Christian Quotations

"Our little time of suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome home to Heaven."
- Samuel Rutherford

"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
- Abraham Lincoln

"We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking only to learn that it is God shaking them."
- Charles West

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
- John Shedd

"The next time you are called to suffer, pay attention. It may be the closest you'll ever get to God."
- Max Lucado

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
- Stephen Levine

"Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask."
- Billy Graham

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
- C. S. Lewis

"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all, but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess."
- Martin Luther

"The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick along side it."
-D. L. Moody

"I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love."
-Henry Ward Beecher

"The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else."
-Oswald Chambers

"It's not what you did, but what you could have done if you allowed the Lord to work His will in your life."
-A. W. Tozer

Don't Fear Deeper Friendships

By : Rick Warren

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV).

When we’re full of fear and anxiety, we don’t get close to each other. We back off from each other. We’re afraid of being rejected, manipulated, vulnerable, hurt, or used. All of these fears cause us to disconnect in life.

This fear is as old as humanity. When Adam and Eve sinned, and God came looking for them, Adam said, “I was afraid . . . so I hid” (Genesis 3:10 NIV). People have been doing that ever since. We’re afraid, so we hide. We hide our true selves.

We don’t let people know what we’re really like. We don’t let them see the inside of us. Why? Because if we let people know what we’re like and they don’t like it; we’re up a creek without a paddle. Tough luck. Why am I afraid to tell you who I am? Because if I tell you who I am, and you don’t like me, I’m in for it. I have no alternative. So we wear masks and we pretend.

Fear does three terrible things to relationships:

1. Fear makes us defensive. We’re afraid to reveal ourselves. We defend ourselves. When people point out our weaknesses, we retaliate and defend ourselves.

2. Fear keeps us distant. We don’t let people get close to us. We want to withdraw, pull back. We want to hide our emotions. We don’t want to be open and honest. We become defensive and distant.

3. Fear makes us demanding. Whenever we’re insecure, and the more insecure we are, the more we try to control. So we try to have the last word in a relationship. We try to dominate, control. It’s always a symptom of fear and insecurity.
Where do you get the confidence, the courage, to take the first step in connecting with someone, to go into a deeper intimacy? Where do you get that courage?

You get it from God’s Spirit in your life. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For the Holy Spirit, God’s gift, does not want you to be afraid of people but to be wise and strong (courageous), and to love them and enjoy being with them” (LB).

How do you know when you’re filled with God’s Spirit? You’re more courageous in your relationships. You love people. You enjoy being with them. You’re not afraid of them because God’s Spirit is in your life. The Bible says “God is love,” and “Love casts out all fear.” The more of God you have in your life, the less of fear you’re going to have in your life.

So the starting point in connecting with anybody is to pause, pray, and say, “God, give me the courage to take the first step.” You need to do that now with a person you want to connect with.

Find Power in Prayer!

James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Throughout the United States today believers are gathering for the National Day of Prayer. Since the founding of the country there have been 134 national calls to prayer, humiliation, fasting and thanksgiving issued by the President of the United States.

Prayer needs to be a huge part of our lives. We need to recognize that our spirit needs prayer like our body needs food! Charles Spurgeon once said, “We cannot all argue, but we can all pray; we cannot all be leaders, but we can all be pleaders; we cannot all be mighty in rhetoric, but we can all be prevalent in prayer.”

Let’s commit to spending more time in prayer today! Make sure you don’t allow the enemy to rob your time to pray — for it’s in prayer that we tap into God’s unlimited power that makes demons tremble!

Red Alert!

Romans 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

As we spoke across the United States these past months, it seems we were continually met with a spirit of apathy and a lack of understanding about the times in which we live. Despite all the things going on in the world today, the sense of urgency about the hour seemed lost among many.

Dr. Albert Bartlett, an expert on compounding, gave this scenario. Let’s suppose you’re sitting in a water tight baseball stadium which seats over 50,000 people, and you’re handcuffed to the top bleacher. Let’s say a single drop of water is placed in the center of the stadium and is allowed to double at a rate of 1 time per minute. In other words, 1 drop doubled, equals two drops added to the stadium. The next minute, two drops doubled equals four drops, next minute, four doubled equals eight, and so on.

How many minutes do you suppose you’d have before you’d drown? A few months? A few days? Get this — how about 49 minutes?! That’s right; it would take only 49 minutes to drown completely! What’s even more remarkable is that at 44 minutes, the amount of water in the stadium would only be at 7%! Seriously, do the math!

