Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future. —Blaise Pascal

Never confuse movement with action. —Ernest Hemingway

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. —Author unknown

The first, is the most difficult of steps. —Monte Robinson

Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise.

Boldness is indispensable in attacking the evils of the age–not in the mass, but in detail. –Joseph Exell

Boldness acquired only by studious and prayerful familiarity with God and His message. –G. Barlow

In her book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen puts it like this: "Burnout occurs when all that devotion [to work and its being at the center of life] becomes untenable — but also when faith in doing what you love as the path to fulfillment, financial and otherwise, begins to falter."

"[The early Church was] a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. “To live as the New Testament language requires,” he writes, “Christians would have to become strangers and sojourners on the earth, to have here no enduring city, to belong to a Kingdom truly not of this world." –David Bentley Hart

A saint is one who exaggerates what the world neglects. –G. K. Chesterton

"When I was a boy, my father, a baker, introduced me to the wonders of song,” tenor Luciano Pavarotti relates. “He urged me to work very hard to develop my voice. Arrigo Pola, a professional tenor in my hometown of Modena, Italy, took me as a pupil. I also enrolled in a teachers college. On graduating, I asked my father, ‘Shall I be a teacher or a singer?’ “‘Luciano,’ my father replied, ‘if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair.’ “I chose one. It took seven years of study and frustration before I made my first professional appearance. It took another seven to reach the Metropolitan Opera. And now I think whether it’s laying bricks, writing a book—whatever we choose—we should give ourselves to it. Commitment, that’s the key. Choose one chair.”

The Drawing of the Father

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him… —John 6:44

When God begins to draw me to Himself, the problem of my will comes in immediately. Will I react positively to the truth that God has revealed? Will I come to Him? To discuss or deliberate over spiritual matters when God calls is inappropriate and disrespectful to Him. When God speaks, never discuss it with anyone as if to decide what your response may be (see Galatians 1:15-16). Belief is not the result of an intellectual act, but the result of an act of my will whereby I deliberately commit myself. But will I commit, placing myself completely and absolutely on God, and be willing to act solely on what He says? If I will, I will find that I am grounded on reality as certain as God’s throne.

Betty Scott once wrote a prayer out: “Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give my self, my life, my all, utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt. Send me where Thou wilt. And work out Thy whole will in my life – at any cost, now and forever.”

Those words are not only beautiful but risky: if you mean them, they may lead your life in directions you never anticipated. In Betty’s case, they led her and her husband John Stam to serve as missionaries in China, some sixty years ago. While there, Betty and John were captured by Chinese Communists, stripped half-naked, chained together, and marched through the streets of a little village. Then both were beheaded. That example of heroic sacrifice for Christ galvanized the imagination of an year-old girl, Elisabeth Elliot, who went on to become a missionary, author, and Christian leader who ministers widely today.

Some people would complain if they were given a million dollars in small bills. —Monte Robinson

There was once a wood cutter’s wife who forgot to put salt in her husband’s morning porridge. When he angrily complained, she told him that he was a fool to make such a fuss about so trifling a matter. This infuriated the wood cutter, and commencing work in the forest he lashed out at a tree with such force and venom that the [ax] head flew off. It injured his employer’s [favorite] horse that was being led to the blacksmith’s shop. That horse was to have taken his employer, a nobleman and an important man in the district, to a meeting of Lords that was to discuss their differences with the King. Because of his anger and foul mood due to the need to arrange for another horse, he successfully argued for an uprising against the King. In the rebellion that followed many were killed, and there followed a period of poverty, famine and unrest. This rebellion, loss of life and suffering happened because a wood cutter’s wife forgot to salt her husband’s porridge.

There's Always Someone There to Say You are Wrong

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help. –Abraham Lincoln

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. —Elbert Hubbard

Only mediocrity escapes criticism. —John Steinbeck

Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult. —Winston Churchill

Sandwich every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise. —Mary Kay Ash

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. –Abraham Lincoln

Listen to critism...from wise people. —Monte Robinson

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. —Mark Twain

God indeed has the Devil in a chain, but has horribly lengthened out the chain." —Cotton Mather

That there is a devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the Devil. —Cotton Mather

Did Satan ever hinder a man from doing a bad action? When we were about to give a pound to a good cause, did Satan ever say, “Give two.” —Joseph Excell

Under Seige

Theologians tell a story to illustrate how Christ’s triumph presently benefits our lives: Imagine a city under siege. The enemy that surrounds they city will not let anyone or anything leave. Supplies are running low, and the citizens are fearful.

