Wait For The Coming of Your Lord

O Christian . . . wait for the coming of your Lord, but let it be with your lamps trimmed and your lights burning. - Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon "A Visit to the Harvest Field"

The Greatest Tribute to Mother's Courage

I think the greatest tribute to mother's courage is that we children never sensed fear and we ourselves never had any fear. - Ruth Bell Graham

Test of Real Devotion

Seeking to please God in little matters is a test of real devotion and love. Let your aim be to please our dear Lord perfectly in little things. - Jean Grou

Great Person

The really great person is the person who makes every person feel great. - G.K. Chesterton

Christianity

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. - Gilbert K. Chesterton

Stirring of Good

It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirring of good. Gradually, it was disclosed to me that the line seperating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through all human hearts. So, bless you prison, for having been in my life. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Acquiring Peace

We're only asking for trouble when we lead ourselves to believe that our internal agitation will subside once we get that place in the mountains or a quaint condo at the beach or a little larger boat or a little better job or a microwave for Christmas or a second TV or stereo upstairs or an original oil in the living room or a Shop Smith in the garage or ... or ... or .... It's not that owning any of that stuff is wrong-you know that-but when it's pursued in hopes of acquiring peace in the package, no way! - Chuck Swindoll

Compromise And Consequence

We reap precisely what we sow. If we sow a lifestyle that is more comfortable or easier or even happier-but is in direct disobedience to God's revealed Word-we ultimately reap disaster. - Chuck Swindoll

Risking Liberty

You can hardly abuse slavery, but you certainly can liberty. - Chuck Swindoll

Take Time To Be Tender

Fragile and delicate are the feelings of most who seek our help. They need to sense we are there because we care ... not just because it's our job. Truth and tact make great bedfellows. - Chuck Swindoll

Home

Home is a lot of things ... but mainly

it is the place where life makes up its mind. - Chuck Swindoll

Insight

Those without insight dwell mainly in the realm of the obvious ... the expected ... the essentials. The dimensions that interest them are length and width, not depth. Please understand, I do not mean to be critical of those who cannot go deeper... but of those who can but will not. I'm not pointing my finger at inability but rather refusal. - Chuck Swindoll

Overexpecting

The overexpecter uses words like "ought" and "should" and loves sentences that include "must" and "more." To them, "work harder" and "reach higher" are the rule rather than the exception. - Chuck Swindoll

Man's Quest

Greece said ... Be wise, know yourself

Rome said ... Be strong, discipline yourself

Judaism says ... Be holy, conform yourself

Epicureanism says ... Be resourceful, expand yourself

Psychology says ... Be confident, fulfill yourself

Materialism says ... Be acquisitive, please yourself

Pride says ... Be superior, promote yourself

Asceticism says ... Be inferior, suppress yourself

Diplomacy says ... Be reasonable, control yourself

Communism says ... Be collective, secure yourself

Humanism says ... Be capable, trust yourself

Philanthropy says ... Be unselfish, give yourself

                                                                    - Chuck Swindoll

Living It Up

Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. - Jim Elliot

Jesus' Method of Communication - Chuck Swindoll

1. Make it clear
2. Make it simple
3. Emphasize the essentials
4. Forget about impressing
5. Leave some things unsaid

Meditation

Five practical steps to follow to develop this spiritual exercise: - Chuck Swindoll

1. Emphasize different words and phrases
2. Paraphrase the verse. Make it personal
3. Compare the verse with other Scripture
4. Relate the verse to your present circumstance
5. Use prayer as a follow-up

Holding Things Loosely

The greater the possessiveness, the greater the pain. The old miser within us will never lie down quietly and die obediently to our whisper. - Chuck Swindoll

Characteristics Found In Those Who Impact Our Lives

Four characteristics usually found are: Consistency, Authenticity, Unselfishness and Tirelessness. - Chuck Swindoll

Efficiency

When will we learn that efficiency is enhanced not by what we accomplish but more often by what we relinquish? - Chuck Swindoll

How To Sympathize?

