"The greatest Christian revolutions come not be the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there." – Philip Yancey

Radical Christianity

"The effective prayer of faith comes from a life given up to the will and the love of God. Not as a result of what I try to be when praying, but because of what I am when I’m not praying, is my prayer answered by God." – Andrew Murray in With Christ in the School of Prayer

"Many “sophisticated” political and social commentators complain that issues like school prayer are “distractions” having nothing to do with today’s most pressing issues. What they fail to recognize is that a people’s faith is intertwined with the issues of the day." – William J. Bennett, former secretary of education, in The De-Valuing of America

"I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him. – C. S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm

Peter Marshall prayed, “Forgive us for thinking that prayer is a waste of time, and help us to see that without prayer, our work is a waste of time.”

Prayer

"Leadership is - by its very nature - already extreme. Real leaders are already embroiled in extreme acts: they're taking us to places we've never been, turning nothing into something, taking something good and turning it into something great, helping us to grow as human beings and changing the pieces of the world that they touch. Or the whole world, for that matter. The Extreme Leader is, therefore, the only true and authentic leader. But here's the problem: many people who call themselves leaders are only posing. They're wearing the label or accepting the title without putting their skin in the game. Extreme (real) Leadership takes a personal commitment and a significant, personal choice...As Terry Pearce said...in the San Francisco Examiner: 'There are many people who think they want to be matadors, only to find themselves in the ring with two thousand pounds of bull bearing down on them, and then discover that what they really wanted was to wear tight pants and hear the crowd roar.'" - By Steve Farber, Fast Company Weblog, May 3, 2004

Leadership

"The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.” -James M. Barrie, Copyright 2004, INJOY, Leadership Wired Volume 7, Issue 8

“Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” - Theodore Rubin, Copyright 2004, INJOY, Leadership Wired Volume 7, Issue 8

“Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.” - Charles M. Schwab, Copyright 2004, INJOY, Leadership Wired Volume 7, Issue 8

"An individual who has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living. I commend cheerfulness to all who would win souls; not levity and frothiness, but a genial, happy spirit. There are more flies caught with honey than with vinegar, and there will be more souls led to heaven by a man who wears heaven in his face than by one who bears death in his looks." – Charles Spurgeon

"Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending. Perversely, I will not give the happy ending (in my stories). I think life is difficult and that’s that. I am not at all – absolutely not at all – interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite." – Jamaica Kincaid (quoted in Utne Reader, Jan/Feb 1998, pg. 41

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else says or does, I guess you do have a problem." – Richard Bach

Happiness

"Prayer is political action. Prayer is social energy. Prayer is public good. Far more of our nation's life is shaped by prayer than is formed by legislation. That we have not collapsed into anarchy is due more to prayer than to the police. That society continues to be livable and that hope continues to be resurgent are attributable to prayer far more than to business prosperity or a flourishing of the arts. The single most important action contributing to whatever health and strength there is in our land is prayer. Not the only thing, of course, for God uses all things to effect His sovereign will, and the 'all things' most certainly includes police and artists, senators and professors, therapists and steelworkers. But prayer is, all the same, the source action." - Eugene Peterson, Living the Message (Harper San Francisco, 1996)

"Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience I realize that compassion is not mine but God's gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are, that is, when God allowed all of us to enter into the intimacy of the divine life, it became possible for us to share in God's infinite compassion." - Henri Nouwen in Seeds of Hope, Christianity Today - March 2, 1998

"The rule in a monastery was not 'Do not speak,' but 'Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.' Might not the same be said of prayer?" - Anthony de Mello, Taking Flight

"Remember that REPENTANCE is the key... PRAYER is the answer...GOD is the POWER." - Rev. Don Miller, Bible Based Ministries, June 1997

"Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but from falling in love." - Richard Foster

"Our growth in prayer may be to us the test of our growth in all other respects. 'Lord, teach us to pray,' is a prayer for the young beginner and for the more advanced disciple; it is a suitable petition for us all, for we have none of us yet learned to the full the sacred art of supplication." - Charles H. Spurgeon in Let It Begin with Me

"Think of the last thing you prayed about - were you devoted to your desire or to God'? Determined to get some gift of the Spirit or to get at God? 'Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.' The point of asking is that you may get to know God better. 'Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.' Keep praying in order to get a perfect understanding of God Himself." - Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest

"Some people think the prayer of faith is crawling out on a limb and then begging God to keep someone from sawing it off. But that is not real prayer, that is presumption. If God makes it clear that he wants you out on a limb, tine - you will be perfectly safe there. If not, it is presumptuous to crawl out on that limb, expecting God to keep you there." - Ray C. Stedman in Man of Faith

"Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God, Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might." - Charles H. Spurgeon in The Quotable Spurgeon

