"Rather than praying to God the same way you talk to your store-bound spouse—merely listing the things you want Him to get you—you should confine yourself to enumerating the blessings you already have. In fact, you could do it in alphabetical order—picking one blessing for every letter. If you follow my advice, your only problem will be choosing between the many blessings you have but rarely even think about... Self-pity and gratitude are mortal enemies. Where one exists the other cannot. Since both are highly contagious, individuals must choose gratitude before becoming too thankless to do otherwise."

“It is time for those of us who are tired of the diversity movement to come up with our own definition of racism. Racism is best defined as a pathological tendency to interject race into situations where it is not relevant, merely for personal gain."

“Some people think I am opposed to the National Day of Silence. That isn’t true. There’s nothing like a day without homosexual whining. Right now, I’m trying to talk them into a Nation Year of Silence.”

“When I am hunting and I know I see a deer in the brush, I pull the trigger. When I know it is a human, I hold my fire. When I don’t know, I also hold my fire. The feminist who doesn’t know whether it a fetus is a person, has the abortion anyway. In other words, she just pulls the trigger. Nonetheless, feminists still feel they are morally superior to hunters.”

“Our college campuses have become the last safe haven of Marxists, largely because its adherents have never had to survive in the real world, much less in a communist dictatorship. Indeed, there are more communists teaching in the State of North Carolina than there are in the former Soviet Union.”

“Over the last couple of years, I’ve been tying to see things from a liberal perspective. Unfortunately, I can’t get my head that far up my ass. I guess it takes a lot of flexibility to be a liberal. It also takes a considerable lack of backbone.”

“Many of those who are unfit for any job besides that of a tenured professor would be unemployed and homeless if we abolished tenure tomorrow. Without tenure, these people would not be such an irritation at work, although they would probably be just as irritating as panhandlers once the unemployment checks ran out.”

“Marxism is an emotional disorder, not a political philosophy.”

“George W. Bush has done more for women’s rights than any president in modern history. But feminists hate him because he is opposed to abortion rights. Bill Clinton sexually harassed more women than any president in American history. But that’s okay. He supports abortion rights so feminists love him. If he were ever convicted of rape, feminists would still love him because he supports abortion rights.”

“I think that many people who are pro choice are glad that they were born before 1973. Otherwise, they might not be able to make choices. I’m just glad my parents were pro-life.”

“Just remember that Jesus didn’t die on the cross for you to run from what is right. And war heroes didn’t die on the battlefield for you to cower away while this country is destroyed.”

“Feminists often justify abortion by saying that the procedure is no different than picking a scab. That’s when I start asking questions. I often ask feminists about a film I saw of a fetus in the so-called first trimester of development. The baby was yawning, rubbing its eyes, and even rolling around and playing in the womb. I like to ask feminists whether they have ever seen a scab yawn.”

“I do not believe that surgically applying a breast to a man’s chest can make him a woman any more than surgically applying a horn to a man’s forehead can make him a unicorn.”

“Like Marxism, liberalism is not really a political philosophy. Instead, it is a state of arrested emotional development. It is a way of thinking, which leads to no place in the real world. It is a place existing only in the imagination.”

“Standing up against that which is wrong invariably means you will take on a lot of angry people. If you cannot do it with a sense of humor, you are less likely to prevail.”

Years ago, people who supported racial discrimination and racial segregation were called racists. Today, people who are opposed to racial discrimination and racial segregation are called racists—at least they are on campuses all across America. If the diversity movement has accomplished anything at my university, it has been to teach young blacks to model themselves after members of the Ku Klux Klan... But there is another rather obvious conclusion that comes from watching the 'progress' made by the Offices of Campus Diversity in recent years. It is that these people are so arrogant as to presume that they may redefine racism whenever they see fit in order to garner support for whatever initiatives they deem fashionable at any given point in time. So, perhaps, it is no longer advisable to ask the diversity nabobs to inform us of their most recent postmodern definition of racism simply because they are, yet again, making spurious allegations. Perhaps, instead, it is time for those of us who are tired of the diversity movement (that includes those tired of paying for it with hard-earned tax dollars) to come up with our own definition of racism... Racism—is a pathological tendency to interject race into situations where it is not relevant, merely for personal gain.

Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask but when we are challenged to be what we can be. (Morris Alder)

The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second.
(Florence Allshorn)

Jesus is our mouth, through which we speak to the Father; He is our eye, through which we see the Father; He is our right hand through which we offer ourselves to the Father. Unless He intercedes, there is no intercourse with God.