Comfort for the sorrowing cannot be regulated and systematized. Be real, Be quite, Be supportive and Be available to comfort a friend. - Chuck Swindoll

Refuse To Get Up

God wants to use you-stumbling and all-but he wont do so if you refuse to get up. - Chuck Swindoll

Unforgiving Spirit

There is no torment like the inner torment of an unforgiving spirit. It refuses to be soothed, it refuses to be healed, it refuses to forget. - Chuck Swindoll

The Sting of Pearls

When all kinds of traials crowd into your lives, my brothers, don't resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they have come to test your endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men (and woman) of mature character .... - J. B. Phillips

Error Indeed

Old error in new dress is ever error nonetheless. - C. S. Lewis

Losing Your Way

It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way. - Rollo May

Seeming Peace

The seeming peace a sinner has is not from the knowledge of his happiness but from the ignorance of his danger. - Thomas Watson, Puritan

Life Well Spent

It will be an unspeakable comfort to look back on a life well spent and be able to say in humble sincerity, ‘My time was not cast away . . . . It was spent in sincere labors for my God--in making my calling and election sure, in doing good to men's souls and bodies, it was entirely devoted to God. - Puritan Richard Baxter

Illicit Relationship

You get into an illicit relationship and very soon you will be justifying many other illigetimacies and it will turn desire into desrespect if not hatred. - Ravi Zacharias

Marriage

Marriage means handing over yourself, your body, your future, your keeping to the one whom you dearly love, although this person may in many ways may remain a stranger. This tremendous act of faith is something that can unlock in each lover powers of compassion, generosity, joy, passion, fidelity and hope that no one gussed was even there. That is whay the confidence of young lovers is not foolish or arrogant but an expression of basic fact of human experience, that the greatest of human gifts are set to work only when people are prepared to risk everything and first you risk it before God. - Ravi Zacharias

The Spiritual Challenge of the Evangelist

As somebody ones said there are many, many angles at which you can fall but only one angle at which you can stand straight. And civilization dominated by herself today is testing the angles. And the spiritual challenge of the evangelist is to  so breath the Spirit of God into himself, so bathe his mind with the Word of God, so be in tune with the master creator of this world, so bring his life in tune with the Lord Jesus Christ, so that he will be reflector of the Lord so that, when he is finished preaching he will know what it means when somebody said this, intense is the agony when the eye begins to see, when the ear begins to hear, when the pulse begins to pound, when the heart begins to throb, when the soul feels its flesh and when the flesh feels its chains. – Ravi Zacharias

The Creator

Nature refuses to let you forget her Artist. - Chuck Swindoll

God-appointed Storms

Life is literally filled with God-appointed storms. But two things should comfort us in the midst of daily lightning and thunder and rain and wind. First, these squalls surge across everyone's horizon. Second, we all need them. God has no other method more effective. - Chuck Swindoll

Obedience

The very best proof of your love for your Lord is obedience ... nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. - Chuck Swindoll

Individual Matter

Following Christ is an individual matter. The Lord saves us individually. He gifts and commissions us individually. He speaks to us and directs us individually. When it comes to this matter of doing His will, God has not said that you must answer for anyone else except yourself. Quit looking around for equality! Stop concerning yourself with the need of others to do what you are doing. Or endure what you have been called to endure. God chooses the roles we play. Each part is unique. - Chuch Swindoll

Tears

In some mysterous way, our complex inner-communication system knows when to admit its verbal limitations ... and the tears come.

Tears are not self-conscious.

Most often they appear when our soul is overwhelmed with feelings that words cannot describe.

- Chuck Swindoll

Truth about Rumors

Rumor is a pipe

Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,

And of so easy and so plain a stop

That the blunt moster with uncounted heads

The still-discordant wavering multitude

Can play upon it.

- Shakespeare, King Henry IV; II, induction, line 15)

Rumors

Those who feed on rumors are small, suspicious souls. They find satisfaction in trafficking in poorly-lit alleys, dropping subtle bombs that explode in others' minds by lighting the fuse of suggestion. They find comfort in being only an "innocent" channel of the unsure information ... never the source. - Chuck Swindoll

Heart-Genuine Friendship

Rule by the heart. When logic and argument and other forms of persuasion fail, fall back on the heart-genuine friendship. - John R. Mott

Friendliness

Friendliness is a matter of being someone ... more than it is doing something. - Chuck Swindoll

Deterioration

Deterioration is never sudden. - Chuck Swindoll

Avoiding Problems

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. - Dr. Peck

Solving Problems

... It is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct."

Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us ... attempt to avoid problems. We procastinate, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. - Scott Peck, M.D, The Road Less Traveled, p. 16

Hurry

We are in such a hurry, we hate to miss one panel of a revolving door. - Peter Marshall

Listening

It takes two people to say a thing - a sayer and a sayee. The one is just as essential to any true saying as the other. - Samuel Butler

Habits

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it. - Horace Mann, American educator

Memorizing Scriptures

I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture. Your prayer life will be strengthened. Your witnessing will be sharper and much more effective. Your counseling will be in demand. Your attitudes and outlook will begin to change. Your mind will become alert and observant. Your confidence and assurance will be enhanced. Your faith will be solidified. - Chuch Swindoll

Difference between good and great

The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail. - Chuck Swindoll

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Out attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. Our sense of reality has been flattened by thirty-page abridgments.

It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate.... In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. - Eugene Peterson

Expecting Perfection and Accepting Humanity

Its my job to love Billy. It's God's job to make him good. - Ruth Graham

Singing while speeding

If we occasionally must speed, maybe it would help to sing loudly: - Chuck Swindoll

• At 45 mph ... "God Will Take Care of You"
• At 55 mph ... "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"
• At 65 mph ... "Nearer, My God, to Thee"
• At 75 mph ... "Nearer, Still Nearer!"
• At 85 mph ... "This World Is Not My Home"
• At 95 mph ... "Lord, I'm Coming Home"
• Over 100- ... "Precious Memories" 

Silence

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. - Publius, a greek sage

Keep your lips from slips

If your lips would keep from slips, Five things observe with care: To whom you speak; of whom you speak; And how, and when, and where. - William Norris, American Journalist

A Sharp Tongue

A sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use. - Washington Irving

The Alluring Voice of Lust

Its (lust) alluring voice can infiltrate the most intelligent mind and cause its victim to believe its lies and respond to its appeal. - Chuck Swindoll

An old and ironic habit

It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way. - Rollo May

The unlovely character

‎How many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom of God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be inside! - Henry Drummond

Deception

‎Deception comes in convincing fashion, wearing the garb of authenticity, supported by the credentials of intelligence, popularity, and even a touch of class. - Chuck Swindoll

Two essential reasons why Jesus gave His life

Jesus gave His life for two essential reasons. First, because we are sinners. Second, because we can do nothing about it. In Western cultures, that first reason is increasingly questioned and even denied. In Eastern cultures, they don't comprehend the second. - Randy Hurst, World Missions, AG

Planning for a nervous breakdown

‎I am planning to have a nervous breakdown. I have earned it ... I deserve it ... I have worked hard for it ... and nobody's going to keep me from having it! (Thoughts we entertain sometimes) - On a small wooden plaque

Keeping our hearts clean

‎How does finitude express the infinite? How does the dirty describe the clean? How does the impure talk about the pure? When you and I can't keep our hearts clean for one solitary hour, how can we do justice to the description of who our loving God really is? - Ravi Zacharias

The truth of Christ

‎The truth of Christ is not a matrix of facts, but an address delivered to the whole person, requiring the openness of one's entire being to God. - Joe Boot, RZIM

Facing the giants

Facing giants is an intimidating experience; doing battle is a lonely experience; trusting God is a stabilizing experience; winning victories is a memorable experience and facing goliath’s is a recurring experience – Chuck Swindoll & Ravi Zacharias

The Promise Before You

When you walk with God, the promise before you is always greater than the pain behind you. - Bob Gass

Strong Character

Your talents, your résumé and your reputation may get you to the top, but if you haven’t built strong character you won’t stay there long. - Bob Gass

                                                     

The highest use of your tongue

The highest use of your tongue is telling others about Jesus. He doesn’t need to be defended, just introduced. - Bob Gass