Category: Quotes

…Strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it. I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest lesson I have ever learned. When you get it, it changes you. My friend Julie from Seattle told me that the main prayer she prays for her husband is that he will be able to receive love. And this is the prayer I pray for all my friends because it is the key to happiness. God’s love will never change us if we don’t accept it.
–Donald Miller

Many of us like to give but have a hard time receiving. We like being known as givers but haven’t learned to graciously accept. It takes humility to graciously receive. I pray that God will help me learn to receive love from Him and from others.

“God did not abolish the fact of evil: He transformed it,” wrote Dorothy Sayers. “He did not stop the crucifixion; He rose from the dead.” The hero bore all consequences, yet somehow triumphed.
–Philip Yancey

True then are these two sayings: Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works. Bad works do not make a bad man, but a bad man does bad works. Thus it is always necessary that the substance or person should be good before any good works can be done, and that good works should follow and proceed from a good person.
–Martin Luther

What kind of person am I?
What kind of person are you?

Remember the story where we encounter obscurity as a young boy brings Jesus two fish and five loaves of bread to help feed the group of more than 5000 people:

…in none of the Gospels are We even given his name, and he is never mentioned again. Have you ever been asked in one of those small group ice-breaker questions, “What Bible story character would you like to be?” Would this be yours? Would you want to be “the young boy”? Would you be Willing to remain nameless, offering up your meager portion to your Savior, with no promise of return or guarantee of notoriety, but in complete obedience allow God to work His magic through your small “lunch”? That’s what embracing obscurity is all about: Being content with being “relatively unknown” so that Christ can he made more known. Temporarily going hungry, so that many more may be filled.
–Anonymous, in Embracing Obscurity

Ugh. My pride.
I don’t know about you, but my pride resists wanting to pick “the young boy” as the Bible character I’d want to be. The unknown, nameless one who offers all he has so that Jesus can be made more known…I mean I’m all for Jesus to be made more known through what I provide, BUT can’t I also be made more known in the process as well? That’s more along the lines of what I usually want. To get the pat on the back and be made known. I need God to keep helping me become a person of true humility this year.

Regarding God’s Story, Gabriel Fackre once said that:
–We need to get the story straight by learning how to give the content of God’s story and ours;
–We need to get the story out by developing natural communication skills;
–We need to take the story in by learning to depend on the Spirit’s power; and
–We need to learn how to defend the story to others by being prepared to answer the common questions people ask about the gospel.

God help me to better learn Your story, take it in personally, get it out to others, and be able to defend the story. Your story of love for this fallen, corrupted world is the best news that has ever been told. Help me to love to remember it and tell it!