But in the dark of the night, a spy sneaks through the enemy lines. He has rushed to the city to tell the people that in another place the main enemy force has been defeated; the leaders have already surrendered. The people do not need to be afraid. It is only a matter of time until the besieging troops receive the news and lay down their weapons. Similarly, we may seem now to be surrounded by the forces of evil—disease, injustice, oppression, death. But the enemy has actually been defeated at Calvary. Things are not the way they seem to be. It is only a matter of time until it becomes clear to all that the battle is really over.

No Teeth

Carl Armerding recounted his experience of watching a wildcat in a zoo. “As I stood there,” he said, “an attendant entered the cage through a door on the opposite side. He had nothing in his hands but a broom. Carefully closing the door, he proceeded to sweep the floor of the cage.” He observed that the worker had no weapon to ward off an attack by the beast. In fact, when he got to the corner of the cage where the wildcat was lying, he poked the animal with the broom. The wildcat hissed at him and then lay down in another corner of the enclosure. Armerding remarked to the attendant, “You certainly are a brave man.” “No, I ain’t brave,” he replied as he continued to sweep. “Well, then that cat must be tame.” “No,” came the reply, “he ain’t tame.” “If you aren’t brave and the wildcat isn’t tame, then I can’t understand why he doesn’t attack you.” Armerding said the man chuckled, then replied with an air of confidence, “Mister, he’s old—and he ain’t got no teeth.”

In your highest moments, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you. –Danzel Washington

The hinderer assails the most eminent workers in the Church–The Saviour even .... We are apt to think that the greatest escape the temptations which fall to the lot of others. But the greater the man, the greater the temptation. –Joseph Exell

Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst;
He promises honor and pays with disgrace;
He promises pleasure and pays with pain;
He promises profit and pays with loss;
He promises life and pays with death.—Thomas Brooks

Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if,” never with the forceful or dogmatic statement— “You must.” Discipleship carries with it an option. —Oswald Chambers

I can live for two months on a good compliment. —Mark Twain

Sam Metcalf in his book, Beyond the Local Church: How Apostolic Movements Can Change the World, wrote of a time that he was taking a tour of the Church of Scotland’s beautiful Glasgow Cathedral ... . It is estimated that over 50,000 university students live within walking distance of this extraordinary building. The congregation of the church itself is down to a remnant of less than two hundred people. So [he] purposely asked the [tour guide] leading the tour, “If this building still houses an active congregation, what is being done to reach these 50,000 students with the good news of Jesus?” Her response was stunning.

“The people we have who are active in this church are mostly old. And as you may well know,” she said, “young people these days are not that interested in religion. But we’re trying and we’re making adjustments. For example, the Church of Scotland has historically used black or dark vestments [robes] for our clergy. But recently, to be more relevant, we’ve added color!” [He said, he] was so stunned [he] could barely contain [himself].

The root of false theology is belittling God. —Charles Spurgeon

I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is no easy task. I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels and the ammonia content. I pumped in vitamins and antibiotics and sulfa drugs and enough enzymes to make a rock grow. I filtered the water through glass fibers and charcoal, and exposed it to ultraviolet light. You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dove for cover into the nearest shell. They showed me one "emotion" only: fear. Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule, three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them. I could not convince them of my true concern.

To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty; my attempts at healing they viewed as destruction. To change their perceptions, I began to see, would require a form of incarnation. I would have to become a fish and "speak" to them in a language they could understand.

A human being becoming a fish is nothing to God becoming a baby. And yet according to the Gospels that is what happened at Bethlehem. The God who created matter took shape within it, as an artist might become a spot on a painting or a playwright a character within his own play. God wrote a story, only using real characters, on the pages of real history. The Word became flesh.

What can be less scary than a newborn with his limbs wrapped tight against his body? In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear.

Arnold Palmer

Golf immortal Arnold Palmer recalls a lesson about overconfidence: It was the final hole of the 1961 Masters tournament, and I had a one-stroke lead and had just hit a very satisfying tee shot. I felt I was in pretty good shape. As I approached my ball, I saw an old friend standing at the edge of the gallery. He motioned me over, stuck out his hand and said, “Congratulations.” I took his hand and shook it, but as soon as I did, I knew I had lost my focus.

