Craig D. Lounsbrough Quotes - Page 7

Failure is information encased in a shell of pain.

The only things I truly keep are those things that I give away.

Is it reasonable to assume that the jarring nature of a particular consequence might be the very thing that strong-arms us away from making the poor choice that we didn't see as a poor choice?

We myopically stare at the gaping hole left in our lives and see nothing but the hole, not realizing a hole is defined by everything around it that is not a hole.

How often is my tidy and well-appointed world nothing but the thin veneer of an imagination that I’ve chosen to use in the service of denial, rather than a gift I’ve chosen to exercise out of a passion for change?

Being our best involves walking away from every situation with less than what we had when we encountered it because we left something behind in the exchange.

Loss is the uninvited door that extends us an unexpected invitation to unimaginable possibilities.

I would entertain the apparently fading idea that patriotism that serves the self is greed dressed in the garments of liberty and adorned with the fashion accessories of other associated patriotic notions.

Maybe we should remember that logic constructs a box that is far too small for wonder to take up residence in. Therefore, the crucial question is, ‘Will we choose to live there if wonder cannot?

Apathy is unconditional surrender where we are driven into hiding by unrealistic fear, and firmly held there by the misinformed belief that we are helpless to do anything other than hide. Therefore, apathy survives solely on lies and can be completely abated by truth.

To let something go is to participate in a much greater dance that we call life.

Faith means I chose not to know, which is different than ignorance which refuses to know.

Pain is nothing but growth waiting for us to give it permission to grow us up.

Have we ever thought to consider that we create values that ‘feel’ right because they serve our current agendas, which is an infinitely different thing from values that ‘are’ right because they serve an eternal agenda?

The love hidden within is always greater than the hate displayed without.

Until I realize that it’s all I gift, I can hold all of it and yet receive none of it.

We’ve yet to comprehend the impervious reality that to gain ‘life’ we have to do the most scandalous thing imaginable, and that is to work ‘against’ the whole of our humanity and give everything away. And yet to give everything away is to work ‘with’ the whole of God’s character.

A commitment to never getting knocked down is in reality a decision to never stand up.

If God created great things with a point of vulnerability, it would lie in the reality that great things die in the hands of great ignorance.

Either we are running ‘from’ what we fear, or running ‘to’ what we fear. The former is a choice driven by fear, the latter is an action inspired by it.

The most formidable way to lead is to serve. And while the perplexing oxymoron of such a grinding statement absolutely cripples us, it birthed a Savior.

I will not find myself, nor will I obtain any precarious morsel of life in giving all of life to myself. If I am ever to find these things, I must first be willing to give these things away at the very moment that I come into possession of them.

Rhetoric can be easily recognized for it is delightfully sweet sounding but it is utterly void of sacrifice, which means it is utterly void of substance. Christmas is irrefutable evidence that God never engages in rhetoric.

Instinct is all of our humanity being deliberately honest with all of life.

What excites us the most or likewise scares us the most is when something is exactly what it says it is. And when it comes to Christmas, we’re going to end up finding ourselves on one side of that line or the other.

It is inevitable that I will leave a legacy simply because I cannot walk through life without leaving footprints as I walk. Therefore, I would be wise to consider the path before I make the prints.

Whatever might be taken from me need not leave me with a deficit in its wake.

If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this.

Pain dutifully reminds me that the world is terribly imperfect, but it faithfully helps me appreciate the world on those days when it’s a little closer to being perfect.

Easter is the final solution to the finality of death.

The shortest short-term investment is to serve ourselves.

Faith is the resplendent key that liberates me from the impregnable confines meticulously constructed from the raw material of my disbelief.

Everything I touch makes me a little bit more like the thing I’m touching, so I’d better start paying attention to what I’m touching.

Jesus came to give us life to the very edges of life.

What would behoove me to instantly declare God not to be God unless He followed my script in some tediously exacting manner? I must confess that I am less likely to believe that it’s a matter of some narcissistic demand that I freely pen my own script. Rather, I think it’s fear that I’m too inadequate to follow God’s.

I much prefer not to fall, unless of course I am falling into the hands of God.

Vigilance of the wisest kind is to incessantly remain open to the reality that what I ‘see’ is but a single thread and solitary shard of what ‘is’, for to assume otherwise is to surrender the wisdom of vigilance to the decay of ignorance.

The challenge is never based on the size of the obstacle that stands before me. Rather, it is dictated by the degree of faith that rests within me.

If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped children who have no handicap other than the conviction that they believe they do.

Christmas is a bold act of emboldening sacrifice and the most selfless gift ever granted the rebellious lot that we are.

Despite the voices of the culture that would scream otherwise, victory is irreparably tied to the surrender of self. And that explains why so few are truly victorious.

The message of Christmas is a message of hope when all other such messages created by men can do nothing more than be hopeful.

There’s not much that I can find in places where there is nothing to find. However, to avoid facing God I find myself spending a lot of time in those very places.

If sacrifice is not the theme of my life, there’s no sense telling the story.

Let me be strong, for to be anything else is to languish in the abyss of compromise and to descend to places of impoverishment so destitute that they will squelch my soul and crush my heart.

Suddenly finding myself imprisoned in the ruins of the fortresses I created, I realize that that which I built to protect me has now become a labyrinth that is set to destroy me. And laying spent in the rubble, I finally realize that there is only one fortress and I cannot create it because there is only one God.

If I have never had, or worse yet, I have lost the conviction that life (despite all of the blows it wields and the savagery that it spawns) is nonetheless an incalculable privilege, I will have in that single loss forfeited the whole of my life and effectively wiped out any hope that I can or will do anything other than exist.

I am not the sum total of my accomplishments, for no matter how much I exhaust myself acquiring those accomplishments, the sum total of them will always be far too trifling to ever reflect my true value. My value rests in the fact that I am an accomplishment of God so incalculably valuable that He gave up Himself rather than give me up.

Consequences need not be the obstacles that I dread, but the direction that I need.

The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.

I have forged many things that I believe to be things of great beauty. Yet if God is not a part of them, they are entirely counterfeit and I have been robbed blind by the work of my own hands.

It is the restraint of patience that yields the magnificent in life.

If Christmas is a universally comprehensive and keenly clandestine rescue mission strategically crafted by God Himself eons before the rescue was necessary, it would naturally follow that if it is doomed to anything, it is doomed to incontestable success.

If it has anything to do with me, it has nothing to do with sacrifice.

Authorship of anything apart from God is nothing more than a tragedy in the making.

It is the state of the heart within us that determines the nature of the triggers we will pull outside of us.

I would suggest that our imagination is a tiny shard of God’s infinite genius that we have within us simply because we were created in God’s image.

To forget is to blithely toss aside the hard lessons that were hard won by others before us, thereby needlessly dooming us to endure the hard lessons that are likely to be forgotten by those who will follow us. And it is altogether reasonable that in order to avoid this repetitive trouncing, God graciously granted us memories.

No person, collection of people, institution, government or organization of any kind can in any way promise to meet all of my needs for no person, collection of people, institution, government or organization possesses the array of resources necessary to do that. And so, I am left with the reality that either there is a God who can meet all of my needs, or I’ve been stranded in an existence that created me with needs that the existence itself cannot meet.

If there is any solace to be found in the carnage of September 11th, may I find it in understanding that the potential to do great good can handily rival the tendency to carry out great evil. And out of that understanding may I commit in my own life to make certain that in such a critical rivalry I will ensure that towers will never fall because of me, but people will be raised up due to me.