Find A Quote by Topic
To find a quote about a particular topic, please click on the appropriate letter below. For example, if you’re looking for a quote about “worry,” click on the “w.”
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
CALLED
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
– Frederick Buechner
Being “called” isn’t just for preachers!
Romans 1:7 and 1 Corinthians 1:2 (NKJV)
7 …called to be saints
1 Corinthians 1:9 (NKJV)
9 …you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Galatians 1:6 (NKJV)
6 …Him who called you in the grace of Christ…
Galatians 5:13 (NKJV)
13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty…
1 Peter 2:9 (NKJV)
10 …Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light…
1 Peter 5:10 (NKJV)
10 …the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus…
CALLING
“God is not looking for extraordinary characters as His instruments, but He is looking for humble instruments through whom He can be honored throughout the ages.”
– A.B. Simpson
“Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher.”
– Alexander Whyte
“’Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face – whose mercy you have professed to obey – and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.”
– William Booth
“My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“I see more and more of my own insufficiency for the great work I am called to… When I compare myself with my work, I sink into a point, a mere despicable nothing.”
– William Carey
“The mercy and grace of God have caused many who did not seem to be great ‘candidates’ for spiritual leadership, to undergo amazing transformations:
– Moses the Murderer became the Mighty Deliverer
– Gideon the Insecure became the Lord’s Warrior
– David the Adulterer became the Sweet Psalmist of Israel
– Peter the Denier became the Proclaimer of Pentecost
– John the Boisterous became the Apostle of Love
– Saul the Terrorist became the Apostle of Grace
– Mark the Quitter became Profitable for the Ministry”
– From the book, Qualified, by Tony Cooke
“If a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?”
– David Livingstone
“Life is very sweet to me, and there is no position of power or wealth that could tempt me from the throne God has given me.”
– D.L. Moody
CARE
While teaching, preaching, and healing are vital, sometimes the most impacting ministry takes place personally through a pastoral touch…through the presence of someone expressing the heart of Jesus, the Great Shepherd. Having a pastor’s heart and engaging in pastoral care does not take the place of teaching, preaching, and healing, but it builds upon it!
– Tony Cooke
CARING
“Deep down, your players must know you care about them. This is the most important thing. I could never get away with what I do if the players didn’t know I care. They know, in the long run, I’m in their corner.”
– Bo Schembechler (University of Michigan football coach)
CAUSE
“I would rather fail in the cause that someday will triumph than triumph in a cause that will someday fail.”
– Woodrow Wilson
CHALLENGES
“Do you know why so many Christians are so weak? No one challenges them to the depths of their soul. No one blows the trumpet and says, ‘Come to the Lord’s side.’”
– Bruce Wilkinson
“Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.”
– Winston Churchill
“There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.”
– William Frederick Halsey, Jr.
“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
– Joshua J. Marine
“Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, wanted to recruit 38-year old John Sculley, President of Pepsi-Cola. Jobs issued a tremendous challenge to Sculley. He asked, ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?’ What a challenge to all Christians! Are we settling for sugared water existence, settling less than what God designed us to be?”
CHANGE
“You cannot improve the future without disturbing the present.”
– William Booth
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
– General Eric Shinseki
“Only two things have ever changed the human soul: the fall and grace, the power of Satan and the power of God. And God is infinitely more powerful. Nothing is stronger than grace. Satan doesn’t have any. God is defined by it.”
– Larry Crabb
“God invites us to come as we are, not to stay as we are.”
– Tim Keller
“The only three things we can count on are death, taxes, and change. Since organizations are being bombarded with change, you would be wise to make learning a top priority and constantly strive to adapt to new circumstances.”
– Ken Blanchard
“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.”
– Francis Bacon
“If we are to better the future we must disturb the present.”
– Catherine Booth
“Many men today will change wives, children, businesses, anything, rather than change themselves. Real men face change and reality.”
– Ed Cole
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“If you want to make enemies, try changing something.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“When you’re through changing, you’re through.”
– Bruce Barton
“The individuals who will succeed and flourish will also be masters of change: adept at reorienting their own and others’ activities in untried directions to bring about higher levels of achievement.”
– Rosabeth Moss Kanter
“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
– Arnold Bennett
“In times of change learners will inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
– Eric Hoffer
CHARACTER
“A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.”
– Harry S. Truman
“The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor”
– George Bernard Shaw
“A saint abroad, and a devil at home.”
– John Bunyan
“The final estimate of men show that history cares not one iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart.”
– Samuel Brengle
“Sweetest Lord, never permit me to disgrace my vocation by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.”
– Mother Teresa
“A man is not to be estimated according to his rank, but according to his character.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Reputation is what is chiseled on your tombstone. Character is what the angels say about you before the throne of God.”
– Theodore Epp
“Christianity isn’t worth the snap of your finger if it doesn’t straighten out your character.”
– D.L. Moody
“No man can be a good bishop if he loves his title but not his task.”
– Augustine
“Every one of us is the sum total of what we secretly admire, what we think about, and what we would like to do most if we became free to do what we wanted to do.”
– A.W. Tozer
“You may fill your heads with knowledge or skillfully train your hands, but unless it is based upon high upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing.”
– Booker T. Washington
“Christian ministry is all about character. Lose your character and you lose your ministry.”
– Kent Hughes
“Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.”
– Phillips Brooks
“Nothing is more pathetic than having a small character in a big assignment. Many of us don’t want to give attention to our character, we just want the big assignment from God.”
– Henry Blackaby
“…all else we possess or pursue shall fade and perish, our moral character shall alone survive.”
– Alexander Whyte
“Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“The test of real character is what a man does when he is tired.”
– Winston Churchill
“I’ve met a lot of leaders in the Army who were very competent – but they didn’t have character. . . . I’ve also met a lot of leaders who had superb character but who lacked competence. . . . To lead in the twenty-first century . . . you will be required to have both character and competence.”