On my next two shots, I hit the ball into a sand trop, then put it over the edge of the green. I missed a putt and lost the Masters. You don’t forget a mistake like that; you just learn from it and become determined that you will never do that again. I haven’t in the 30 years since.

Scattered Effort

Ford said, “A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once. That scatters effort and destroys direction. It makes for haste, and haste makes waste. So we do things all the wrong ways possible before we come to the right one. Then we think it is the best way because it works, and it was the only way left that we could see. Every now and then I wake up in the morning headed toward that finality, with a dozen things I want to do. I know I can’t do them all at once.”

When asked what he did about that, Ford replied,

“I go out and trot around the house. While I’m running off the excess energy that wants to do too much, my mind clears and I see what can be done and should be done first.”

King Canute ruled over Denmark, Norway, and England more than one thousand years ago. A wise ruler, he worked diligently to make the lives of his subjects better. As is often the case, he was surrounded by those who sought to gain influence and prominence with him, and according to the ancient story, he grew tired of their continual flattery and determined to put an end to it. He ordered that his throne be carried out to the seashore and gathered his courtiers about it.

By the sea, the king commanded the tide not to come in. Yet soon the waters were lapping around his legs as the tide did not heed him. According to one historian’s account, King Canute rose up from his throne and said, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom Heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

Charles Bradlaugh was an outstanding atheist in England. Down in one of the slums of London was a minister by the name of Hugh Price Hughes. All London was aware of miracles of grace accomplished at his mission.¶ Charles Bradlaugh challenged Mr. Hughes to debate with him the validity of the claims of Christianity. London was greatly interested. What would Mr. Hughes do? He immediately accepted the challenge and in doing so added one of his own. ¶ Hughes said, “I propose to you that we each bring some concrete evidences of the validity of our beliefs in the form of men and women who have been redeemed from the lives of sin and shame by the influence of our teaching. I will bring 100 such men and women, and I challenge you to do the same. ¶ “If you cannot bring 100, Mr. Bradlaugh, to match my 100, I will be satisfied if you will bring 50 men and women who will stand and testify that they have been lifted up from lives of shame by the influence of your teachings. If you cannot bring 50, then bring 20 people who will say, as my 100 will, that they have a great joy in a life of self-respect as a result of your atheistic teachings. If you cannot bring 20, I will be satisfied if you bring 10. ¶ “Nay, Mr. Bradlaugh, I challenge you to bring one, just one man or woman who will make such a testimony regarding the uplifting of your atheistic teachings.” ¶ Again London was stirred. What would Mr. Bradlaugh do? In answer, Charles Bradlaugh, with great discomfiture and chagrin, publicly withdrew his challenge for the debate.

In heaven, everyone's going to have some produce. —Monte Robinson

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number. –Abraham Lincoln

No man resolved to make the most of himself has time to waste on personal contention. –Abraham Lincoln

If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace. –Blaise Pascal

Let it never be forgotten that glamour is not greatness; applause is not fame; prominence is not eminence. The man of the hour is not apt to be the man of the ages. A stone may sparkle, but that does not make it a diamond; people may have money, but that does not make them a success.

It is what the unimportant people do that really counts and determines the course of history. The greatest forces in the universe are never spectacular. Summer showers are more effective than hurricanes, but they get no publicity. The world would soon die but for the fidelity, loyalty, and consecration of those whose names are unhonored and unsung. —James R. Sizoo

For the Christian, greed is rooted in a lack of trust in God, selfishness or both. —Monte Robinson

There are scores of Christians who have been sermonized for decades, and they are still babes in Christ.⁸⁴ We Christians are not transformed simple by hearing sermons week after week. We are transformed by regular encounters with Jesus Christ.

A father and son arrived in a small western town looking for an uncle whom they had never seen. Suddenly, the father, pointing across the square to a man who was walking away from them, exclaimed, “There goes my uncle!”

His son asked, “How do you know when you have not seen him before?”

“Son, I know him because he walks exactly like my father.”

If we walk in the Spirit, the world should know us by our walk.

In the words of nineteenth-century Scottish theologian John Brown, "Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills."

A holy life will make the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns, they just shine. —D.L. Moody.

