(From 14,000 Quips & Quotes for Writers & Speakers, E. C. McKenzie)

Thankfulness could well be the finest sentiment of man—and also the rarest.

It isn’t what you have in your pocket that makes you thankful, but what you have in your heart.

There’s always something to be thankful for. If you can’t pay your bills, you can be thankful you’re not one of your creditors.

If you have nothing for which to be thankful, make up your mind that there’s something wrong with you.

Be thankful if your job is a little harder than you like. A razor can’t be sharpened on a piece of velvet.

We should be thankful for the good things that we have and, also, for the bad things we don’t have.

A person doesn’t realize how much he has to be thankful for until he has to pay taxes on it.

Even though we can’t have all we want, we ought to be thankful we don’t get what we deserve.

We ought to be thankful that we are living in a country where folks can say what they think without thinking.

Thankfulness

“We ought to change the legend on our money form “In God We Trust” to “In Money We Trust.” Because, as a nation, we’ve got far more faith in money these days that we do in God.” – Arthur Hoppe, Quoted in Way, June 1963

“Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get.” –Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

“Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.” – Henry David Thoreau, Journal

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” –1 Timothy 6:10, NIV

“Money has become the grand test of virtue.” – George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.” – John D. Rockafeller, Sr., Quoted in The Age of the Moguls

“Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.” – Sydney J. Harris, Quoted in Reader’s Digest, April 1968

“When I have any money I get rid of it as quickly as possible, lest it find a way into my heart.” – John Wesley

“Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven, and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.” –anonymous

“The soul of the covetous is far removed from God, as far as his memory, understanding and will are concerned. He forgets God as though He were not his God, owing to the fact that he has fashioned for himself a god of Mammon and of temporal possessions.” – St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul

“Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek God.” – St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Love of God

“It is not earthly riches which make us or our sons happy; for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime, or be possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or perhaps by whom we would not.” – St. Augustine, The City of God

“All the money in the world will not buy you a kid who will do homework, or maturity for a kid who needs it. It may buy a kid who knows how to buy.” – Bill Cosby

“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hop in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” –1 Timothy 6:17, NIV

In Money We Trust

“In the process of faith, doubts and crises must occur. Paul Tillich points out that only through crises can faith mature. Doubt eats away the old relationship with God, but only so that a new one may be born. The same thing is true of our human, interpersonal relationships…One thing is certain, that passage through the darkness of doubts and crises, however painful they may be, is essential to growth in the process of faith.” – John Powell, A Reason to Live! A Reason to Die!

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paridise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” –Charles A. Beard

“Do you know one of life’s greatest ways of making us grateful? Overcoming adversity. Grateful people often had a difficult childhood, suffered troubling losses, or had to compete against the odds. And they succeeded. But in doing so, they realized they could just as easily have failed. Although they worked hard, they know that “success” was a gift.” – Charlie Hedges, Getting the Right Things Right

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller, her journal

“An Oak, which hung over the bank of a river, was blown down by a violent storm of wind, and as it was carried along by the stream, some of its boughs brushed against a Reed which grew near the shore. This struck the Oak with a thought of admiration, and he could not forbear asking the Reed how he came to stand so secure and unhurt, in a tempest which had been furious enough to tear up an Oak by the roots? Why, says the Reed, I secure myself by a conduct the reverse of yours: instead of being stubborn and stiff, and confiding in my strength, I yield and bend to the blast, and let it go over me, knowing how vain and fruitless it would be to resist.” – Aesop, Fables

“Hardened clay is brittle, easily damaged. If dropped, it can fracture into a thousand pieces. Dropped wax, however, only bends from the pressure of the fall. Impressionable and pliable, it can be quickly remolded. People are like that. People who are hardened in their resolve against God are brittle, their emotions are easily damaged. But those who bend to the will of God find perfect expression in however God molds them.” – Joni Eareckson Tada, Secret Strength

Handling Adversity

“What we entrust to God, we cannot lose; what we hold for ourselves, we cannot keep.”

“The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.” –Dorothy L. Sayers

“If truth-telling springs from love, it will not only pain those who hear it, it will pain those who speak it. If telling the truth is fun, it probably doesn’t come from love. Jeremiah told the truth and was called the “weeping prophet.” - Philip Gulley

“[When] I was young, I tended to believe that certain principles were true because they were in the Bible. But year by year, as I have read much of the social research, I have come to look at this a new way—that certain principles are in the Bible because they are true. They are true and helpful for all people, regardless of whether they accept or reject the Bible’s central claim.” - Tom Minnery

“Speaking the truth is the most significant political action available to any of us—not voting, but speaking the truth. This view is based on the familiar Biblical notion that the Word is central. The Word is the truth; the expression of the truth by human lips moves culture and history toward the government of God. There is no higher form of political action, nor is there one that can contribute more to the wholeness of the human community.” – John K. Stoner

“Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing begets the other.” - C. H. Spurgeon

“Distortion will always lead to dysfunction, while truth will always lead to triumph.” - Joseph M. Stowell

“Beware of half-truths; you may have hold of the wrong half.”

