QUIPS AND QUOTES

"Fearing to launch on "full surrender's" tide,
I asked the Lord where would its waters glide
My little bark, "To troubled seas I dread?"
"Unto Myself," He said." - "Streams in the Desert"

"I don't run from a challenge because I am afraid.  Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet."
- Nadia Comaneci

"Sometimes you have to deal with loss and pain and with knowing that bad things happen to good people.  Just know that God will have the final way, and He keeps meticulous records.  In the meantime, we keep the faith and know that God can be trusted." - Dayle Shockley

"I am thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength." - Alex Elle

"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith.  I don't agree at all.  They are afflictions, not sins.  Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ."
- C. S. Lewis, "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer"

"He is indeed too wise to be mistaken... too good to be unkind."
- Lidia, Crown of Beauty, blog

"There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.  The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it.  His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration." - Flannery O'Connor, "Mystery and  Manners: Occasional Prose"

"As our emotions wither and desert us, God is burrowing away at our wills."
- Rosemary Budd

"Pain penetrates through despair and stimulates a new beginning - a journey to God - the transition from a dreamy nostalgia for a better life to a rugged pilgrimage of discipleship." - Eugene Peterson

"He that believes...shall not get into a fuss.  He shall not panic, neither fetching fears from his yesterdays nor from his tomorrows."
- John Henry Jowett

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." - Job

"To pray is to let Jesus come into our hearts." - Ole Hallesby

"We are called by God to live our uniquely created selves.  To grow spiritually means to live increasingly as Jesus would in our unique place." - John Ortberg

"And now Lord, with your help I shall become myself." - Soren Kierkegaard

"At its core, joy emanates from the abiding sense of God's fierce love for us. Practicing defiant joy is the declaration that the darkness does not and will not win.  When we fight back with joy, we embrace a reality that is more real than what we're enduring." - Margaret Feinberg, "Fight Back With Joy"

"Aid me, when I cease to soar, to stand..." - Stephen Phillips

"I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages."
- Charles Spurgeon

"Depression causes a blindness that keeps one from seeing how God is not only meeting our needs but giving us some of our desires." - Betty Draper

"One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak."
- G.K. Chesterton

"I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence.  It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered.  That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood.  Slowly, no doubt..." - Mary Oliver, "A Thousand Mornings"

"God is most often found in the still and quiet corners of life, in between the distractions of busyness." - Sharon Kirby

"Perseverance is a process.  And rather than a destructive windstorm that serves only to erode us, it's more like a chisel in the hand of a master sculptor." - Sharon Kirby

"The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance." - Oswald Chambers 

"God loves to fix messes, and He deeply loves the mess-makers."
- Sharon Kirby

"Whatever situation you face today will have to bow in His Presence when you bow in His Presence.  When you acknowledge the power of God, you acknowledge the impotence of your problems, and God responds to such faith." - Chris Tiegreen, "The One Year Experiencing God's Presence Devotional"

"Great faith is the product of great fights!" - Smith Wigglesworth

"One step and then another, and I will not fall." - George R. R. Martin, 
"A Clash of Kings"

"Life is hard - and it hurts.  But God is bigger." - Sharon Kirby

"[Prayer] is the flow of the soul toward its original fountain." - E. M. Bounds

"God loves his mountains and his mountain climbers." - Elaine Olsen

"The self must know stillness before it can discover its true song."
- Ralph Brum

"Rivers know this: There is no hurry.  We shall get there someday."
- A. A. Milne, "Winnie-the-Pooh"

"Dreams.  Wings.  Promise.  Everything you need to soar is within you."
- Tamara Bruner

"God is still in the business of making your suffering season count."
- Elaine Olsen

"Jesus sees the weight of your faith by the expense you've expended to exercise it — the hardness, the fear and even the doubt you put on the line, to carry it out." - Bonnie Gray, on her blog, "Faith Barista"

"It takes a whole person to pray, until all the storms that agitate his soul are calmed to great tranquility." - E. M. Bounds

"Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even shorter." - Celtic saying

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Why is it important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved." - Henri Nouwen 

"God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars."
- Elbert Hubbard

"Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right." - Max Lucado, "He Still Moves Stones"

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays." - Søren Kierkegaard

"Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God."
- Corrie ten Boom

"Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves."
- Joni Eareckson Tada, "The God I Love"

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
- Rainer Maria Wilke

"I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"
- C. S. Lewis, "Till We Have Faces"

"We have to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.  He has won the battle, we must soldier on in HIS victory!"
- Sharon Kirby

"I may be little, but I'm not scared." - Randomly heard on a TV show

"We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand." - C. S. Lewis

"Our God is righteous. He is just. He is reasonable. But He doesn't necessarily give you and me His reasons." - Elisabeth Elliot

"If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped." - Evelyn Underhill

"Happiness keeps you sweet, Trials keep you strong, Sorrows keep you human, Failures keep you humble, Success keeps you glowing, but only God keeps you going!  Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up."
- Unknown

"Trusting God for the grace to accept adversity is as much an act of faith as is trusting Him for deliverance from it." - Jerry Bridges, "Trusting God"

‎"And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs." - C. S. Lewis, "The Silver Chair"

"Rest is not something we do; it is what comes to us when we cease to do."
- A. W. Tozer

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis

"We are not at our best perched at the summit - we are climbers, at our best when the way is steep." - The Daily Walk Bible

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice.  It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved." - William Jennings Bryant