Perhaps God brings us to the end of our resources so we can discover the vastness of His.

The essence of temptation is the invitation to live independently of God.

Gratitude is the praise we offer God: for teachers kind, benefactors never to be forgotten, for all who have advantaged me, by writings, sermons, converse, prayers, examples, for all these and all others which I know, which I know not, open, hidden, remembered, and forgotten. (Lancelot Andrewes)

For I seek not to understand in order that I may believe; but I believe in order that I may understand, for I believe for this reason: that unless I believe, I cannot understand. (Anselm of Canterbury)

The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity. (Robert Anthony)

To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer. (Thomas Aquinas)

God does not ask your ability or your inability. He asks only your availability. (Mary Kay Ashe)

It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that then He loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud.

The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.

Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love and the future to God's providence.

He loves each one of us, as if there were only one of us

.I have read Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and beautiful; but I never read in either of them: 'Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give thee rest.'

It is easy to want things from the Lord and yet not want the Lord Himself, as though the gift could ever be preferable to the Giver.

Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens. Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others. Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee, O Lord. (John Baillie)

If you get busy serving God, you're too busy to sin. (Chuck Baker)

Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a Christian experience. We think we are doing our duty when we're only talking about it. (Charles F. Banning)

Jesus is the yes to every promise of God.

Faith is not only a commitment to the promises of Christ; faith is also a commitment to the demands of Christ.

In any museum we will find quite ordinary things - clothes, a walking stick, a pen, pieces of furniture - which are only of value because they were possessed and used by some great person. It is the ownership which gives them worth. It is so with the Christian. The Christian may be a very ordinary person, but he acquires a new value and dignity and greatness because he belongs to God. The greatness of the Christian lies in the fact that he is God's.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

Money is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master. (P.T. Barnum)

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone. (Karl Barth)

The longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree? (Richard Baxter)

Affliction comes to the believer not to make him sad, but sober; not to make him sorry, but wise. Even as the plow enriches the field so that the seed is multiplied a thousandfold, so affliction should magnify our joy and increase our spiritual harvest.

Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

The knowledge of Christ's love for us should cause us to love Him in such a way that it is demonstrated in our attitude, conduct, and commitment to serve God. Spiritual maturity is marked by spiritual knowledge being put into action. (Edward Bedore)

A skeptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it is a forgery. (Morris Bender)

When life caves in, you do not need reasons -- you need comfort. You do not need some answers -- you need someone. And Jesus does not come to us with an explanation -- He comes to us with His presence. (Bob Benson)

The prayer closet is the arena which produces the overcomer. ( Paul E. Billheimer)

In my twenty-seventh year, while riding the metro in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) I was overcome with a despair so great that life seemed to stop at once, preempting the future entirely, let alone any meaning. Suddenly, all by itself, a phrase astonished: 'Without God life makes no sense.' Repeating it in astonishment, I rode the phrase up like a moving staircase, got out of the metro and walked into God's light." (Adrei Bitov, Russian Novelist)

Pride is tasteless, colorless and sizeless. Yet it is the hardest thing to swallow. (August B. Black)

Christians ought not to be smothered in fear. There is a spiritual readiness, where we return to having the peace of God stand guard over our hearts and minds. What an incredible witness it is to a lost and fearful society when the Christian acts like a child of God, living under the loving sovereignty of the Heavenly Father. The Christian needs to walk in peace, so no matter what happens they will be able to bear witness to a watching world. (Henry Blackaby)

Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last. (Horatius Bonar)

The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one's life towards a goal.

Salvation is free, ... but discipleship will cost you your life.

God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill all His promises . . . leading us along the best and straightest paths to Himself.

Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible, and receives the impossible.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing. (Edward McKendree (E. M.) Bounds)

I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light. (Mary Gardiner Brainard)

It seems to me, as time goes on, that the only thing that is worth seeking for is to know and to be known by Christ -- a privilege open alone to the childlike, who, with receptivity, guilelessness, and humility, move Godward. (Charles H. Brent)

Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace. ( Jerry Bridges)

Decisions which are made in the light of God's Word are stable and show wisdom. (Vonette Z. Bright)

Faith says not, "I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it"; but, "God sent it, and so it must be good for me" Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its hand more closely.

The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond.

The more man becomes irradiated with the divinity of Christ, the more, not the less, truly he is man.