What We Entrust to God

The following quotes are by Jimmy Draper.

They are taken from Walking God’s Path, The Life & Ministry of Jimmy Draper by John Perry.

Bible Interpretation
“No one in his right mind wants to exercise some dictatorial authority over the legitimate bounds of interpretation. Bible-believing Christians have long differed as to the exact nature of the millennium, for example. Will Jesus Christ return before or after the Great Tribulation? Does man consist of two parts or three? Does man inherit his soul by natural generation, as he does his body, or does God create it immediately? Is God’s elective purpose for man conditional or unconditional? And the list goes on. Most Christians would agree that there is sufficient doubt about these matters that extreme dogmatism is inappropriate. Certainly these matters should not be allowed to become a barrier to fellowship and cooperative effort.” pg. 168

Benevolence
“When you pay a man not to work and care for him when he refuses to work you rob him of his pride and his self-respect. pg. 74

Change
“Change is not an option,” Brother Jimmy said in describing his ministry at Del City. “Change is inevitable. The best we can hope for is to manage change, not be victimized or marginalized by it. A good pastor keeps people from being threatened by change. A good pastor is a leader, not a driver. The people have to understand why changes are made.” pg. 110

Church
“The church is not an institution for the retention of the status quo. The church is not an institution that exists for its own enhancement or its own perpetuity. The church is an institution that is planted by God to be a witness to the saving gospel of the redemptive purposes of Almighty God through Jesus Christ. The challenge is for us to be used of God in those kinds of churches, and our blueprint is the Bible. We have a word to proclaim from God.” pg. 152-153

Evangelism
“It's important for us to understand that evangelism and truth are inseparable. Biblical evangelism requires divine truth. Divine truth requires revelation in language. Revelation in language requires the deposit of an infallible scripture. As soon as confidence is weakened in the integrity of our source material, evangelism is weakened to a corresponding degree. Without an authoritative scripture, the gospel is like a movie without a sound track, leaving us bewildered and uncertain about the future, and about the nature of the message and our salvation. There is no evangelism where His truth is not declared. That is the task of the church.” pg. 153

God's Will
“It's a mystical thing, like being saved. You feel God calling you to something different from the secular world, something of a spiritual nature. Baptists have a sense of God calling you; it's a plan God has for your life, not a vocational choice you make. I surrendered any right I had to be anything else and vowed to devote myself to the work of the Lord. pg. 40

Humility in Ministry
“To humble ourselves means to face the truth about ourselves. It means to be honest with ourselves. To humble ourselves means that we admit that the problem is with us. We as preachers particularly have become experts at what’s wrong with everybody else, and we’re always preaching and pointing our fingers, and we’re always coming to conclusions, and we’re always speaking a piece of our minds and drawing very strong conclusions about things we know very little about. You know, meeting people and praying with them has ruined some of my greatest prejudices, it really has. The truth is, the problem is with me. I am my greatest foe. It is in my heart that the battlefield is the strongest. It is in my soul and in my spirit that the temptation is the greatest…The greatest exercise that any of us could take would be to humble ourselves before God.” pg. 152

Liberal theology is… “man’s attempt to explain his concept of God rather than God’s self-disclosure and revelation to man. Repeatedly the Bible is pictured as being solely of human origin.” pg. 146

Politics
“Where two or more are gathered together, politics is inevitable.” pg. 2

Priesthood of the believer
“They are using the term, priesthood of the believer, to mean that an individual Baptist has the right to believe anything he wants to believe, and that no other Baptist has a right to say he is wrong, criticize him, or in any way interfere with his beliefs or with his teaching of those beliefs in our Baptist institutions. That, of course, is a complete distortion of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer. According to Scripture, the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer teaches that all believers in Jesus Christ have immediate, direct access to the Father through Jesus Christ, the only Mediator, and that we do not need any other man, or any other being of any kind, to intercede for us. Those who misuse this term are invoking a doctrine that means a great deal in Baptist circles, making it apply to something to which it does not apply.” pg. 167

Relationships
“Almost all problems are people problems at their core, and that by supporting, encouraging, admonishing, equipping; rewarding – and occasionally replacing – people, virtually any problem could be solved.” pg. 216

Tradition
“If a program isn’t meaningful, change it or eliminate it.” pg. 85

Quotes By Jimmy Draper

"There’s more gossip passed around under the guise of prayer request than anything I know." - James T. "Jimmy" Draper, quoted by Baptist Press