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon

"The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."
- William Faulkner

"Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are." - Max De Pree

"Prayer is [the] way of declaring that the boundaries of life and the limits of hope cannot be drawn with the crayons of time and space."
- Anthony Padovano

"Fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in the quietness until light goes up in thy darkness...Heed not thy feeling: Do thy walk." - George MacDonald

"The man who would step out of the crowd and follow his own destiny, must keep before him the knowledge that the way is hard." - Elizabeth O'Connor, Journey Inward, Journey Outward"

"Go and pray to the Lord to command some struggle to be stirred up in you, for the soul is matured only in battles...he did not pray that the struggle be taken from him, but only said: Lord, give me strength to get through the fight."- Ernest Boyer, Jr. "A Way in the World"

"The center of God's will is our only safety." - Betsie Ten Boom

"God's will is what every one of us would choose if we had all of God's facts."
- Ike Reighard

"Faith is the fruit of a seed planted in the depth of a lifetime."
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

"There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compelling and hauntingly."
- Frederick Buechner

"Too often we attempt to work for God to the limit of our competency, rather than to the limit of God's omnipotency." - Hudson Taylor

"Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short of God and His will for us." - Billy Graham

"Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God.  Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love."
- Oswald Chambers

"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift

"God is too good to be unkind; too wise to be mistaken.  When you cannot trace His hand, you can trust His heart." - C.H. Spurgeon

"I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back." - Phillips Brooks

"Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.  Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions." - Matthew Henry

"The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth." - Malcolm Muggeridge

"Let my soul take refuge from the crowding turmoil of worldly thoughts beneath the shadow of thy wings; let my heart, this sea of restless waves, find peace in thee, O God." - St. Augustine

"Some people have greatness thrust upon them.  Few have excellence thrust upon them...They achieve it.  They do not achieve it unwittingly by doing what comes naturally and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves.  All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose."
- John W. Gardner

"We're afraid of God's will being done because we can't control what He will do, when He will do it, how He will do it, and what the outcome might be. God's will requires surrender and trust, and it's something we're unwilling to offer..." - Peter Scazzero, "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality"

"The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart--it is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that befits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice--it does not so much nibble at our shoe leather as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from the bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our small-minded questions, but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask." - Rich Mullins

"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ." - C. S. Lewis

"Not all who wander are lost." - J. R. R. Tolkien

"Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.  For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live." - Henry David Thoreau

"God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he'll be there." - Billy Graham

"I am beginning to believe that heaven is not in some other world, but shot through the broken world in which we live." - Heather King, from her essay "Heaven and Earth"

"Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" - T.S. Eliot

"The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go."
- Herman Hesse

"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." - Helen Keller

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain." - Anonymous

"To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. … All that self-denial can say is: 'He leads the way, keep close to Him.'" 
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly...to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; await occasions, hurry never...this is my symphony." - William Henry Channing  

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." - C.S. Lewis

"Truth is not afraid of scrutiny." - Dr. Calvin Werjonic, "The Bishop"

"Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading." - Oswald Chambers

"Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write." - Elie Wiesel

"If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world." 
- C. S. Lewis

"Everything passes. Everything changes. Just do what you think you should do." - Bob Dylan

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength." - Corrie Ten Boom"

"It doesn’t matter how long God chooses to preserve my earthly life. What matters is how I choose to preserve him in the earthly life I’ve been given."
- Elaine Olsen

"Every artist was first an amateur." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today." 
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"God is not who you think He is; He is who He says He is." - Clarice Fluitt

"Even when we cannot see the why and wherefore of God's dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always." 
- J. I. Packer 

"But as you know, the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between." - Norton Juster

“Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”
- Anatole France

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." - C. S. Lewis

"I can get more out of God by believing Him for one minute than by shouting at Him all night." - Smith Wigglesworth 

"A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner." - English Proverb

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." 
- Albert Einstein

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill

"If you want to be free, just start doing what God wants you to do, one step at a time, and you'll eventually walk out of your messes." - Joyce Meyer

"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things." - T. S. Eliot

"It is the nature of the strong heart, that like the palm tree it strives ever upwards when it is most burdened." - Sir Philip Sidney

"Generosity consists not in the sum given but in the manner in which it is bestowed." - Anonymous

"Discipline yourself to do things you need to do when you need to do them, and the day will come when you will be able to do the things you want to do when you want to do them." - Zig Ziglar

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien  

"He is the one who can tell us the reason for our existence, our place in the scheme of things, our real identity...He will whisper it to us not in the mad rush and fever of our striving and our fierce determination to be someone, but rather when we are content to rest in him, to put ourselves into his keeping, into his hands." - Emile Griffin, "The Experience of Prayer"  

"Seldom does anyone move in a straight line from the conception of a dream to its fulfillment.  Far more often, we experience ups and downs, delays, and disappointments.  These, though, won't stop us if we keep our eyes on our purpose and on the One who has given it to us." - Zig Ziglar 

"Never mind if you think you are unable to take another step, for either He will strengthen you to make you able, or He will call a sudden halt, and you will not have to take it at all." - Frances Ridley Havergal, "Streams in the Desert"

"Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—still He knows what He is about."
- From a devotion by Cardinal Newman  

"...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is." - Ann Voskamp, "One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are"

"In a storm of struggles, I have tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness.  But stress can be an addiction, and worry can be our lunge for control, and we forget the answer to this moment is always yes because of Christ." -  Ann Voskamp, "One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are"

"He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life." - Ralph Waldo Emerson