The Bible shows how the world progresses. It begins with a garden, but ends with a Holy City.

Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you yourself shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.

We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.

If any man should ask me what is the first, second, and third part of being a Christian, I must answer "Action!"

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. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold.

Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. And only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit round and pluck blackberries. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

In the most lopsided deal of all time, Jesus took our filthy rags of sin and gave us His robe of righteousness. Our righteousness is not our own, it is from Him. Dare we brag of our goodness now? (Paul C. Brownlow)

For the rest of my life I'm going to trust that God is always at work in all things, and give him thanks long before my simplest prayers are answered. (Nancy Parker Brummett)

Sanctification is glory begun. Glory is sanctification completed.

Only at the cross of Christ does man see fully what it is that separates him from God; yet it is here alone that he perceives that he is no longer separated from God. Nowehere else does the inviolable holiness of God, the impossibility of overlooking the guilt of man stand out more plainly; but nowhere else does the limitless mercy of God, which utterly transcends all human standards, stand out more clearly and plainly.

The church exists by mission, as fire exists by burning.

Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst.

Humility is the Christian's greatest honor; the higher men climb, the farther they are from heaven. (Burder)

A wise man seeks much counsel...a fool listens to all of it. (Larry Burkett)

Christ is the desire of nations, the joy of angels, the delight of the Father. What solace then must that soul be filled with that hath the possession of Him to all eternity!

Sincerity carries the soul in all simplicity to open its heart to God.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Nor can a man with grace his soul inspire, More than the candles set themselves on fire.

Contentment is not by addition but by subtraction: seeking to add a thing will not bring contentment. Instead, subtracting from your desires until you are satisfied only with Christ brings contentment. (Jeremiah Burroughs)

Now the great thing is this: we are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory. For a sacred thing may not be applied to profane uses without marked injury to him.

Nobody seriously believes the universe was made by God without being persuaded that He takes care of His works.

God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us -- as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray.

Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

It is not after we were reconciled by the blood of his Son that God began to love us, but before the foundation of the world.

Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind. (Catherine of Siena)

Nails were not enough to hold God-and-man nailed and fastened on the Cross, had not love held Him there

Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God. (William Carey)

One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving.

I have had prayers answered--most strangely so sometimes--but I think our heavenly Father's loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me. ( Lewis Carroll)

Since God offers to manage our affairs for us, let us once and for all hand them over to His infinite wisdom, in order to occupy ourselves only with Himself and what belongs to Him. (J. P. de Caussade)

God denies a Christian nothing, but with a design to give him something better. (Richard Cecil)

Wherever there is any element of pride or of conceit, Jesus cannot expound a thing. He will take us through the disappointment of a wounded pride of intellect, through disappointment of heart. He will reveal inordinate affections-things over which we never thought He would have to get us alone.

When Jesus Christ shed his blood on the cross, it was not the blood of a martyr; or the blood of one man for another; it was the life of God poured out to redeem the world.

Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.

God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.

The golden rule for understanding in spiritual matters is not intellect, but obedience.

Today Jesus Christ is being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere example. He is that, but he is infinitely more; He is salvation itself, He is the Gospel of God.

Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us.

There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all cost, and God will fulfill His purpose through your life. (This includes meeting the needs of your heart.) One individual life may be of priceless value to God's purposes, and yours may be that life.

The Bible as a whole speaks more of God's holiness than of His love. (Walter Chantry)

I don't see the big picture. I don't have a clue. But I know God does. I'm going to declare that, even if I don't feel it right now. (Steven Curtis Chapman)

We may be truly said to worship God, though we lack perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we lack sincerity. (Stephen Charnock)

We are perpetually being told that what is wanted is a strong man who will do things. What is really wanted is a strong man who will undo things; and that will be the real test of strength.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

The issue now is clear. It is between light and darkness and everyon must choose his side.

Whatever else may be said of man, this one thing is clear: He is not what he is capable of being.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.

Every sermon should be an agony of the soul, a passion to beget Christ in the souls of men.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.

Obedience is the burial of the will and the resurrection of humility.

Christ is with those of humble mind, not with those who exalt themselves over his flock. (Clement of Rome)

We are no more responsible for the evil thoughts that pass through our minds than a scarecrow for the birds which fly over the seedplot he has to guard. The sole responsibility in each case is to prevent them from settling. (John Churtom Collins)

A blind, anemic, weak-kneed flea on crutches would have a