I have noticed a few blogs that participate in the “Thursday Thirteen” — a list of thirteen of anything, designed to helps folks get to know each other and spark conversation. This is my first time to participate. I’m borrowing from Cindy Swanson’s idea from a couple of weeks ago and posting 13 favorite quotes:

1. It doesn’t really matter how great the pressure is. What matters is where the pressure lies, whether it comes between me and God or whether it presses me nearer His heart. — Hudson Taylor

2. No amount of activity in the Father’s service will make up for neglect of the Father Himself. — Robert Murray McCheyne

3. Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present. — Dale Carnegie

4. Sarcasm comes from a Greek word which means “flesh.” It means “to tear flesh.” — Jim Berg, Quieting a Noisy Soul

5. We have a base man-pleasing disposition, which will make us let men perish lest we lose their love, and let them go quietly to hell, lest we should make them angry with us for seeking their salvation: and we are ready to venture on the displeasure of God, and risk the everlasting misery of our people, rather than draw on ourselves their ill-will.
—Richard Baxter as quoted in the Nov./Dec. 2005 Frontline Magazine

6. Emily, wife of America’s first foreign missionary, Adoniram Judson, wrote home from Moulmein, Burma, in January 1847: “This taking care of teething babies, and teaching natives to darn stockings and talking English back end foremost . . . in order to get an eatable dinner, is really a very odd sort of business for Fanny Forester [her pen name–she was a well-known New England writer before marrying Judson]…. But I begin to get reconciled to my minute cares.” She was ambitious for “higher and better things,” but was enabled to learn that “the person who would do great things well must practice daily on little ones; and she who would have the assistance of the Almighty in important acts, must be daily and hourly accustomed to consult His will in the minor affairs of life.”

— From Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot

7. The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. — Psalm 68:17

I have not a shadow of a doubt that if all our eyes could be opened today, we should see our homes, and our places of business, and the streets we traverse, filled with “the chariots of God.” There is no need, for any one of us to walk for lack of chariots. That cross inmate of your household, who has hitherto made life a burden to you, and who has been the Juggernaut car to crush your soul into the dust, may henceforth be a glorious chariot to carry you to the heights of heavenly patience and long-suffering. That misunderstanding, that mortification, that unkindness, that disappointment, that loss, that defeat — all these are chariots waiting to carry you to the very heights of victory you have so longed to reach. Mount into them, then, with thankful hearts, and lose sight of all second causes in the shining of His love who will carry you in His arms safely and triumphantly over it all.

—Hannah Whitall Smith

8. True prayer is not asking God for what we want, but for what He wants.
—J. Oswald Chambers

9. Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire? — Corrie Ten Boom

10. Do not have your concert first. and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.– Hudson Taylor

11. Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” — Unknown

12. When I came to see that Jesus Christ had died for me, it didn’t seem hard to give up all for Him. It seemed just common, ordinary honesty.
—C. T. Studd (1860-1931)

13. God does not waste suffering, nor does He discipline out of caprice. If He plough, it is because He purposes a crop. — J. Oswald Sanders