Craig D. Lounsbrough Quotes - Page 12

If we’re missing life it’s probably because we’re expecting it to reveal itself to us, rather than realizing that life is revealed by us looking for it.

The hands of man can manufacture many things both penetratingly brilliant and utterly astounding. Yet, despite their amazing dexterity and profound skill they cannot manufacture hope. Such a masterpiece as that is left for the hands of God and a manger crafted by those hands.

To ‘live’ is to realize that without the journey the destination is nothing more than a task rigorously completed rather than an experience riotously lived.

Truth even in the most whispered tones will always roar.

To assist us in climbing the mountains is marvelous. To level the mountains and altogether eliminate the climb is miraculous. And at times I think that God prefers the latter because it emboldens us to face the former.

What I’ve yet to realize is that each time I work to avoid that which I fear, I have in that very same action forfeited the blessings that my fear blinded me to. And I’ve yet to realize that with God, the blessings will always and forever eclipse whatever I fear despite how absolutely imposing those fears might be

Peace is achieved when our conscience rests in the fact that we’ve engaged in ‘right’ living, verses believing that living is a ‘right.

More often than not, the foolishness of our humanity drives us to destroy the very things that we need to keep ourselves from destroying ourselves. And because that’s the case, God will never allow us to destroy Christmas.

Every advancing step I take toward my goal of comfort is yet another retreating step I take away from God's goal of the impossible.

Great difficult is the dogged bedfellow of great wealth, which always renders great wealth as less than great. Yet, great wealth as bequeathed by God is robustly free of such travails, which always renders it greater than great.

If I had a single wish, I would wish sixty seconds of total depravity upon myself. For one of the greatest gifts of all is to have ‘nothing’ so that I can finally learn how to appreciate ‘everything’.

Will I someday pass into history having passed by God and therefore forfeited the opportunity to change my world and reap the blessing of being able to do so because I saw myself as inadequate to achieve either? And how long will it take me to realize that if I doggedly refuse to pass by God, my inadequacy is instantly irrelevant and I have in actuality begun to achieve these very things.

Such is the power of truth that even the slightest whisper of it can handily drown out the most boisterous of lies, which may explain why in many instances God only needs to whisper.

To strategize a rescue mission irrefutably capable of saving every human being is leagues beyond our ability to comprehend, and enormous beyond any resource we possess to execute. And to embark upon just such a mission fully knowing that without our death the mission will fall to failure is bravery of the greatest sort imaginable. Yet, that is exactly what Christmas is.

There’s something tightly woven throughout the fabric of our humanity that runs entirely opposite to the baser instinct of looking out for our own good.

We can only climb the mountains because there’s a valley that makes the mountain a mountain.

Will I live yearning for a world that I need not yearn for because the message of Christmas is entirely undaunted in its ability to handily penetrate and completely subjugate the very world that I doubt its ability to survive in?

With God, a mountain is only a road waiting to happen.

The paralyzing fear of being lost is fed solely by the irrational fear that we will never be found.

I want to stand on the foundation of ethics and morals when the world around me would assault that foundation with all of its collective might, and in the standing I want to stand on the truth that that foundation will stand long after everything that has assailed it has itself has ceased to stand.

If I scan the expanse of my heart and find it empty of everything except emptiness, it is because I ‘poured’ the whole of my passion into something other than God. And anything other than God will always be too ‘poor’ to be able to ‘pour’ back anything that can fill that kind of emptiness.

I spend a tremendous amount of time carefully choosing the roles I wish to play so that I can run from the role I was born to play. And if I keep on doing that, I will eventually set foot in my grave never having set foot on the stage.

And who would dare write their own death into the script so that the rest of the characters in the tale might live? God of course.

Christmas seems to say that paradise lost and longed for does not have to be paradise given up on.

The problem that I think I have with God is often not a problem at all. Rather, it is most frequently a tired misperception where I have made God what I need Him to be in order to justify my rejection of Him.

