Discipleship Quotes - Page 16

He found his irritation that the American memory could be short.

When meeting criticism, he would regard it not as something to resent but as a thing to be examined, like an interesting beetle. "That's a curious view, not uninteresting.

We are to be generous not just in the results of our work, but also IN our work.

It’s easy to give God a list of excuses for not feeling worthy or as capable as someone else, in our service to him. The problem is that God doesn’t call those who are unprepared or incapable. He calls those who have the talent and ability to serve. He has it all planned out for us. Our challenge is to accept his calling and move out in faith believing in his promises of help and support.

The big idea here is not, have you sinned, but are you changing?

The longer you look at Jesus, the more you will want to serve him in his world. That is, of course, if it’s the real Jesus you’re looking at. Plenty of people in the church and outside it have made up a ‘Jesus’ for themselves, and have found that this invented character makes few real demands on them. He makes them feel happy from time to time, but doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t suggest they get up and do something about the plight of the world. Which is, of course, what the real Jesus had an uncomfortable habit of doing.

Don't sweat the small stuff" doesn't work with parenting small children. They only work in small stuff. They aren't making company decisions. They are deciding whether to use a crayon on the wall. – Bill Klein

Fidelity in marriage requires self-will and self-denial.

When I push the button on my laptop, it should start up. If it doesn’t, it can’t blame its nonexistent emotions. It should respond immediately and appropriately because that’s what it has been created to do.In evaluating my parenting, I realized much of my anger with my children arose from my having the wrong perspective about them. I was viewing them as if they were machines.

The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.

If we are to have real faith, we must study the Word of God and discover what is promised. Then, we must simply believe the promises of God. Trying to believe something that you want to believe is not faith. Believing what God says in His Word is faith.

To be a disciple of Jesus means to learn from Him, to follow Him. The cost may be high.

Challenge quandary thinking, either/or thinking come by moving from the abstract to the concrete. What can we do with the choice actually in front of us?

The inner struggle against one’s own weaknesses is the central drama of life.

There is nothing Christ dislikes more than for His people to make a showpiece of Him and not to use Him.

My son will wear the title well, the Duke thought, and realized with a sudden chill that this was another death thought.

He (the Bible study leader) is blessed with a light touch and a firm hand.

A family that never embraces life's risks never really lives.

If somebody in your life doesn't think you are a fanatic, you are probably backslidden.

Peter's denial was not just a personal weakness. He was in a leadership position, honored as the one who spoke for the group, and was second in command (when Jesus wasn't around). But his choice to publicly deny his place in the community at the side of Jesus had massive repercussions for the other disciples. They ran and hid, and from this point on in the Way of the Cross there is no mention of the disciples again in the Passion narrative. The sheep are scattered, routed, and demoralized. Peter's sin tore open the seems that held them together.

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

The more spiritual successes that Edwards experienced, the more he seemed to intentionally infuse his sermons with language deemed to move a person’s emotional center—their souls—to spiritually and physically respond.

Explaining a professor's emphasis on teaching over research: "She traded clinical questions with determinable answers for perennial questions with inexhaustible answers.

The further you go, the more you're going to need the people you started with.