Craig D. Lounsbrough Quotes - Page 3

Humility is the greatest shaper of souls and crafter of character, for it wipes away all the grandiose things that we spend so much of our lives pretending to be, so that we can spend all of our lives being the exceptional person that we were actually created to be.

We got where we are because our choices mapped the route and paved the road.

We desperately want to believe in something. To simply live out our lives believing in nothing is to live as if this thing we call life is filled with nothing but nothing.

If as an adult I have scolded and then silenced the child within me, I contend that I am neither an adult nor a child. Rather, I am just plain ignorant.

Oftentimes I think it is far better to listen for an answer, rather than talk out of an effort to create one.

It would do me well to realize that the path that has led me to where I am was mapped by those who taught me and paved by what they taught me. Therefore, if God is not my teacher and His truth is not my topic I will find myself where I don’t want to be, having trod a path I didn’t want to take.

If I am indeed my own god, I’d better start praying to myself to get myself out of myself.

We opt to be seen as ‘right’ in the eyes of everyone else, rather than doing what’s ‘right’ in light of the situation.

An obese ego is just about the heaviest thing you’ll ever carry. So maybe you should stop feeding it.

Chilled ice tea that tempered tepid summer days lathered thick with humidity. Frothy hot chocolate that cut winter’s chill. Bedtime prayers that sent our fears scrambling in panicked flight. Golden bouquets of dandelions aromatically rich with the gift of summers scent. Family meals that wove yet another binding thread in and through the tapestry of those seated around the table. These are but the slightest sampling of the innumerable gifts my mother handed to this child of hers. And without them, my life would be impoverished beyond words to describe.

Maybe we don’t ever feel that sweetly untainted and wholly majestic kind of love that takes every longing captive because we are hopelessly entangled in the illogical fear that despite all of love’s grand goodness, it might not be good enough to keep us safe.

We’re making our decisions … or so we think. Yet in truth, ignorance, greed, and the scourge of immediate gratification are often the things that are making them. So if we’re going to truly live well, maybe the first thing we need to decide is who’s deciding.

If the amount of times we get up is just one less than the amount of times that we've been knocked down, then we're spending our lives lying down.

Eons ago, the creative genius of God foresaw that it would take the shattered pieces of my ‘yesterday’ to construct the sturdy portal to my ‘tomorrow.

Sometimes the grandest of all events are described in the poverty of a few simple words.

Despite my incessant desperation, I simply cannot paint the perfect picture within which I would wish to live out my life. And because I cannot, God picked up the brush of love, positioned the canvas of history and painted a manger.

Too often the spotlight that highlights our successes burns out quickly, while the spotlight that scrutinizes our failures is a long-life bulb.

Discerning the difference between a dictator and a leader is quite easy. The former cannot help but see ‘leading’ and ‘serving’ as stark contradictions that by their very nature are utterly incompatible. The latter can’t tell the difference

Consequences are not the spoiler that kills my dreams. Rather, they are the lessons that enhance my dreaming.

If I worship the fact that I don’t worship anything, amongst other things what I’m worshipping is denial.

Whatever the depth of our darkness, God navigated it eons before it was dark. And whatever the duration of our nights, God was there long before it ever turned to night. Therefore, despite our frequent feelings to the contrary, there is no place we might be where God was not lovingly waiting for us an eternity before we got there.

Thanksgiving is an attitude that must be rooted in the ‘gift of life’ if we ever hope to be thankful for the ‘gifts’ of life.

Greatness untethered from God results in calamity unrestrained by men.

Easter says that every ending ever experienced by man is exquisitely crafted to find its own ending at the feet of a fresh beginning.

Fear is often bred of an imagination that couldn’t let something be what it actually was.

My soul is utterly frantic for that single place of perfect refuge from which I can clearly see the winds rip and hear the tempest tear, yet despite the ferocity of the tumult I rest in such a sublime peace it is as if neither existed at all. And if I have not yet found such a place, it is because I have not yet found God.

I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets.

I am only one, but that is infinitely better than being none.

To live a fantasy is to avoid a life.

I pray for sufficient wisdom to understand that wisdom apart from God is the stuff of opinion tainted by the rot of bias. And if I am somehow apt to confuse such rubbish with wisdom, I will think myself wise but find myself living in a landfill.

How many times has our conscience firmly prompted us to ‘draw the line,’ and we showed up with an eraser?

Given the lethal enormity of sin and the inestimable value of a single soul, a baby in a manger and a man on a cross makes more sense that anything else I will ever be able to possibly imagine.

Is safety the ‘dream’ that will kill all of my other ‘dreams?’ For the truth is, no ‘real’ dream is safe.

How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I’ve really been doing is running?

Forgiving others simply means that you refuse to be a prisoner of a past that you can't change, and shackled to decisions that you didn't make.

If I give with the motive to get, regardless of the degree to which that motive besets me, I will walk away impoverished and I will leave those to whom I have given just as impoverished as I have now found myself.

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 of this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.

I can attempt to stay on the fence. However, the problem is that the fence is a figment of my fear not a reality of my journey.

Prayer is one action where I lay aside my abilities to immerse myself wholly in God’s capabilities. And the liberation found in such an action is less about being engaged with God and more about being freed from myself.

I can amass countless fortunes and yet stand with empty hands. I can seek God and have fortunes that fill countless hands.

We are not built for mediocrity, but we build it into our lives nonetheless.

Undoubtedly, our weariness is not based on the fact that we’re running. Rather, our weariness is all too frequently based on the fact that many of the things that we’re running from are the very things we should be running to.

I would like to say that I’m sacrificial. But am I sacrificial enough to acknowledge the fact that I’m not?

I want to ‘think’ that I have all the answers. But if I ‘think’, I soon realize that what I thought to be answers were guesses. And if I ‘think’ yet again, I begin to realize that since God has all the answers He never hands me a guess.

If I am always standing at the bottom of the mountain longingly looking up, in all probability it is because I have heeded the pillaging dogma of mediocrity which persistently tells me that the dream is not worth the climb.

It is not the chains of some tyrant that robs us of freedom. Rather, it is the staleness of our attitude.

I simply can’t look into the heavens on a crisp starry night and somehow bring myself to believe that the gaping expanse that engulfs the whole of me is the product of chance happenstance. And neither can I believe that the gaping expanse that rests within me is anything less.

It may be that we’re not seeing the wonder in life because all we’re doing is wondering how we’re going to survive life.

A goal lacking a sense of ethics is a goal that lacks any sense.

To understand the mysteries of God we must move past the logic of men.

God’s decision to reach out in such dramatic fashion as to lay all rightful privilege aside and be born into abject destitution tells us that His passion for us exceeds our desire for Him. And maybe we should commit to evening that up a bit.

To fall is not to fail. To fail is to never fall because I never got up in the first place.

I paved the path to the very place I don’t want to be. But passing the blame off to someone else doesn’t put me any place else.

Kicking the can down the road implies that we’re accepted the galling reality that whatever it is that we’ve avoiding, it’s something that’s not going to go away; at least on its own.

The hallmark of great dreams is not their possibility but their impossibility, and the fact that it is the very notion of the ‘impossible’ that inspires us to go and accomplish them anyway.

If my heart is set on pursuing real treasures, my mind must be fixed solely on the privilege of enjoying them and freed of the obsession of owning them.

Love that is fueled solely by feelings will suddenly find itself out of gas on a long road with no gas stations.

If I have attached anything to sacrifice other than loss, I have at some level assumed a pay-off. And if I’ve assumed a pay-off, I’m only assuming a sacrifice.

Death reminds us that life is a temporary privilege, not an endless right.

Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.