The ‘gods’ that do us the greatest harm are the gods we deny having.

I can ruthlessly press my imagination out beyond its very edges, and even in such a remote place I have not begun to touch the barest periphery of God’s imagination.

Fear left unrestrained always leaves us running ‘from’ something. Fear harnessed compels us to run ‘to’ something. And fear denied leaves us running in circles.

We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out of the tangled carnage.

It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort.

An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I’ve made out of my past, not the elimination of that mess.

A true work of art is shaped by the hands of another, and if in shaping us that ‘other’ is anything other than God, the piece will never touch the remotest periphery of its potential.

If I’m asking what kind of ‘return’ I should be expecting on the sacrifices I’m making, I have in that question revealed the need to ‘return’ that question to wherever I found it and have the word ‘return’ edited out of it.

God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives ‘declining’.

To ascend the mountain, we must descend to our knees.

Has it not ‘dawned’ on us that many of the things that we incessantly blame others for are actually things that our actions originally set in motion? Or, are we too weak to experience a ‘dawning’ of that sort?

Comfort is a stance of avoidance rather than the pursuit of excellence.

Thanksgiving is not some formulaic action based on a tedious ledger that neatly tallies everything I have received so I can determine if being thankful is warranted or not. Rather, it’s appreciating the fact that I have already received the privilege of living life which in and of itself will fill the whole of my ledger for the whole of my life.

The eyes of love have 20/20 vision when focused on another, and become entirely blind when focused on ourselves.

Reasonably speaking, we can see the cross as entirely possible. But in considering Easter, we see an empty tomb as entirely impossible. And is it possible that God had to do the impossible to finally get our attention?

Romanticizing comes with colored glasses of the most colored sort.

To live safely within the realm of possibility is to know nothing other than that which is possible. To live boldly within the realm of God is to experience everything that’s impossible.

I often think myself to be so ingenious that I don’t even realize that my own plans may actually be my own undoing. Therefore, I might be wise to realize that God’s plans undo what I’ve done that’s undoing me.

For love to eliminate pain is to waste it, for it is love alone that possesses sufficient force to bend pain against everything that would break us.

We tend to perseverate on the fact that as far as we might have fallen, there’s always another bottom underneath the one we’re laying on. Yet, for every bottom underneath us, there’s always endless opportunity above us.

With God, a mountain before me is soon to be a memory behind me.

Could it be that we lost something because had we not lost it, we would have lost ourselves?

If I continually focus on what I don’t have, my life will always be completely empty despite the fact that it’s completely full.

The fear of getting knocked down is less about the pain of the fall and more about the embarrassment in having fallen. And so, to rid myself of the latter is to reduce my concern about the former, which means I just unleashed my life.

To savor the simple privilege that every day I have a sunrise to bathe in, a storehouse of opportunities to romp through, the thick wrap of relationships to keep me warm, a God who meticulously tends to every detail round about me, and it all costs me not a dime. What madness would keep me from being eternally thankful for all that?

God’s eyes readily see beyond our actions, for our actions are simply fear and selfishness pretending to be us.

Sadly, I put my dreams to bed long before they ever had the chance to get tired.

We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists.

Hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate, but it is crafted hard by the hands of God.

To love those who hate us is to refuse to borrow their hatred.

The best way to see majesty is to strip away everything that pretends to be majestic so that which is fake wholly collapses in the face of that which is majestic. And God in a manger is likely the most remarkable example we have of such a monumental truth.

God chose to deliberately venture into and intentionally occupy depths far below and infinitely beyond that which any human has ever descended, and then to raise Himself back up to glory from those horridly dark places. And I pray that we never miss the fact that Christmas is God’s invitation for us to join Him in the rising.

Maybe we need to reflect on the fact that the patience of God always outruns the impatience of our greed, and that His love always outweighs the greed that outweighs our love for Him.

If I’ve prayed, I never have to worry about being the first one to show up.

Dreams must be chased, for if we wait for them to chase us we will live a life of waiting.