"We all tend to prescribe the answers to our prayers. We think that God can come in only one way. But Scripture teaches us that God sometimes answers our prayers by allowing things to become much worse before they become better. He may sometimes do the opposite of what we anticipate...yet it is a fundamental principle in the life and walk of faith that we must always be prepared for the unexpected when we are dealing with God." - D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in Faith: Tried and Triumphant

"In times when you are sad and troubled, do not give up the good works of prayer and penance which you have been in the habit of doing. For the devil will try to persuade you to abandon them, and unsettle you. Rather, practice them more than before, and you will see how quickly the Lord will come to your aid." - Theresa of Avila in A Life of Prayer

"Prayer is the plumb line that finds its rest in the place where our hearts beat in rhythm with the heart of God. Scripture is the weight that propels the plumb line's fall." - Wendy M. Wright in Weavings (July/Aug 1996)

"I have learned that God's silence to my questions is not a door slammed in my face. I may not have answers. But I do have Him." - Dave Dravecky in When You Can't Come Back

"Our lives must be as holy as our prayers. Our prayers are to prove their reality by the fruit they bear in the holiness of our life. True devotion in prayer will assuredly be rewarded, by God's grace, with the power to live a life of true devotion to Him and His service." - Andrew Murray in Aids to Devotion

"When we pray for ourselves, our petitions usually center around what we think we need or what we are sure so and so needs. God sees needs in our lives that are far more urgent than those we have written on our heavenly supermarket list and daily present to our 'Need-Meeter' in the sky. Our need for changed attitudes, a new acceptance of someone we have been rejecting, our need to be 'cut down to size' - these are not things we pray for too readily. On the other hand, we do find we can pray these things for other people!" - Jill Briscoe in Before You Say 'Amen'

"No one can believe how powerful prayer is and what it can effect, except those who have learned it by experience. It is important when we have a need to go to God in prayer. I know, whenever I have prayed earnestly, that I have been heard and have obtained more than I prayed for. God sometimes delays, but He always comes." - Martin Luther

"What a man is on his knees before God, that he is - and nothing more." - Robert Murray McCheyne

"You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed." - Charles Swindoll

"If God answered all our petitions we might find the response to our desires tragic." - Source unknown

"Some things are proved by the unbroken uniformity of our experiences. The law of gravitation is established by the fact that, in our experience, all bodies without exception obey it. Now even if all the things that people prayed for happened, which they do not, this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted." - C. S. Lewis in The World's Last Night

"The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says 'Amen' and runs away before God has a chance to reply. Listening to God is far more important than giving Him your ideas." - Frank Laubach in Frank C. Laubach, Teacher of Millions

Prayer

"We need more transparency in the church, not fear of it. It's difficult for men and women alike to be transparent in an evangelical church. You put something on the prayer chain, and you never know when your next door neighbor is going to be talking about it." - Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen, interviewed in The Door (Jan-Feb 1992)

"How can you expect to keep your powers of hearing when you never want to listen? That God should have time for you, you seem to take as much for granted as that you cannot have time for Him." - Dag Hammerskjold in Markings

"Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask." - Billy Graham, quoted in Encounter Weekly online

"When life knocks you to your knees - well, that's the best position in which to pray, isn't it?"- Ethel Barrymore

"No Christian rises higher than his praying." - Source unknown

"To substitute other forces for prayer, retires God and materializes the whole movement." - E. M. Bounds

"What seem our worst prayers, those least supported by devotional feeling, may really be, in God's eyes, our best." - C.S. Lewis, Leadership 1991

"If God has left some things contingent on man's thinking and working why may he not have left some things contingent on man's praying? The testimony of the great souls is a clear affirmative to this: some things never without thinking; some things never without working; some things never without praying! Prayer is one of the three forms of man's cooperation with God." - Harry Emerson Fosdick in The Meaning of Prayer

Prayer

"Hem your blessings with praise lest they unravel." - Source unknown

"Gratitude is the interest we owe God for the life He has loaned us." - Source unknown

"We must, during all our labour and in all else we do, even in our reading and writing, holy though both may be --I say more, during our formal devotions and spoken prayers --pause for some short moment, as often indeed as we can, to worship God in the depth of our heart, to savour him, though it be but in passing, and as it were by stealth. Since you are not unaware that God is present before you whatever you are doing, that He is at the depth and centre of your soul, why not then pause from time to time at least from that which occupies you outwardly, even from your spoken prayers, to worship him inwardly, to praise him, petition him, to offer him your heart and thank him? What can God have that gives him greater satisfaction than that a thousand times a day all his creatures should thus pause to withdraw and worship him in the heart." - Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God (tr. E. M. Blaiklock)