The real test of spiritual focus is being able to bring your mind and thoughts under control.

Let us remember that holiness affects not only our personal relationship to God but all of our relationships. It affects all you do (literally "your conduct")....

He is fitted to be our Judge, because He perfectly and completely bears our nature, knows by experience all its weaknesses and windings, as from the inside, so to speak, and is ‘wondrous kind’ with the kindness which ‘fellow-feeling’ enkindles. He knows us with the knowledge of a God; He knows us with the sympathy of a brother.

S. I. McMillen, in his book None of These Diseases, tells a story of a young woman who wanted to go to college, but her heart sank when she read the question on the application blank that asked, “Are you a leader?” Being both honest and conscientious, she wrote, “No,” and returned the application, expecting the worst. To her surprise, she received this letter from the college:

“Dear Applicant: A study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower.”

The Knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him. –Blaise Pascal

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves. —A. W. Tozer

Without the Spirit of God, we can do nothing. We are as ships without the wind, branches without sap, and like coals without fire, we are useless. —Charles Spurgeon

Once in a while, it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to. —Alan Keightley

"John Wesley wrote the following letter from his deathbed to William Wilberforce to encourage him in his prolonged fight against slavery in England: 'Unless the divine power has raised you up.... I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that [abominable practice of slavery], which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Go on in the name of God, and in the power of His might.”

First, take a public stand for Christ.
Don’t try to be a secret believer, for it won’t work. Confess Christ at every opportunity. “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words…of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed” (Mark 8:38). If you want to grow rapidly, confess Him openly.

Second, turn from all you know to be wrong.
He gives you a new nature, a nature that loves righteousness and hates iniquity. You can now overcome. “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. 6:14). But you must choose righteousness and forsake sin. Turn your back on it. Put it away. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body” (Rom. 6:12). Come clean. Be through with sin.

Third, spend much time in Bible study and prayer.
The more you read the Bible the more you will want to read it. If you want to grow in grace, meet God every day. Have a place and time for prayer and Bible [reading] study. Be a Bible Christian. Never let a day pass without spending time alone with God. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2).

Fourth, keep busy in God’s service.
Satan always finds mischief for idle hands to do. Therefore find something to do. Give out gospel tracts. Get into a soul-winning church. Sing in the choir. Help in the young people’s work. Attend the prayer meeting. Put first things first.

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
--Charles Kingsley, Bits & Pieces, December 9, 1993, p. 16.

Laszlo Tokes, the Romanian pastor whose mistreatment out raged the country and prompted rebellion against the Communist ruler Ceausescu, tells of trying to prepare a Christmas sermon for the tiny mountain church to which he had been exiled. The state police were rounding up dissidents, and violence was breaking out across the country. Afraid for his life, Tokes bolted his doors, sat down, and read again the stories in Luke and Matthew. Unlike most pastors who would preach that Christmas, he chose as his text the verses describing Herod's massacre of the innocents. It was the single passage that spoke most directly to his parishioners. Oppression, fear, and violence, the daily plight of the underdog, they well understood.

The next day, Christmas, news broke that Ceausescu had been arrested. Church bells rang, and joy broke out all over Romania. Another King Herod had fallen. Tokes recalls, "All the events of the Christmas story now had a new, brilliant dimension for dimen us, a sion of history rooted in the reality of our lives.... For those of us who lived through them, the days of Christmas 1989 represented a rich, resonant embroidery of the Christmas story, a time when the provi dence of God and the foolishness of human wickedness seemed as easy to comprehend as the sun and the moon over the timeless Tran sylvanian hills." For the first time in four decades, Romania celebrated Christmas as a public holiday.

Perhaps the best way to perceive the "underdog" nature of the incarnation is to transpose it into terms we can relate to today. An unwed mother, homeless, was forced to look for shelter while travel ing to meet the heavy taxation demands of a colonial government. She lived in a land recovering from violent civil wars and still in turmoil a situation much like that in modern Bosnia, Rwanda, or Somalia. Like half of all mothers who deliver today, she gave birth in Asia, in its far western corner, the part of the world that would prove least receptive to the son she bore. That son became a refugee in Africa, the continent where most refugees can still be found.

The Knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him. –Blaise Pascal

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed. –Blaise Pascal

The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted. –Blaise Pascal

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him. –Abraham Lincoln

If you look for the bad in people, you will surely find it. –Abraham Lincoln

When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages.” To that, Calvert replied, “We died before we came here.”

