Quotes by Counselors - Page 3

You cannot force people to walk with God. You cannot force them to repent. All you can do is live with integrity and invite them to do so as well. Take things a step at a time. Give them consequences when they refuse to deal with serious issues, and pray. Pray like the dickens. Pray every step of the way.
John Eldredge
Due north’ on my compass is largely ‘due’ to the fact that in ‘due’ time I have been ‘unduly’ lax in recalibrating my compass. And I’m apparently ignorant enough to wonder why I’m lost.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Whatever the item is that I have chosen to give you, it is nothing more than the receptacle within which I have placed the whole of myself. If it is empty, it is not a gift.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To attempt to know myself ‘apart’ from God is to choose to know nothing more than ‘a part’ of myself.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In the end, if we don't have God we don't have anything other than an end.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, the fear of failure is slain cold by success that is already hot on the way.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Idolatry is always subject to the law of diminishing returns.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
My limitations abruptly define the frighteningly negligible extent of my existence, yet my soul utterly perishes if bound by those very same limits. And does this not somehow evidence both the reality of and need for God?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I spend my life constantly calling in ‘imaginary’ debts that aren’t owed to me in order to avoid the ‘real’ debts that I owe to others, and so everybody ends up bankrupt.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I don’t necessarily sit around inviting life to knock me down, but when it does I don’t wait around for an invitation to stand back up either.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I wonder if it will rain after we die. When you kill yourself, you don't know what happens next, afterward.
Albert Borris
It’s not so much about writing the story of Christmas itself, as ingenious as it is. In reality, it’s much more about writing the story of Christmas into the story of life so that it will become the story of life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Acceptance is the most beautiful word in any language; this beautiful concept can only exist when you allow other people to be who they are and do not imprison them with your definition of what is right, proper, correct, or other limiting criteria. Decreasing the black and white in your thinking allows for an expansive area of gray, allowing you to live your life and others to live there life. Acceptance sets us all free! This simple change of thought creates a wonderful space for happiness to thrive.
David W. Earle
Rarely do I truly understand the disease which ails me. Therefore, rarely do I truly understand the fix that would cure me. And so maybe I should truly contemplate how rarely I recognize that God understands both.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is in opposing the world’s lies that we impose truth in our hearts.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It’s not a lack of opportunity around me. Rather, it’s a lack of faith within me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Things becomes invisible at the very moment I refuse to grant them importance. And while I am utterly ashamed to admit it, many of the most important things in my life are invisible.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am selfish by habit, but sacrificial by nature. Therefore, I’d be wise to develop the habit of following my nature.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although I am far too frequently convinced otherwise, with God a dead-end is only the death of an end.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
While we tediously check our weaponry before entering into battle, do we check our hearts? For without exception, that is the greatest weapon of all.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Boundary violations are deeply experienced.
David W. Earle
God’s absence in the carnage is due to one single rather unnerving fact; that at some time past He honored our request that He leave. And if we are not brutally honest with ourselves regarding that choice, it is we ourselves who have set the stage for the next tragedy.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In the deepest darkness God tenderly grasps my hand and whispers that darkness is nothing more than a place that He is preparing for the arrival of light.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues.
Hugh Prather
The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.
John Eldredge
I’m not the author of my fears, but I sure feed them really well.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I think myself so terribly ‘clever’ that the need for God is blatantly irrelevant. And all the while, in the rapidly growing mess that I’m ‘cleverly’ creating, I rather quickly begin to realize that the only thing that is relevant is His relevance.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If life is nothing more than a journey to death, autumn makes sense but spring does not.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When I find that stubbornness continually overrides common sense regardless of the logic of my argument, it seems that the only effective solution is to tell them to go ahead and stick their finger in the socket. And what I find is that what my argument failed to solve, electricity does quite nicely.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Ignorance is avoiding that which stands in front of me out of the misplaced hope that it will put what I’m ignoring behind me. Instead, it’s most certain to drop it on top of me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We ask, ‘Why the need for God?’ Maybe the better question is ‘Why the need not to need Him?’ And could it be that that question in fact evidences our need for Him?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The road ahead is not some predetermined path that I am forced to trod, but it is a rich byway that I can help create.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We forget the gospel when we neglect our adoption and think that we're still just a hired servant. The Father doesn't let us come to him on those terms. We will either come as sons or we will stay with the pigs. He won't let us earn anything from him because there will be no boasting in his sight. It will either be that Jesus and his glorious gospel has the preeminence or we will go it on our own.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
God never encourages self-reliance.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
Each human being deals with hurt or resentment in a unique way. When you feel insulted or bullied, you may reach for a chocolate bar. In the same circumstance, I might burst into tears. Another person may put his or her feelings quickly into words, confronting the mistreatment directly. Although our feelings can influence how we wish to act, our choices of how to behave are ultimately determined more by our attitudes and our habits. We respond to our emotional wounds based on what we believe about ourselves, how we think about the person who has hurt us, and how we perceive the world. Only in people who are severely traumatized or who have major mental illnesses is behavior governed by feelings. And only a tiny percentage of abusive men have these kinds of severe psychological problems.