"Authentic praise of God acknowledges what is true about God: it responds to qualities that are 'there' and not simply 'there for me'... In other words, God is to be praised because God is God, because of what God is and does, quite apart from what God is and does for me. Anyone can, and should, praise God when the Lord blesses one and keeps one...Gratitude is indeed often expressed as praise, and rightly. But that does not make praise and gratitude identical. Or does God cease to be praiseworthy when gratitude has fled because the Lord seems to withhold blessings, when the divine face appears to be set against us, and when agony drives out peace?" - Leander E. Keck in the Christian Century (Dec. 16,1992)

"Has praise become the new darling of the church -- something to busy ourselves with while skirting other more demanding calls of God? Is it now 'praise' instead of 'love' that covers over a multitude of sins? Is it now faith, hope, and love that remain, but the greatest of these is praise? It does appear sometimes that no matter what we are doing wrong, praise will somehow make it right... Praise is important, but not something to make such a big deal about when everything else God created is already engaged in the moment by moment expression of this...as a natural course of events... When we admonish people to praise, don't tell them what they'll get out of it, or what God will get out of it. Tell them to praise Him simply because it is right and reasonable to do so. To attach anything more to this is to presume undue importance upon ourselves." - John Fischer in Contemporary Christian Music (Dec. 1994)

Praise

"The human scene is crowded with the people who have gone as far as they're going simply because their goals aren't high enough." - Paul J. Meyer

"Whether life is rough or smooth, ambition we must have, or die at the hands of our own laziness." - A.P. Gouthey

"To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, that can inspire a human being." - John Lubbock

"Children, you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessing here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won't be hard in the end to lie down and rest." - Pearl Bailey

"You must have long-range goals to keep from being frustrated by short-term failures." - Charles N. Noble

"Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A.W. Tozer

"If you always do what you have always done, you will always be where you have always been." - Source unknown

"If God by your partner, make your plans large." - Dwight Moody

"Make no little plans. They have no power to stir men's blood and probably in themselves will not be realized. Make BIG plans in the hope that they will live through the ages and become a thing of living, burning intensity. - Daniel Burnham, architect and city planner, who is responsible for many of the features of Chicago today"

"Most failures in the church come about because of an ambiguity of purpose than for any other reason." - Howard Hendricks

"Our task is not to bring order out of chaos, but to get work done in the midst of chaos." - George Peabody

"Remember, even if you are on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there. "- Will Rogers

"Seventeenth-century spiritual writer Francois Fenelon said, 'When it comes to accomplishing things for God, you will find that high aspirations, enthusiastic feelings, careful planning, and being able to express yourself well are not worth very much. The important thing is absolute surrender to God. You can do anything he wants you to do if you are walking in the light of full surrender.'" - Matt Woodley, Pastor of Cambridge, MN, United Methodist Church, Leadership, Winter 1997

"Not failure, but low aim, is a crime." - Lowell

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." - Chuck Swindoll

"If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time." - Chuck Swindoll

Goal Setting

"Without the resurrection, our faith is dead. The story's not complete without it." - The Passion director Mel Gibson, explaining why the movie ends with a scene of the empty tomb - Outreach (Jan/Feb 2004)

"I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God has given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead." -- Oxford professor Thomas Arnold, author of the three-volume History of Rome

"After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is either one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted on the minds of human beings--or it is the most remarkable fact of history." --Josh McDowell in Evidence for the Resurrection

"It is no exaggeration, therefore, to maintain that the bodily resurrection of Christ is as certain as any fact of history can ever be. If there is anything at all in which we can believe with absolute confidence, it is the fact that Jesus Christ died, was buried, then conquered death and is now alive!" --Henry Morris in The Resurrection of Christ-The Best-Proved Fact in History

"The resurrection is the keystone of the arch on which our faith is supported. If Christ has not risen, we must impeach all those witnesses for lying. If Christ has not risen, we have no proof that the crucifixion of Jesus differed from that of the two thieves who suffered with him. If Christ has not risen, it is impossible to believe his atoning death was accepted." - D.L. MOODY, 'Jesus Arose: So Shall We' (sermon)

"If the first Christians had not believed that Christ rose from the dead there would have been no church and no New Testament. If Christianity had been founded merely on the moral teaching of Jesus, it would no doubt have flourished for a short time as a well-meaning deviation from orthodox Judaism. It would quickly have lost its identity amid the innumerable varieties of religion and philosophy which occupied the minds of the ancient world." - William Neil, The Life and Teaching of Jesus

"In the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we see God's decisive victory not only over death but over all God's other enemies as well. In that one climactic event, we see the certainty that someday, in the kingdom of God, there will be no more violence, war, jealousy, or death.. . . These forces are still alive and at work in the world, but because of the victory that God won at Easter, their doom is certain." - Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed

"There are times when I feel that he has withdrawn from me, and I have often given him cause, but Easter is always the answer to My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" - Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season