– General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
“America will improve when we have better Americans and the church will improve when we have better Christians.”
– Vance Havner
“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become your character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”
– Frank Outlaw
“If people speak ill of you, live so that no one will believe them.”
– Plato
“Ability can take you the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
– Zig Ziglar
“Character is destiny.”
– Heraclitus
“Character is what you are in the dark.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”
– Will Rogers
“You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.”
– Seneca
“Are there bad bishops? Perish the thought, there aren’t any; yes, I have the nerve, the gall to say there are no bad bishops; because if they are bad, they aren’t bishops.”
– Augustine
“Character is power.”
– Booker T. Washington
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take on wings, those who cheer today will curse tomorrow; only one thing endures—character.”
– Horace Greeley
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.”
– Charles Spurgeon (from “Lectures to My Students”)
“Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.”
– Aristotle
“We set young leaders up for a fall if we encourage them to envision what they can do before they consider the kind of person they should be.”
– Ruth Barton
“The line of least resistance makes crooked rivers and crooked men.”
– Bob Murphey
“Character is the most effective means of persuasion.”
– Aristotle
“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to stay there.”
– John Wooden
“To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful.”
– Edward R. Murrow
“Your character is what you really are. Your reputation is only what others think you are.”
– John Wooden
“The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”
– Thomas B. Macaula
“If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.”
– Dwight L. Moody
“Character, not circumstance, makes the person.”
– Booker T. Washington
“The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.”
– Abigail van Buren
“A man’s character is his fate.”
– Heraclitus
“You must decide whether or not you will design your life after the pattern of Jesus, or design your life around the best thinking the world has to offer.”
– C. Gene Wilkes
CHEERFULNESS
“You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others?”
– Lydia M. Child
CHILDREN
“If we treat kids as fragile, they will most assuredly become fragile adults.”
– Tim Elmore
“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”
– C. S. Lewis
“As soon as a child is capable of being lost, it is capable of being saved. As soon as a child can sin, that child can, if God’s grace assist it, believe and receive the Word of God. As soon as children can learn evil, be assured that they are competent, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to learn good.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“It is a commonplace how easily a child of 3 or 4 picks up a foreign language if exposed to it without any formal teaching. Yet we are unwilling to admit that a child of the same age picks up our unconscious attitudes and prejudices without being taught–and often retains these longer than any of his formal education.”
– Sidney J. Harris
“Great ideals and principles do not live from generation to generation just because they are right, nor even because they have been carefully legislated. Ideals and principles continue from generation to generation only when they are built into the hearts of children as they grow up.”
– George S. Benson
“People who do not like children are swine, dunces, and blockheads, not worthy to be called men and women, because they despise the blessing of God, the Creator and Author of marriage.”
– Martin Luther
CHOICES
“Oh that people were as eager to accept the consequences of their choices as they were to embrace the freedom to choose!”
– Richard Blackaby
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
– Albert Camus
CHRIST
Excerpted from the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.”
“I have had so many experiences of Christ’s divinity, that I must say: either there is no God, or he is God.”
– Martin Luther
“The deity of Christ is the key doctrine of the scriptures. Reject it, and the Bible becomes a jumble of words without any unifying theme. Accept it, and the Bible becomes an intelligible and ordered revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
“Jesus was the meeting place of eternity and time, the blending of deity and humanity, the junction of heaven and earth.”
– Oswald Sanders
“Jesus was not just godly, godlike, God-hungry, God-focused, or God-worshiping. He was God.”
– Max Lucado
“If Jesus is not God, then there is no Christianity, and we who worship Him are nothing more than idolaters. Conversely, if He is God, those who say He was merely a good man, or even the best of men, are blasphemers. More serious still, if He is not God, then He is a blasphemer in the fullest sense of the word. If He is not God, He is not even good.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
“Jesus was God and man in one person, that God and man might be happy together again.”
– George Whitefield
“Depend upon it, my hearer, you never will go to heaven unless you are prepared to worship Jesus Christ as God.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Remember, Christ was not a deified man, neither was he a humanized God. He was perfectly God and at the same time perfectly man.”
– C. H. Spurgeon
“Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God ‘by whom all things were made’… He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be ‘like God’—He was God.”
– Dorothy L. Sayers
“He who… does not perceive Christ to be God… is blind amidst the brightness of noon day.”
– John Calvin
“If Jesus Christ is not true God, how could he help us? If he is not true man, how could he help us?”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“They lose nothing who gain Christ.”
– Samuel Rutherford
“Jesus that I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God.”
– Athanasius
“Any movement toward Christ is ascent, and any direction away from Him is down.”
– A. W. Tozer
“In his life, Christ is an example, showing us how to live; in his death, he is a sacrifice, satisfying our sins; in his resurrection, a conqueror; in his ascension, a king; in his intercession, a high priest.”
– Martin Luther
“Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The human soul is full of sin, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them. Sin, death, and damnation will then be Christ’s; and grace, life, and salvation will then be the believer’s.”
– Martin Luther
“Jesus Christ is what God does, and the cross where God did it.”
– Frederick Buechner
“It seems to me that if we get one look at Christ in His love and beauty, this world and its pleasures will look very small to us.”
– D.L. Moody
“Being in Christ affords us great benefits; Christ being in us demands of us great responsibility.”
– Eddie Turner
“I rest and trust in the finished work of Christ for me. I yield to and cooperate in the ongoing work of Christ in me and through me.”
– Tony Cooke
“Christ took your cup of grief, your cup of the curse, pressed it to his lips, drank it to its dregs, then filled it with his sweet, pardoning, sympathizing love, and gave it back for you to drink, and to drink forever!”
– Octavius Winslow
“Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy.”
– John Calvin
“If you make a great deal of Christ, He will make a great deal of you; but if you make but a little of Christ, Christ will make but a little of you.”
– R.A. Torrey
CHRISTIAN LIVING
“Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today, and is coming back tomorrow.”
– Theodore Epp
CHRISTIANITY
“Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Today we have a Christianity made easy as an accommodation to an age that is unwilling to face the implications of Calvary, and the gospel of “simply believism” has produced a harvest of professions which have done untold harm to the cause of Christ.”
– Duncan Campbell
“What we must have is a higher type of Christianity in this country.”
– D.L. Moody
“Christianity is not the sacrifice we make, but the sacrifice we trust.”
– P.T. Forsyth
“Christianity doesn’t get more basic.… It is seeing value in, and loving and caring for, and reaching out to, and spending time with ‘the least of these.’”
– Chuck Swindoll
“Christianity is either supernatural or nothing at all.”
– Reinhard Bonnke
“This is true religion, to approve what God approves, to hate what he hates, and to delight in what delights him.”
– Charles Hodge
“Christianity isn’t true because it’s relevant. It’s relevant because it’s true.”
– Tim Keller
“If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity!”
– CS Lewis
“Christianity is the great antiseptic of society.”
– Henry Drummond
“Christianity that doesn’t begin with the individual doesn’t begin; Christianity that ends with the individual ends.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“Christianity is the only religion whose God bear the scars of evil.”
– Os Guinness
“Christianity, in its essence, is Christ. He is the beginning; he is the end. That is not my theory, it is the teaching of the New Testament.”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
– C. S. Lewis
“Christianity is not the sacrifice we make, but the sacrifice we trust.”
– P. T. Forsyth
“I believe in Christianity as I believe in the rising sun; not because I see it, but by it I can see all else.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Saying you’re a new kind of Christian with a new kind of Christianity is basically saying you’re an old kind of heretic.”
– Burk Parsons
“Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship. Then it moved to Greece and became a philosophy, then it went to Rome and became an institution, and then it went to Europe and became a government. Finally it came to America where we made it an enterprise.”
– Richard Halverson (former U.S. Senate Chaplain)
“Christianity does not mean knowing all the theories about the New Testament; still less does it mean knowing all the theologies and the Christologies. Christianity does not mean knowing about Christ, it means knowing Christ; and to do that requires not earthly wisdom but heavenly grace.”
– William Barclay
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Aggressive Christianity is the world’s greatest need.”
– A.B. Simpson
“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
“Enemy-occupied territory—that’s what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
– C.S. Lewis
“As soon as Christ’s kingdom comes to terms with the world, Christianity is abolished.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
“Becoming a Christian takes only a single step; being a Christian means walking with Christ for the rest of your life.”
– Billy Graham
“The converted person will love the good he once hated, and hate the sin he once loved.”
– Billy Graham
“Becoming a Christian is the work of a moment; being a Christian is the work of a lifetime.”
– Billy Graham
“Christianity has a cross at its heart! Crossless Christianity is a contradiction!”
– Richard C. Halverson
“The flame of Christian ethics is still our best guide … only on this basis can we reconcile the rights of the individual with the demands of society.”
– Winston Churchill
“He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Moody believed that all Christians have a place of service to the Lord – not just leaders. He relied heavily on the help of ‘average’ Christians in his evangelistic meetings everywhere. He saw the masses of believers in the pews as a tremendous source of untapped power – as armies who could help advance Christ’s kingdom even if ministry never became their occupation.”
– Steve Miller
“Where are the marks of the cross in your life? Are there any points of identification with your Lord? Alas, too many Christians wear medals but carry no scars!”
-Vance Havner
CHRISTIANS
“It is not that I want merely to be called a Christian, but actually to be one. Yes, if I prove to be one, then I can have the name.”
– Ignatius of Antioch
“A Christian is: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps.”
– Augustine
CHRIST-LIKENESS
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
– Mohandas Gandhi
CHRISTMAS
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CHURCH
“When the Church is mainly watered down to having good experiences, then we shouldn’t be surprised when people walk away once they have a bad one.”
– Shane Pruitt
“Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.”
– John Calvin
“The church is not a democracy in which we have chosen God, but a theocracy in which He has chosen us. The church is the only society in the world that never loses any of its members, even by death.”
– E. M. Bounds
“When you have been saved, regenerated, born again, then join a church—a live church. Join where the preacher loves the Word of God and the souls of men. Keep out of these ecclesiastical deep freezers. A deep freeze is all right for a dead chicken or a chunk of cheese or a leg of lamb, but it is no place for a live baby. A baby must be fed and nourished and given a chance to exercise, vocalize and grow. It couldn’t do that in a refrigerator.”
– Walter Hughes
“Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them. He does more harm by sowing tares than by pulling up wheat. He accomplishes more by imitation than by outright opposition.”
– Vance Havner
“Everybody is doing somebody else. Franchise faith/franchise church is killing us. Stop doing somebody else. Do you. Do Jesus. Do you in Jesus.”
– Leonard Sweet
“The church is a colony of heaven in a country of death.”
– Eugene Peterson
“It would have been inconceivable in the first century to call yourself a Christian but not join a church.”
– D. A. Carson
“Don’t aim to plant churches. Aim to plant a church that will plant many other churches.”
– George Patterson
“A good sign of church health is teams instead of committees. A committee talks about doing stuff; a team actually does stuff. A church that is heavy on committees and light on teams usually is an unhealthy church.”
– Karl Vaters
“As long as heaven and hell are a reality, church growth is not an option.”
– Norm Dubois
“A frightened world needs a fearless church.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Not for yourself, O church, do you exist, any more than Christ existed for himself.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God.”
– John Calvin
“Some people put down roots into a church. Others put down tentacles.”
– Tony Cooke
“Each generation of Christians is the seed of the next, and degenerate seed is sure to produce a degenerate harvest… For a worldly, weak, decadent church to make converts is but to bring forth after her own kind and extend her weakness and decadence a bit further out…”
– A.W. Tozer
“I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroad, so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek . . . at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where church-men ought to be and what church-men ought to be about.”
– George MacLeod
“The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.”
– Billy Sunday
“A church has no right to make anything a condition of membership which Christ has not made a condition of salvation.”
– A.A. Hodge
“The church needs to earn the right to be heard in its community.”
– Matthew Barnett
“Healthy, lasting church growth is multidimensional. My definition of a growing church has five facets. Every church needs to grow warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry, and larger through evangelism.”
– Rick Warren
“The early church was married to poverty, prisons, and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.”
– Leonard Ravenhill
“The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God, give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!”
– A.B. Simpson
“All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.”
– Philip Yancey
“The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.”
– C.S. Lewis
“I do not think the devil cares how many churches you build, if you only have lukewarm preachers and people in them.”
– Charles Spurgeon
“The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.”
– John Wesley
“If the church is acceptable to this present age and is not suffering reproach, then it is not the true church that our Lord founded.”
– Billy Graham
“The church is in turmoil today. The church is not to reflect the world but to be a portrait of Jesus Christ.”
– Billy Graham
“The church is to be in the world, but worldliness is not to be in the church.”
– Billy Graham
“The Church always fails at the point of self-confidence.”
“Today much of the professing church has gone in for theatrics, running a showboat instead of a lifeboat, staging a performance instead of living an experience, a ‘form of godliness without the power thereof’.”
– Vance Havner
“Don’t ever come to church without coming as though it were the first time, as though it could be the best time and as though it might be the last time.”
– Vance Havner
“In other days people chose a church on the basis of their doctrinal convictions. Now, lacking doctrinal convictions, they choose for social reasons.”
– Vance Havner
“Christ is the Head of the church and the church is His body. We are not preaching the Head without the body or the body without the Head. A body-less Head is as unscriptural as a headless body.”
– Vance Havner
“The church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“Four purposes of the local church:
• Exaltation of Jesus Christ.
• Evangelism of the lost.
• Edification of believers.
• Expression of service.”
“The church that is man-managed instead of God-governed is doomed to failure. A ministry that is college-trained but not Spirit-filled works no miracles.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“Whenever God erects a house of prayer
The devil always builds a chapel there;
And ’twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”
– Daniel Defoe (1701) Author of Robinson Crusoe
“The reason most people don’t go to church is because they’ve already been.”
– Mark Twain
“Big wind, lotta dust, no rain.”
– American Indian chief after attending church
“The church has but one mission in this world: to lead people destined to spend eternity in hell to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and an eternity in heaven.”
– John MacArthur
“The church is only the church when it exists for others.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.”
– William Temple
“We’re no longer fishers of men, but keepers of the aquarium, and we spend most of our time swiping fish from each other’s bowls.”
– Dr. Kermit Long
“I have no objection to churches so long as they do not interfere with God’s work.”
– Brooks Atkinson
“Farewell to those who want an entirely pure and purified church. This is plainly wanting no church at all.”
– Martin Luther
CIRCUMSTANCES
“Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. Our broken lives are not lost or useless. God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out His wonderful plan of love.”
– Eric Liddell
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
– George Bernard Shaw
CITIZENSHIP
“A Christian’s first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code to the polls and vote them… If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease… it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country.”
– Mark Twain
“If America is to survive, we must elect more God-centered men and women to public office; individuals who will seek Divine guidance in the affairs of state.”
– Billy Graham
COACHING
“My athletes always follow my advice… unless it conflicts with what that they want to do.”
– Lou Holtz
COLLABORATION
“Cooperation is working together agreeably. Collaboration is working together aggressively.”
– John Maxwell
COMFORT
“Blessed be Thou, O Holy Spirit, that speaketh more comfort to my heart than the voice of my oppressors can speak terror to my ears!”
– Alexander Peden, before being martyred in 1686
“The word comfort is from two Latin words meaning ‘with’ and ‘strong’—He is with us to make us strong. Comfort is not soft, weakening commiseration; it is true, strengthening love.”
– Amy Carmichael
“He who becomes a brother to the bruised, a doctor to the despairing, a comforter to the crushed may not actually say much. What he has to offer is often beyond the power of speech to convey. But the weary sense it and it is a balm of Gilead to the soul.”
– Vance Havner
“God does not comfort us to make us comfortable but to make us comforters.”
– John Henry Jewett
“If I had my ministry over again, I would devote far more time to the ministry of comfort and encouragement.”
– F.B. Meyer
COMMITTEE
“Committee – a group of people who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.”
– Fred Allen
“A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.”
– Barnett Cock
“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.”
– G. K. Chesterton
“For God so loved the world that he did not send a committee.”
– Unknown
“Moses did not go up to the mountain with a committee. If he had, he would never have come down.”
– Ken Blanchard
“Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to Adam.”
– A. Whitney Griswold
COMMITMENT
“Be half a Christian, and you shall have enough religion to make you miserable; be wholly a Christian and your joy shall be full.”
– Spurgeon
“A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for.”
– Richard Wurmbrand
“Jesus didn’t use subtlety or gimmicks to gain followers. Rather, He honestly laid before them the tough demands of discipleship – total commitment and total involvement.”
– Billy Graham
“A woman in India stood by a heathen temple in process of construction. Someone asked her the cost of the temple. She looked in surprise at the questioner, a missionary, and said, ‘Why, we don’t know. It is for our god. We don’t count the cost’.”
“Give me one hundred men who love nothing but God, hate nothing but evil, and know nothing but Jesus Christ, and I will change the world.”
– John Wesley
“…you cannot take the lead in great causes as a half-timer.”
– Winston Churchill
“There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you do it only when it is convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses.”
– Ken Blanchard
“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
– The last sentence of the Declaration of Independence
COMMUNICATION
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
– Albert Einstein
“In talking to a man you want to win, talk to him in his own language.”
– Henry Drummond
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“In talking to a man you want to win, talk to him in his own language.”
– Henry Drummond
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
– Peter F. Drucker
“The key to successful communication is clarity, not verbosity.”
– Henry and Richard Blackaby
“Communicate everything you can to your associates. The more they know, the more they care. Once they care, there is no stopping them.”
– Sam Walton
COMMUNION
“The Lord has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which a victim is to be offered; He has not consecrated priests to make sacrifice, but servants to distribute the sacred feast.”
– John Calvin
“The Lord’s Supper is a link between the Lord’s first coming and His second coming.”
– Frederic Godet
COMMUNITY
“There can be no Christianity without community.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf
COMPANIONSHIP
“A true companion is someone who dedicates his life to helping others follow God’s will for their lives. A companion is there to affirm, to encourage, to pray and support—often at great personal cost.”
– Henry Blackaby
COMPARISON
“Being of one heart and one soul does not mean we are all equal. Every soul is an individual king. You can find the beauty of Jesus in every person, even though the social status, temperament, maturity, and age are different. Do not put anybody under pressure to do certain ministries. Heartfelt ministries only develop in a chamber called freedom.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf
“Don’t let your ice cream melt while you’re counting someone else’s sprinkles.”
– Unknown
“If you compare yourself with others, you may be bitter or vain, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”
– Max Ehrman
“Rabbits don’t fly. Eagles don’t swim. Ducks look funny trying to climb. Squirrels don’t have feathers. Stop comparing. There’s plenty of room in the forest.”
– Charles Swindoll
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
COMPASSION
“Three words were constantly upon Jesus’ lips: the least, the last, and the lost.”
– E. Stanley Jones
“Compassion costs. It is easy enough to argue, criticize and condemn, but redemption is costly, and comfort draws from the deep. Brains can argue, but it takes heart to comfort.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“As God did not at first choose you because you were high, so He will not forsake you because you are low.”
– John Flavel
“It seems to me the basest ingratitude if we do not reach out the hand to others who are down in the same pit from which we were delivered.”
– D.L. Moody
“Only the wounded are masters at mending.”
– Samuel Chadwick
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”
– George Washington Carver
“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”
– Shakespeare
“Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
– Longfellow
“Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
COMPETITION
“The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.”
– Washington Allston
“Are we driven people, propelled by the winds of our times, pressed to conform or compete? Or are we called people, the recipients of the gracious beckoning of Christ when he promises to make us into something?”
– Gordon MacDonald
COMPETITIVENESS
“I never did say that you can’t be a nice guy and win. I said that if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with the winning run, I’d trip her up.”
– Leo Durocher
COMPLACENCY
“There is nothing that is more dangerous to your own salvation, more unworthy of God and more harmful to your own happiness than that you should be content to remain as you are.”
– Francois Fenelon
COMPLAINING
“A complaining tongue reveals an ungrateful heart.”
– William Arthur Ward
“I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.”
– Lily Tomlin
COMPOSURE
“90% of life is about remaining calm.”
– Dr. Chris Feudtner
“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.”
– Arnold Bennett
“My father used to say to me, ‘Whenever you get into a jam, whenever you get into a crisis or an emergency…become the calmest person in the room and you’ll be able to figure your way out of it.'”
– Rudolph Giuliani
COMPROMISE
“Behind every act of compromise is a Christian who is living for this world rather than the next.”
– Michael W. Smith
“The Scripture teaches that popularity with the world means death. Satan’s most effective tool is conformity and compromise.”
– Billy Graham
“As Christians, we must never compromise our faith with evil. It is often appropriate, however, to compromise with each other when no sin or evil intent is involved.”
– Norman Shawchuck
COMPULSION
“A driven person is usually caught in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion… rarely having any time to appreciate the achievements to date. They are usually too busy for the pursuit of ordinary relationships in marriage, family, or friendship… not to speak of one with God.”
– Gordon MacDonald
CONCLUSION
“A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.”
– Unknown
CONDUCT
“Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold — but so does a hard-boiled egg.”
– Unknown
CONFESSION
“Confession is good for the soul. Obsession is not.”
– Tony Cooke
“Confession is not telling God what he doesn’t know. That’s impossible. Confession is not complaining. If I merely recite my problems and rehash my woes, I’m whining. Confession is not blaming. Pointing fingers at others without pointing any at me feels good, but it doesn’t promote healing. Confession is so much more. Confession is a radical reliance on grace. A proclamation of our trust in God’s goodness. ‘What I did was bad,’ we acknowledge, ‘but your grace is greater than my sin, so I confess it.’ If our understanding of grace is small, our confession will be small: reluctant, hesitant, hedged with excuses and qualifications, full of fear of punishment. But great grace creates an honest confession.”
– Max Lucado
CONFIDENCE
“If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me.”
– John Bunyan
“It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.”
– Jeremy Taylor
CONFLICT
“Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.”
– Max Lucado
“Never get in a spittin’ match with a skunk. Even if you win, you come out smelling bad.”
– Unknown
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
“The option for human beings, however, is not whether to experience conflict or not. The only choice is whether this conflict will be managed constructively or destructively. The evidence is overwhelming that a persistent management style of avoidance or repression of conflict ultimately has a destructive effect on a person, a relationship, or an organization.”
– Douglas Lewis, “Resolving Church Conflicts.” Harper & Row, 1981.
CONFORMITY
“The prophets who spoke to their generations for God did not please and conform; they irritated and opposed.”
– Billy Graham
CONFRONTATION
“It was well done of Paul to reprove Peter to his face, and it was well done of Peter, to praise Paul in his absence.”
– Thomas Adams
CONNECTING
“Connecting is never about me. It’s about the person with whom I’m communicating. Similarly, when you are trying to connect with people, it’s not about you—it’s about them. If you want to connect with others, you have to get over yourself. You have to change the focus from inward to outward, off of yourself and onto others.”
– John Maxwell
CONQUEST
“We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we must elevate ourselves.”
– Todd Skinner, Mountain Climber
CONSCIENCE
“There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.”
– French Proverb
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property.”
– James Madison
“A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.”
– Winston Churchill
“Conscience is condensed character.”
– Unknown
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount…The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”
– General Omar Bradley
“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Most of us follow our conscience as we follow a wheelbarrow. We push it in front of us in the direction we want to go.”
– Billy Graham
Throughout his administration, Abraham Lincoln was a president under fire, especially during the scarring years of the Civil War. And though he knew he would make errors of office, he resolved never to compromise his integrity. So strong was this resolve that he once said, “I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.”
“Conscience,” said an Indian, “is a three-cornered thing in my heart that stands still when I am good, but when I am bad, it turns around and the corners hurt a lot. If I keep on doing wrong, the corners wear off and it does not hurt anymore.”
CONSECRATION
“I am destined to proclaim the message, unmindful of personal consequences to myself.”
– Nikolaus Zinzendorf
“I am so thankful that I ever went into the field to do Christian work. If I had a hundred lives, I would surely consecrate them all to the service of my Lord and Master.”
– D.L. Moody
“Feeling deeply this great need, and believing that its reward is in reserve for all who honestly seek it, a gathering is hereby called to meet in Northfield, Mass… the object of which is not so much to study the Bible (though the Scriptures will be searched daily for instruction and promises) as for solemn self-consecration, for pleading God’s promises, and waiting upon Him for a fresh anointment of power from on high.”
– D.L. Moody
“I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls to Christ.”
– David Brainerd
“There is need of a great revival of spiritual life, of truly fervent devotion to our Lord Jesus, of entire consecration to His service. It is only in a church in which this spirit of revival has at least begun, that there is any hope of radical change in the relation of the majority of our Christian people to mission work.”
– Andrew Murray
“Consecration is not the act of our feelings but of our will.”
– F.B. Meyer
“Jesus Christ has bought us with His blood, but, alas, He has not had His money’s worth! He paid for ALL, and He has had but a fragment of our energy, time and earnings. By an act of consecration, let us ask Him to forgive the robbery of the past, and let us profess our desire to be henceforth utterly and only for Him – His slaves, owning no master other than Himself.”
– F.B. Meyer
“What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever;
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee!”
– Bernard of Clairvaux
Lord, today, may my life be…
Christ-centered,
Word-based,
Grace-focused,
Faith-filled,
Spirit-led,
and Love-dominated.
– Tony Cooke
“No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him.”
– D.L. Moody
With my whole heart, I embrace the finished work of Christ and all of its benefits relative to my redemption (Hebrews 10:12).
With my whole heart, I embrace the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit and all of His influence relative to my spiritual growth (Ephesians 4:14-15).
With my whole heart, I embrace the unfinished work of the church and all of its responsibilities relative to my assignment (Matthew 28:19-20).
– Tony Cooke
“Lord, whatever you want, wherever you want it, and whenever you want it, that’s what I want.”
– Richard Baxter
Henry Varley said, ‘The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.’ Commenting on Varley’s statement, D.L. Moody said, ‘He [Varley] said ‘a man.’ He did not say a great man, nor a learned man, nor a rich man, nor a wise man, nor an eloquent man, nor a smart man, but simply ‘a man.’ I am a man, and it lies with the man himself whether he will or will not make that entire and full consecration. I will try my uttermost to be that man.'”
“The first thing a man must do if he desires to be used in the Lord’s work, is to make an unconditional surrender of himself to God. He must consecrate and then concentrate. A man who does not put his whole life into one channel does not count for much, and the man who only goes into work with half a heart does not amount to much.”
– D.L. Moody
“I learned from William Booth that the greatness of man’s power is his measure of surrender.”
– J. Wilbur Chapman
“A. W. Tozer pointed out that every Christian must learn to bear one of two pains, either the pain of double-mindedness or the pain of the crucified self. The pain of double-mindedness is like a toothache that lasts a lifetime. The pain is always there, filling you with resentment, anger, and envy. The pain of the crucified self, on the other hand, is a deep, terrible, surgical pain. But once it’s over, it’s over. It doesn’t make you cry out anymore. May God do that surgery in each of our lives.”
“We cannot sincerely pray, ‘Thy kingdom come’ until we have legitimately prayed, ‘My kingdom go.’”
– Tommy Tenney
“The mark of a saint is not perfection, but consecration. A saint is not a man without faults, but a man who has given himself without reserve to God.”
– W.T. Richardson
“Because I know that I am not my own master, I offer my heart as a true sacrifice to the Lord.”
– John Calvin
A group of ministers were once talking about a minister they could bring in for a city-wide revival. D.L. Moody’s name was brought up and many concurred.
One minister said, “D.L. Moody doesn’t have a monopoly on God.”
Another responded: “No, but it’s obvious that God has a monopoly on D.L. Moody.”
CONSEQUENCES
“Every choice you make has an end result.”
– Zig Ziglar
“If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
– Herbert Spencer
CONSISTENCY
“I have observed very frequently that it is not the man who is so brilliant who delivers in times of stress and strain, but rather the man who can keep on going indefinitely doing a good, straightforward job”.
– D.D. Eisenhower
“It isn’t hard to be good from time to time in sports. What’s tough is being good every day.”
– Willie Mays
CONTEMPLATION
“Action and contemplation are very close companions; they live together in one house on equal terms. Martha and Mary are sisters.”
– Bernard of Clairvaux
CONTENTMENT
“I am content to fill a little space if God be glorified.”
– Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley
“The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much. He is not rich that possesses much, but he that covets no more; and he is not poor that enjoys little, but he that wants too much.”
– Francis Beaumont
“Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit.”
– Charles M. Sheldon
“True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.”
– G.K. Chesteron
“It’s not how much we have but how much we enjoy that makes happiness.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Nine essentials for a full and contented life:
Health enough to make work pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real the things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”
– Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“There are two ways you can be rich. One is to have all you want, the other is to be satisfied with what you have.”
– Unknown
“To be content makes a poor person rich, but to be malcontent makes a rich man poor.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”
– George Horace Lorimer
“You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon
CONTRIBUTION
“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it’s time to turn out the lights.”
– George Burns
CONTROL
“Control is when you leverage the strength of your position or personality against the weakness of someone else’s in order to get that person to meet your selfish agenda.”
– Tim Kimmel
CONVERSATION
“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.”
– Lisa Kirk
CONVERSION
“If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions – if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Conversion is a great and glorious work of God’s power, at once changing the heart, and infusing life into the dead soul.”
– Jonathan Edwards
“The converted person will love the good he once hated and hate the sin he once loved.”
– Billy Graham
CONVICTION
“The man who is seriously convinced that he deserves to go to hell is not likely to go there, while the man who believes that he is worthy of heaven will certainly never enter that blessed place.”
– A. W. Tozer
“Is it not wonderful that the Lord can open a human heart; for he who made the lock knows well what key will fit in.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“The conviction to do right must be stronger than the temptation to do wrong.”
– Mike Bang
“Our lives begin to end the minute we become silent about things that matter.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If all of this world falls from the truth, I will stand!
– Athanasius
“An opinion is an idea that we pick up and carry around with us. In contrast, a conviction is something that picks us up and carries us around.”
“When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling and peace has become sin. You must the price of dearest peace lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy with all the fire of your faith.”
– Abraham Kuper
“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm.”
– Abraham Lincoln
CONVICTIONS
“Convictions are what we cling to in our lowest moment.”
– Larry Crabb
CORRECTION
“See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.”
– Pope John XXIII
When we as youngsters, would accuse our mother of picking on us her wise reply was, “All you’ll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you.”
– Judith Crist
CORRUPTION
Instead of praying for the people, the priests were preying on the people! The temple was not a “house of prayer” (Isa. 56:7); it was a “den of thieves” (Jer. 7:11).
– W.W. Wiersbe
COUNSEL
“He that won’t be counselled can’t be helped.”
– Benjamin Franklin
COURAGE
“Just when the truth about life sinks in, his truth starts to surface. He takes us by the hand and dares us not to sweep the facts under the rug but to confront them with him at our side.”
– Max Lucado
“Courage is necessary to succeed in Christian work. I have yet to find a man who is easily discouraged that amounts to anything anywhere… God hasn’t any use for a man who is all the time looking on the dark side.”
– D.L. Moody
“The final question which each of us is compelled to answer is, ‘Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?'”
– Thomas Carlyle
“Courage is the act of doing what one feels is right despite one’s fears.”
– Tom Rusk
“One man with courage makes a majority.”
– Andrew Jackson
“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
– Andre Gide
“Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.”
– John Wayne
A sign in the Grossmunster church in Zurich, where Zwingli preached, reads, ‘By God’s grace do something courageous’.
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
– Dorothy Bernard
“Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”
– Eddie Rickenbacker
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
– Mark Twain
“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Life is a battle in which we fall from wounds we receive in running away.”
– William L. Sullivan
“A man is a hero, not because he is braver than anyone else, but because he is brave for ten minutes longer.”
– Emerson
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
– Winston Churchill
“Bravery is being the only one who knows you’re afraid.”
– Franklin P. Jones
COURTESY
“Knowledge, ability, and experience are of little avail in reaching high success if courtesy is lacking. . . Nothing commends itself so well as kindness; and courtesy is kindness.”
– George D. Powers
“Treat everybody with politeness, even those who are rude to you. Show courtesy to others, not because they are gentlemen, but because you are one.”
– Unknown
COVETOUSNESS
“Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by other men.”
– Charles Cale Colton
CREATION
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being… All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God.”
– Sir Isaac Newton
“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”
– John Calvin
“The human body has been called the microcosm of the universe, a little world of wonders and a monument of divine wisdom and power, sufficient to convince the most incredulous mind of the existence of the Great Designer.”
– A.B. Simpson
“What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!”
– Jeremy Taylor
“…the world is a work of art, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of Him who created it should be known…”
– Basil
“I look at the universe and know there’s an architect.”
– Jack Anderson
CREATIVITY
“You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.”
“What mood is that?”
“Last minute panic.”
– Calvin and Hobbes comic (Created by Bill Watterson)
“We bury the men who do the nation’s creative work under layers of administrators and mountains of memoranda. We shrivel creativity by endless frustrations.”
– Admiral H G Rickover
“In creating, the only hard thing is to begin; a grass blade’s no easier to make than an oak.”
– James Russell Lowell
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
– Jonathan Swift
“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.”
– Roger von Oech
“The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
– Albert Einstein.
“Creative solutions are, by definition, solutions that are untried. They involve risk and require you to make decisions that often do not meet with immediate, universal acceptance.”
– Marc Oldach
CREED
“There never was a man in the world without a creed. What is a creed? A creed is what you believe. What is a confession? It is a declaration of what you believe. That declaration may be oral or it may be committed to writing, but the creed is there either expressed or implied.”
– B.H. Carroll
CRISIS
“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.”
– H.G. Wells
CRITICISM
“We will never become holy by criticizing others; nor is anyone brought nearer to God through finding fault.
– Francis Frangipane
“If the only way I can make myself look good is to criticize you, something is seriously wrong with me.”
– Warren W. Wiersbe
“My critics err because they don’t know the real me. I’m much worse than they know.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“The defects of a preacher are soon spied. Let him be endued with ten virtues, and have but one fault, and that one fault will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts, so evil is the world in these times.”
– Martin Luther
“The loudest boos always come from the cheapest seats.”
-Babe Ruth
“Constructive criticism is when I criticize you. Destructive criticism is when you criticize me.”
– Unknown
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christian are hurling on others.”
– A.B. Simpson
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“If one man calls you a horse, ignore him; If two men call you a horse, consider it; if three men call you a horse, buy a saddle.”
– Persian Proverb
“If the only way I can make myself look good is to criticize you, something is seriously wrong with me.”
– Warren W. Wiersbe
“If it is painful for you to criticize your friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.”
– Alice Duer Miller
“It’s easier to criticize than to create. That’s why there are more critics than creators.”
“Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult.”
– Winston Churchill
“It is good that we at times endure opposition and that we are evilly and untruly judged when our actions and intentions are good. Often such experiences promote humility and protect us from vainglory. For then we seek God’s witness in the heart.”
– Thomas à Kempis
“Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been erected to a critic.”
– Jean Sibelius
“To escape criticism—do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
“The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A wise man gets more out of his enemies than a fool gets out of his friends.”
– Baltasar Gracian
“Cynics and critics wake us up. Kindness often covers up the truth and allows us to sleep on in our ignorance.”
– Wilfred A Peterson
One time many years ago preacher Dwight L. Moody was criticized because of the evangelistic methods he used. Moody replied, “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.”
– David Brinkley
“Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, insinuations, and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.”
– Henry Ward Beecher
“If I tried to read, much less answer, all the criticisms made of me, and all the attacks leveled against me, this office would have to be closed for all other business. I do the best I know how, the very best I can. And I mean to keep on doing this, down to the very end. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I had been right would make no difference. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me now will not amount to anything.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Criticism is something you can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
– Aristotle
TV personality Gary Moore had a special way of handling criticism. Whenever he would receive a particularly nasty letter, he would send it back with a note: “The enclosed letter arrived on my desk a few days ago. I am sending it to you in the belief that as a responsible citizen you should know that some idiot is sending out letters over your signature.”
“Get a friend to tell you your faults, or better still, welcome an enemy who will watch you keenly and sting you savagely. What a blessing such an irritating critic will be to a wise man, what an intolerable nuisance to a fool!”
– Charles Spurgeon
CROSS
“In the Cross is salvation; in the Cross is life; in the Cross is protection against our enemies; in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the Cross is strength of mind; in the Cross is joy of spirit; in the Cross is excellence of virtue; in the Cross is perfection of holiness. There is no salvation of soul, nor hope of eternal life, save in the Cross.”
– Thomas à Kempis
“Jesus was crucified on the cross so that we could stop crucifying ourselves.”
– Rick Warren
“The words crucial and crux both have their root in the Latin word for cross, ‘crux,’ and they have come into the English language with their current meanings because the concept of the cross is at the very center and core of biblical Christianity. In a very real sense, the cross crystalizes the essence of the ministry of Jesus.”
– R.C. Sproul
“Some of the best writing advice I ever received? ‘Cross it out and start over.’ It’s also some of the best Christian life advice I ever got.”
– Leonard Sweet
“If you don’t run to the cross in your messages, your people won’t run to the cross in their trials.”
– Bill Giovannetti
“We may not preach a crucified Savior without being also crucified men and women. It is not enough to wear an ornamental cross as a pretty decoration. The cross that Paul speaks about was burned into his very flesh, was branded into his being, and only the Holy Spirit can burn the true cross into our innermost life.”
– A.B. Simpson
“The cross is the supreme evidence of the love of God.”
– Eric Sauer
“Christ took your cup of grief, your cup of the curse, pressed it to his lips, drank it to its dregs, then filled it with his sweet, pardoning, sympathizing love, and gave it back for you to drink, and to drink forever!”
– Octavius Winslow
“The cross of Christ declares two things: first, God’s infinite love for the world; second, God’s infinite hatred of sin.”
– R.A. Torrey
“The first arm of the cross is the vertical, our relationship with God. The second arm of the cross is the horizontal, our relationship with others, ourselves, and creation. If you just pick up one arm of the cross, it becomes a stick most often used to beat other people with.”
– Leonard Sweet
“No Cross, No Crown.”
– William Penn
“No man understands the Scriptures, unless he be acquainted with the cross.”
– Martin Luther
“The cross shows the seriousness of our sin – but it also shows the immeasurable love of God.”
– Billy Graham
“The law enables us to see ourselves as morally dirty and in need of cleansing. But it also points us to the place of cleansing: the cross of Christ.”
– Billy Graham
“Two thousand years ago God invited a morally corrupt world to the foot of the cross. There God held your sins and mine to the flames until every last vestige of our guilt was consumed.”
– Billy Graham
“The cross was designed to defeat Satan, who by deception had obtained squatters’ rights to the title of the earth.”
– Billy Graham
“When Paul preached ‘the cross,’ he preached a message which explained that this instrument of rejection had been used by God as his instrument of reconciliation. Man’s means of bringing death to Jesus was God’s means of bringing life to the world.”
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
CROSS / RESURRECTION
“Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.”
– Watchman Nee
CRUCIFIXION
“As we remember the crucifixion, know that Jesus was not a helpless victim of mob violence, neither was He merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Peter says that Jesus was, ‘delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God’ (Acts 2:23), and John calls Jesus, ‘the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ (Rev. 13:8). Jesus Himself testified, ‘I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again’ (John 10:17-18). Jesus was no powerless victim; He is the Savior and Redeemer. His death was as deliberate as His resurrection. He was in the right place at the right time, and all who believe in Him are the eternal beneficiaries of His sacrifice.”
– Tony Cooke
CULTURE
“The men in the Lewis and Clark expedition thought of themselves as explorers, not a war party. This has to be our attitude toward contemporary culture – we are not at war with them; we are explorers looking for the initiation of God’s kingdom in the culture, so we can come alongside it as ambassadors of His kingdom and partner with Him.”
– Todd Hunter
“If you over-adapt to the culture you’re trying to reach, it means you’ve bought into that culture’s idols.”
– Tim Keller
CURIOSITY
“I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.”
– Albert Einstein
“Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
– Samuel Johnson
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tires merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
– Albert Einstein
CYNICISM
“Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.”
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
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