"Prayer, as St. Theresa tells us, consists not in speaking a lot, but in loving a lot." - Charles De Foucauld, Silent Pilgrimage

"We pray best when we are no longer aware of praying." - Cassian, quoted in John Howard Griffin, The Hermitage Journals

"As the floor is swept everyday, so is the soul cleansed everyday by confession." - Hugh Connolly, The Irish Penitentials

Those people who pray know what most around them either don't know or choose to ignore: centering life in the insatiable demands of the ego is the sure path to doom.. . . They know that life confined to the self is a prison, a joy-killing, neurosis-producing, disease-fomenting prison. - Eugene Peterson, Earth and Altar: The Community of Prayer in a Self-Bound Society

I am reminded that one old saint was asked, "Which is the more important: reading God's Word or praying?" To which he replied, "Which is more important to a bird: the right wing or the left?" A.W. Tozer, Jesus, Our Man in Glory

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: "Full experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental." Bo Lozoff: "Rabbi, if God-realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?" Rabbi Carlebach: "To be as accident prone as possible." - Bo Lozoff, It's a Meaningful Life - It Just Takes Practice

We must distinguish prayer from prayers. Saying prayers is one activity among others. But prayer is an attitude of the heart that can transform every activity. We cannot say prayers at all times, but we ought to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17). That means we ought to keep our heart open for the meaning of life. Gratefulness does this, moment by moment. Gratefulness is, therefore, prayerfulness. – David Stendl-Rast, Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer

Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his. It is by prayer that we seek God's will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. Every true prayer is a variation on the theme, "Your will be done." Our Master taught us to say this in the pattern prayer he gave us, and added the supreme example of it in Gethsemane. – John Stott, The Letters of John

"Who one believes God to be is more accurately revealed …in the way one speaks to God when no one else is listening." – Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time

"Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at his disposition, and listening to his voice in the depths of our hearts." – Mother Teresa

Prayer

"I believe that you measure the health or strength of a church by its sending capacity rather than its seating capacity. The church is in the sending business. One of the questions we must ask when evaluating a church's health is: 'How many people are being mobilized for the Great Commission?' This conviction, one I've held from Saddleback's beginning, led me to design the process for turning members into ministers and missionaries that is described in The Purpose Driven Church." - Rick Warren

Missions

A belief that God acts with purpose in this world must lead to attempts, however feeble, to discern how my own actions might be attuned to God's one action. – William Barry in Presence

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck; your profession is what you're put here on earth to do - with such passion and such intensity it becomes a spiritual calling. - Vincent Van Gogh, quoted in Edward C. Sellner, Mentoring

Discerning and acting on God's will does not mean you'll never have difficult days or feel lousy sometimes. But choosing to live in alignment with God makes you more joyful, compassionate, and peaceful, even on bad days. – Debra K. Farrington, Hearing with the Heart

God guides us first through his Word, then through our heartfelt desires, then the wise counsel of others, and then our circumstances. At that point we must rely on our own sound judgment. . . . God gave each of us a brain, and he expects us to put it to good use. – Bruce K. Waltke, Finding the Will of God

A talent may be so great that it propels a person forever down one path, as is the case with some artists. But even for these extraordinary folk, call determines whether and how they use their gifts. – Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope

The Basic decision, after all, is to let God be God, to say "yes" to the work of the Lord, which goes before the church's ability to understand or even perceive it. – Luke Timothy Johnson, Scripture and Discernment

Circumstance and coincidence may cause us to be in the right place at the right time to do God's work in a specific way. – Suzanne Farnham, Listening Hearts

God is always calling us! But there are distinctive moments in this call of his, moments which leave a permanent mark on us – moments which we never forget. – Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert

The fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. – Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Our only task is to seek willingness. This radical willingness will, if we are faithful to it, shatter every idea we have about ourselves; about our inner growth and transformation; about living a Christian life; about contemplation and our relationship to the world; about God. – Maggie Ross, The Fountain and the Furnace

In His will is our peace. – Dante, The Divine Comedy: Paradise

God’s Will

The knowledge of God is a mountain steep indeed, and difficult to climb. – Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

May God shield you on every steep, May Christ keep you in every path, May Spirit bathe you in every pass. – The Carmina Gadelica, trans. Alexander Carmichael

The mountains are ready to teach us the way of all life if we will clamber into their laps…The mountaintop vision is raw, wild, and life-giving. In no way can I take credit for it. It is the gift of the mountain. The vision is brief. I want to hang on, stay on top forever. Yet I must come down the mountain to continue my journey. I have to let go. – Susan Mangam, “Seeing Things As They Really Are,” in Weavings

