She feared God may not deliver her out of this mess, especially if He had a greater plan.
~ Jennifer Hudson Taylor
In the darkest of nights, there is only one thing on your mind--should I be required to stand before the Almighty, will I find myself in His favor?
~ Rachel Hauck
If God gives you a hundred bucks, you better bet He’s going to ask you what you bought.
~ Geoffrey Wood
We just have to believe that God is bigger than the junk happening to us.
~ Michelle Lynn Brown
I am beginning to understand that I cannot interpret the probable action of Jesus until I know better what His spirit is. The greatest question in all of human life is summed up when we ask, 'What would Jesus do?' if, as we ask it, we also try to answer it from a growth in knowledge of Jesus himself. We just know Jesus before we can imitate Him.
~ Charles M. Sheldon
Indeed if they ever once saw the endless supply of eternal opportunities The Adversary offers them every temporal moment of day after day of their fuddled little lives, they would stagger at the sheer industry and prodigality of His efforts. Conversely, if they ever gained a glimpse of how their ordinary actions actually effect and shape things not only under time but without, the very vast weight of that would almost certainly end in their becoming humble.
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~ Laura Frantz
Magdalen, the girl with pretty green eyes. Magdalen, who was smiling so warmly right now at Lenhart, who was attentive to Katrin even when she talked too much. She had been so gentle and concerned about his wounds, washing his face and bringing him fresh water to drink.
~ Melanie Dickerson
A love so true, so consuming, so good.
~ Melissa Jagears
Love has a heavy load of possibilities. You can't have it without some measure of pain. They go together with an inseparable bond in this world. But it's worth it. I promise you, the treasure is worth the pain.
~ Miranda Shisler
Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.
~ Nancy B. Brewer
As far as he was concerned, there were only two all-important laws on earth:1. Don’t murder people.2. Never swear in front of Lilly.
~ Hannah Heath
You need time for the grief to heal, for the memories to fade in sharpness, time to adjust your expectation for the future. Be gentle with yourself, you'll make it.
~ Dee Henderson
You're not so tough. No tougher than the man whose blood will spill from your veins.
~ Dawn M. Turner
You see my point? The average person has a very average notion of goodness to which they aspire averagely. To aspire to goodness in any remarkable way would be ‘undemocratic’.
For example, your man might think: I don’t steal. Maybe on my taxes, everyone does that, but not in the way I heard so and so stole from his company. See? Those men for whose opinion he cares approve of embezzlement in one area, not the other. He uses them to maintain a claim on goodness while at the same time stealing.
If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they’ve been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we’re headed right back toward The Virtues.
As a motivation —for humans, but Christians especially— guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.
If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls them out, they fall back in, etc... That way they never get anywhere; they’re always either standing next to a hole or down in it.
Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.
Even if their guilt actually does produce a good action, it will be the saddest good action you’ll ever see, and it will be of no use to them because their goal is not to obey, but to feel less guilty, thus nothing about their souls will be reshaped.
Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don’t feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they’re stuck right where they started: Guilty.
No wonder being a real Christian isn't popular. Who wants to suffer so they can find joy? ~ Dianne Simmons
~ Michelle Sutton
Denial makes it easier to keep an addiction progressing smoothly along and, being a lie, it’s just better form.
With addiction, a client’s fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana —the fear of Fear itself.
The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more and more heightened and imagined, thus anticipation is increased. This kind of anticipation is the spiritual equivalent of a Cheeto and we want them to eat the whole bag.
If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain.
An imagined pleasure is never really the pleasure, but an imagined pain, in a very real sense, is the pain, because so much of pain is the consciousness of it. It makes itself objective. Whereas to think about pleasure is to step outside of it; to think about a presently felt pain is to step inside it. And in a very real sense, we’ve already got them in Hell.
And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they’ve lost, forever.
Sometimes I wonder which is worse: To have to kill because it is your job, or to have no remorse for all the murderous things you have done?
~ Jason E. Royle
Seems like we own the day! Now die like a good Christ!- Boniface de Monteferret, ON THE WALLS OF CHRISTAs Constantinople falls.
~ Earl Devere
The schoolroom . . . Olivia had always adored its confines and endless horizons. The melodious purr of the teacher's voice rising up and down her lessons like a musical score. And the sight of book spines--black, blue, green--lined up side by side like London townhouses. Each leather rectangle a gift waiting to be opened and explored and savored.
~ Julie Klassen
When we decided to move West, I worried about how to defend my family and my stock from Indians, but I never worried about inheriting one!”--from Prairie Grace when Georgia's father Thomas realizes gravely ill Gray Wolf has been left at their doorstep
~ Marilyn Bay Wentz
Thomas slammed his fist on the table, sending eating utensils flying. “Shameful! It is downright shameful that so-called men of God would use religion to manipulate people.”--from Prairie Grace when Thomas learns how the Indian agents and others are stealing from Native Americans
To those of you who are enslaved by your past, may my story set you free. For youth is innocent and its beauty is to always be cherished.
Most of [her ashes] fell into the river in a long gray curtain. But some was caught by the wind and blown upward toward the blue spring sky where it swirled a moment in the air, before dissolving into sunlight.
~ Kimberly Cutter
They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.
We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.
Teach them the shame that tells the lie, “I am unforgivable,” when the truth is, “I feel unforgivable, but it was out of my control.” Never let them switch those round right or The Adversary will liberate them in a heartbeat, like a bird flying from a cage.
