"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Your past is much like your rearview mirror...It's important to look back for an occasional frame of reference, but if you're constantly looking back instead of ahead, you're going to crash.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
~C. S. Lewis

When I don’t understand something, I reach up and hold God’s hand. And we walk together in silence. ~ Ron Atchison

"It took me a little while as a preacher to appreciate the significance of the fact that God’s Word is a two-edged sword. It wounds the listener, in order to heal him; but it also wounds the preacher. I believe this is the ultimate explanation for many of the mysterious experiences we have in preaching. At times we are elated, yet the people seem not to share that elation. At other times, even while we speak we are inwardly weeping over our failures, and confessing ‘I am a man of unclean lips.’ Yet so often we discover that on such occasions God spoke with great grace and power. No one else knew what we were going through (except perhaps a fellow preacher who recognized some of the telltale signs!). Or, more accurately, no one beside the Lord. He knew, because he was speaking to us through his Word, as well as through us to others. In this intimate way, the Lord teaches us that while ours is the responsibility rightly to handle the Word of God in preparation and exposition, yet it remains the Spirit’s sword, and not ours."

Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Communion with God through Preaching,” in Inside the Sermon, ed. Richard Allen Bodey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 83.

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Remember, before you talk to the men about God, talk to God about the men!

~ Dr. Paul Pettit

“…that’s when it occurred to me. I am stuck…the courtship was over, and the honeymoon had ended…went from an option to an obligation…from someone to play with to someone to care for…such permanence can lead to panic…”

(Paraphrased) There are three ways to cope: flee, fight or forgive. To flee is to wake up later in another relationship and face the same reality. To fight is to make tension a way of life: to turn the house into a combat zone, the office into a boxing ring.

To forgive: “Oh, I could never do that, you object. The hurt is so deep. The wounds are so numerous. Just seeing the person causes me to cringe…Try shifting your glance away from the one who hurt you and setting your eyes on the one who saved you.”

“But I’ve done nothing wrong…I am not the guilty party here…Neither was Jesus…the burden of bridge building falls on the strong one, not the weak one.”

“Relationships don’t thrive because the guilty are punished but because the innocent are merciful.”

If you think His love for you would be stronger if your faith were, you are wrong. If you think His love would be deeper if your thoughts were, wrong again.

God's love never ceases. Never. Though we spurn Him. Ignore Him. Reject Him. Despise Him. Disobey Him. He will not change (toward us). Our evil cannot diminish His love. Our goodness cannot increase it. Our faith does not earn it anymore than our stupidity jeopardizes it.

“Lead me not into temptation;”
I can find the way myself.
~ Rita Mae Brown

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
It is a powerful obstacle to growth.
It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality
and prevents exploration and experimentation.
There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling.
If you want to keep on learning,
you must keep on risking failure—all your life.
~ John W. Gardner

Most great people have attained their greatest success
just one step beyond their greatest failure.
~ Napolean HIll