Lundy Bancroft
It is in building the best of our abilities that we ultimately destroy the worst of our liabilities.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What is fear but that ‘thing’ that we believed to be as powerful as it pretended to be.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Most of the things we deem as impossible are only impossible because we’ve given them permission to be impossible.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hate feeds on itself, while love will always find itself fed.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
This is what we desire in intimate relationships but this deep connection is often so frightful that most do not take advantage of the opportunities presented for honesty.
David W. Earle
If the light we have is continually engulfed by the darkness in a way that makes the darkness even darker, maybe we should think about getting our light from Someone else before it gets a whole lot darker.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Children naturally believe without question and absorb knowledge at an incredible rate; since there is no other frame of reference; they believe their parental reality, true or false.
David W. Earle
They say that if you really want to kill yourself, no one can stop you. There are too many ways to do it. You can jump off a bridge or a building. You can hang yourself. You can crash a car or slit your wrists or swim out really far into the ocean until you drown. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not dead, if I really wanted to kill myself.
Albert Borris
We know enough to know that all of this is not quite right. And we know enough to know that settling for what’s not quite right is quite wrong.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To abandon the child ‘within’ means that the adult ‘without’ will be an adult in name only. And frankly, I can only name a handful of things that are that tragic.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To simply survive appears to be the choice of the plodding hoards that wander all around me. Therefore, I’ve adamantly committed to never hoard hoards.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The woman knows from living with the abusive man that there are no simple answers. Friends say: “He’s mean.” But she knows many ways in which he has been good to her. Friends say: “He treats you that way because he can get away with it. I would never let someone treat me that way.” But she knows that the times when she puts her foot down the most firmly, he responds by becoming his angriest and most intimidating. When she stands up to him, he makes her pay for it—sooner or later. Friends say: “Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance. He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he is, she may know that he will become dangerous when she tries to leave him. She may even be concerned that he will try to take her children away from her, as some abusers do.
Lundy Bancroft
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.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We got where we are because our choices mapped the route and paved the road.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our parents were our first gods. If parents are loving, nurturing, and kind, this becomes the child’s definition of the creator. If parents were controlling, angry, and manipulative, then this becomes their definition.
David W. Earle
The wife's list, no matter how long or short, communicates to the husband, "I don't like you. I don't accept you. But if you perform the way I think you should, then I will like and accept you." And no matter how long the husband's list may be, it says in like manner to his wife, "I don't like you either. But if you stop caring about things so much, if you stop feeling the way you feel and noticing the things you notice, then I will accept and like you.
Jeff VanVonderen
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.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
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.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Oftentimes I think it is far better to listen for an answer, rather than talk out of an effort to create one.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It was His gentle voice who calledand sent His angel pain to guide me, through the long ‘n dusty corridors, and empty hallways of my soul.
David W. Earle
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.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I am indeed my own god, I’d better start praying to myself to get myself out of myself.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We opt to be seen as ‘right’ in the eyes of everyone else, rather than doing what’s ‘right’ in light of the situation.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
THE MYTHS ABOUT ABUSERS1. He was abused as a child.2. His previous partner hurt him.3. He abuses those he loves the most.4. He holds in his feelings too much.5. He has an aggressive personality.6. He loses control.7. He is too angry.8. He is mentally ill.9. He hates women.10. He is afraid of intimacy and abandonment.11. He has low self-esteem.12. His boss mistreats him.13. He has poor skills in communication and conflict resolution.14. There are as many abusive women as abusive men.15. His abusiveness is as bad for him as for his partner.16. He is a victim of racism.17. He abuses alcohol or drugs.
Lundy Bancroft
The central attitudes driving Mr. Right are:You should be in awe of my intelligence and should look up to me intellectually. I know better than you do, even about what’s good for you.Your opinions aren’t worth listening to carefully or taking seriously.The fact that you sometimes disagree with me shows how sloppy your thinking is.If you would just accept that I know what’s right, our relationship would go much better. Your own life would go better, too.When you disagree with me about something, no matter how respectfully or meekly, that’s mistreatment of me.If I put you down for long enough, some day you’ll see.
Lundy Bancroft