You see, the real action takes place only in the last five minutes. It seems there is all the time in the world and then…perhaps this is one reason the scriptures say the Lord will come as a thief in the night!

I do not want to be sitting there in the top bleacher, oblivious and helpless — do you? Those of us who are aware of the times have a key to the handcuffs — discernment, wisdom and faith! We will begin preparing now for the times drawing nearer by the second!

Let’s get a sense of urgency about the hour in which we live. Let’s pray earnestly, invest wisely, and be about His business while there’s still time! There’s SO much work to be done!

God Designed You to Work

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10 NIV).

Your work can be an act of worship. No matter what you do, it’s never just a job if you are a believer. This is because God designed you with talents, gifts, and interests that He wants used for his glory.

You are custom-made. There’s nobody like you in the whole world. And the gifts, the abilities, the talents, even the interests you have, they were genetically encoded into you by God. You didn’t have a say in what you were going to be interested in, what you are naturally good at. God made you with a specific mission in mind and He wants you to use the gifts He’s given you in your work.

The Bible says that you are God’s workmanship. The Greek word used for workmanship is poema; that’s where our word for “poem” comes from. You are God’s poem! You are God’s work of art. You are God’s masterpiece.

Your work is part of God’s plan for your life and that is why, as you work, you worship God.

Are You in a Mismatched Job?

By :Rick Warren

“Each of you should go on living according to the Lord’s gift to you, and as you were when God called you. This is the rule I teach in all the churches” (1 Corinthians 7:17 TEV).

God does not expect you to glorify Him with gifts you don’t have. But He does expect you to glorify Him with gifts you do have.

To fulfill God’s will for you life, you need work that expresses what God made you to be. If you’re in a job that is not using the talents, gifts, abilities, and interests that God gave you, you may want to pray about whether or not you’re in a mismatched job.

This is a serious problem and it’s a spiritual issue. It is far more important than you may think it is because God has given you your gifts, talents, and abilities, and one day He’s going to say, “What did you do with them?” And do you want to say, “Well, I spent my life at a job that didn’t use them”?

Now, I know this raises some questions, you may be saying, “Rick, what if my current job doesn’t express my gifts?” As someone committed to your fulfillment in life, living for the purpose God designed you for, I urge you toward this: If you are in a job that does not match the gifts, interests, and abilities God gave to you, then give serious consideration to taking steps to get out of it and get into the job that God has called you to by the very nature of who you are.

It’s a very important issue for your spiritual life: Get into what God made you to be. The first step you need to take is some self-appraisal. You need to ask yourself, “What did God make me to be?” As the Bible says, “Try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you” (Romans 12:3 PH). During this appraisal, you may even discover that you are in the very job God wants you to be, and you can develop a new attitude about your work.

“Each of you should go on living according to the Lord’s gift to you” (1 Corinthians 7:17 TEV). Pray about this: Are you in a job that doesn’t match who God made you to be, or are you exactly where God wants you to be?

Don't Fear Authentic Relationships

By : Rick Warren

“But if we live in the light, as God is in the light, we can share fellowship with each other. Then the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from every sin. If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:7-8 NCV).

Authentic fellowship is not superficial, surface-level chit-chat. It’s genuine, heart-to-heart, sometimes gut-level sharing.

It happens when people get honest about who they are and what is happening in their lives. They share their hurts, reveal their feelings, confess their failures, disclose their doubts, admit their fears, acknowledge their weaknesses, and ask for help and prayer.

Authenticity is the exact opposite of what you find in many churches. Instead of an atmosphere of honesty and humility, there is pretending, role-playing, politicking, and superficial politeness, but shallow conversation.

People wear masks, keep their guard up, and act as if everything is rosy in their lives. These attitudes are the death of real friendship.

It’s only as we become open about our lives that we experience authentic fellowship. The Bible says, “If we live in the light, as God is in the light, we can share fellowship with each other . . . If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves” (1 John 1:7-8 NCV).

The world thinks intimacy occurs in the dark, but God says it happens in the light. We tend to use darkness to hide our hurts, faults, fears, failures, and flaws. But in the light, we bring them all out into the open and admit who we really are.

Of course, being authentic requires both courage and humility. It means facing our fear of exposure, rejection, and being hurt again.

Why would anyone take such a risk?

Because it’s the only way to grow spiritually and be emotionally healthy. The Bible says, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed” (James 5:16 MSG).