Money often costs too much.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
–Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
–Mark Twain

Creative Adversity

In 1832, French engineer Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps was traveling on the Mediterranean Sea. One of the passengers on the ship he was on came down with a contagious disease and the ship was quarantined. Lesseps became very frustrated. To help kill time he read the memoirs of Charles le Pere who had considered the feasibility of building a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. In 1869 the Suez Canal was completed. It was constructed following the design by and under the leadership of de Lesseps.

The British minister, W. E. Sangster, began to lose his voice and mobility in the mid-1950s. He had a disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. He recognized the end was near, so he threw himself into writing and praying. In the midst of his suffering he pleaded, “Let me stay in the struggle, Lord. I don’t mind if I can no longer be a general, but give me just a regiment to lead.”

Sangster’s voice eventually failed completely, and his legs became useless. On Easter morning just a few weeks before his death, he took a pen and shakily wrote his daughter a letter. In it he said, “It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout, ‘He is risen!’—but it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout.”

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts. –Blaise Pascal

"It is a false heart that steals the revenues of God, and buys therewith the intoxicating cup of self-congratulation." —Charles Spurgeon

I do not know of any command anywhere in Scripture, "Groan in the Lord alway; and again I say, Groan." —Charles Spurgeon

There’s little difference in ethical behavior between the churched and the unchurched. There’s as much pilferage and dishonesty among the churched as the unchurched. And I’m afraid that applies pretty much across the board: religion, per se, is not really life changing. People cite it as important, for instance, in overcoming depression—but it doesn’t have primacy in determining behavior.

“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.” ― C.T. Studd

Suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent, and of the Son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified, the penitent thief is crucified, and the Son of God is crucified. By these signs we know the widespread heritage of suffering. — Oswald Chambers

No Scar?

Hast thou no scar' No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand' I hear thee sung as mighty in the land, I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star, Hast thou no scar'

Hast thou no wound' Yet I was wounded by the archers, spend, Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned: Hast thou no wound'

No wound, no scar' Yet, as the Master shall the servant be, And, pierced are the feet that follow Me; But thine are whole: can he have followed far Who has no wounds nor scar'

Most of the Psalms were born in difficulty. Most of the Epistles were written in prisons. Most of the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers of all time had to pass through the fire. Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress from jail. Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized the hospitals of England. Semi-paralyzed and under the constant menace of [a stroke], Pasteur was tireless in his attack on disease. During the greater part of his life, American historian Francis Parkman suffered so acutely that he could not work for more than five minutes as a time. His eyesight was so wretched that he could scrawl only a few gigantic words on a manuscript, yet he contrived to write twenty magnificent volumes of history.

If we consider the greatness and the glory of the life we shall have when we have risen from the dead, it would not be difficult at all for us to bear the concerns of this world. If I believe the Word, I shall on the Last Day, after the sentence has been pronounced, not only gladly have suffered ordinary temptations, insults, and imprisonment, but I shall also say: "O, that I did not throw myself under the feet of all the godless for the sake of the great glory which I now see revealed and which has come to me through the merit of Christ!"

"We live in the midst of errors."

The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion. –Blaise Pascal

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked. —Tillie Olsen

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own. –Blaise Pascal

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. –Abraham Lincoln

Someone once observed that a wasted life is really nothing more than a collection of wasted days. As God gives us life, each one of us starts the new year with the same number of opportunities—365—that we can choose to either use and invest in eternal things or allow to drift by without taking advantage of the gift we have been given. The difference between those who succeed and those who fail is not found primarily in talent but in diligence and effort. –Unknown

The common fault with most of us is our readiness to yield to distractions. Our thoughts go roving here and there, and we make little progress toward our desired end. –Charles H. Spurgeon

We have time for what we make time for. –Monte Robinson

We live our lives the exact way we want to. –Monte Robinson

Truth is so obscure in these times and falsehood so established that unless one loves the truth, he cannot know it. —Blaise Pascal

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others. –Blaise Pascal

I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him. –Abraham Lincoln

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. –Abraham Lincoln

Archbishop of Canterbury

Barclay quotes William Temple, the renowned Archbishop of Canterbury, as defining worship as quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God, and devoting the will to the purpose of God.