After the Ecstacy, the laundry. Book title by Jack Kornfield

The path by which the Lord ascended is winding, twisting this way and that; [but] whoever wishes to climb up to pray can easily make the ascent. – Elisaeus, as quoted in The Journal of Theological Studies

The significance of desert and mountain is not who resides here, but what we ourselves have left behind in coming. – David Douglas, Wilderness Sojourn: Not in the Desert Silence

If my hands were to hover in the sky like powerful eagles and my feet ran across mountains as swiftly as the deer; all that would not be enough to pay you fitting tribute, O Lord my God. – Jewish hymn from the Talmudic period

When you reach the mountaintop, you’re only halfway. – Mountain climber’s proverb

Extraordinary experiences are not to be sought after, stirred up, or in any way “worked for.” Genuine ones are not in the realm of “our work” at all; they are objective and God-sent, not subjective and self-caused. Should a person desire them to the point of deliberately striving after them, he lays himself open to the greatest spiritual suspicion. He is manifestly desiring God’s gifts, God’s comforts, rather than desiring God. He is seeking excitement rather than the basic spiritual virtue of stability. – Gale D. Webbe, The Night and Nothing

The last experience of God is frequently the greatest obstacle to the next experience of God. We make an absolute out of it…All great spirituality is about letting go. – Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

The mountain journey is about becoming more aligned with God’s presence and purposes in our lives…The goal is not the glamour of iridescent light, but Christ-shaped encounters with others. The journey is not about getting out of this world or out of ourselves into some more glamorous place – but about getting as deeply into this world as God, in Christ, has. – Robert C. Morris, “Riding the Wild Mountain Ox,” in Weavings

Spirituality

Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.” – Erica Jong, quoted in Thestreet.com

The ability to “turn off” responsibility is now in vogue. “Let’s just quit” are household words. – Chuck Swindoll

The price of greatness is responsibility. – source unknown

A responsibility worth shouldering is a commitment worth expressing. – William A. Ward

When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, Who’ll Be There? It may not be Johnny. He was on your roll for a long time but never came, so you dropped him. It may not be Jim. He wasn’t a Christian when he came into your department, and he wasn’t when he promoted out. It may not be Chris. Her family were members here, but she never was. Don’t guess you ever really knew her. Hey, Lord, they weren’t my responsibility, were they?

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. – Martin Luther King, Jr., REV Magazine, July/August 2004

Responsibility

Duncan Campbell, a great agent of God, in a revival in Scotland 40 years ago, said, “We do not pray for revival in order that souls may be saved, but souls are saved in their thousands when we have revival. When the thirsty are satisfied, then the floods come on the dry ground.”

Do you need a Christian tune-up?
If so, here are five tune-up specials for you.
1. Adjust your light so others may see your good works.
2. Set your timing so as to be at the meeting house on time.
3. Adjust the brakes on your tongue.
4. Align your direction so that you may stay on the straight and narrow.
5. Anti-freeze your heart and be fervent in spirit, above all things, love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.

Revival is needed when sinners are careless and stupid, and sinking into hell unconcerned. Then it is time for the CHURCH to stir itself. It is as much the duty of the church to awake as it is of the firemen to awake when a fire breaks out in the night in a great city. The CHURCH ought to put out the fires of hell which are laying hold of the wicked. Sleep! Should the firemen sleep and let the whole city burn down? What would be thought of such firemen? And yet their guilt would not compare with the guilt of CHRISTIANS who sleep while sinners around them are sinking stupid into the fires of hell. – Charles G. Finney

When God finds His people willing, when they have been forged into an instrument He can use, He will begin to work in power upon the consciences of sinners. – Anonymous

God is not only the source of revival – but He is also the end of revival. Revival comes from God and leads to God, that He may be ‘all in all’ and that man may learn that of himself he is nothing. – Anonymous

Revival times cause a rebuilding of the altar of prayer and a new commitment to seeking God. – Anonymous

Revival

Repentance is always difficult, and the difficulty grows still greater by delay. – Samuel Johnson in The Quotable Johnson, Christianity Today: October 6, 1997

One thief on the cross was saved, that none should despair; and only one, that none should presume. – J.C. Ryle

If there are a thousand steps between us and God, He will take all but one. He will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours. – Max Lucado

The man who knows his sins is greater than one who raises a dead man by his prayer. – Isaac the Syrian

Repentance may be old-fashioned, but it is not outdated so long as there is sin. – J.C. McCauley

Within the next few hours if we really opened our hearts to repentance and faith for an unscheduled invasion of God, we could meet the demonism of this age with the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power. – Vance Havner

People who admit they’re wrong get a lot farther than people who prove they’re right. – Beryl Pfizer

Repentance