Craig D. Lounsbrough Quotes - Page 5

Surrendering is intentionally laying down the power I possess. And have I considered that the power I lay down is often more powerful than that which I’m laying it down in front of? Therefore, I would be wise to recognize that surrender is less the absence of power and more the presence of fear.

It wasn’t until I slowed the car and rolled down the windows that I realized I spend most of my days driving ‘through’ life without driving ‘in’ life. So, I’ve decided to walk because the pace is slower and the windows are always down.

Bravery is not found in getting knocked down. Rather, bravery is found is getting back up knowing that you’re going to get knocked down again.

The most elusive and ultimately impossible act of liberation is freedom from sin and self, and no document or declaration of man regardless of how exquisitely penned can do that. Such an astonishing act of liberation could only have been penned in one place: the cross.

Once faith dies, the death of hope follows hard on its heels.

To ‘stop and smell the roses’ we must first believe that there’s a rose garden out there somewhere. And in this jaded world of ours, the refusal to believe in gardens leaves most of us ref of roses.

Starting over is opportunity informed by failure, which is opportunity made intelligent.

When I read the ghastly lines of tragedy darkly penned into my life, I turn and notice that the pen in my hand is wet.

If God has the answer to every question, maybe my appreciation for God should be shaped more by the number of questions and less by the wisdom of the answers.

Mediocrity is ‘purpose’ left to rot in minds ensnared in the deluded rationalization that vision is nothing more than a collection of fanciful dreams constructed by an imaginary God.

It’s not about describing someone as that’s typically an attempt to make whatever they are comfortable for whoever we are. Instead, we may wish to skip the agenda of the description and embrace the wonder of the person.

Oh yes, I am frequently driven to an enraged frenzy by the blatantly crass actions of others. But to be painfully honest, that anger is much less driven by the reality of their actions and far more fueled by the realization that everything I am is everything that I hate in them.

And so to tame Christmas we spin myths to temper the story, we create our own caricatures to speak our own lines into the script, we gift ourselves to enhance an adventure now lagging, and we think we’re on a grand adventure when we’ve completely forgotten what an adventure is.

So, there’s this hornet’s nest. And there’s this long stick. And then there’s me. How I walk away from all of this will depend on whether I realize that some things go together and some things don’t no matter how hard you try.

To grasp love, I must grasp the fact that it is a creation of God and therefore it is forever beyond me. But the very fact that it is forever beyond me is the very thing that prompts me to forever pursue it.

You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you.

If I so much as dare to intimately probe the reflection I see in the mirror, I am filled with the tormenting fear that I might be repulsed. God invites us to boldly probe the reflection in the mirror so that we might be released.

Although it would lead me to believe otherwise, fear has little interest in intimidating me. Rather, it much prefers to enslave me.

The world screams, ‘Stay down, it’s safer.’ My soul screams, ‘So is being dead.

Doing life without God is not doing life.

I would much prefer to enlarge your life by giving you the gift of my life, rather than gifting your life to material obesity with frivolous trinkets.

One of a mother’s greatest gifts is to teach her child that to grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water’s edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. And that lesson can be best taught by a mother who stands before her child dripping wet.

The yardstick that we frequently use to determine if something can be restored is based on the handful of inches that we bring to the process, when God shows up with an infinite amount of miles.

Most often, what I don’t know will have a vastly greater bearing on my life that what I do know.

Sometimes consequences are building blocks fashioned of granite when successes are shaped of clay.

Maybe it’s a whole lot less about focusing on the fact that we’re all victims and a whole lot more about the changing the fact that we’re all careless, as that is what victimized all of us in the first place.

The best I can do is to ‘pretend’ that I’m my own god. But in the pretending I have to pretend that I’m not pretending, and somehow that doesn’t sound very god-like to me.

The present is too often squandered grieving the past or fearing the future, which makes the present nothing more than a cheap facsimile of what was or what will be instead of what it could be.

My worth is not based on the ‘work of my hands’ despite how feverishly I might work and how audaciously successful I might be. Rather, my worth is based exclusively on the astonishing fact that I am the ‘work of God’s hands.

I would surmise that we must cherish the resources that God has given us to achieve a goal more than we cherish the goal itself. For if we fall victim to the pursuit of the goal alone, then the goal has suddenly become our god.

Real accomplishments do virtually nothing to serve me and they do everything to serve others. Anything less is nothing more than a meaningless task dressed in the deceptive finery of accomplishments.

Directing praise to oneself is to cash in on the ego in order to bankrupt the soul.

Intelligence and wisdom are certainly compatible, however they are rarely seen in each other’s company.

I am so often the architect of my own pain and the engineer of my own failures.

Sometimes we are so caught up in the disappointment of plans gone astray that we fail to recognize the potentially new options that might now exist.

To judge someone is to say that I have the right to define who they are, verses understanding that God has handed me the priceless privilege of discovering who they are.

To be an end in myself is to bring an end to myself.

Today I must look in the mirror and be thankful for the person who I find staring back at me. For although the reflection is terribly imperfect, and I know that full well, God created it with enough room that one day it would be perfect. And if there is nothing else I can find to be thankful for, let me begin here.

Five of the most dangerous words I know: ‘What’s in it for me?

It’s not about the elimination of fear. Rather it’s about the elimination of the feeling that the elimination of fear is necessary before we take the next step.

One sure way I can avoid facing myself is by refusing to look into the face of God.

To fully understand how utterly amazing we really are we must first understand all of the things about us that are not, and then we must make our habitation where they are not.

Ego is borne of the need to ‘prove’ oneself instead of making the choice to ‘be’ oneself. And so maybe we need to begin curbing the birthrate.

Tomorrow’ is the thing that’s always coming but never arrives. ‘Today’ is the thing that’s already here and never leaves. And because that’s the case, I would much prefer to invest in today than sit around waiting for an arrival that’s not arriving.

Real, lasting closure is never secured through retribution or retaliation.

Life is not about getting everything right, as much as it’s about working to live right.

I suppose that one of my greatest problem lays in the fact that I have assumed a blessing to be something that is mine for the taking, verses being something that by sheer exposure to it takes me.

If I’m chasing the wrong thing, what I’m chasing will end up chasing me. And in the end, I’m less likely to be the one doing the catching.

We tend to deny our humanity because in accepting the fullness of it, we would need to confess how little we’ve done with it.

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life.

Ethics are the things that say, 'Don’t stick your finger in the socket.' The world says, 'It’s okay because we’ve shut off the electricity.' And at the point that we’ve chosen to listen to the world and ignore our ethics, we say, 'I’m having a really hard time getting back up.

However far I’ve come, it’s probably somewhere less than halfway of where I could be if I simply believed in myself.

We want greatness, but we prefer it tamed and on a leash short enough for us to control it, yet long enough to allow it to retain some remote yet diminished flavor of greatness.

The service of self terminates at our own death.

I say that my value is based on my accomplishments. Christmas is God saying that I am His accomplishment and that will forever be enough.

Darkness should never be an excuse to quit, for with God, darkness is the exact stuff that light was built for.

A hole is a space where everything has been moved out so that opportunity has space to move in.

A cause that only serves me is much like a door on the edge of a cliff, it doesn’t open to anywhere good.

As it peaks over the horizon, does not a sunrise whisper the opportunity to try again. And if the day passes and our efforts were stunted by the bane of our insecurities or blunted by the challenges of life, does not a sunset invite us to rest before it whispers the same message the next morning?

I want to stand on the belief that great things are the product of ordinary people who are made great when they stand.