"The great joy that disciples felt when they saw the risen Lord, that 'burning of heart' that they experienced on the way to Emmaus, were not because the mysteries of an 'other world' were revealed to them, but because they saw the Lord… They announced what they knew, that in Christ the new life has already begun, that he is Life Eternal, the Fulfillment, the Resurrection and the Joy of the world." - Alexander Schmemann, O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

"Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it over-throws it. The Resurrection, in the full Jewish and early Christian sense, is the ultimate affirmation that creation matters, that embodied human beings matter." - N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

"The resurrection is God's way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost - not even our mortal bodies." - Henri J. M. Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift

Easter

"Men of power have no time to read," a British labor leader once noted, "yet the men who do not read are unfit for power." - U.S. News & World Report November 30, 1992

"Put on the whole armor of God, Paul admonished the Ephesians, and you will be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Missionary Mike Key of Togo thought of Paul's message when the trembling stranger asked for shelter in his mission church. Key inquired if the man were homeless. No, he replied, but evil spirits were trying to kill him, and he sought sanctuary in the holy building. Key explained that the church building had no magical power and couldn't protect him from anything. But Jesus Christ, he added, could give not only protection but salvation, too."

The stranger stopped trembling and prayed with Key to accept Christ. Then he declared to the other believers gathered around that he was no longer afraid of evil spirits because Jesus was stronger. He would return to his own home with confidence. Then he departed, leaving his collection of fetishes and idols with the believers. He no longer needed them. He had the full armor of God." - Irma Duke

"What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" We ask, "Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?" (Mt. 20:21)...We have been tempted to replace love with power." - Henri Nouwen in Mornings with Henri J. M. Nouwen

"The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give use hope are the saints." - Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus

"The modern myth of power has gravely impoverished our civilization. It has deprived it of all values that lie beyond the search for power. The beautiful, the good, the true cannot be weighed and measured. True knowledge is spiritual knowledge, which is beyond the reach of the world of quantity and therefore is disregarded by our civilization." - Paul Tournier in The Whole Person in a Broken World

"The books are many on leadership today, and some make me rather uncomfortable. I find myself reaching back to the philosophers of bygone days and one said, "Power is the ability to achieve purpose." Real power is not thunder and noise and turbulence. Real power is not like a mighty river, sweeping everything in its course. Rather, it is like a river held back, dammed up, channeled into turbines, and providing light for our homes and energy for our industries. Power is not ruthless behavior but it is disciplined behavior that has the purpose of making things better."

"Power is the ability to achieve purpose, and leadership admired is power used to achieve noble purposes. So today I salute, not those who make noise, but those who quietly do good."- Tom Haggai IGA Grocergram

"Power is his ideology, his friend, his concubine, his mistress, his passion. Everything beyond that, beyond the struggle for power, concerns him much less." -Vyacheslav Kostikov, former spokesman for Russian President Boris Yeltsin, on his onetime boss

"No one in the world today has such power as they who can make their fellow human beings feel that Christ is a reality." - Henry Van Dyke in The Upward Path

Power

"Do not let your peace depend on the hearts of men; whatever they say about you, good or bad, you are not because of it another man, for as you are, you are." - Thomas a Kempis in The Imitation of Christ

"Peace is not made in documents, but in the hearts of men." - Herbert Hoover

"What is the most elusive quality in the world today? Isn't it the condition known as peace? Nations spend millions of dollars dispatching envoys across oceans and continents to negotiate or promote peace. Individually, people spend fortunes on psychotherapy, escapist entertainment, tranquilizers, alcohol and drugs, seeking to replace their inner restlessness with the balm of peace. Despite their relentless pursuit of peace, most people come up empty handed. As Patrick Henry once said, "The gentlemen may cry, 'Peace, peace!' but there is no peace. 'Peace with God brings the peace of God'" - Bob Mumford

Peace

"In an era when many of us feel that time is our scarcest resource, hospitality falters... 'In a fast-food culture,' a wise Benedictine monk observes, 'you have to remind yourself that some things cannot be done quickly. Hospitality takes time.'" - Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain." - C. S. Lewis in Letters of C. S. Lewis

"You can accomplish almost anything if you have patience. You can even carry water in a sieve if you wait until it freezes." - Source unknown

"The average person becomes visibly agitated after waiting 40 seconds for an elevator." - Harper's Index, February 1997

"Patience is a virtue praised by many, possessed by few and sought only occasionally. We pray and want an immediate response. We either do not know or do not care that God has ordained that when and how our prayers will be answered are decisions which belong to Him alone. God may delay in coming, but He never comes too late. And God may send an answer to prayer by wrapping it in a package we do not recognize. Many of us are impatient and fret anxiously either because we do not recognize the answer God sends or because it does not come at a time we think it should. There are occasions when we must wait for God. His time schedule is not ours. But though the waiting seems long, the outcome is certain. Nobody who bides God's time will ever be disappointed. "- Source Unknown

Patience