"If you are seeking gradual sanctification, you may know you are wrong because you are seeking it by works. If you have to wait, it is not for God, but for yourself to work. You get all blessings from God, not by work, but by faith alone. Hence you don't have to wait. For God wants to give it to you now." - John Wesley, quoted in Wesleyan Advocate, Feb 1996, page 21

Holiness

"Every time we proclaim our goodness and purity, those who know us see our hypocrisy and those who don't know us think that the Christian faith is only for good and pure people. Frankly, I've never seen anyone come to Christ because of the purity of another Christian. If they did, it was despite that purity. Our witness is always one of beggars pointing to the source of the bread." - Steve Brown

"Always do right, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain

"Integrity is keeping my commitment even if the circumstances when I make the commitment have changed." - David Jeremiah

"Integrity is like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody knows what to do about it... Integrity entails not only a discernment of the right action but a willingness to act on one's conclusions." - Stephen L. Carter in Integrity

"We as a nation too often lack integrity, which might be described, in a loose and colloquial way, as the courage of one's convictions. We, the people of the United States, who a little over 200 years ago ordained and established the Constitution, have a serious problem: too many of us nowadays neither mean what we say nor say what we mean. Moreover, we hardly expect anybody else to mean what they say either." - Stephen L. Carter

Integrity

"Every time we proclaim our goodness and purity, those who know us see our hypocrisy and those who don't know us think that the Christian faith is only for good and pure people. Frankly, I've never seen anyone come to Christ because of the purity of another Christian. If they did, it was despite that purity. Our witness is always one of beggars pointing to the source of the bread." - Steve Brown

"Always do right, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain

"Integrity is keeping my commitment even if the circumstances when I make the commitment have changed." - David Jeremiah

"Integrity is like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody knows what to do about it... Integrity entails not only a discernment of the right action but a willingness to act on one's conclusions." - Stephen L. Carter in Integrity

"We as a nation too often lack integrity, which might be described, in a loose and colloquial way, as the courage of one's convictions. We, the people of the United States, who a little over 200 years ago ordained and established the Constitution, have a serious problem: too many of us nowadays neither mean what we say nor say what we mean. Moreover, we hardly expect anybody else to mean what they say either." - Stephen L. Carter

Integrity

"Are you proving that the Christian life is a joyful, happy thing? Do you look glad that you are a Christian? Does your life radiate joy and enthusiasm? Check yourself carefully on this before you teach it. Make the Christian life contagious." - Henrietta Mears in Dream Big: The Henrietta Mears Story

"The modern world has had far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forgot that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy." - G.K. Chesterton

"The Bible talks plentifully about joy, but it nowhere talks about a 'happy Christian.' Happiness depends on what happens; joy does not. Remember, Jesus Christ had joy, and He prays 'that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves." - Oswald Chambers in Run Today's Race

"Joy is not the same as pleasure or happiness. A wicked and evil man may have pleasure, while any ordinary mortal is capable of being happy. Pleasure generally comes from things, and always through the senses; happiness comes from humans through fellowship. Joy comes from loving God and neighbor. Pleasure is quick and violent, like a flash of lightning. Joy is steady and abiding, like a fixed star. Pleasure depends on external circumstances, such as money, food, travel, etc. Joy is independent of them, for it comes from a good conscience and love of God." - Fulton J. Sheen in Fulton J. Sheen's Guide to Contentment

"I once shared a platform with the nearly blind theologian Joseph Sittler, a man who really saw, and heard. He was asked, 'If you had to reduce a call for reformation of the church to one sentence, what would it say?' His answer: 'Watch your language.' The rest - including action for justice - follows language, speech, encouragement, judgment, and the like." - Martin Marty in Context, April 15, 1998

Joy

"Honesty is not only the best policy, it is rare enough today to make you pleasantly conspicuous." - Charles Brower

Honesty

"There's a lot of spiritual smog in the churches. Nothing will blow that out except the same wind that blew at Pentecost." - Vance Havner, quoted in SBC Life, Nov. 1996, pg. 3.

The following quotes on the Holy spirit are taken from Christianity Today: May 24, 1999

"There is no need for us to wait, as the one hundred and twenty had to wait, for the Spirit to come. For the Holy Spirit did come on the day of Pentecost, and has never left his church. Our responsibility is to humble ourselves before his sovereign authority to determine not to quench him, but to allow him his freedom. For then our churches will again manifest those marks of the Spirit's presence, which many young people are specially looking for, namely biblical teaching, loving fellowship, living worship, and an ongoing, outgoing evangelism." - John Stott

"When we know we have most of Christ, when we love Him most, live for Him most, we know that the Holy Spirit is within us in power." - F. B. Meyer in A Castaway and Other Addresses

"Spell this out in capital letters: THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A PERSON. He is not enthusiasm. He is not courage. He is not energy. He is not the personification of all good qualities, like Jack Frost is the personification of cold weather. Actually, the Holy Spirit is not the personification of anything. He is a Person, the same as you are a person, but not material substance. He has individuality. He is one being and not another. He has will and intelligence. He has hearing. He has knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think. He can hear, speak, desire, grieve and rejoice. He is a Person." - A. W. Tozer in The Counselor

