Craig D. Lounsbrough Quotes - Page 16

When my vision is numbed by apathy and narrowed by mediocrity, I can stand in the presence of great things and fail to see even the smallest of things.

Thankfully, the nature of pain reminds us of what the ease of pleasure foolishly allows us to forget.

Maybe the real miracle in any miracle is our ability to believe that despite our own depravity, in the eyes of God we are worthy of a miracle.

Fate’ and ‘coincidence’ are the mythological derivatives authored by those who refuse to see a ‘greater purpose’, because such a conclusion would naturally suggest a ‘Greater Being’.

However, in many instances we might be very wise to ask what the consequence of removing the consequence might actually be.

Be absolutely assured that we will die long before our own deaths if we ever allow the fear of adulthood to kill the wonder of childhood.

We have a choice. We can be jaded by what we’ve lost, or joyous over what that thing had accomplished while we had it.

The step that we are on is only a step to the next place, and no step regardless of how massive is ever a destination.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, an absolutely certain way to lose something as quickly as possible is to forget the privilege you have to possess it in the first place.

We are quick to surrender that which we deem as long dead, when God is quick to restore that which He deems as never really having lived.

Everything that I hold will eventually be gone. Subsequently, the quality of my life will depend on whether I choose to appreciate those things ‘now’ or wait until ‘then.

I yearn not for the easy path, but for the right path.  For 'easy' and 'right' are rarely compatible.

If I’m surprised at where I’m at, it’s probably because I’m not listening to the reality that listening to the voices that I’ve listened to have put me here. So, maybe I should be less surprised and more disappointed.

Forgiveness allows the burdens that we carry to become the histories that we forget.

Prayer is knowing that what I ask for is always far bigger than what I could ever articulate, but it is never too big for God to understand nor is it ever too vast for Him to deliver.

We might do well to take a look at what we’ve crammed into our pockets as it will say much about what we’ve crammed into our hearts.

If those who cause destruction have come to be ‘newsworthy’, and those who heal the devastation of that destruction have come to be less than ‘noteworthy’, has our thirst to be entertained become the truly destructive thing?

Loss eventually arrives when something departs. Grief is working through both.

Failure is a friend if we can see past the face of the foe that we project on it.

I pretend to give gifts that people pretend to be gifts so that I can pretend that I gave something that actually cost me something. And what pretending or this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.

My definition of success is not based on achieving the impossible, but rather surviving the probable. And with a threshold that horribly low, simple survival cannot help but become my highest aspiration.

At some point I hope to have grown sufficiently in both stature and wisdom to understand that I cannot deliver myself from myself, and that God alone can save me from me.

Am I a storm-waster? For it is within the fury of the very storms within which I cower that I find resources for my growth that are entirely absent on calmer days.

Mediocrity is a path cleared by fear, leveled by apathy and paved by comfort.

Each day hands me a clean sheet of paper upon which to write. Therefore, I would be wise to write without ever having the need to erase.

I don’t know that love is freedom. Rather, I think it’s more a force to preserve freedom.

My prayer is that God would continue to love me enough to refuse to answer the prayers I'm praying that I shouldn't be praying.

If in fact it’s not too late to realize that something’s ‘too late’, then there’s a good chance that it’s not.

Who you are is too vast to be captured by the reflection of a mirror, classified by the state of your attitude, or categorized by the opinions of others. Therefore, if any of these are defining you, you have yet to be defined.

Opportunity is present is wreckage as much as it is in that which is wonderful. It’s not so much how it comes to us, but what we do with it.

If I had any hand in it at all there’s a chance that it might be beautiful, but it simply cannot not be majestic.

You can dress up greed, but you can’t stop the stench.

God’s genius is as wide as the cosmos, while by comparison our intelligence can find room on the head of a pin.

Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner?

God has given me both the right and privilege to outrun Him if I so choose. Yet, if I do so, I will have lost the race.

We must leave Christmas to be what it is, for to reduce it to the stuff of myth and whimsy is take the single and sole hope of a dying humanity and obliterate it. And I would contend that such an action is insanity of the greatest sort.

If truth is relative, then it’s cousin is anarchy.

When surrounded by the ashes of all that I once cherished, despite my best efforts I can find no room to be thankful. But standing there amidst endless ash I must remember that although the ashes surround me, God surrounds the ashes. And once that realization settles upon me, I am what I thought I could never be ... I am thankful for ashes.

To grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water’s edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by me. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore.

My decisions determine my destination long before I ever get there. And once I do get there, I suddenly realize this is not the destination I had in mind because what I had in mind was the fantasy that my denial had created verses the reality my choices crafted.

The very places that we presume God not to be are the very places that are filled with His footprints and littered with His fingerprints.

Christmas is God saving mankind from the folly of mankind’s grandiose sense of greatness.

The legacy I leave will be unimaginably enhanced by the legacies I received. Therefore, I must be wise enough to embrace the history of those who have gone before me so that I can shape the future of those who will go ahead of me.

To my own demise, I rarely ask why I’m hungry because I’m focusing all of my energies on getting fed. And if I persist in such a diminishing cycle, in all probability I will eventually starve to death because I have chosen to gorge myself on the very things that will keep me empty.

It might not be about perfection. Rather, it may be that that which is imperfect is that which has the most character.

I am the greatest obstacle to my greatest dreams.

I can only begin the process of saving myself when I surrender to the reality that I can’t. And what greater place to surrender that reality than to an infant who surrendered Himself to me so that I might surrender myself to Him.

The restless adventurer within me stands eye-to-eye with the fear that has stepped directly in my path. And the thing I absolutely must not do is to blink first.

The greatest imagination in all of existence is one that would be able to take ‘nothing’ and imagine ‘something’ from ‘nothing.’ And that is God.

To wait is to wisely resign myself to the fact that my ‘timetable’ is too often a ‘table’ with two legs that won’t stand up no matter how much ‘time’ I give it.

Strength other than that received from God is just hype manufactured by men.