Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Your career you will only hear the drum of setback but it is time to shine! Whatever situation you have been facing - this is the time you have been praying for to shine, to move, to overcome, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ!
There can be no more reliable authority on earth than God's Word, the Bible. This timeless, trustworthy source of truth holds the key that unlocks life's mysteries. It alone provides us with the shelter we need in times of storm.
As far back as I can remember, my mother would have me down by the bed at night with her, praying. I can still hear her voice calling my name to God and telling him that she wanted me to follow him in whatever he called me to do.
There's a difference between losing your salvation and leaving your salvation. If you lose something, you don't know where to find it. You can't lose your salvation because you always know where to find it; you can only leave it.
...Gratitude transforms the torment of memory of good things now gone into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.
[Those who accept] the Americanized, Constantinian paradigm [say:] We are of God; they are of the Devil. We are the light; they are the darkness. Our wars are therefore "holy" wars. With all due respect, this is blatant idolatry.
In the end we must be merciful to the fallen, show grace to struggling, and be patient with the doubting. But when God's Word is clear we must not-and we cannot-back up, back off, back down, back out, or backslide from the truth.
Then Jesus changed the situation. When he paid for our sins on the cross, the veil in the temple that symbolized our separation from God was split from top to bottom, indicating that direct access to God was once again available.
The Gospel is not ultimately a defense from pain, it is the message of God's rescue through pain. In fact, it allows us to drop our defenses, to escape not from pain but from the prison of "How" and "Why" to the freedom of "Who?"
God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you have construct for yourself, or that others have construct for you. He may even use suffering to deconstruct that narrative.
Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It's dangerous and disorderly. It wrestles control out of our hands. It is wild and unsettling. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down and inside-out.
I have six kids - four girls and two boys. I'm amazed that growing up in the same house, same parents with the same exposure to the same things that all my six kids can be so different. I see that as their (being) designed by God.
Preaching on Sunday mornings is such a simple thing, and by complicating it, I think we all do ourselves and the audience a disservice. It is very simple. Here is the model: Make people feel like they need an answer to a question.
If you tell God 'no' because He won't explain the reason He wants you to do something, you are actually hindering His blessing. But when you say 'yes' to Him, all of heaven opens to pour out His goodness and reward your obedience.
Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.
This is the reality about humanity. We are each born with an evil, God-hating heart. Genesis 8: 21 says that every inclination of man's heart is evil from childhood, and Jesus' words in Luke 11: 13 assume that we know we are evil.
God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.
The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.
When you have a godly husband, a godly wife, children who respect their parents and who are loved by their parents, who provide for those children their physical and spiritual and material needs, lovingly, you have the ideal unit.
Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or a conservative value. It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on.
The secret behind every godly man and woman is their belief in the truth that they have been forgiven. ... Even when they say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, or have a wrong thought, they continue to be forgiveness-conscious.
I've come to see that you can limit God is different ways. You can limit Him by thinking he can never work in spectacular ways. But you can also limit Him by thinking that only the spectacular is meaningful." - from "Dug Down Deep
Whether it's an attorney or a bond trader or a journalist, or a musician or pastor, you want to do your best. You don't want to seek acclaim. You don't want to seek awards. You want to seek to do your best at what God's given you.
Jesus will always move away from religious drama and toward the needs of people who are hurting. Jesus will always go out of his way to find and minister to people who others will go out of their way to avoid. I love him for that.
I don't think that John Kerry is the Messiah or the Democratic Party is the answer, but I don't like the evangelical community blessing the Republican Party as some kind of God-ordained instrument for solving the world's problems.
We ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus, and that's what I do.
Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.
God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, he cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy.
People who are obsessed with Jesus aren't consumed with their personal safety and comfort above all else. Obsessed people care more about God's kingdom coming to this earth than their own lives being shielded from pain or distress.
Civilizations may clash, but they surely fall if robbed of light from above. It could come from the 1 percent or the 99%, but a guiding light is needed to keep the United States from becoming the rubble of past great civilizations.
To Barack Obama, if you believe in traditional marriage, you are a homophobe. If you believe men shouldn't go into women's bathrooms and showers, you are a bigot. If you believe the unborn have a right to life, you must hate women.
I've never known anyone who has fallen into sin and been successfully restored by the formal church structure. Nor have I ever seen a formal church structure wisely deal with sin, enabling ministry to continue without interruption.
If we choose to be offended when we don't get our own way, Then we're going to live constantly on the edge of anger. But if we say to ourselves, " A merry heart does good like a medicine," It'll make all the difference in the world.
So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self- satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.
The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one's life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous. Chastity is the sine qua non of lucidity and concentration.
God rewards the person who is diligent. And for those who will take time in their day to seek the Lord, for those who will take time to read His Word, for those who will take time to wait upon Him, He will reveal His truths to them.
It is impossible to call yourself a Christian and defend homosexuality. There is no justification or acceptance of homosexuality... Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit, but they cannot reproduce.
It is time that conservative people of faith jointly commit to praying for our nation (daily, fervently!) and also rise up hand in hand in an effort to raise up a new generation of Franklins and Washingtons and Lincolns and Reagans.
You have all these things not because you deserve them, but because Jesus shed His blood and gave you the right to have them. All these blessings are yours today because God is for you! And if God is for you, who can be against you!
Nolan Bushnell, the creator of the Atari video game system, once stated, ‘Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea, It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference.
We are supernaturalists first, not naturalists. The only reason we feel compelled to accommodate science is that science says we ought to. But it is science that should accommodate revelation. Revelation has been around much longer.
In God's eyes, the greatest heroes of faith are not those who achieve prosperity, success, and power in this life, but those who treat life as a temporary assignment and serve faithfully, expecting their promised reward in eternity.
I don't believe my interpretation's inerrant. I don't believe anybody else's interpretation is inerrant, but I do believe the scripture is inerrant. I believe in the plenary, verbal plenary inspiration of scripture, without a doubt.
I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist. I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he's not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes.
The thing is, God has already seen every twist and turn of your life. He already knows what's in your heart. He already knows the decisions you've made. He's just waiting for you to call on Him and be honest with Him like Jonah was.
Our culture highlights all the trouble, all the drama, all the affairs and all the junk. Do not believe for a minute that any of that reflects reality. That does not have to be your future. The handwriting is not written on the wall.
Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty.
Jesus' plan called for action, and how He expressed it predicted its success. He didn't say "you 'might' be my witnesses," or "you 'could' be my witnesses," or even "you 'should' be my witnesses." He said "you 'WILL' be my witnesses.
I tell you, my friends, it's a sin to pray for the USA. And nobody that's intelligent, and that fears God, will fly the American flag any way but upside-down, the international signal of distress... It's too late to pray for the USA.
Clearly, in every civilized culture since recorded history, marriage is always between a man and a woman. And the fact that we're trying to change it is very serious, because the family is the foundational institution in our culture.