in Christ -- that is redemption
—  but for Christ to be in you -- that is sanctification!
Kitten, you still haven’t told her? Blimey, whatare you waiting for?”“The Second Coming of Christ!” I snapped.
— Jeaniene Frost, Halfway to the Grave
There are no real personalities apart from God. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerers have been; how gloriously different are the saints.But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality; but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him...Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
— C.S. Lewis
If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.
— Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything