Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin. "

Related Quotes:

" When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate. "

" When preaching is done right, it can change lives. When it's done badly, my failure goes beyond the merely human. "

" Jesus is why women have traveled continents, spent decades learning a strange language so they could translate the Gospel, planting churches, caring for the sick, educating the illiterate, and marching for the oppressed. "

" Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion. "

" Politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into 'us' vs. 'them.' "

" I don't have a problem with delegation. I love to delegate. I am either lazy enough, or busy enough, or trusting enough, or congenial enough, that the notion leaving tasks in someone else's lap doesn't just sound wise to me, it sounds attractive. "

" There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text. "

" Sloth is the failure to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done - like the kamikaze pilot who flew seventeen missions. "

" The single dynamic that helps people be most aware of God and most experiencing the fruit of the Spirit is gratitude. "

" Sometimes in churches somebody will discover a particular vein of spirituality and seek to recruit others into it, or assume a superior position because they have found certain techniques - but no one actually wants to become like them. "

" Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness. "

" Women are the first witnesses to the resurrection and pillars of the early church. "

" There are no clear boundary lines between what is physiological, what is psychological, and what is spiritual. Those are language domains that make sense and have integrity but overlap significantly. "

" Some leaders are not intimidated by opposition; they actually thrive on it. It wakes them up. It energizes them. It calls them to battle. It causes them to mobilize their thoughts and energy. "

" I hate how hard spiritual transformation is and how long it takes. I hate thinking about how many people have gone to church for decades and remain joyless or judgmental or bitter or superior. "

" Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds. "

" Sin is protean. It is a cancer that keeps mutating, and just when you think you have killed off one form, it turns out a deadlier strain yet is threatening your heart. "

" My main job is to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in my everyday experience of life with God. Everything else is job number two. "

" I have given up the idea that there is an opposition-free church out there. But I have gained something else - an appreciation for the gift of opposition. When it comes, I learn something about my motives. When it comes, I get to test my courage. "

" Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel. "

" No one wants pain. Not even long-time, mature Christians who want to grow. We will always find ways to avoid pain. Pain itself is a bad thing. "

" One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness. "

" When someone is in crisis, don't start by teaching, leveraging, or explaining. Just be with. "

" Prudence is what makes someone a great commodities trader - the capacity to face reality squarely in the eye without allowing emotion or ego to get in the way. It's what is needed by every quarterback or battlefield general. "

" Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, the death of every victim of every war. "

" A healthy soul is whole and integrated. It is connected to God. A person with a healthy soul is at peace with God, with himself, and with other people. "

" Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.' "

" Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones' mind. "

" Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly. "

" Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader. "