"Waste of power is a tragedy. God does not waste the great power of his Spirit on those who want it simply for their own sake, to be more holy, or good, or gifted. His great task is to carry on the work for which Jesus sacrificed his throne and his life - the redemption of fallen humanity." - Alan Redpath in The Life of Victory

"When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, it wasn't dynamite, it was a dynamo! Dynamite makes a loud noise, kicks up a lot of dust, and is over. A dynamo is a continual source of power. It builds and builds and builds, and the power never stops flowing." - Ken Hutcherson in The Church: What We Are Meant to Be

"The Spirit will teach us to love the Word, to meditate on it and to keep it. He will reveal the love of Christ to us, that we may love him fervently and with a pure heart. Then we shall begin to see that a life in the love of Christ in the midst of our daily life and distractions is a glorious possibility and a blessed reality." - Andrew Murray in Every Day with Andrew Murray

"Every time we say, 'I believe in the Holy Spirit,' we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it." - J. B. Phillips in Plain Christianity

"Immediately the Holy Spirit comes in as life and as light, He will chase through every avenue of our minds; His light will penetrate every recess of our hearts; He will chase His light through every affection of our souls, and make us know what sin is. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin, man does not." - Oswald Chambers in Biblical Psychology

"Do not pray for more of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity and is not in pieces. Every child of God has all of Him, but does He have all of us?" - Julia Kellersberger in Presbyterian Journal (May 11, 1983)

"If a person is filled with the Holy Spirit, his witness will not be optional or mandatory - it will be inevitable." - Richard Halverson in Pentecostal Evangel (Aug. 12, 1979)

Holy Spirit

"Most men is this world live out their lives in quiet desperation." - Henry David Thoreau

"Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." - Mark Twain, Christianity Today, March 2, 1998

"Be simple in your needs and you will have peace in your heart…be humble in what you demand of life and you will have peace in your heart…be giving in what you take to life and you will have peace in your heart…stop the wars within yourself and you will have peace." - John Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from The Daily

"If God does not enter your kitchen, there is something wrong with your kitchen. If you can't take God into your recreation, there is something wrong with your play. We all believe in the God of the heroic. What we need most these days is the God of the humdrum, the commonplace, the everyday." - Peter Marshall, Sr.

"Our calling and purpose as followers of Christ is to love God completely, to love self correctly, and to love others compassionately." - Kenneth Boa

Life/Lifestyle

"The Christian who is ambitious to be a star disqualifies himself as a leader." - David Watson

"A leader is a person with a magnet in his heart and a compass in his head." - Vance Havner

"The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there." - Henri Nouwen in The Wounded Healer

"As a leader, you provide for people only what they can't provide for themselves."

"Awkwardness is natural. If people aren't feeling awkward doing something new, they're not doing something new."

"Do not punish a learner. If you do, you'll immobilize him."

"In change, people feel alone, even if everyone is going through it."

"The biggest addiction we have to overcome is to the human ego. Why? Because ego stands for 'Edging God Out.'"

"Everyday, do something in relation to everything that is important to you."

"Change agents aren't loved, so you'd better get centered that you are loved (by God), that you're fabulous." - Willow Creek Leadership Summit (8/95)

"Leadership is character and competence - if you have to be lacking in one, let it be competence, because you can't be a leader without character." - General Norman Schwarzkopf

"And all the time such is the tragic comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect virtue or enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful." - C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man

"When I bear the major load of responsibility, I am going to be in the middle of it." - John Maxwell

"Leadership is accepting people where they are, then taking them somewhere." - C. W. Perry

"Consensus is a poor substitute for leadership." - Charlotte Beers, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather worldwide ad agency

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality." - Max Depree in Leadership Is an Art

"The nation had the lion's heart. I had the luck to give the roar." - Winston Churchill

"Two army rules: 'When placed in command - take charge. Do what's right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good. There is no such thing as a born leader…most great leaders are ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances." - Norman Schwarzkopf

"According to George Barna, only 6% of pastors say they have the gift of leadership. If other terms like 'shepherding, pasturing, and administration' are included the figure rises to 30%. Yet of these pastors only 2 out of 100 could articulate their church's vision. Barna does not assert that the other 98% can't articulate such a vision, but that up to this point they haven't." - Leadership, Summer 1995

"The church's successes of yesterday are killing us today. In times of great success, leaders feel little need to be reflective. Rather, the impetus is to go, go, go. But to go, go, go when the congregation is headed in the wrong direction will only get it there faster." - Norman Shawchuck and Roger Heuser in Leading the Congregation (quoted in Circuit Rider, May 1993)

Leadership

"We don't have a clue as to what people's limits are. All the tests, stopwatches, and finish lines in the world can't measure human potential. When someone is pursuing their dream, they'll go far beyond what seem to be their limitations. The potential that exists within us is limitless and largely untapped…When you think of limits, you create them." - Robert Kriegel & Louis Patler

Limitations